PERSIAN GULF
photo by Peter Iverson
A Dream About Changing the Weather
by Kurt Brenneman
(December 2025)
Critics and historians have canonized the best American independent rock bands of the 1980's. Persian Gulf belongs in that canon. When asked for the best music of 1984 for The Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop Poll, Robert Christgau, the Dean of American Rock Critics, voted Persian Gulf's Changing the Weather the best extended play (EP). Changing the Weather arrived with "absolutely no hoohah," he wrote in summer 1984. "The best EP I've heard all year is Changing the Weather by Persian Gulf, who left Florida to be nearer the Liberty Bell and the U.S. Mint, and who remind me of both Alex Chilton and the Clash."
Hal Shows was Persian Gulf's founder, guitarist, and principal songwriter. "If you listen to our music, you'll hear soul music. It's more in our punk attack that we were different. Anything was possible. We were rock'n'rollers in the broadest sense," he said in a recent interview. This is the story of Persian Gulf, the band behind a classic of Amerindie.
You're So Serious, I'm Just Curious: Tallahassee, 1980-1983
Shows grew up on the north Florida coast in a home filled with music. He played guitar, wrote poetry, and loved 1950's and 1960's rock. "I really came up in the age of the great three-minute song, which I consider one of the 20th Century's most powerful art forms," said Shows.
Shows formed Persian Gulf in 1980 in Tallahassee, where he was a poet and academic at Florida State University. "I spent most of the 1970's in Europe. My experience when I came back to America was a little shocking." John Lennon's assassination in December 1980 intensified his "sense of alienation." "It was a terrible wound to the culture," he said. Shows had given poetry readings in Tallahassee. Now he asked himself, "How do I really want to make some art? I was 26 and had been playing music a long time." The answer was to recruit Charlie "Chas" Chase on drums, David House on bass, and other musicians as needed. When brainstorming a band name, they thought about "the weirdest place we could possibly be. [The Persian Gulf] seemed like a place that would be crucial for the next century."
Persian Gulf played its first show on January 11, 1981, at the Rock Against Racism concert in Moore Auditorium at Florida State, now posted on Hal Shows' Bandcamp page. All songs were Shows originals. Shows plays articulate but noisy guitar. The embryonic Gulf is ragged but together. "Rumor Has It" was an early staple that never made to the studio. "On the Line" appeared later on their album The Movie. The set's climax is "Race War," the dissenter's lament performed powerfully on Changing the Weather.
In 1981, Shows, House, and Chase recorded, with Robert Anthony and the band producing. Beertown and Others is the name for "original recordings made at Florida State and played a lot on the radio from the four-track tape we mixed them on," said Shows. This airplay attracted new fans. "['Beertown'] had never been released after all these years." In 2018, a fan put together a compilation of 1980's Tallahassee punk and approached Shows for a track. Shows gave him "Beertown," so the radio hit finally had an official release.
In late 1981, Jonathan Adams became their new bassist, a chair he held to the end. Adams was a member of the Florida State Jazz Ensemble, but Persian Gulf was his first rock band. He was a fan, as he told Ken Tucker of The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1985. "They were raw, and their energy was really exciting. And they did a great version of 'Not Fade Away.'" The lineup solidified with Shows, Adams, and Charlie "Chas" Chase on drums. The band was managed by Shows' old friend Alan Pendleton.
Persian Gulf played every club in Tallahassee - Railroad Square, Smitty's, the Club DownUnder. "We played country bars, holes-in-the-wall." Tommy's Deep South Music Hall "was our Hamburg," said Shows. "It was an all-night club. We played midnight to dawn." On August 19, 1981, Persian Gulf opened for the Psychedelic Furs at Tommy's. In the Florida Flambeau, reviewer Martin Hannet said, "Persian Gulf is so new, so amorphous that even the band doesn't know if it's a trio or a quartet." Noting its deployment of different styles, Hannet was pleased when the band played "a set of Shows' hard-edged pop, reminiscent of Elvis Costello." Persian Gulf built a large following. "We held the box-office record at Club DownUnder for twenty years," said Shows. Steve Dollar, writing in the Florida Flambeau, said, "The trio relies on a mixed set of golden oldies - recycled rockabilly anthems and K-Tel classics - and originals colored by regional scenery ('Beertown,' 'Cat City'), sex ('Clean Love,' 'Mechanical Bull'), and persuasive politics ('El Salvador,' 'Race War')."
