The Lurkers
Greatest Hit (Beggars Banquet)
by Jon Sarre
The vaults have been opened and good luck to whomever’s got the gumption to try and close ’em. Thus continues the deluge of direct from scratchy vinyl to analog CD “Best of” product from every band of “No Future” kids who picked up instruments from 1976 on. The Lurkers, FYI, were first generation UK punkers, messy partiers like the Damned, but musically more deliberate (with chops a wholehelluvalot less choppy). Their chant-along proto-Oi may have been made for the benefit of the punters, but they proudly wore their Johnny Thunders/Ramones mimeographs like old trackmarks (which when ya think about it, is not true of mosta the “punk movement” clowns who went straight from the dole queue to the pages of Melody Maker in the late ’70s).
The Lurkers’ place in history is kinda spotty today, probably cuz their stuff is bereft of the political nonsense that rock scholars like to spiel on about. Instead, they wrote loutish anthems about puberty (“Just Thirteen”), “love-love-love” (“Love Story”), your heart bein’ in the shadows (“Shadow,” the “hit” referred to in the title), bein’ “on heat,” whatever that means (“I’m On Heat”), and “He’s a Rebel”-type teen dramas turned on their ear (“Jenny,” a precursor to other songs about murderous ex-girlfriends who end up incarcerated like Supercharger’s “All About Judy”). They actually covered Phil Spector with “Then I Kicked Her” (it’s “Then He Kissed Me” down to the composing credit where credit is due), as well as Waylon Jennings cum New York Dolls (“Little Ol’ Wine Drinker Me”) and the Dolls themselves on “Pills” (which, according to the songwriter’s credit, was penned by, I think, Ellis “Bo Diddley” McDaniel, ‘cept I can’t picture Bo havin’ a rock’n’roll nurse shooting him up with pills; then again Johnny Thunders and Walter Lure re-worked “Pills” into their “Too Much Junkie Business,” which had a damn-near litigable similarity to Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business,” so where was I?). Ladies and gentlemen, the fabulous Lurkers! They’re worth your money!
(625 Broadway #1004 New York, NY 10012)
