Customer Reviews

Lamf

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This great album by The Heartbreakers has been around in at least three versions since 1977. The original release on Track records suffered from a terrible mix that doomed this fantastic and overlooked album. This version "LAMF Revisited" was released in 1984 and boasts only marginally better sound than the original. As best I can tell the treble was boosted on this release. I listened to it back to back versus my Lp version and the sound and mix is better but still poor.

The good news is that in 1994 Jungle Records got hold of the original masters and started from scratch. This new version "LAMF The Lost '77 Mixes" finaly delivers a mix and sound quality that does this classic album justice. You really have to wonder if things would have been better for the Heartbreakers if the album always sounded this way. I am not one who believes in altering what the artists originaly intended but Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan were always disgusted with the sound on the original album. In addition this version maintains the original song order plus adds the same two bonus tracks as "Revisited"

... Enjoy!!!

To listen to Johnny Thunders and the crew again for the first time in 20 years; my skin responded with goose bumps! This is the audio bible. This group made the Pistols, Clash, Damned & Stranglers look like infants in a crib. The New York Dolls were good, but this CD just shows that the follow on; the Heartbreakers, were fantastic. Malcolm Maclarren wishes he carried on with these guys after the Dolls, but the Sex Pistols were one of his many mistakes..... We all know what L.A.M.F. stands for, and as coloquial, biblical, sociology says; that's the best. Just buy it, love it, play it, and re-live it again; FABULOUS.

Buy the Lost Mixes from Amazon. Poor Johnny re-mixed this---that tell you anything?But it's still the same great stuff. The mixes are richer, but still enough to shake the graveyards to break the band up yet again.A flawed masterpiece.

Throw that Elton John disc at your neighbor's yapping mutt, use Shania Twain as a coaster, and take one loud, glorious listen to this. You'll rejoice the day you did. LAMF is rock n' roll at it's absolute zenith: a screaming ball of Chuck Berry-inspired fire that will blow your eyes through the back of your skull. If you aren't up pogoing across your living room by the time "Can't Keep My Eyes on You" hits your speakers, you're either dead or a Republican.

Tragically, the Heartbreakers' fabulous studio album, L.A.M.F., could be the most-overlooked record of the punk era. This is its second incarnation, mixed in the early 1980's by Johnny Thunders himself. He brought his guitar way, way up...it's loud, it's sharp, it melts the wax in your ears. I am an admitted Johnny Thunders fanatic; my final words on this CD are: it's my favorite of all my Thunders CD's.

This is what rock'n'roll is supposed to sound like--drunken, trashy, careening from one brilliant wreck to another, forever on the verge of ultimate destruction. Sorry, but I like my rock musicians on the edge, racked with drugs and liquor... and Johnny Thunders and his wonderful Heartbreakers Walter Lure, Jerry Nolan and Billy Rath fit the bill. Not for nothing were they chosen to take part in the first great punk tour way, way back in 1976 with a couple bands you mighta heard of, the Sex Pistols and the Clash.

On to the record: a different track order than "LAMF: The Lost Mixes," this version opens with the stunning, exhilirating "One Track Mind." Why isn't this song played on the radio every twenty minutes? A singalong classic, put the pedal to the medal--"I fixed up one time/ And I don't look back!"

Other great songs include "Get Off the Phone," "Going Steady," and "All By Myself." "Pirate Love" features some blistering dual guitar work from Johnny and Walter, it's sheer aural pleasure, plus my favorite Thunders solo of all time. "It's Not Enough" is a thoughtful, melodic, touching rock ballad sorta thing: "You can give me this/You can give me that/It's not enought." Their cover of "Do You Love Me?" is genius; they attack it with joyful anarchy--a must for your next party.

Then there's the two classics: "Born to Lose" and Dee Dee Ramone's "Chinese Rocks." Man, these songs are towering achievements of boozy, live fast die young beautiful corpse rock'n'roll.

Yes, this album is entirely essential. Get it, learn it, love it--but ya don't necessarily have to live it.

I can't believe there is no US edition of this masterpiece ! This is the perfect example of how urban rock'n'roll can sound when played by kids who just want other kids to dance. To put between your favorite Clash and Ramones records.

Johnny Thunders was a true believer--like Springsteen or Westerberg--with less brains but just as much heart. All that comes across brilliantly here. This is rock at its least self-conscious. Just pure, unbridled rock and roll fury, steeped in tradition but fresh-sounding, too. It's too bad Johnny died, we need more genuine madmen like him around. One listen to "Chinese Rocks" and you know he was the real deal.