Persian Gulf commanded all styles, including punk and R&B, and fit into different scenes. Shows recalled one club owner thinking they were reggae. Mostly, the band was grouped with New Wave bands like the Slut Boys and the Know-It-Alls. Persian Gulf described itself as garage - concise and full of energy.
Left to right: Shows, Adams, Chase
Art School Party: Early Studio Recordings and Live Takes, 1981-1983, now posted on Bandcamp, documents their Tallahassee club nights. "Beertown" was a local hit on Florida State's public radio station WFSU-FM. Persian Gulf slowed the tempo to a reggae rhythm with "Mad Doctor." Shows' bitter lyrics about relationships recalled early Elvis Costello. The band covers "Tear It Up," "Johnny B. Goode," and even "Psycho Killer." The lineup was Shows, Chase, and House or Adams on bass, with production on the studio tracks by Bob Anthony.
Persian Gulf practiced, played, and recorded, but Shows still wanted to go North to the legendary clubs and enthusiastic music press of the Northeast. "The local press didn't understand what we were doing," said Shows. "When people would get involved with the band, I would ask them if they were ready to go big?" On July 1, 1983, Persian played a farewell show at Railroad Square - tickets $2 in advance, $3 at the door - and moved to Philadelphia.
They Said We'd Never Make It to the Barricade: Philadelphia, 1983-1986
Shows, Adams, Chase, Pendleton, and their families, including Chase's two children, drove to Philadelphia. "We needed a really big truck. It was pretty crazy." Shows, Adams and his wife Kathleen Crawford, and Pendleton settled in a big house in South Philadelphia. Chase and his family resided in another section. Shows and Adams worked as coffee shop waiters in Reading Terminal Market.
"Philly was great! We were very lucky we went to Philadelphia rather than New York City," said Shows. For one, the competition was less. "Forty bands a day were moving to Brooklyn." Chase was from Philadelphia. "He knew the ropes. The local press was great." Philadelphia also had more and less expensive recording studios than Tallahassee, and more clubs. Plus, it was closer to New York City.
For some immediate renown, Pendleton arranged concerts in the suburbs. An early audience was a bowling league drinking post-game beers. Persian Gulf won them over. By October, Persian Gulf played Philadelphia's preeminent punk venue, the East Side Club. The secret, said Shows, is "[y]ou want the women to dance. Once the women dance, then the men will dance."
They needed to record. The band felt that perfected recordings of their originals would grab new fans. Fate assisted. An employee of Sigma Sound Studios saw Persian Gulf at a club, was impressed, and connected the band to Sigma engineer Peter Humphreys. Humphreys recorded Shows, Adams, and Chase in his own eight-track studio, Music Visions, in northeast Philadelphia. Shows said, "We spent three-four months making a seven-song record. We had time to digest what we were doing. We were playing with it." The band selected the songs, six by Shows and one by Adams, from their live repertoire.
Changing the Weather cover
Persian Gulf released Changing the Weather on the band's Raven Records in 1984. The black-and-white cover is by artist Jim Loser. "I was always delighted our first record came out in the Year of Orwell... A bit more than a coincidence, but certainly a stroke of luck as well," said Shows.
