The Joneses                                                                                                       By Trashy Anderson
The Joneses... there was an R&B 60’s act with that name. There was an east coast (Fr. Boston- Ye olde editor from Boston) bad rock band that did an album on Atlantic with that name. And there were the Hollywood legends with that name.

It’s hard to try and explain the time and place when the Joneses were one of the best bands in L.A.. Hell, it’s impossible to remember a solid Joneses line up at all! A few people called them an L.A. version of the Heartbreakers, and maybe that’s so, but this is a band that deserved to be more than a footnote in Hollywood rock history! They were too late for the L.A. punk scene, and too rock for it anyhow. They were too early for the L.A. rock scene that gave the world GN’R & all the rest, but were too punk for that scene anyhow. I guess they were rock during that era when rock was far from cool!

The band seemed to have an ever changing line-up but were somewhat constant with singer/guitar player Jeff Drake and bassist Scott Franklin. Although it seemed Franklin and band mates Nickey “Beat” Alexander (legendary drummer who’d played with every L.A. punk band from Venus & the Razorblades to the Weirdos to the Germs and later with L.A. Guns) and Paul Mars (drummer who later, as Paul Black, became singer for L.A. Guns)  also revolved around the line-up of L.A.’s Mau Maus, which featured former Berlin Brat Rick Wilder as their frontman. It seemed like this band was the only band doing good drunk rock & roll aside from Tex & the Horseheads in L.A. before the rise of GN’R and their affiliated bands. It was always amazing to see the Joneses pull off doing such Aerosmith-isms as “Chip Away At The Stone” in front of 1985 L.A. punk crowds. Like the Heartbreakers, a good Joneses show would set your mind aflame, but also like the Heartbreakers, those bad shows happened, and were just as unforgettable.

The band did record some cool stuff, but never caught the lightning in a bottle that was their great live gigs. The songs on “Hell Comes To Your House Vol 2” especially “She’s So Filthy” might have been their best moments, Somehow catching their Stones/Aerosmith drunk rock edge with a small country tinge and a punk attitude. The one real album they did (which apparently their indie label Dr. Dream spent a ton on), “Keeping Up With The Joneses” didn’t capture the sleazy fire of the band, but remains a L.A. drunk classic. The fine folk at Sympathy For The Record Industry did do a Joneses compilation “Criminal History” that truly does keep you up with the Joneses including almost all the studio recordings that whoever compiled it could find.

Occasionally I see a mention of a Joneses gig in L.A. Who knows which of the 20-some members Jeff Drake may have put together for those and sadly what I was told about those gigs was not even worth repeating. Still, there are still former Joneses that litter the rock landscape. Scott Franklin plugged away forever around Hollywood and eventually became what someone like him was destined to be, the bassist for the Cramps!

-Trashy Jones-Anderson