Some EASY ACTION with JOHNNY THUNDERS.

It’s been a while since there’s been any legitimate Johhny Thunders releases hitting the streets, the last one (I think) being Jungle Records rather fine Down To Kill collection, which coincidently I picked up last weekend at a local record shop for the bargain price of £7.99 for a 3-disc set 2xCDs + 1xDVD (1. Unreleased early demos 2. Complete live 1977 3. Unseen video footage, and 24 pages of booklets) I’ve slightly digressed….Easy Action Records, suppliers of the finest Rock’n’Roll have plans to end the drought of official releases with a few things in the err!.… pipeline. I’ll hand you over to Carlton P Sandercock from Easy Action to tell us more.

“Everyone at Easy Action is proud to announce we will be working alongside the Johnny Thunders Estate / Beta Petrol in producing a catalogue of Johnny Thunders recordings on an exclusive imprint called Chatterbox. We have had great success with our relationship with the Stooges & Iggy Pop as well as producing high quality box sets and albums by T.Rex, Steve Marriott and the MC5.
Outside of Jungle Records, who have done a sterling job for Thunders fans - above and beyond the call of duty, and of course Warners ‘So Alone’ album, we will be looking at compiling a boxed set of unreleased material from 1975 onwards. We will also be re-issuing and re-mastering certain albums that have been out of print for some time. Reels of tape have been located already!
As fans, we want the profile of Johnny Thunders to return to the rock n roll music and fragile acoustic performances that he delivered.
We promise to produce highly packaged product and will liaise with fans to ensure we deliver exactly what they (and we) want on CD, LP, 7” and digitally.
Beta Petrol now have an archive of amazing photos, many unseen. With the official merchandise company “Don’t mess with us “ providing quality T shirts etc, we can at last provide quality Johnny Thunders goods and hopefully bury all the cheap and vile product that has escaped over the years.”

Well that’s certainly wetted my appetite for unheard Thunders material. To feed anyone else’s Thunders habit, here’s a crafty little dose of The Heartbreakers from Max’s Kansas City on 23rd July 1976, I’ve lifted it from a two disc set called S.O.B lost live tapes 1976-1977 (It’s were the Portsmouth one came from as well) it was released by Back To Zero Products, dunno if it’s classed as a “cheap and vile product” or it’s semi official, what I do know there were only 250 pressed up. It was The ’breakers first gig with Bill Rath on bass instead of Richard Hell, and a mighty fine set it is. The scourge of Sid Vicious; Nancy Spungeon reviewed it for Issue 4 of New York Rocker saying how tight the band were for a first performance and how “all for members together created a perfect chemistry, a certain magic, if you will..” Check out the magic here mutha fuckers!