"I'm Joe Curious" is the "introduction song," said Shows. It's punchy and poppy and is frank about the desire to learn about the wider world. "Talk to me, I'm Joe Curious," sings Shows. "Talk to me 'til I'm comatose." Adams wrote the next number, "Katie Lit a Fire" (co-written by Adams and Shows). "It was our funk number," said Shows, "about burning down your landlord's house." Side one concludes with "(I'm so Glad I'm) Living in the Free World," an intense rocker with a noisy solo by Shows. Shows' homely details described the ups and downs of a free economy:
My Dad says it's a depression situationSide two starts with "Eclipse of the Moon," a grand hard rocker. Its poetic lyrics describe sanguinity in advance of a lunar eclipse. Gazers gather in a grain field, breathe slowly, and take "a thousand pictures." The revelation brings hope and relief from the chaotic world. "Real magic will make me feel better," sings Shows. This is followed by "It's a Good Thing," with just acoustic guitar, handclaps, and harmonies at first. The lyrics sing of nature's pleasures. They are, simply, "a good thing." Shows said the song warns of an "ecological nightmare," and the song fades during Kathleen Crawford's ironic, mournful cello.
He can't get a job, he can't get a vacation
He takes one real beating from the bills
Maybe when I'm older I'll feel the way he feels
A sudden feedback blast heralds the social nightmare "Race War." "It's about 'it doesn't matter how poor we are, we're still better than them,' even though they are doing better than you. Being a Southerner runs through all the work." World-weary, Shows sings about the Ku Klux Klan:
Drag your dirty linen through the streetThe song concludes with the band pleading, "I don't wanna die in a race war!" The song reflected Persian Gulf's commitment to politics. "I don't think you can make art without being political," said Shows. Again, Persian Gulf's first gig was for Rock Against Racism. The band played benefits for Tallahassee magazine Red Bass, responsible disposal of nuclear waste, and Amnesty International.
Find another curly hair to beat
It's race war!
Changing the Weather concludes with "Pieces of Eve." "I put one song on every record that I wrote when the recording was about done. The song's about what I've been doing during the recording." The most punk song on the record, the singer studies a faded photograph in hopes of bringing the mysterious past into focus.
In August, 1984, Robert Christgau made Changing the Weather his "Pick Hit" of the month, the first EP he so honored, and gave it an "A." "Except maybe for Rank and File (who are bitterer) and Springsteen & Co. (who are grander), I can't think of an American band whose account of the world is more unflinchingly on." Christgau found the songs "constricted and expansive, sour and ebullient all at once. Hal Shows understands his own anarchic/apocalyptic impulses, and his Lennonesque rhythm guitar provides the extra momentum he needs to stay on top of things."
"Christgau was sent that record out of the blue. He didn't know us from Adams. His review gave us the chance to do all this. It was very kind of him," said Shows. Changing the Weather enjoyed good reviews from Philadelphia and Florida newspapers, too. Now curious radio stations and record labels like CBS, Arista, Warner Brothers, and Twin/Tone called for copies. No wonder. Changing the Weather has lean but complex songs and lyrics rich with empathy for everyone struggling to get by.
Left to right: Shows, Woods, Adams
photo by Hal Gadgette
One month after recording, drummer Chase left the band. His seat was filled by Philadelphia native Doug Woods. Woods, a welder by day and drummer since his mother bought him a set, lived only three blocks away and had drummed in local bands for a decade. Woods sat in for Chase at a gig at the last minute. Woods told Ken Tucker of The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1985, "I really liked the way they played and the songs Hal had written. I thought, 'Man, these guys are good - there's only three of them, but it sounds like there's eight of them.'" Woods said Persian Gulf was his first band that had a plan for their future.
Persian Gulf was, in the estimation of The Philadelphia Inquirer's Tucker, "one of the most dependable live acts on the local scene." In November, 1984, Tucker, reviewing Persian Gulf at Grendel's Lair on South Street, said:
With his close-cropped hair, tight smile and round, rimless glasses, Shows looks like the sort of yuppie who takes pride in having outgrown rock-and-roll. Instead, he has grown into it, bending it to his will. He and his band make thoughtful music that doesn't get bogged down in contemplation; whenever his lyrics begin to get knotty or abstruse, Shows abruptly stops singing and inserts a prickly guitar solo... At Grendel's Lair, however, Shows was his own man, singing crisply, constructing his songs around the rhythm section, whose terse funkiness inspired the audience to hop up and dance.After Christgau's review, New York City clubs called. Jon Pareles, reviewing an October 1984 show at Danceteria for The New York Times, said, "Although the music sounds workmanlike and rough-hewn, there's not a note out of place; the band tossed off a song in an odd meter, 7/4, as easily as a funk tune." "We played CBGB's twenty times. Greatest club and best sound system in New York," said Shows.
