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The Wanderers' sole album, Only Lovers Left Alive was recorded in November 1980 but didn't come out until 1981.  As might be imagined from the title of the opening song "Fanfare for 1984" (which features sirens that might have come from a concentration camp), the album concerns a young man who becomes obsessed with the impending doom of civilization through his fascination (described in the track "A Little Bit Frightening") and later disillusion ("Can't Take You Anymore") with the pronouncements of a conspiracy theorist.  The two singles released from the album were the potent "Ready to Snap" and a cover of Bob Dylan's "the Times They Are A-Changing".  As Allmusic put it:  "This album remains one of the most foreboding records ever released and plunges the listener into a world of Bolshevik plots, duplicate Popes, and a third World War that is so close you can smell it."

 

Many rock critics were not ready for a "concept album" from a punk rock band, and the Wanderers were often dismissed as "the Sham Boys" or "Stiv 69", though they did get some favorable notices (from Trouser Press, among others).  Their label Polydor Records had expected more than a cult following and made only minimal efforts at promoting the Wanderers; in retrospective paranoia, this seemed like sabotage to Stiv Bators.  Today, the original album is almost impossible to find, but a reissue in 2000 on Captain Oi! Records has brought the album to a wider audience.  ("Oi" refers to a working-class subgenre of British punk rock; Sham 69 was one of the first such bands).  Greg Shaw regards the album as being among Stiv Bators' finest work, and I concur.

 

The name of the conspiracy theorist referenced in the album, Dr. Peter Beter sounds like a weak masturbation joke.  In actuality, however, Dr. Beter is a real person, an ex-CIA agent who brought news from the intelligence-community underground in a series of "audio letters".  (Oddly, the liner notes on the 2000 reissue never mentioned that, nor did those on the original album release).  Not only that, Stiv Bators was obsessed with him in real life and used to regale anyone who would listen about the dangers of impending Bolshevism and the end of the world.  The song "Dr. Beter" presents a synopsis of the endless conspiracies discussed by Dr. Beter and features an actual excerpt from one of his recordings.  Talk about “Reality . . . What A Concept”:  Only Lovers Left Alive had it all!

 

The title of the album is taken from an apocalyptic 1964 novel called Only Lovers Left Alive by Dave Wallis about an uprising of British teenagers against not only the authorities but the entire adult population as well.  Sitting on top of a copy of the novel on the front cover photograph is another paperback book called The War Game, a companion book (published in 1967) to a controversial 1965 faux-documentary film also called The War Game (both by Peter Watkins) about the aftermath of a nuclear war in Britain; it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary that year, though because of the bleak subject matter, it wasn't actually broadcast in Britain for 20 years.  At the bottom of the stack of books is a copy of the Christian "end times" classic The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey.

 

The band was dropped by Polydor and broke up almost immediately.  Shortly thereafter, Stiv Bators and Dave Tregunna formed the Lords of the New Church, which had their own version of doom and gloom.  This post-punk band had a more polished sound than the Dead Boys and were quite successful during the 1980's, but Bators' stage histrionics were as wild as ever.  In one celebrated incident, Stiv Bators hanged himself on stage and was pronounced dead for several minutes.  Though he recovered from that incident, he was hit by a taxi in Paris and died from those injuries all too young in June 1990.

 

(February 2011)

 

 

 

 

Due to our recent escape from the projected end of the world on December 21, 2012, the apocalyptic album by the Wanderers is an appropriate Flashback for this month.  Stiv Bators, the frontman of one of the best American punk rock bands, the Dead Boys teamed up with the remains of one of Britain's best punk bands, Sham 69.  Stiv Bators would found his next punk rock band, the Lords of the New Church with one of the members of the Wanderers, Dave Tregunna.

 

YouTube has a few Wanderers tunes in its database.  Their single, "Ready to Snap" (audio only) can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5VOfIS8skQ ; and "Take Them and Break Them" (again, with only audio) is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TRAZ5_Mllo .

 

(February 2013)