UNDER-APPRECIATED ROCK BAND OF THE MONTH FOR FEBRUARY 2011: THE WANDERERS
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;
Sex Pistols had famously imploded in
January 1978 during their first
American tour.
Stiv Bators and
Greg Shaw began working together almost immediately and continued off and on well into the
1980’s when
Bators was trying to reinvent himself as a pop singer. The results were a fine album called
Disconnected (which was released in
1980 and was recently reissued on both CD and LP) and several singles that were collected in a CD called
L.A. L.A.
The Wanderers’
sole album,
Only Lovers Left Alive was recorded in
November 1980 but didn’t come out until
1981. As might be imagined from the title of the opening song “
Fanfare for 1984” (which features sirens that might have come from a concentration camp), the album concerns a young man who becomes obsessed with the impending doom of civilization through his fascination (described in the track “
A Little Bit Frightening”) and later disillusion (“
Can’t Take You Anymore”) with the pronouncements of a conspiracy theorist. The two singles released from the album were the potent “
Ready to Snap” and a cover of
Bob Dylan’s “
The Times They Are A-Changing”. As
Allmusic put it: “This album remains one of the most foreboding records ever released and plunges the listener into a world of Bolshevik plots, duplicate Popes, and a third World War that is so close you can smell it.”
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). Their label
Polydor Records had expected more than a cult following and made only minimal efforts at promoting
the Wanderers; in retrospective paranoia, this seemed like sabotage to
Stiv Bators. Today, the original album is almost impossible to find, but a reissue in
2000 on
Captain Oi! Records has brought the album to a wider audience. (“
Oi” refers to a working-class subgenre of
British punk rock;
Sham 69 was one of the first such bands).
Greg Shaw regards the album as being among
Stiv Bators’
finest work, and I concur.
The name of the conspiracy theorist referenced in the album,
Dr. Peter Beter sounds like a weak masturbation joke. In actuality, however,
Dr. Beter is a real person, an ex-CIA agent who brought news from the intelligence-community underground in a series of “audio letters”. (Oddly, the liner notes on the
2000 reissue never mentioned that, nor did those on the original album release). Not only that,
Stiv Bators was obsessed with him in real life and used to regale anyone who would listen about the dangers of impending Bolshevism and the end of the world. The song “
Dr. Beter” presents a synopsis of the endless conspiracies discussed by
Dr. Beter and features an actual excerpt from one of his recordings. Talk about
“Reality . . . What A Concept”: Only Lovers Left Alive had it all!
The title of the album,
Only Lovers Left Alive is taken from an apocalyptic
1964 novel called
Only Lovers Left Alive by
Dave Wallis about an uprising of
British teenagers against not only the authorities but the entire adult population as well. Sitting on top of a copy of the novel on the front cover photograph is another paperback book called
The War Game, a companion book (published in
1967) to a controversial
1965 faux-documentary film also called
The War Game (both by
Peter Watkins) about the aftermath of a nuclear war in
Britain; it won the
Academy Award for
Best Documentary that year, though because of the bleak subject matter, it wasn’t actually broadcast in
Britain for 20 years. At the bottom of the stack of books is a copy of the
Christian “end times” classic
The Late Great Planet Earth by
Hal Lindsey.
The Wanderers was dropped by
Polydor Records and broke up almost immediately. Shortly thereafter,
Stiv Bators and
Dave Tregunna formed
the Lords of the New Church, which had their own version of doom and gloom. This
post-punk band had a more polished sound than
the Dead Boys and were quite successful during the
1980’s, but
Bators’ stage histrionics were as wild as ever. In one celebrated incident,
Stiv Bators hanged himself on stage and was pronounced dead for several minutes. Though he recovered from that incident, he was hit by a taxi in
Paris and died from those injuries all too young in
June 1990.
* * *
The
Honor Roll of the
Under Appreciated Rock Bands and Artists follows, in date order, including a link to the original
Facebook posts and the theme of the article.
Dec 2009 – BEAST; Lot to Learn Mar 2010 – BANG; Record Collecting I Jul 2010 – THE EYES; Los Angeles Punk Rock Feb 2011 – THE WANDERERS; Punk Rock (1970’s/1980’s)
Mar 2011 – INDEX; Psychedelic Rock (1960’s) Nov 2013 – CHIMERA; Women in Rock II Jan 2014 – BOYSKOUT; (Lesbian) Women in Rock IV Apr 2014 – HOMER; Creating New Bands out of Old Ones Jul 2014 – MIKKI; Rock and Religion I (Early CCM Music) Sep 2014 – NICK FREUND; Rock and Religion III (The Beatles) Mar 2015 – PHIL GAMMAGE; Songwriting II (Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan) Dec 2016 – THE IGUANAS; Iggy and the Stooges; Proto-Punk Rock Jun 2017 – THE LOONS; Punk Revival and Other New Bands Dec 2017 – SS-20; The Iguana Chronicles
