Gone

by Christopher M. TrueFormed near the end of his tenure as the leader of Los Angeles hardcore legends Black Flag, Greg Ginns instrumental group Gone walked the strange fine line between atonal jazz, riff-heavy rock, and brief forays into funk stylings sporadically from 1986 onward. The first Gone release, Lets Get Real, Real Gone for a Change, and its follow up, Gone II: But Never Too Gone, featured eventual Rollins Band members Sim Cain (drums) and Andrew Weiss (bass). Gone went quiet after their first two releases, not to return until 1994 with not one but two new full-lengths releases that year, Criminal Mind and All the Dirt Thats Fit to Print. With Cain and Weiss no longer playing with Ginn (Weiss, by this time, had moved on from the Rollins Band and taken up bass duties with Ween), replacements were found with bassist Steve Sharp and drummer Gregory Moore. 1996 and 1998 saw further Gone releases, Best Left Unsaid and Country Dumb, respectively. Other projects, as well as distribution problems at Ginns (and for that matter Gones) label, SST, kept Gone quiet after 1998, limiting the band to occasional live appearances.