Superb post.
Blasted
Forward To Termination in my brief music time tonight, fuckin mechanised assault.
Returning tomorrow for sure (fuckin flat... grew up with acres of empty space, never appreciated it until now) The internet's a friggin miracle ain't it. Used to be I'd have to theorise what the bands I was reading about sounded like. (yeah I know, internet's caused a lot of trouble too. hard cheese innit
)
Finally moved me ol' music folder from my ancient potato to my brand-new medieval potato!
JOHNNY THUNDERS & THE HEARTBREAKERS
LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3vnSiDrzmM
Immortal sleaze-rock hurricane, as furied and addled as it is effortless. Doesn't burn out so much as detonate, not fade away. While these guys were - by their own admission - useless at the mixing desk, the studio said to resemble a needle-strewn bombsite, they were an A1 live unit who could jolt their songs to roaring life in the most abject conditions.
The Lost '77 Mixes fixes things right up - the drums pound and crash, the guitars grind and howl, the record takes on the tangible presence of a good live LP, punctuated only by the odd
"YEAH!" and
"ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR!" and
"Was that alright?"
These guys are widely named as punk progenitors, a field with many a heated nerdfight. IDGAF. >_> Rather like the Ramones, they remind me of nothing so much as the Stones and the Kinks - though not as much The Beatles. LAMF only minimally expresses Joey and Dee Dee's keen pop sense, otherwise favouring Johnny Ramone's speciality - buzzsawingly insistent, fighting-trim rock n' roll, launching shoe after audibly contemptuous shoe at the mainstream Seventies' increasingly padded ass.
For all the junkie malaise lapping at the edges of this disc, it can hardly slow down, inevitably exploding afterward. Technical chops are a decided cut above their strictly-business contemporaries The Ramones and The Saints - Johnny Thunders' lead guitar keens, wails and weeps with a passion flatly denying Johnny Ramone's "no solos" policy. You can have solos in blistering, no-bullshit rock n' roll, just not wank-offs.
Is about what u saying maaan!
Incidentally, Dee Dee collaboration
Chinese Rocks had to be crowbarred into The Ramones' lukewarm
End of the Century - Johnny detesting the junkie lifestyle, correctly noting it was no lack of talent, but simple vice that'd doom the unit he regarded as his only New York rivals. Unsurprisingly, the longer-lived band's
Rocks sounds as uncharacteristically affected as much of its surrounding LP. Compare the cheerful, cheesy exit of the Ramones' take (all it needs is a freeze-framed high five) to the discordant groaning collapse of Thunders and company.
There are some very catchy tunes in here, namely marquee single
Chinese Rocks (a notorious song, owing to authorship disputes between Dee Dee and collaborators - monster riff and grim lyrics aside, I think it's the nearest LAMF gets to a pop single, besides opener
"Born Too Lose"), rock-steady
Pirate Love, amiably manic
Goin' Steady and its more frantic escalation
One Track Mind (formerly
"Love Comes In Spurts" - RIP mischievous Walter Lure, longtime sole survivor and unit co-guitarist/vocalist/writer, recently deceased - making LAMF a punk cenotaph on par with any of The Ramones' legendary First Four), and the cheerfully barraging closer
Let Go.
I've always found myself favouring the more percussive, abrasive stuff, three of which slam down in rapid succession post-opener: the barraging roar and alleycat yowl of
Baby Talk, the eccentrically bumpy pair of
All By Myself and
Get Off The Phone, and the audibly fret-grinding
I Wanna Be Loved. Not a weak track to be found in here - even sole lover's ballad
I Love You makes weight with its grittily brilliant Keef riff, though it's second to the gorgeous, sparingly plaintive
It's Not Enough. As Johnny Ramone said, as filthy a unit as these guys were, they could distinguish themselves with prodigious ease. They just never bothered to.
A chronicle of truly all-consuming sleaze rock.
Definitely a record to hear from end to end, no matter where one's favourites fall. Songwriting and performance is so tightly focused, nothing sticks around for long anyway. This release includes a couple covers, AFAIK bonus tracks - they're agreeable performances, and fine selections, but as is frequently the case with extra tracks, I find them jarring in album context, having long since chopped 'em.