[kj] OT: The Lords

[TB]

"Harold Grey" wrote:



> Not to date myself, but I saw Lords of the New Church in the early  80s at 

> a small club in in Coney Island called the Brooklyn Zoo (aptly  named!) 

> They were awesome and Stiv was outstanding. This was shortly  after their 

> debut album came out.


In a lot of ways, The Lords along with Hanoi Rocks were a few years ahead of 
their time and bands like Guns n' Roses really snaked a lot of their act of 
The Lords.  I'll always contend The Lords debut album is a stone classic.

I know I've probably mentioned this too many times already, but I was a huge 
fan of The Lords (that was my "partyslammer" youtube profile that vid came 
from, btw) and I met and hung out with Stiv and the rest of the band many 
times around local shows between '83 - '86.  Stiv could be a really cool, 
pretty sharp guy, usually when fairly sober and either dangerously hilarious 
or at worst, an obnoxious asshole loaded.

A couple key incidents involving Stiv include introducing a friend to him 
outside Fender's Ballroom in Long Beach in '85 after a show (in which a 
young Gun's n' Roses opened!) and a clearly trashed Stiv reaches out to 
shake the guy's hand and promptly projectile vomits on him.  Another was 
when The Lords had left IRS Records and were playing almost weekly shows in 
any dive bar they could get booked at to make quick cash around '86 in 
Southern California (after original bass player Dave Tregunna left because 
he knew Miles Copeland was ripping off the band).  They played a really 
crummy club in Huntington Beach to maybe 30 people basically a 5 minute walk 
from my place and Stiv and a roadie/drug dealer came over after the show and 
watched "Apocalypse Now" after I bragged about how good the "new" laserdisc" 
was (Stiv was a huge Jim Morrison fan and a big fan of the movie as can be 
heard on the song "Russian Roulette").  A few days later, I got Stiv to sign 
the LD sleeve ("Jim Lives  Stiv Bator"):

[IMG]http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h26/Partyslammer/apocalypsestivldcover.jpg[/IMG]

Here's another sleeve the band signed:

[IMG]http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h26/Partyslammer/LordsSignedEP.jpg[/IMG]

I also had a lot of conversations with drummer Nicky Turner who was a pretty 
cool guy who was probably the one member of the band that had his head 
screwed on straight, although he kind of went to the dark side when he began 
working for Copeland as a "talent scout" when he figured there was no real 
future drumming for The Lords.  Now, he almost is ashamed to recall his days 
in the band.

These days, I keep (or maybe kept) infrequent contact with Brian James 
through his manager (who unfortunately just quit managing James).  I have 
also held onto and never traded or torrented a 1st generation copy of a 
pretty amazing/amusing band-produced documentary the band did the last year 
they were together in 1988 when they gave one last effort to land a new 
record contract.  Recently Brian James wanted to release it in conjunction 
with the "remixed" classic tracks cd "Rockers" (highly recommended if you 
can find it, btw) that came out earlier this year but the interest was so 
miniscule and Brian's focus so scattered these days, I doubt it'll ever 
officially see the light of day.

T.B.