S&D: Dead Boys, Stiv Bators

I know nothing about these guys, except I recently uncovered Stiv Bator's cover of The Choir's "It's Cold Outside," which I thought was really cool (I've always loved the original off Nuggets. But I suspect this song sounds nothing like most of their output. Any thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aktQOuNY9g

[/i]Young Loud and Snotty[/i] is one of the best of the 1st gen punk albums, up there with Never Mind the Bollocks and L.A.M.F. for crude swagger and hooks. It's got a Nuggets cover too- Hey Little Girl- that's not far off from that one.

also, it's crude bboard markup was way ahead of it's time.

To all Dead Boys fans: get out to see Olivier Assayas' Carlos immediately!

i like the wanderers stuff.

just curious, why do you guys think they didn't even have their own thread on this site?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V27qA1YHX7E

just curious, why do you guys think they didn't even have their own thread on this site?

Truthfully, they're kind of marginal. "Sonic Reducer" is great, but they're not the Ramones or X-Ray Spex or Wire or whoever. They don't even have as many great songs as the Damned. I don't mean to knock them--there were a lot of great punk bands, and they get crowded out by many others.

i don't think ANYONE listens to the lords of the new church anymore. maybe alex in nyc. i still like a lot of those songs. russian roulette, dance with me, etc.

Also, Stiv = classic just for this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxbypHnI_5A

"Next time you won't be so selfish and ignore LITTLE CHILDREN!"

and yeah i checked i started a wanderers thread and nobody posted on it. the lords thread is just alex, ned, me, and bimble and a couple of other people. kind of a sad showing.

ned, when was the last time you listened to the lords? i probably played a song or two not long ago. i get their stuff in and can't even sell it for a dollar.

i could sell the first dead boys album really quick though.

i like the nostalgia-ridden songs off stiv bators' power pop album better than say the strokes or the exploding hearts, who all seem to mine the same kind of material.
a lot of them are as good or better than the "it's cold outside" cover, I think, which doesn't seem to add much to the original.

what album are you talking about

i think it's this one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._L.A.

But it doesn't have Evil Boy on it, so maybe it's some other compilation.

Very proud to say I own an actual Cheetah Chrome single, "Still Wanna Die" (and will admit that I had to go to the shelf to remember the title).

http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-150-1902788-1251294942.jpeg

Last time I heard the Lords...can't say. A long while back!

the availability of rocket from the tombs (for years only a bootleg/legend) eclipses the dead boys musically though their first album remains a significant period piece.

Googling around, I was shocked to find that I didn't realized Rocket From the Tombs released a single this year. But then I see that the official youtube only has about 4,500 views, so they're not exactly working the PR very hard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D_6fQtxTUk&feature=related

It's good. There's a full length in 2011. I've been waiting for this since the mid-00s reunions.

Weird that this thread would pop up now -- this week's Cleveland SCENE has a lengthy cover article on/interview with Cheetah Chrome.

I heard that Cheetah used his Pearl Jam royalties to help buy his mom a house, but that doesn't exactly fit the angle of the article .

Great article, and well written.

I heard that Cheetah used his Pearl Jam royalties to help buy his mom a house, but that doesn't exactly fit the angle of the article.

the article seems to actively contradict this, in fact.

I would have bet money yesterday that Cheetah was dead...I remember when Bators died, and I thought for sure Chrome died not too long after; I must be mixing that up with the Ramones or Dolls.

Johnny Thunders and Stiv Bators died about a year apart.

i don't think ANYONE listens to the lords of the new church anymore. maybe alex in nyc. i still like a lot of those songs. russian roulette, dance with me, etc.

Yer damn right I still do.

knew it.

still listen to the lords, at least occasionally. usually go for method to our madness, not that it's the best thing they ever did, but i grew up with it and remain sentimentally attached to nearly every moment. like it a hell of a lot better than most LA glam of that era.

lack of a decent dead boys thread says more about ILM's general indifference to punk than it does about the band's significance within the genre.

yeah, obv ilm don't give a fuck about punk rock but w/e, i get by, pick your battles etc

Young, Loud and Snotty was probably one of the first half-dozen punk LPs I bought (I was a little late to punk), and first year university I was in a hopelessly amateurish band that did "Sonic Reducer." So I do have a sentimental attachment to the Dead Boys. I just can't see how they could ever be considered significant.

They're significant in that they are a huge influence on the trashy punk hi-energy stuff that was big (small) in the 80's and 90's. Their name, along with The Pagans, always came up as an influence in reviews. Maybe covered in the new book about gunk punk by the leader of New Bomb Turks (I haven't read it yet).

Cheetah Chrome has just put a book out, (also haven't read yet), but it has some funny parts about being naked outside a Houston hotel.

I like them, "Night of the Living Dead Boys" was one of my first punk purchases. I don't know why Hastings had a copy in the clearance rack.

I guess their influence wasn't felt until after I'd stopped following that stuff. I know Guns N' Roses covered them.

i think it's this one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._L.A.

But it doesn't have Evil Boy on it, so maybe it's some other compilation.

