GUADALCANAL DIARY

Seated on an uncarpeted wooden step, I listen and feel myself carried back to memories of Guadalcanal Diary at a litany of long-gone Atlanta clubs: the Agora, the Moonshadow, the legendary 688.... I'd come today expecting to hear them play the same tune repeatedly, practicing and polishing. Instead to my astonishment I find that, over three weeks before their scheduled reunion show, they move expertly through an entire 23-song set. As the thunder of "Ghost on the Road" dies out, drummer Poe turns and says quietly, "Takes you back to high school, doesn't it?"

Guadalcanal Diary was originally formed in the Spring of '81 by Attaway and Walls. Crowe, who was Attaway's roommate at the time, was recruited to play bass. Poe, who had played bass with Walls in another band, was drafted as a replacement drummer on the eve of the first show. Attaway took the band name from author Richard Tregaski's first-person account of U.S. Marines battling the Japanese during WWII (and the acclaimed 1943 film of the same title). "I liked the sound of it," Attaway explains, "and the implications of patriotism that went behind it."

Attaway and Walls had previously played together in the '77 punk band Strictly American. It was there that they first performed the song "John Wayne," the oft-misunderstood saga of a B-movie gunfighter whose one regret is that he never slew the Duke onscreen. This tune later became a signature song for Guadalcanal Diary, until they wearied of explaining it and refused to include it in their shows. It appears on their first record, the four song E.P. WATUSI RODEO, released in '83. Danny Beard's DB Recs issued the group's first full album, WALKING IN THE SHADOW OF THE BIG MAN, the next year. The Diary was soon picked up by Elektra Records, for whom they ultimately recorded three more full albums: JAMBOREE, 2X4, and FLIP-FLOP. In '89, at the end of their longest tour ever, the group decided to disband. Their final performance was in Athens, at Legion Field.