Dead Boys: Young Loud and Snotty
1977
Sire Records
Format I Own it on: Vinyl
Track Listing: 1. Sonic Reducer 2. All This and More 3. What Love Is 4. Not Anymore 5. Ain't Nothin' to Do 6. Caught with the Meat in Your Mouth 7. Hey Little Girl 8. I Need Lunch 9. High Tension Wire 10. Down in Flames 11. Medley: Not Anymore/Ain't Nothin' to Do
Special Note: I'm editing this while I'm blasted on beers, so it might work best of you read it with a drunken slur...Let the typos and rambling begin:
I used to have this on cassette back in high school...Definitely a favorite from when I was first discovering punk...I lost it when I lost all my tapes and never bothered to pick up another copy, since I kind of played it to death back in the day...They have this in the jukebox at the bar I frequent, so I'd been pumping it full of quarters recently to hear some "I Need Lunch" and realized how much I'd missed having the album around...
One day me and my friend Jonathan went to the Zia Records in Tempe and I snagged a used CD copy of "Young, Loud, and Snotty"...I took it home, eager to hear it again, put it in my CD player only to be greeted by a phat beat...
"Hmmm, I don't remember the Dead Boys ever rapping about AK's and blunts...And what does 'Thug for life! BEEE-YOOOOTCH!!' mean?" I though to myself...
I ejected the CD and took a closer and look, only to realize...
So I went back and returned the Cd, where the clerk scratched his head on how this could of happened...They didn't have another copy, so I picked up something else...A few days later I went to Eastside Records and picked up the vinyl copy of "Young, Loud, and Snotty" but when I got home and opened it up, inside was a copy of...
..BARRY MANILOW LIVE!!!
Nah, I'm just kidding...It really was the Dead Boys this time..I just wanted to post a picture of that Barry Manilow album cover...I always joke that when I was a kid everybody's mom owned that album, but I swear that's true!
Anyway, I didn't invite you here on a Friday Night to talk about Barry Fuckin' Manilow...I Brought you here so we can consume many beers and crank up the Dead Boys all night! God, this shit rocks so much...I can still remember playing it for the first time somewhere in the 90's...It takes about 45 seconds for album-opener "Sonic Reducer" to cement itself as one of the all-time punk anthems...The cyclical, muted menace of the opening riff eventually gives way to churning punk as Stiv Bators pouts the classic opening lines:
"I don't need anyone
Don't need no mom and dad
Don't need no pretty face
Don't need no human race
I got some news for you
Don't even need you too..."
And that's it...That sums it all up...You could waste a million words dissecting it, but you're never going to nail it as eloquently as that single, stupid verse...You kind of go through the record trying to determine if these guys were a group of geniuses or a bunch of drooling morons...The way "Sonic Reducer" achieves a universality with its antisocial message is very calculated...
And listen to Stiv howl, "Look at me that way, bitch! Your face is gonna git a punch!" on "I Need Lunch..." Why do you smile when he says it? It's a horrible, disgusting thing to say! But there's a writerly vividness to Stiv's character on the album...And he delivers the line so brilliantly, that when the verse kicks back in it suddenly has a pronounced air of triumph and majesty to it...It's a real payoff moment for his character...The charismatic villain that you can't help but love... The fact that the band's playing so effortlessly summons the stench of piss and warm beer probably help sells the illusion too...There's a reason that a live-recording of "Hey Little Girl", done at CBGB's is placed prominently in the track listing...Gritty, scene-setting...
Even though there are albums form the late 70's New York scene that I like better, I still have to declare "Young, Loud, and Snotty" the ultimate CBGB album...I've never physically been there, but my mind has been there via this record...Who knows...Maybe it's not an accurate portrayal of the time and place at all, but it sure is evocative...
The only criticism that I could possibly level at it is that it seems to just kind of fizzle out, due to the odd decision to end the album on alternate takes of songs that had already appeared on side one...And it's not like they're radically different versions either...Must have ran out of songs or recording time or something...Oh well..."Sonic Reducer," "I Need Lunch," "Ain't Nothin' to Do"...The whole thing is classic...
Here's "I Need Lunch" by the Dead Boys...Enjoy...
Dead Boys: We Have Come for Your Children
1978
Sire Records
Format I Own it on: Vinyl
Track Listing: 1. 3rd Generation Nation 2. I Won't Look Back 3. (I Don't Wanna Be No) Catholic Boy 4. Flame Thrower Love 5. Son of Sam 6. Tell Me 7. Big City 8. Calling on You 9. Dead and Alive 10. Ain't It Fun
This is a record I hadn't heard until maybe a year ago...I had grown up loving "Young, Loud and Snotty" and naturally I wanted more, but this album was just nowhere to be found back then...Pretty much all you ever heard was that it's so severely disappointing that it immediately did the band in...You know the old story...The sophomore slump...You have your whole life to write the first record, you have to write the second album on yer lunch break...
But I'm always suspicious of that story...Very rarely does a great band just suddenly, and out of nowhere, suck...Sucking is usually a gradual process, brought on by the loss of vital band members and/or years of complacency, so I believe I went into "We Have Come for Your Children" with an open-mind...
And it turns out I like this record! No doubt, it's different than their debut...Ragged, sleazy punk and sexist lyrics are replaced by polished hard-rock and more diverse subject matter...And Stiv's vocals are much more restrained than his previous blood-curdling shrieks and sobs...It was almost shocking on first listen to hear that "I Won't Look Back" is perfectly respectable power-pop! Listen to it, if you don't believe me!
I actually think they should have pursued this poppier direction a bit more...When they do the more traditional Dead Boys material like "(I Don't Wanna Be No) Catholic Boy," it comes across as a bit rote, but the songs with the more radio-ready hooks are sticky as hell...See their cover of the Rolling Stones' "Tell Me," "Calling on You," "I Won't look Back" and the awesome chorus on "Dead and Alive" for examples of when it goes gloriously right...
That said, the album's peak (and in the running for their best song ever) has to be "Ain't it Fun." Originally co-written by Cheetah Chrome for his pre-Dead Boys band, Rocket From the Tombs, it's the most perfect showcase imaginable for Stiv....It's almost like he was given a brief glimpse of his grim fate and came back from the void to do a presentation on it...Creepy, desperate, doomed...Ain't it Fun? I don't know, it doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs to me...If you're a Dead Boys fan, you've got to seek out this album for that track alone...On the other hand, this album seems to be best suited for non-Dead Boys fans...I still hear it get trashed by punks, but I think folks who are into punk/power-pop/hard rock would enjoy it very much...If one of those 3 genres isn't something you dig, then I'm betting its appeal will remain elusive...
BTW, as soon as I looked at the track listing, I just knew that when Stiv sang "Summer of Sam" it was going to come out as, "SUMMER OF SAY-YUM!" Well, the barking dogs are telling me to cut this short, so "We Have Come for Your Children" is good, Boko Haram is bad, and beers to infinity...
Here's "Tell Me" by the Dead Boys...I hope everyone has a great Friday Night!
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