She's A Diamond

Clay Allison was meant to be an outlet for the members to explore directions that they couldn’t go with their primary groups. David Roback was still in The Rain Parade but he started a band with Kendra and drummer Terry Graham. After a single was released, Graham decided to focus on the Gun Club and was replaced by Keith Mitchell from The Romans. The name Clay Allison was retired. The trio played some shows opening for The Rain Parade in 1984 but the members of that band decided that Roback was focusing too much on his new band and fired him. Or he quit, it depends on who’s telling the story

At some point, the band started using the name Opal. Romans guitarist Juan Gomez joined up too. Gomez had been (and still is!) in Human Hands with Dream Syndicate drummer Dennis Duck. There were several singles released on different labels in ’84 and ’85 that were hard to find. I remember looking at the back of every record in the new arrivals bin to see if the names Roback or Smith were there. The records were hard to find and I didn’t want to miss one if they changed the name of the band again.