Smog Veil Records announces the Dead Boys 30th Anniversary show on Halloween 2005 at Cleveland's Beachland Ballroom. Show starts at 9:00 pm and tickets are $15.00 in advance and $18.00 at the door.
The band features its original line-up including Johnny Blitz (John Madansky), Cheetah Chrome (Gene O'Connor), Jeff Magnum (Jeff Halmagy), Jimmy Zero (William Wilden) and Stiv Bators in spirit. Cleveland's Amps II Eleven (Smog Veil) will open the show.
"We're just gonna get up there and do what we always do" Cheetah Chrome explains. "People will either like it or they won't - but anyone who knows us knows we don't give a shit what anyone thinks anyhow." Frank Mauceri of Smog Veil Records opines "Today's rock 'n' roll comets come and go. They quickly become remnants of the past, but Rocket From The Tombs were the Big Bang, and the resulting gamma-emiting constellations were, and are, The Dead Boys and Pere Ubu.
This gig, however, celebrates the primordial spew that came between the two. It's the 30th anniversary of the first live sighting of The Dead Boys pre-cursor, Frankenstein, and it provides the rockologists in Cleveland a glimpse of what it was and what it then became."
The Dead Boys formed when Rocket From The Tombs broke-up making way for two separate visions. Pere Ubu, a band that embraced an experimental and art-driven expression of music (featuring David Thomas and Peter Laughner) and the Dead Boys who personified the motto 'Fuck art, let's rock!'
Dead Boys frontman Stiv Bators, guitarist Jimmy Zero and bassist Jeff Magnum, were looking for musicians in Cleveland, Ohio in the summer 1975. Being fans of Iggy Pop they wanted to play Iggy covers and have fun. At that time guitarist Cheetah Chrome and drummer Johnny Blitz had just walked away from Rocket From The Tombs. Thus Bators, Zero and Magnum formed a band with Chrome and Blitz. They called themselves Frankenstein and their first gig was that Halloween. Frankenstein did only four gigs total in Cleveland and were immortalized on a lone posthumous release, Eve Of The Dead Boys (Bomp), with three songs including "Sonic Reducer", "High Tension Wire" and "Down In Flames." The band found it hard to find gigs in Cleveland and soon broke-up only to reform again three months later in New York City at Bators behest, calling themselves the Dead Boys.
In 1990, many years after the band had gone their separate ways, Stiv Bators tragically lost his life in Paris, France. On September 18, 2004 the remaining band members played together at the Beachland Ballroom for the first time since their break-up in 1979.
Since then Johnny Blitz (John Madansky), Cheetah Chrome (Gene O'Connor), Jeff Magnum (Jeff Halmagy) and Jimmy Zero (William Wilden) have played together again only one other time on August 28, 2005 at the Save CBGB's benefit concert series.
Smog Veil is an independent record label, recently relocated to Chicago, IL (founded in Cleveland, OH). Releases out now include albums by Thor The Mighty Rock Warrior, David Thomas and two pale boys, Rocket From The Tombs, Amps II Eleven, Rubber City Rebels and New Christs (featuring Rob Younger of
Radio Birdman).
Dead Boys 30th Anniversary Show
“We’re just gonna get up there and do what we always do” Cheetah Chrome explains. “People will either like it or they won’t
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