Persian Gulf began shows with an acoustic set. Shows, Adams, and Woods harmonized, accompanied by acoustic guitar and Kathleen Crawford's cello. In his review, Ken Tucker said, "The songs were beautifully arranged, and the cello was tart and ironic rather than pretty and romantic." Fans loved the acoustic set. "We played songs that we also played electric versions of," said Shows.
Persian Gulf toured, too, going from the Rat in Boston to Tobacco Road in Miami twice each year. "We were on the road a lot." Persian Gulf played legendary venues like the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, 40 Watt Club in Athens, Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill, and the 688 Club in Atlanta. Florida stops included Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Orlando, and Tampa. Miami's Tobacco Road, ornamented with a neon sign that read "liquor bar," had a reggae room on the first floor and a live music club upstairs "decorated like a French bordello." "I always loved the Miami shows," said Shows.
The Movie cover
In 1985, a group of Florida entrepreneurs approached Persian Gulf about financing the recording, production, and distribution of what became the follow-up to Changing the Weather, the band's first full-length album The Movie. While in the middle of an East Coast tour, Persian Gulf recorded at Flamingo Studios in Tallahassee at Christmas, 1985, with production by the band and Jonathan Prescott. Songs were selected from their live set. The extra musicians on the album often were friends hanging around the studio during recording. Recording took "six long days."
"The Movie was the least satisfying record I made. It was made hastily in one week - not my style of working. We didn't get to refine that record. We didn't spend as much time on that record as I'd liked. The backers wanted it out quickly. And we had to get back to New York City." Persian Gulf jumped on stage at CBGB's just twenty-one hours after completion of the final mix.
The Movie starts with "On the Line," with a Jimmy Graham sax solo, and "Clean Love," both rockers about romantic troubles, catchy but earthbound. "Free South Africa" is a rousing anti-Apartheid chant. "This was done when things [in South Africa] were still bad and before Nelson Mandela's parade in New York City." The following "Curfew" builds on the unrest of "Free South Africa." It describes a more general battle in the streets:
I gathered all my hundred-dollar billsAdams' harmonica, Shows' solo, and Woods' propulsive drumming complement the desperation of the lyrics. "Awaiting Room" is an acoustic song from the viewpoint of a young soldier waiting for a train to home or the front. Whistled passages and Crawford's cello sweeten the ballad. The side-ending "No Use," said Shows, is "laughing at the media and the music industry." Shows sings, "We drove off in your cars, we sent you back to Mars."
In paper sacks that held what we would buy
They said I'd never make it to the barricade
I knew I had to give it a try
"Flying to Newark (of Your Own Free Will)," the first track on side two, "has got a lot of soul," said Shows. Persian Gulf adorned the mid-tempo folk song with harmonica puffs and lap steel guitar by Jonathan Copps. This may be another commentary on the music industry. Shows sings, "The business is a cemetery built on sand." "Water is Rising/White Paper" begins with a bluesy riff and shifts to a rocker. "Water and sea stuff appear in all our music," said Shows. "Being from Florida, we go through a lot of hurricanes."
"Responsibilities" is a chant about acceptance of and rebellion against the duties of adulthood. "Quiet Life," written by Adams, continues this theme, as a child dreams of "doing all the things that a shopkeeper does" and then imagines the quietude of old age. "Sea Song," said Shows, "is an homage to my youth. I grew up on the ocean. I spent all my summers barefoot on beaches."
"Everything Begins Again" is a power pop gem. Shows' singing is intense, shouted, almost hoarse. He plays a great riff with energetic support by Adams and Woods. "A mystical song," said Shows, "about how we keep doing the same thing over again." The Movie's credits roll with "Southern Bells," a brief instrumental calm. Chip Kaye created the cover art, "one of the first entirely digital covers." Persian Gulf called the album The Movie because they loved cinema and because of the spotlight on the band after the success of Changing the Weather.
