Johnny Thunders

July 25 - August 1, 1 9 9 6 [Off the Record]

**1/2 Johnny Thunders

HAVE FAITH

(Mutiny)

The lonely planet boy from Queens has been dead for five years now, and to mark rock and roll's most inevitable OD, Mutiny Records has released this live-in-Japan disc. It's no visceral snapshot of an era like some of Thunders's Heartbreakers live recordings, but Japan in 1988 wasn't exactly Max's Kansas City in 1979, either.

Although it's nice to have a refresher course in downtown dissipation, the renderings of such classics as "Too Much Junkie Business," "Chinese Rocks," and "Born To Lose" are just too muddy and steeped in weariness to go anyplace new. Yet Thunders's burning ingenuousness occasionally bleeds through the zonked-out haze. "I Can Tell," for instance, lands in a choice guitar groove and stays put. His mythical pathos dyes some of Faith an impossible shade of blue. His take on "Play with Fire" is enough to make you want to bawl. And "Joey, Joey," even though it doesn't compare to the lucid version on Hurt Me (New Rose), is affecting in its own narcotized way.

Faith has the distinct whiff of odds-and-sods foraging, but that's fair enough. Thunders deserves renewed attention every so often. Not because there's any romance in suicide by installment, but because there is romance in simplicity and an open heart.

-- Amy Finch