Johnny Thunders Madrid Memory Vinyl/Blu-Ray/CD Review

Johnny Thunders… What a beautiful disaster he was, while he wasn’t the front man of the New York Dolls, his guitar riffs and showmanship along with his approach was everything to the Dolls and in my opinion, the Dolls would’ve never reached the heights they did without Johnny, he just had a way about him. I often think of him and Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys in the same sense, they were just too good and too damned wild for their own good – they burned the candle at both ends and left us too soon.
 
Thankfully there are labels out there like Cleopatra Records that feel like I do, and they want to flood the world with more Thunders releases. This time around, we’re talking Johnny Thunders Madrid Memory Live. This is a long-lost Spanish TV broadcast that saw Thunders reuniting with Dolls members Jerry Nolan, Sylvain Sylvain and Heartbreakers member Billy Rath. For years this was a highly sought after VHS in the bootleg trading scene, I watched it with some dear Punk friends of mine years ago. I never got my own copy of it, but I recall enjoying it a great deal.
 
Cleopatra released a DVD/CD of this awhile back, so it’s been back on the market for a bit. Recently, the label released a blu-ray and vinyl edition of this performance. You can also rent the stream via Amazon, so it’s available now more than ever, just depends on your preference. The performance is a bit all over the place, but we’ve come to expect that from Thunders, he was always on the fringe of lunacy. The sound quality isn’t exactly top tier, but we’re talking Thunders and 2 members of the Dolls on stage cranking out the classics “Personality Crisis”, “Too much Junkie Business”, “Just Another Girl”. This is a need for all fans of Thunders and the New York Dolls! Personally, the blu-ray release and the vinyl edition are essentials to a collection. I wouldn’t miss out on this release on some kind of format.

~Black Angel