MWSA Music Review

The Gousters

Walt Cronin & Zander Schloss

Plum Music Productions

email: gousters@yahoo.com

Website: http://www.thegousters.com/

Reviewer: Bill McDonald – President of the MWSA

Vietnam - PTSD - Hillbilly - Folk - Grunge Rock at its BEST!

There is no way to place or fit this musical CD into some neat fitting musical genre box—so I have described it as Vietnam-PTSD-Hillbilly-Folk-Grunge Rock! It will knock you in butt with its themed songs that related to Walt Cronin’s life as a Vietnam veteran. We are now playing it on our web radio station: K-Dade Radio to great reviews from listeners who can identify with this creative voice from a fellow veteran.

Hearing is the only way one can share what this experience is like. It is edgy poetry with shades of emotional trauma and memories of things past.

This touchstone of emotions is from the creative partnership of Walt Cronin (who is a former Navy Corpsman with a Marine platoon in Vietnam in 1970) and his friend Zander Schloss. There are many others who contributed time and creative juices to this CD; however, this still remains an undiscovered gem of musical enlightenment. WARNING: Their music will hook you and entrance you—so caution must be voiced if you listen to this CD.

Hillbilly, mystical, grunge rhythms mixed with spiritual folk lyrics—what more can I say. I LOVE IT! Go out and buy it and listen to it. Your life will be touched and changed. A FIVE STAR REVIEW!!!

Notes from Walt Cronin:

I first met Zander Schloss when working on a now cult film called “Repo Man” by Alex Cox. My friend Peter McCarthy from Chicago was one of its producers. I had just moved to Los Angeles and helped out videotaping the auditions with my interest in video production just beginning.

Zander of course played “Kevin” and went on to pursue his true passion of music, writing some of the soundtracks of Alex’s other films, Sid & Nancy, & “Straight To Hell” as well as acting in them. He is the bass player for one of L.A.’s founding punk bands “The Circle Jerks” still on tour after these many years.

Zander has also written with the late Joe Strummer and Scott Weiland. Zander, originally from St Louis moved to California as a teenager. Having become friends while working on “Repo Man” in 1984, I reunited with Z when he rented the studio apartment in 1999 over our garage. This was a home my wife and I were renting in Los Angeles. This old Spanish home built in the 1920s has what is very uncommon in L.A. “ A basement”

This is where we spent countless hours recording analog tracks on an eight track reel to reel. Zander’s command of musical instrumentation and the help of his many friends who contributed both instrumental and vocal tracks over a period of 4 years evolved when we brought the reels to Brian Susko’s Westside Recorder Studio.

It was there, that editing, mixing and dozens of more tracks were added digitally over the next few years with Brian’s fine ear.

I moved to Crestline, CA in the San Bernardino Mountains where my wife Viola and I bought a 2 bedroom cabin on an acre of land. I was seeking some peace of mind having been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. I had served as a Navy Corpsman (medic) with a Marine platoon in Vietnam in 1970.

After the wildfires in the fall of 2003, I was never able to regain a sense of safety living somewhat remote in the forest and returned to urban L.A. I finally have completed what has been sitting on all those back burners these many years.. The Gousters. The origin of the name is what I perceive as pre-dating the “Grunge" look in Seattle.

It was a term we referred to ourselves as of the similar style or “non-style”of the way we dressed while growing up in Chicago in the 1960s based on Black street slang on the south and westside.

We sincerely hope you enjoy the music.

Walt Cronin