Twenty years on from its closure, CBGBs remains one of the most legendary clubs in rock history, and perhaps THE most important in the annals of punk rock.
So many of the bands that we now consider the founding fathers of punk took their first unsteady steps onto the stage at CBGBs, although genuine sonic documents of both venue and artists from the most crucial years in their development, 1976-1978, are very thin on the ground. Those who were there speak longingly even of the club’s failings – it was a long, thin room in a ramshackle building in the roughest part of town. It had poor acoustics, served weak beer and boasted some of the most disgusting bathrooms on the circuit.
But it was home to a long list of names whose music still rings loud today – Television, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Talking Heads… and the Dead Boys, the Cleveland quintet that arrived in New York in late 1976 with a high octane set that mashed the viscous showmanship of the Stooges with the garage swagger of the New York Dolls, then set it all to a Mach 1 soundtrack. Few people who saw the Dead Boys at CBs ever left with their hearing intact.
Of course the Dead Boys had an easy ride into that seething melting pot – venue owner Hilly Kristal was their manager. But they earned the audience’s respect regardless, and in this instance, we do have the evidence.
Recorded on that sainted stage on an uncertain date in 1978, Time Warp Baby is the third in a trilogy of brain charring Dead Boys live recordings released by Cleopatra Records this year – Down On The Bowery and From The Sleaziest Of Catacombs both caught the band in action at CBGBs, while 2025’s Night Of The Living Dead Dolls preserves that historic night when Dolls and Dead Boys (plus John Belushi!) joined forces as a benefit for drummer Johnny Blitz.
All are blistering rampages through the band’s catalog. But Time Warp Baby might just be the one that stands out the loudest, capturing the band on one side or another of the release of their second album, We Have Come For Your Children, and so what if the sound is a little on the bootlegy side? It probably wasn’t much better on the night.
It’s a dramatic set, cherrypicking not just the best of the band’s two albums (“Son of Sam” is breathtaking), “Flame Thrower Love” is incendiary; and “Sonic Reducer” is… well, it’s “Sonic Reducer,” one of the most glorious blurts of noise to come out of punk on either side of the Atlantic.
But even among the favorites, there’s room for a surprise, as the band close their set with “Death May Be Your Santa Claus,” itself a distinctly punk-inclined number first heard on Mott The Hoople’s 1971 Brain Capers album. “Straight gut-tearing electric rock ‘n’ roll: is how the New Musical Express described the song back then, and the Dead Boys do not deviate far from Mott’s blueprint.
But still that combination of Stiv Bator’s vocals, Cheetah Chrome’s guitar, and the remainder of the band’s brutal battery conspires to bring a whole new edge of menace to the song – the same menace, of course, that glowered behind all the Dead Boys’ finest performances, and the audience was alongside them all the way.
The Dead Boys were not destined to last long – two studio albums and that was it. But they were never forgotten and, unlike some of the bands who eclipsed them in commercial terms, their music remains as much a part of the modern musical consciousness as it ever was back then. More so, in fact, if you check out the band’s reviews.
We are still awaiting the long promised new Dead Boys album, an epic reinvention of the classic band sound with contributions from the late Clem Burke, Sex Pistol Glen Matlock, Stooges legend James Williamson and Hanoi Rocks’s Michael Monroe – and more!!! More details on that to come. But with gifts like this to rock out to, the time just flashes past.
VINYL: https://cleorecs.com/products/dead-boys-time-warp-baby-blue-vinyl-lp
DIGITAL: https://orcd.co/deadboys_timewarpbaby
Track listing
SIDE A
1. Sonic Reducer
2. All This And More
3. High Tension Wire
4. Son Of Sam
5. (I Don’t Wanna Be No) Catholic Boy
6. Hey Little Girl
SIDE B
1. I Won’t Look Back
2. Flame Thrower Love
3. 3rd Generation Nation
4. Ain’t Nothin’ To Do
5. Down In Flames
6. What Love Is
7. Death May Be Your Santa Claus
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