"Evil Boy" is on Disconnected. That and LA Confidential, are both pretty essential for solo Stiv. Haven't listened to the LOTNC in eons.

Dead Boys are marginal in that their discog is limited, and much of it was hard to come by after the early 80s. They're at the center of a certain kind of misogynist, glammy punk that doesn't fit with the hardcore or indie ends of the scene. Like Zachary Taylor says, their influence was really felt in the 90s, especially on Crypt and SFTRI - New Bomb Turks, Devil Dogs, D-Generation, Dwarves, Little Killers all put out great, ugly albums with that walking-Id feel.

I get the sense that it wasn't just heroin that held back various former NY Dolls and Dead Boys. They also seemed to have a sense of entitlement- that they belonged on a big record label, that they were supposed to be the next Stones and Alice Cooper. Loud and snotty (and really good songwriters) for sure, but they weren't DIY.

I always really dug 'Young, Loud & Snotty' and got it pretty soon after it came into print on CD in the early 90s. Their second album 'We Have Come for Your Children' was harder to find and mine is some German import CD. The first record is pretty much perfect for what it is. "All This and More" is one of my all time favorite songs. The second album isn't bad, but it is slower and the production is kind of cold sounding.

I had the first Lords of the New Church on CD before either Dead Boy albums and always kind of dug it but criminy it sounds like it is recorded in a huge cave there is so much reverb in the sound.

All the dodgy rubbish loser glam bands I've ever personally known (which is far too many) cite the Dead Boys as a major influence, along with The Raamones and Hanoi Rocks. I guess they're the missing link between punk rock and Ratt, or something.

Loved the Dead Boys, but the glam rock tie is undeniable. Second time I saw them back in the 80's (on one of their annual reunion jaunts at the Ritz), Chuck Eddy's favorite hair metal band Kix were the openers.

Dead Boys are marginal in that their discog is limited, and much of it was hard to come by after the early 80s.

― bendy, Monday, December 13, 2010 4:30 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark

it's possible to be an influential and even an important band by virtue of your legend even in the absence of a substantial and/or widely available recorded legacy. pagans were mentioned upthread, and they're a great parallel example. same goes for a bands like the urinals and the homosexuals, though in different punk contexts. i mean, you could even say the same about the sex pistols. it's not like never mind the bollocks ever went out of print, but it's their sole monument. as far as i'm concerned, all the dead boys ever really had to do was to record "sonic reducer", look nice & sleazy and pass stiv on to glory. at that point, the legend has been secured and they can spend the rest of their lives walking around a flower in their boutonniere.

there's a strain of american punk & glam that owes everything to stiv & the dead boys/lords, johnny thunders & the dolls/heartbreakers, and hanoi rocks. in light of the eventual success of bands like motley crue, guns n' roses, and the whole 80s LA glam scene, it seems absurd to relegate the dead boys to mere footnote status. throw iggy pop, darby crash and lux interior in with stiv, and they combine to define an indelible and still resonant icon: the beautiful/hideous, narcissistic & self-annihilating american punk frontman.

You guys are all big fans, and that's great. I guess I'm looking at them more from a stodgy, who-shows-up-on-greatest-ever-lists? angle. "Sonic Reducer" will often show up on lists of great punk singles, but not up near the top, and that's pretty much all they're remembered for; for me, they are to punk what Mouse & the Traps are to garage. I think you can be influential without being particularly significant. Maybe that's overly semantical, but I just don't see them as being anywhere nearly as important as the Ramones or the Dolls.

that new rftt song sounds pretty ok -- terrifying video though. that's richard lloyd right? creepy.

...for me, they are to punk what Mouse & the Traps are to garage. I think you can be influential without being particularly significant. Maybe that's overly semantical, but I just don't see them as being anywhere nearly as important as the Ramones or the Dolls.

the mouse and the traps comparison is a little cruel, but i'd agree they're part of a not-so-large pack of 2nd place contenders behind the dolls & ramones. but like neck-and-neck with the dictators and several laps up on the electric eels. not a bad place to be.

the mouse and the traps comparison is a little cruel

Actually wasn't meant to be--"A Public Execution"'s brilliant!

yeah, i love it too, but i dunno that it cast quite as long a shadow as "sonic reducer", which i'd compare to "strychnine", "psychotic reaction", and "pushin' too hard". but now i'm splitting hairs over obscurities, so maybe you were right in the first place: i'm speaking primarily as a fan.

makes me think that one of the problems with the idea of "importance" in music discussion is that it often accompanies the suggestion that there is a single narrative in pop, a coherent story encoded in greatest-lists that can speak from a position of relativist omniscience to music as whole. according to this narrative, things either are or aren't really important in terms of how they affect some position of all-knowing concordance. i don't buy it. i think there are a number of stories being told at any given time, and the things that are crucial in one might seem hardly to matter in another, or to a benevolent generalist looking down from above. the dead boys matter because they mattered more than almost anyone in one particular plotline, and if you care about that part of the larger story, you must accord them their due, imo.

i'm also dubious about the idea of the omniscent generalist's position of anthropological remove. there is no eye of the storm, no single still point that all can gather under in scholarly consensus. in any given moment, certain marginal-seeming artists will elevated and lauded as innovators, while others languish in the footnotes, due largely to the ebb and sway of fashionable taste. an artist that yesterday was a rarely mentioned one-hit wonder will tomorrow be a hailed as a visionary, only to be forgotten again a few weeks down the line when some unforeseen new development once again upends the pop landscape.

