Note: For an index of all articles in all three Favorite Songs series, click here, then scroll down.

Who They Were: A smart and energetic rock n’ roll quartet from Marietta, Georgia, whose life cycle essentially book-marked the ’80s: they formed in 1981, they released four solid albums, and they broke up in 1989 (except for a few short-term later reunions). The group’s line-up never changed throughout their history: Murray Attaway was the guitar-strumming front-man singer, Jeff Walls the roots-rockin’, twang-slingin’ lead guit-box man, Rhett Crowe the high-NRG bass player, and John Poe the secret-weapon drummer, who also offered crucial vocal and songwriting support over the group’s run. Guadalcanal Diary (who took their name from a 1943 war memoir) had the arguable misfortune of being a guitar-based band from Georgia just as R.E.M. emerged from the college-rock ghetto into unexpected mass marketability, leading the record industry to seek out “similar” groups who could generate comparable buzz, along with jingling  the coffers handsomely for the suits. Guad Di were one of the ones so lumped by the music magazines and marketing cabals of the era, even though their sound, lyrical interests, live approach, and overall musical aesthetic were significantly different from R.E.M. and any of the other Athens, Georgia bands then emerging. As each of their albums were issued, there was a general critical trend to compare/contrast it to whatever R.E.M. had most recently issued, and as R.E.M. got bigger and bigger over the ’80s, the music press tended to become increasingly dismissive of Guad Di. Unjustly and unfairly so, objectively speaking in hindsight. I suspect fatigue with that consistent “not quite R.E.M.” narrative got to them eventually, though the marriage of Walls and Crowe in 1988 and the birth of their daughter a year later also likely changed their perspective and priorities vis-à-vis touring and music-making. The group’s members intermittently engaged in a variety of musical pursuits (primarily regional) in the decades that followed; Walls died of pancreatic cancer in 2019, shutting the door on any future reunions. They left behind a fine catalog and a reputation for in-concert excellence, though, and there’s nothing wrong with spending a solid decade doing that.

When I First Heard Them: Would have been sometime in late 1984, likely on WHFS-FM, my go-to radio station of the day, soon after the release of their major-label debut album, Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man. (A 1983 EP on Atlanta’s influential indie/regional DB Records would have been the item that got Elektra to sign them in the post-R.E.M. contracting frenzy). I’m fairly certain the first song I heard would have been “Watusi Rodeo.” I’m also fairly certain that I would have read a lot of gushing prose in music magazines about them being the next R.E.M. I didn’t hear that, and I didn’t really care about having another R.E.M. anyway, but I loved the weirdness of that first single, and the album from which it sprang was superb, diverse, interesting, fun, and yet surprisingly dark on some planes, with the group’s attack seeming to involve laughing and raging across various emotional and spiritual abysses. I nabbed each of their subsequent albums happily and eagerly on release, along with Murray Attaway’s sole solo disc, 1993’s In Thrall. They’ve never, ever rolled off of my routine listening lists for very long over the years, enduring in my personal pantheon in ways that loads of other “next big thing” bands from the ’80s could never achieve.

Why I Love Them: The collection of songs that Guadalcanal Diary left behind is a fine one, covering a lot of territory, both in terms of sonic attack, and in terms of lyrical concerns. There are elements of the Paisley Underground, there’s roots-rock, there’s smart pop, there’s cowboy music, some heart-breaking ballads, some childhood chants turned into energetic rock songs, some hair-raising instrumentals, and some classic college rock radio-era hits. Their lyrics ranged from the silly (e.g. “Cattle Prod” and “I See Moe”) to the sad and sublime (e.g. “Michael Rockefeller” and “3AM”), and were often far richer or more impressionistic than most of what the radio was spewing in their time. But my affection for the group really moved up a next level after I caught them live for the first time, which was such an amazing experience that I went on to see them numerous times in the ensuring years in Athens and Atlanta, Georgia, and in Washington, DC. For the latter part of the ’80s, I’d have eagerly cited them (along with Butthole Surfers) as my unquestionable favorite live acts, to be seen and cheered anytime the opportunity presented itself. Onstage, Guad Di’s component personalities really popped, with Attaway as the stereotypical adenoidal/bespectacled geeky ’80s front-man, Walls a sort of stoic flannel-clad cowboy anchor who flicked out killer leads effortlessly, Crowe a perpetual motion machine linked in perfect lock-step with Poe’s crisply-slamming concussions, a rhythm section to die (or kill) for. I lived in Athens, GA in ’86-87, so I got to see a lot of artists in concert there who either in their time or retrospectively were judged as having made the best and most influential music of their era. But I’ll say this with certainty: Guadalcanal Diary mopped them all of the stage, and some of my finest ever concert memories are of working up a true frothy lather in the the thrall of their musical ministrations.

#10. “Always Saturday,” from Flip-Flop (1989)

#9. “Heathen Rage,” from Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man (1984)

#8. “Little Birds,” from 2X4 (1987)

#7. “Trail of Tears,” from Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man (1984) 

#6. “Please Stop Me,” from Jamboree (1986)

#5. “Fire from Heaven,” from Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man (1984)

#4. “Litany (Life Goes On),” from 2X4 (1987)

#3. “Gilbert Takes the Wheel,” from Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man (1984)

#2. “Michael Rockefeller,” from Jamboree (1986)

#1. “Lips of Steel,” from 2X4 (1987)