Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers - L.A.M.F.: The Lost '77 Mixes
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Artist: Johnny Thunders & the HeartbreakersEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Enhanced, Extra tracks, Import, Limited Edition
CD Release Date: 2003-03-03
Music Label: Freud / Jungle
Soundtracks:
- Born To Lose
- Baby Talk
- All by Myself
- I Wanna Be Loved
- It's Not Enough
- Chinese Rocks
- Get off the Phone
- Pirate Love
- One Track Mind
- I Love You
- Going Steady
- Let Go
- Can't Keep My Eyes on You
- Do You Love Me
Free Music Notes for L.A.M.F.: The Lost '77 Mixes
Free Music Review: L.A.M.F.--It's Not Enough!
Hit: 5 Stars
Up from the red-leather remains of the New York Dolls rose the Heartbreakers, founded by ex-Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders (né Genzale) and handsome-devil drummer Jerry Nolan in 1975. Leaving their former band members in Florida with some guy named McLaren so they could score smack back in the Big Apple, Johnny and Jerry tapped proto-punk poster-boy Richard Hell for their new ensemble. CBGBs and Max's Kansas City were their battlefields and they were an integral part of this febrile, fertile spawning ground. You know the litany of names: the Ramones, Television, Blondie, Talking Heads, etc. etc. Though Hell froze up and departed, the Heartbreakers, eventually released only one album, the sonically-challenged "L.A.M.F." in 1977. This recent mix, from re-discovered tapes, sounds wonderful, less muddy, and all sleaze.
What makes the Heartbreakers great is simplicity. They reduced twenty years of rock and pop and rhythm and blues into 3 minute rave-ups that always leave the listener wanting more. Johnny's guitar-slinging rings true, always teetering on the edge of collapse: it's chaotic and exhilarating. Blistering leads, solos that sound like a strangling cat, chugging rhythms like the subway trains roaring beneath the city streets.
Songs like "Get Off the Phone," "Going Steady," "Baby Talk," and "Let Go" are trashy rock'n'roll rave-ups, with all the requisite elements: catchy choruses, sleazy good-time lyrics (the ones that make sense, anyway; Johnny weren't no English perfessor), driving drums, and immediate gratification. A song like "One Track Mind" is a beautiful thing, all irresistible chorus and air-guitar glory. "It's Not Enough": is a reflective ballad-sorta thing, with Johnny lamenting how "You can give me this/You can give me that" but it's not enough. Man it's good! "Pirate Love" exists only for the dual-guitar solo that rivals anything the Dolls ever laid down.
Then there are the classics, the signature tunes that no Johnny Thunders performance was complete without: "Born to Lose," (or, alternately "Born Too Loose") which opens the album: with some out-of-tune guitar whines, and the lyrics reveals again just what a poet of the streets Johnny was: "Nothin' to do/Oh nothin' to say/Only one thing that I want/It's the only way/I said hit it!/Baby I was born to lose."
"Chinese Rocks" is perhaps Thunders' most famous song even though it was written by fellow junkster Dee Dee Ramone. Anyone unsure as to what the song refers can be sure, it ain't nothing like Pop Rocks.
"The plaster's fallin off the walls
My girlfriend's cryin in the shower stall
It's hot as a bitch
I shoulda been rich
But I'm just diggin a Chinese ditch
I'm livin on Chinese rocks
All my best things are in hock
I'm livin on Chinese rocks
Everything is in the pawn shop"
These songs depict the downside of downtown and how the jungle could eat you alive. Johnny's status as a stylish, decadent loser who strutted those mean streets is legendary. As Wayne Kramer (MC5) said of Johnny: "He could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."
The Heartbreakers weren't really a punk band, even though they rounded out the legendary Anarchy tour of the UK in late '76 with a couple bands you mighta heard of, the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Rumor has it--actually, it's more than rumor, it's fact--that the Heartbreakers introduced heroin to the much younger and more naive UK punks, and Nancy Spungen went looking for Jerry Nolan and followed them there. You know what happened after that.
The band was never able to secure a record deal with an American label due to their, uh, extracurricular activities, so eventually they broke up. Johnny would put out a decidedly mixed solo album a year later ("So Alone") and continue to travel the world as a performer. Shows were plagued by his drug use, his attitude, his poor guitar-playing. I never got to see him perform, and odds are that if I had, I'd've seen a shambles of a set. Although a friend saw him in the mid-80s and remembers the acoustic set Johnny did as particularly entertaining. In April of 1991 Johnny Thunders was hauled out of a grimy New Orleans hotel, his lifeless body doubled over from the effects of countless drugs. It's not enough, is it, Johnny? No, I guess it never is.
Well, all that don't matter. What does matter is that if you care about real rock'n'roll you need this album. It rocks like nothing else I know, but fits kinda between the Stones and the Replacements (whose "Johnny's Gonna Die" is an ode to Thunders), G'n'R, Hanoi Rocks, very early Crue and other hard rock of the '80s. Practically every hard-rock/glam/metal guitarist that tosses a mane of out-of-control hair with a sneer and screech copped it from Johnny (who of course copped it from Keith Richards, let's be honest here). Johnny deserves to be remembered for his single-minded rock tunes, his dedication to the rock'n'roll lifestyle, and also for one of the coolest rock "nom de guerres" ever--I mean, "Johnny Thunders" how cool is that?! Thanks Johnny Rock on RIP!
L.A.M.F.: The Lost '77 Mixes Poster
2002 reissue of classic 1977 album includes a bonus video, 'Chinese Rocks', & a bonus disc, 'Alternative L.A.M.F.', featuring 16 previously unreleased alternate mixes, demos & rehearsals including, 'Born Too Loose', 'Chinese Rocks', 'Let Go', 'Goin' Steady' (Instr.), 'Baby Talk' (Instr.), 'Pirate Love' (Instr.), 'Born To Lose' (Instr.), 'Chinese Rocks' (Instr.), 'Do You Love Me', 'Can't Keep My Eyes On You', 'Get Off The Phone', 'All By Myself', 'It's Not Enough', 'One Track Mind', 'Too Much Junkie Business', & 'London Boys'. Packaging includes a 24-page booklet with complete lyrics, song comments by Walter Lure, & slipcase. Jungle Records.Alternative Rock Music CDs
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