That new song linked to above seems very old and very familiar...

Punched in at my rumor mill, and the story is that Guns 'n' Roses that paid for Momma Chrome's home. So that jibes with Pearl Jam's royalties being a treat for himself.

really, really love young loud & snotty. it took a while to sink in, but i have come to realize that it is one of the most "punk" albums i have listened to! it's pretty misogynistic (not so cool cool but results in some hilarious lines/songs like "i need lunch), but its impolite dirtiness is what makes it so awesome! their notability might be contentious, but they deserve to live forever for being super badass. <3

Booming posts by contenderizer itt

Christ on a bike:

Cleopatra Records Announces All-Star Dead Boys Album Featuring Rock Legends and Groundbreaking Collaboration
Cleopatra Records is thrilled to announce an extraordinary new project celebrating the legacy of the Dead Boys with an all-star lineup and a groundbreaking approach to their unmistakable sound.
The original Dead Boys cut just two albums throughout their short, fiery lifetime, the aptly titled Young, Loud and Snotty and the equally uncompromising We Have Come For Your Children. Now founding guitarist Cheetah Chrome leads an all-star line up of past friends and fans into their third - still untitled, but you can expect something no less provocative than its predecessors.
Set for release in 2025, this startling new album features Cheetah on guitar and vocals, Clem Burke (Blondie) on drums, and Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols) on bass, along with guest performances from James Williamson (The Stooges) and Michael Monroe (Hanoi Rocks).
In addition, the production features never-before-heard demos and early recordings taken from producer Kirk Yano’s pioneering 8-track studio in Cleveland.
The Dead Boys were one of the first bands to record there, in 1977-78, and select tracks on the new album seamlessly blend Stiv’s distinctive voice with new elements, creating a sonic experience that feels both nostalgic and fresh. Cheetah Chrome’s vocals are artfully “dusted” with Stiv’s iconic presence, ensuring the new material retains the raw, visceral energy that defined the Dead Boys’ sound.
This innovative approach celebrates the band’s history while boldly reimagining their future. The album follows recent Dead Boys releases featuring collaborations with The 69 Eyes and Cherie Currie (The Runaways), further cementing the band’s relevance across generations.
What’s Next for the Dead Boys: New Music, Tours, and a Search for a Vocalist
Fans can expect new tour dates and music videos in Spring 2025 as the band prepares to return to the stage. To enhance their electrifying live performances, the Dead Boys are actively seeking a professional vocalist to join them for future shows. This is a rare chance for a dynamic and talented singer to contribute to the next chapter of punk rock history.
Stay tuned for additional announcements as the Dead Boys continue to honor their punk rock roots while embracing bold, innovative directions.

Jake Hout, who had been singing for the reunited band, is properly not having it:

The shortest I can get this story is this: Cleopatra said it would be an A.I. record but Cheetah assured me it would NOT. But the opening line of the contract reads…“Artist has agreed that such Performances shall be Vocal performances (the “Performances”) utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for purposes of creating works based on the original voice of Stiv Bators, to be used on Company’s master recordings of the songs” ….So I said No. I told Cheetah immediately I would be forced to quit publicly. And tell everybody why. -And that it would probably go off like an H-bomb. This was in August. I reminded him frequently. Daily by the end. To no avail. I know that there are grey areas with line-up changes and artistic tools etc. There’s a massive irony here, I actually sympathize w the “no Stiv no Dead Boys” crowd. -I get it! I always have! But, for me personally, A.I. is the bridge too far. I always tried to do right by Stiv and bring his music to life with heart and blood and passion and spirit. A.I. ain’t got none a that stuff.
****I love you all so much and will miss you bad, but my path in this has come to its end.

Sonic Reproducer
A Really Big Loser

there is a lot i could say here, but it mostly boils down to "lol @ cleopatra"

That is always an appropriate response.

I guess my question is how different is this than replacing a live drummer with a drum machine? … It reminded me of the show I went to earlier this year with Budgie/Lol (the Cure) and they played to a backing track, opening up for Miki B’s band that did a few Lush songs with a drum machine… and the friend I went with said, “If the two acts played together, they would actually have a full band.”

Xp Ned — you missed the Cheetah post where he refers to Jake’s main band as “Alter duh whatever”

But of course.

Cheetah also dropped the R word in his response

Not to ever defend Cleopatra but the AI would be to extract the vocals from the demos rather than it being an AI created Stiv Bators facsimilie vocal, would it not? Is that such a big deal?

It sounded to me like they are sprinkling Stiv's vocal likeness onto Cheetah's voice on a few tracks to make him sound like Stiv.

Kind of like the A.I. version of Gary Lewis but at least then people actually sang it in the studio. Also Gary Lewis wasn't dead when his vocals were recorded.

ok. in that case, that is shockingly poor form.