Audio-Visuals
DEAD BOYS: LIVE! AT CBGB
1977
Directed by Rod
Swenson
(MVD)
Imagine, if you will ,that you're a longtime
fan of blues legend Howlin' Wolf. The Wolf peaked in the 60s and died in 1983,
and there's very little film of him in performance at all, let alone a whole
show. Then imagine that someone, somewhere, turned up with a tape of a show and
offered to put it out on DVD. If you're that blues fan, you'd be creaming your
pants at the very concept. Well, that's probably how fans of the original punk
rock wave of the 1970s feel about Dead Boys: Live! at CBGB 1977.
Cleveland-to-New York transplants the Dead Boys existed for barely three years,
and while they were stars in the punk underground, they never broke out of that
realm to find the sales and exposure needed to secure their future. So the fact
that anyone filmed them in full flight at all is astonishing. (That person, by
the way, was Rod Swenson, future manager of Wendy O. Williams and the
Plasmatics.) For punk rock fans, this DVD is a cause for major celebration.
Of course, even in the punk community, the Dead Boys are a source of controversy. Are they truly one of the great punk bands, or just a secondhand imitation of the real thing? Regardless, the quintet's music has held up over nearly 30 years and the passion the group puts into the performance captured here can't be denied. Recorded when the band was arguably at its peak, Live! at CBGB practically explodes out of the player in all its dirtbomb fury. Full of spit and fire, the band rocks the living hell out of standards like "All This and More," "I Need Lunch" and "Ain't Nothin' to Do," chaotic but never out of control. Singer Stiv Bators may be taking his Iggy Pop pretensions over the top during Cheetah Chrome's guitar solos, but the rest of the band keeps the tunes tight as a studded belt cinched around a teenage punk's waist. The performance is bookended by twin atomic bombs, a fearsome "Sonic Reducer" and a blazing cover of "Search and Destroy," borrowed from their heroes the Stooges. It's a mesmerizing, galvanizing performance; after seeing this, I realize now just how many modern punk rockers take their cues from Bators and their inspiration from the band itself.
It should be noted, however, that the technical quality ain't the best. The show was recorded professionally but cheaply, and the technical limitations of the time show up in bad lighting, some dropouts and even the song "What Love Is" being cut off before its end. The main feature ends up being barely half an hour long due to unusuable footage. But what is there is gold, with the bevy of extras (interviews, director comments and a puzzling clip of punk performance artists the Steel Tips) and especially the raging performance easily making up for the crap film quality. If you're a fan of the Dead Boys or classic punk in general, you need this. Michael Toland [buy it]