After recording, the Florida entrepreneurs bowed out. The album sat in limbo for a year before Persian Gulf could finance its release on Raven Records in 1986. "That's time we could have spent working on it." Still, reviewers praised The Movie. In The Village Voice, Christgau graded it a "B+" - good, but not great. Christgau wrote, "The world [Shows'] best lyrics create isn't what the band's music makes it seem - it's an untrustworthy place where being a little crazy can help you get by, full of implicit regrets and sidelong insults and allusions that mean more than they add up to."
Persian Gulf's records omitted two of their live staples. "El Salvador" was a protest song about the violence of the Salvadoran Civil War. Shows said, sadly, "I could play it right now without changing a thing." The other was their cover of the Crickets' "Not Fade Away." Tucker, writing in The Philadelphia Inquirer, said it was "the most hard-rocking version... I've ever heard."
Left to right: Woods, Shows, Adams
Water is Rising in the Dancehall: Brooklyn, 1986-1989
Persian Gulf moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn, in 1986. "New York was great as long as something was happening. Otherwise, you are sitting in a fifth-floor flat tapping your fingers." The band's sets for New York clubs in this period can be sampled on the hour-long Persian Gulf at CBGB, NYC, USA, 1986-1988 on Bandcamp. The lineup is Shows ("guitars and cynicism"), Adams, and new drummer Larry Brown. Persian Gulf is looser and funkier than on The Movie, performing covers of "Hi-Heel Sneakers" and "Money (That's What I Want)," raucous versions of songs from Changing the Weather and The Movie, and several new songs: "Clean This Time," "Push It," twangy "I've Got Time," autobiographical "Next Nine Lives, and "I Can't Make Any Sense of This," described as "a little tune about the way we usually feel."
In 1987, London-based Abstract Sounds/Music released The Trailer, a 12-inch EP, in Europe on its T.I.M. imprint. The Trailer compiled three songs from Changing the Weather and two from The Movie. It was intended as an introduction for a planned release of The Movie in Europe. Instead, the full album never appeared, Abstract fell silent, and the band was never sent a copy. Shows said that, years later, a fan kindly sent him The Trailer.
Though live evidence proves Persian Gulf as fierce as ever, "[w]e didn't get to make more records," said Shows. "We didn't get a toehold in the industry. One guy said we were too smart." Persian Gulf shrunk to a duo of Shows and Adams, then disbanded in early 1989. "We got the feeling that what we wanted to happen wasn't going to happen. Why should we stay in this rut? We needed another rut. At least it's a new rut!"
Birthday Suit cover, by Eric Watts
Everything Begins Again: The Reunion
Hal Shows remained in Brooklyn in 1989. "I hung out at a club called SOB's - Sound of Brazil. I met a lot of musicians there. It was a different type of music. It nudged my songwriting." Working with Latin and Caribbean musicians he met at SOB's, Shows recorded his first solo album, Birthday Suit, released in 1990 on Raven Records. "It was made in ten different studios around New York. There's a different vibe to every song." Shows revised some Persian Gulf material back in Tallahassee for inclusion. Shows eventually returned to Florida, released seven more albums both solo and with the band Kangaroo Court, and is working on a new album in his home studio, Witchingstick Studio. In 2000, he compiled Persian Gulf's music in digital form on Cave Art Collective: 1980-1989, an 18-song CD on Raven Records.
Jonathan Adams moved to Atlanta in 1994 and is leader of the Aerials and a member of Chickens and Pigs. He also records at his home.
