Dec 14

The Dead Boys

THE DEAD BOYS
 
 
The Dead Boys  were an American punk rock band from Cleveland, Ohio.  The band was among the first wave of early punk bands, and was known as one of the most rowdy and violent punk groups of the era.  The Dead Boys were initially active from 1976 to 1979, briefly reuniting in 1986, and then later again in 2004 and 2005 without their iconic frontman Stiv Bators.   (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
Stiv Bators, frontman for the seminal 1970’s Cleveland punk band the Dead Boys was among the admirers of “It’s Cold Outside” by the Choir; but his band couldn’t figure out how to play the song!   (Later, as a solo artist, Bators came up with a nice version).

(February 2010)
 
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As it turned out, three competing and complementary strains of music arose seemingly overnight by 1974:  In addition to power pop, they were what most of us know as “punk rock” – e.g., Ramones, Sex Pistols, Patti Smith Group (with Lenny Kaye on lead guitar), the Dead Boys – and “new wave” – e.g., Elvis Costello, Blondie, Talking Heads, the Runaways – the latter band, the first successful all-female rock band, is now the subject of a major motion picture. 
 
(April 2010)
 
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Greg Shaw, rock music historian and founder of Bomp! Records, has said of Cleveland’s the Dead Boys:  “They are the best punk rock band that I ever saw, and I saw them all”.  Stiv Bators had been their front man from the beginning and was famous for his stage antics, but he was often restless and desired to move beyond the punk rock conventions.
 
The Dead Boys broke up in 1979 when the whole punk rock scene seemed about to disintegrate; the Sex Pistols had famously imploded in January 1978 during their first American tour. 
 
Bomp! Records also released several additional Dead Boys albums following the break-up, beginning with Night of the Living Dead Boys in 1981.  The vocals had to be overdubbed, since Stiv Bators had deliberately ruined the original recording by singing off-mike, in order to get back at their record label.  Even so, this is the best live punk rock album I have ever heard.  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. 
 
The Wanderers were born when frontman Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys essentially replaced Jimmy Pursey as the front man and lead singer in Sham 69, which broke up in the summer of 1980.  Besides Stiv Bators, the other bandmembers were from Sham 69:  Dave Tregunna (bassist), Dave Parsons (guitarist), and Mark Goldstein (drums).  
 
Many rock critics were not ready for a “concept album” from a punk rock band, and the Wanderers were often dismissed as “the Sham Boys” or “Stiv 69”, though they did get some favorable notices (from Trouser Press, among others).
 
(February 2011)
 
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This was the first post where I tried to talk about more than just the band itself.   Many people might have wondered why Cleveland of all places was chosen to be the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so I presented my own theory:   that it was (or at least should have been) due to the largely forgotten musical scene there in the 1960’s and 1970’s.   More to the point, rock bands like the Raspberries, the Outsiders and the James Gang are certainly well known enough; but most people don’t know that Cleveland was their hometown.   Another long-time fave of mine is the Cleveland punk band the Dead Boys and its frontman Stiv Bators, though they were only indirectly pertinent to this discussion. 
 
(February 2012)
  
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Stiv Bators, the front man for one of the best punk rock bands the Dead Boys, had a tempestuous relationship with Bomp! Records’ Greg Shaw.  He was trying to reinvent himself as a pop singer and released one excellent album in 1980 called Disconnected and a lot of other singles.   
 
(September 2012)
 
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Due to our recent escape from the projected end of the world on December 21, 2012, the apocalyptic album by the Wanderers is an appropriate Flashback for this month.  Stiv Bators, the frontman of one of the best American punk rock bands, the Dead Boys teamed up with the remains of one of Britain’s best punk bands, Sham 69.  Stiv Bators would found his next punk rock band, the Lords of the New Church, with one of the members of the Wanderers, Dave Tregunna.
 
(February 2013)
 
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Many of the seminal bands in these rock movements released albums on the Bomp!, Voxx, Alive or Total Energy labels; most of them are not household names by any means, but they are recognized by those in the know as being important bands that shaped the history of rock and roll.  Some of these better-known bands and artists are the Romantics, the Modern Lovers, the Dead Boys (and Stiv Bators individually), the Plimsouls (and Peter Case individually), the Beat (and Paul Collins individually), the Stooges (and Iggy Pop individually), Devo, Nikki Sudden, the Black Keys, and Soledad Brothers. 

 

(May 2013)
 
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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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Danny Nordahl also played with Stiv Bator and His Evil Boys, one of the last bands founded by the Dead Boys front man, Stiv Bators.  An album by this band called Live at the Limelight was released in Germany in 1988. 

 

(October 2014)

 

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The liner notes by Nigel Strange on the Pebbles, Volume 1 CD says of Kim Fowley:  “What more can be said about this writer/singer/producer/hustler who’s had his hand in everything from ‘Alley Oop’ by the Hollywood Argyles, to Helen Reddy, to the Dead Boys, to Guns N’ Roses. . . .  This song [“The Trip”], released at the onset of teenage freakout mania, was something of a sensation in L.A. at the time and was covered by others including Thee Midniters and disc jockey Godfrey.  A real classic.” 

 

(January 2015/1)

 

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These Are the Days by Certain General was produced by Genya Ravan, the former lead singer of perhaps the very first all-female rock band Goldie and the Gingerbreads.  She was also in the band Ten Wheel Drive and has released several solo albums; I have Urban Desire (1978) myself.  Among her other production credits are the Dead Boys’ first studio album, Young, Loud and Snotty (1977).  That’s two important punk rock albums that I know of which were produced by women, the other being the 1979 album by the Germs, (GI), which was produced by Joan Jett (a veteran of another all-female band the Runaways). 

 

(March 2015)

 

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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)
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In seemingly no time, the music scene was crowded with top bands and artists whose work has held up well over the decades since, among them Patti Smith Group (whose debut album, Horses came out before Ramones, in December 1975), Television, Richard Hell, the Heartbreakers (the punk band not Tom Petty’s group, though he was a part of the scene as well), Talking Heads, the Dead Boys, Blondie, the Clash, the Cars, Elvis Costello, Pat Benatar, Joy Division, the Specials, the Go-Go’s, the Police, etc., etc., etc. There were so many that rock critics and others began distinguishing bands in the safety-pin set as “punk” and others that were less confrontational as “new wave”.  
(December 2016)
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The Cleveland music scene has long fascinated me; rock bands from the future home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included the Choir, the Outsiders, the James Gang, and the punk rock band the Dead Boys.  I had picked up a more comprehensive album of songs by the Choir, called Choir Practice, and also an album of material by the Starfires, the predecessor band to the Outsiders who still had that name when they were trying to line up the release of their major hit song “Time Won’t Let Me”.  More recently, many years after locating their other three albums, I finally found a copy of Album #2, considered by most rock critics to be the best album by the Outsiders.
I wrote up several Wikipedia articles on this music, including the Choir and the Starfires; and I greatly expanded the article on the Outsiders and came up with articles on their albums as well.  Another Wikipedia article (much of whose content has been deleted, I was distressed to find out just now) was on the compilation album of music made by Dead Boys frontman Stiv Bators for Bomp! Records, called L.A. L.A., which includes a cover version of the song by the Choir, “It’s Cold Outside”. 
 
(December 2017)
 
Last edited: April 3, 2021