CHEETAH CHROME
Cheetah Chrome (born Eugene O’Connor, February 18, 1955, Cleveland, Ohio) is an American musician who achieved fame as a guitarist for Rocket From the Tombs and the punk rock band, The Dead Boys. After the Dead Boys broke up, Cheetah Chrome played around New York City (mostly at Max’s Kansas City) doing shows with the Stilettos, as well as his own band Cheetah Chrome and the Casualties. He played on Ronnie Spector’s debut solo album Siren. In 1980, he played guitar for Nico at New York’s Squat Theatre as well as Max’s Kansas City. He appeared on several recordings during the 1980’s, most notably his own “Cheetah Chrome and the Ghetto Dogs” (Get Hip) and Jeff Dahl’s “I Kill Me" (Sympathy for the Record Industry). (More from Wikipedia)
Additional Dead Boys lore surfaced last year when lead guitarist Cheetah Chrome released a memoir called A Dead Boy’s Tale: from the Front Lines of Punk Rock.
(February 2011)
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Punk stalwart Jeff Dahl – whose resumé includes a stint in the Angry Samoans and recordings with Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys and Rikk Agnew of the Adolescents – had worked with both the Peeps and Tempe Tramps in the past. Jeff Dahl was instrumental in getting Les Hell on Heels signed by Greg Shaw of Bomp! Records – the CD was released shortly before Shaw’s death in 2004 – and Dahl also wrote one of the songs on the CD, “Ain’t So Cool”. Greg Shaw was quoted as saying of Les Hell on Heels: “I feel the same way that Phil Spector must have felt when he first saw the Ronettes.”
(December 2013)
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Dark Carnival was sort of a Detroit punk supergroup that was assembled by Detroit music promoter Colonel Galaxy, whose name was a nod to Elvis Presley’s longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Bootsey X was the first bandmember to be recruited; others included his bandmate in the Ramrods, Mark Norton, plus (as listed in Wikipedia): “Gary Adams from the Cubes [who was also a sometime bandmember in the Lovemasters], Mike McFeaters from What Jane Shared, Jerry Vile from the Boners, Sarana VerLin from Natasha, Greasy Carlisi from Motor City Bad Boys, Robert Gordon and Art Lyzak from the Mutants, Joe Hayden from Bugs Bedow, Pete Bankert from Weapons, [and] Larry Steel from the Cult Heroes.
“Later, Dark Carnival saw some turnover, with the ‘big’ names signing on: Niagara from Destroy All Monsters, Ron [Asheton] and Scott Asheton from the Stooges, Cheetah Chrome from the Dead Boys, Jim Carroll even came in from New York.”
(March 2016)