Everything does begin again. As part of the "Pioneers of Punk: The Art and Cultural Legacy of the 1980's Music Scene in Tallahassee," a program at the 621 Gallery in Tallahassee, Persian Gulf will reunite in March 2026. "We've never done a reunion. The person setting this up hadn't seen Persian Gulf live. He was told, 'You can't do this without Persian Gulf!' It will be interesting to get together with [Adams and Chase]. We will create the setlist when we rehearse for a week. We will be ragged, but we always were!" So, if you are wintering anywhere near Tallahassee next March, be sure to go to the 621 Gallery to witness the reunion of Persian Gulf, the creators of Changing the Weather, a classic of 1980's American independent rock music.
Discography:
Beertown and Others (Raven Records RRCT001) - four-track tape for radio play. The song "Beertown" is on the compilation Trouble With a Capital T (vinyl album, Panhandle Punk Productions, 2018).
Changing the Weather (Raven Records RREP001) - released 1984. Seven-song 12" EP.
The Movie (Raven Records RRLP001) - released 1986. Fourteen-song LP.
The Trailer (Abstract Records/T.I.M. 12MT2) - released 1986. Five-song 12" EP. Import.
Cave Art Collective: 1980-1989 (Raven Records RRCD003) - released 2000. Eighteen-song compilation CD.
Persian Gulf Rock Against Racism (First Show, 1/11/1981) - released 2024 on Hal Shows/Kangaroo Court/Persian Gulf's Bandcamp.
Persian Gulf: Art School Party: Early Studio Recordings and Live Takes, 1981-83 - released 2024 on Hal Shows/Kangaroo Court/Persian Gulf's Bandcamp.
Persian Gulf at CBGB, NYC, USA, 1986-88 - released 2024 on Hal Shows/Kangaroo Court/Persian Gulf's Bandcamp.
Visit Hal Shows/Kangaroo Court/Persian Gulf's Bandcamp at https://witchingstick.bandcamp.com/.
Bibliography:
Music Catalogue: Raven Records at https://www.nettally.com/halshows/music_catalogue.htm. Accessed on April 8, 2025.
Brown, Marina, "Hal Shows Unveils New Music in 'Masque,'" Tallahassee Democrat, September 10, 2021, p. F.5.
Christgau, Robert, "Christgau's Consumer Guide," The Village Voice, July 24, 1984, at https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/cg/cgv7-84.php.
Christgau, Robert, "Christgau's Consumer Guide," The Village Voice, August 28, 1984, at https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/cg/cgv8-84.php.
Christgau, Robert, "Christgau's Consumer Guide," The Village Voice, September 2, 1986, at https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/cg/cgv9-86.php.
Christgau, Robert, "Pazz & Jop 1984: Dean's List," The Village Voice, February 19, 1985, at https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/deans84.php.
Dollar, Steve, "A Few Reasons to be Cheerful," Florida Flambeau, January 22, 1982, p. 9.
Dollar, Steve, "Persian Gulf Bids Farewell," Florida Flambeau, June 30, 1983, p. 12.
Hannet, Martin, "Into You Like a ... Train," Florida Flambeau, August 10, 1981, p. 9.
Pareles, Jon, "Rock: Persian Gulf Band," The New York Times, October 22, 1984, p. C.20.
Pareles, Jon, "Pop and Jazz Guide," The New York Times, June 6, 1986, p. C.22.
Takiff, Jonathan, "Persian Gulf/Leon Redbone/Sun Ra," Philadelphia Daily News, February 1, 1985, p. 60.
Townsend, Bob, "'Changing the Weather' a Change for the Better: A Chat with Persian Gulf," Florida Flambeau, September 7, 1984, p. 11.
Townsend, Bob, "It's the Return of the Altered Natives," Florida Flambeau, March 1, 1985, p. 8.
Tucker, Ken, "A Concert to Aid the Starving," Philadelphia Inquirer, December 7, 1984, p. E.26.
Tucker, Ken, "A Rock Dream on the Rise in Phila.," Philadelphia Inquirer, February 12, 1985, p. D.1.
Tucker, Ken, "Rock Show by Persian Gulf," Philadelphia Inquirer, November 10, 1984, p. C.8.
All photographs by Hal Padgett and Viki Arias. Flyer art by Charlie "Chas" Chase. Thank you to Hal Shows and to Sorien.
