I saw Johnny Thunders play about 6 months before he OD'd. God was that a pathetic show. Remember the scene in Sid and Nancy where Sid is just sitting on stage, singing the Stooges song "I wanna be your dog" as he's reading the lyrics off a piece of paper? This was worse than that.
Junkies are so cool.
The important thing to remember, is that while heroin has the cache, all the good rock and roll was created on speed: rockabilly, soul, British Invasion, punk. Know your amphetamines if you want a career in rock music.
Innumerable music scenes have been swallowed whole by junk.
Aren't the "reunited" Dolls touring this summer?
From this article dated 7/7/04:
This summer, Johansen is back with the New York Dolls for some reunion shows. Original members Johnny Thunders, Jerry Nolan and Billy Murcia have died. Joining Johansen will be original Dolls Sylvain Sylvain and Arthur Kane.
Johansen said, “It had never occurred to me to do that. We got more dead guys than ‘Spinal Tap.’ "
Ooookkaaay... So I'm guessing Arthur didn't suffer from a protracted illness.
They played London last month for the Morrissey-curated Meltdown festival. Apparently they kicked ass.
Yahoo and Reuters say it was complications from leukemia. He was 55.
Wahoo! I picked up Hex Induction Hour yesterday. I'd forgotten how astoundingly great (and weird) the Fall were.
They played London last month for the Morrissey-curated Meltdown festival. Apparently they kicked ass.
Who's playing guitar?
You know who plays an excellent Thunders-style guitar? John Perry of The Only Ones. I wonder if he's dead.
Who's playing guitar?
Marshall "Sonic" Crenshaw. Seriously, though, why don't they hook up with Wayne Kramer and get one joint "reunion" band? The NY5? The MC Dolls? Recruit Bunny Wailer, too. Percentage-wise the Wailers could be champs in the death sweepstakes.
Hex Enduction Hour (n.b. link contains the sordid tale of that album and the record contract it killed)! Hey there, fuckface! Hey there, fuck-ah-face! Does the Fall get much better than that? I popped on This Nation's Saving Grace this morning because I've had "I Am Damo Suzuki" running through my head since I woke up. Mainly because I went to see Can: The Documentary last night (which had some bad-freakin-ass moments, but no, y'know, narrative, and the last half-hour was wasted on those cruddy Sacrilege re-mixes [and what moron thought that mixing the bassline off of "Halleluwah" could possibly be a good idea?] and the early-90s reformed Can with Michael Mooney), and I've just been in a Can-o-licious mood all day.
Some of the great scenes from the documentary include: a 12-minute live version of "Vernal Equinox" with its superfast pre-hip-hop drumbeat (which was the single most athletic music performance I've ever seen); obviously stoned bandmembers trying in vain to answer simple questions in roughly 1972; Michael Mooney meeting Damo Suzuki in the 90s (although the viewers were denied any narrative to explain the significance of this); live footage of the 1973 Koln Free Concert with an elderly juggler on stage with the band; Holger Czukay, after turning the bass over to Rosko Gee, doing his off-stage noise thing; Can playing to disco dancers on German and English TV in the late 70s; several performances in Inner Space Studios, Can's converted church-studio, with Damo Suzuki singing in an isolation booth in a nave above Jaki Liebezeit, the drummer. Like I said, if you know some of the story about Can already, it had some fascinating moments, but a real filmmaker could have done much more with it.
Seriously, though, why don't they hook up with Wayne Kramer and get one joint "reunion" band? The NY5? The MC Dolls?
They already did that in the 70s - Gangwar.
Some of the great scenes from the documentary include:
Coooooool.
Nobody does movies about the really fascinating scenes like Tropicalia or Krautrock. They should!
Seriously! Although I've missed each of the Serge Gainsbourg documentary and Jandek documentaries twice.
