“August 18, 1975: Arabian swelter, and with the air-conditioning broken, CBGB resembled some abattoir of a kitchen in which a bucket of ice is placed in front of a fan to cool the room off. To no avail of course, and the heat had perspiration glissading down the curve of one’s back, yeah, and the cruel heat also burned away any sense of glamour. After all, CBGB’s Bowery and Bleecker location is not the garden spot of lower Manhattan, and the bar itself is an uneasy oasis. On the left, where the couples are, tables; on the right, where the stragglers, drinkers, and the love-seekers are, a long bar; between the two, a high double-backed ladder, which, when the room is really crowded, offers the best view. … Now consider the assembly-line presentation of bands with resonant names like Movies, Tuff Darts, Blondie, Stagger Lee, the Heartbreakers, Mike de Ville, Dancer, the Shirts, Bananas, Talking Heads, Johnny’s Dance Band, and Television; consider that some nights as many as six bands perform, and it isn’t hard to comprehend someone declining to sit through a long evening. …”
Voice
Tag: The Heartbreakers
1976 Film Blank Generation Documents CBGB Scene with Patti Smith, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie & More
“Fans of bratty New York punk-turned-serious writer Richard Hell or schlocky German horror director Ulli Lommel or—why not—both, will likely know of Lommel’s 1980 Blank Generation, a film unremarkable except for its casting of Hell and his excellent Voidoids as feature players. (Their debut 1977 album and single are also called Blank Generation.) The movie, as a reviewer puts it, ‘seems as if each member of the production was under the impression they were working on a different film than the rest of their collaborators…. You can’t help but think that something more watchable could be produced out of the raw footage with a good editor.’ One might approach an earlier film, also called Blank Generation—the raw 1976 documentary about the budding New York punk scene above—with similar expectations of coherent production and narrative clarity. But this would be mistaken. …”
Open Curture (Video)
W – The Blank Generation
Voice: Punk Icon Richard Hell Looks Back at “Blank Generation” Forty Years Later
L.A.M.F. – The Heartbreakers (1977)
“L.A.M.F. is the only studio album by the American band The Heartbreakers, which included Johnny Thunders, Jerry Nolan, Walter Lure and Billy Rath. The music is a mixture of punk and rock and roll. ‘L.A.M.F.’ stands for ‘Like a Mother Fucker’; in a 1977 interview in the UK monthly magazine Zigzag, Thunders said this originated from New York gang graffiti. Thunders claimed the gangs would add the LAMF tag after writing their gang name. However, if they were on another gang’s territory they would write ‘D.T.K.L.A.M.F’ (Down to Kill Like a Mother Fucker). The original, vinyl release of the album has been criticised for having a lackluster sound despite several attempts to remix it. The Heartbreakers had been trying to get a record contract in the United States since their formation in 1975. In the autumn of 1976, Malcolm McLaren, who had informally managed the New York Dolls in their waning days, invited the band to come to England and participate in the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy tour, along with The Clash and The Damned, who were replaced by Buzzcocks shortly after the tour commenced. The band accepted the offer, arriving in London on December 1, the same day that the Pistols swore at Bill Grundy on live, prime-time television, which precipitated the cancellation of most of the tour. Stranded in England with little money after the Anarchy tour came to a halt, the band contemplated a retreat to New York, but their manager, Leee Black Childers, convinced them to stay in England, believing that they would be more successful there. After several gigs in London, Track Records offered the Heartbreakers a recording contract. …”
Wikipedia
Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers: L.A.M.F.- The Lost ’77 Mixes – Album Review (Video)
Pitchfork
Discogs (Video), L.A.M.F. (The Lost ’77 Mixes) (Video)
amazon
YouTube: L.A.M.F. (Revisited) FULL ALBUM, L.A.M.F. (full album, original cassette mix)
Punk Scrawled Artist 