Dead Boys

Compared to the piranha bite of vintage Sex Pistols or the Ramones' goony joie de vivre, the Dead Boys sound like borderline-competent heavy metal. But on Young Loud and Snotty -- led by Stiv Bators' self-destructive, hate-filled, sexist explosions -- the band makes up for lack of chops with plenty of nasty, vicious attitude. The Dead Boys' only other studio effort, I,>We Have Come for Your Children, offers more of the same though with less effect. The shtick had worn thin. Before they became Dead Boys, Cheetah Chrome (guitar) and Johnny Blitz (drums) were in the groundbreaking Cleveland proto-punk band Rocket From the Tombs, along with Pere Ubu founders Peter Laughner and David Thomas. In fact, many of the best cuts on both Dead Boys albums are Rocket holdovers: Young Loud and Snotty's rousing antianthem "Sonic Reducer" (notably sampled by the Beastie Boys on their 2004 track "Open Letter to NYC") is cowritten by Thomas, while We Have Come for Your Children's morose and compelling "Ain't It Fun" is the late Peter Laughner's unsparing elegy for himself (cowritten with Chrome). So much loutish behavior and public indecency has been committed in the name of punk, but few went further than the Dead Boys. Live, Stiv Bators took Iggy Pop's daredevil stage antics three cocky steps forward into utter anarchy. Not surprisingly, the various live albums -- all of which sound to varying degrees like muddy fan bootlegs -- capture more chaos than music. For anybody who witnessed Bators' simulation of hanging himself while broken glass rained down onstage, his snarling tagline on the Stooges soundalike "All This and More" (on Snotty) was no joke: "I'll die for you if you want me to." Bators did, in fact, meet his maker after being hit by a bus in Paris in 1990. (RICHARD ABOWITZ)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide