Garbage Days Revisited #20: The Waldos - "Rent Party" (1994)

 

"Well I've told you once and I've told you twice, these things aren't always nice..." - The Waldos - Golden Days

I guess you could kind of view this column as a follow-up to the New York Dolls GDR column a few weeks back in that the roots of the Waldos start off with Johnny Thunders. After Thunders and drummer Jerry "Nigs" Nolan walked out of the Dolls following the failure of their second album and an ill-fated stint being managed by Malcolm McLaren before he moved on to the Sex Pistols a year or so later, they hooked up with guitarist Walter Lure and, after a short-lived spell with ex-Television and future Voidoids bassist Richard Hell, four-stringer Billy Rath to form the Heartbreakers.

The Heartbreakers story has been told a million times by people more qualified than me - in a nutshell, the band became fixtures on the CBGB's/Max's Kansas City circuit, emigrated to London upon hearing of the scene starting up around the Roxy there, released an all-time classic but horribly produced album in LAMF before various internal rows and narcotics issues did for them. They would go on to sporadically reform through the '80s with Thunders playing Heartbreakers gigs in tandem with his solo career. However, Thunders' untimely death in 1991 followed by Nolan a year later pretty much put the final full stop on the operation.

Well, not quite - there was a postscript as it were. While Thunders and Nolan (who'd spent much of the '80s drumming for Soho glammers the London Cowboys) had spent the '80s carrying on with rock 'n' roll, Lure had "gone straight" in a fashion, getting a job on Wall Street and doing gigs with Johnny in between working the stock exchange. However, in the wake of Thunders and Nolan's deaths, he put together a new band, the Waldos, and together they recorded what could quite easily pass as the great lost second Heartbreakers album that the world never sadly quite got.

There were a number of links to the group's past - their cover of Seven Day Weekend was a song that the New York Dolls had done a version of nearly twenty years before, likewise Flight had been among the very first Heartbreakers demos put together in the Richard Hell era and Countdown Love, written by Nolan, was a regular in both the Heartbreakers and London Cowboys' sets around this era. But this wasn't just a band looking backwards - Lure had assembled a razor-sharp band to attack these songs with guitar wiz Joey Pinter showing off his chops with aplomb throughout, Jeff West keeping the beat behind the drums in a way that Nigs would've been proud of and Mafia Don lookalike Tony Coiro (RIP) on bass showing his own frontman credentials on Cry Baby and Crazy 'Bout Your Love. Elsewhere, there were cameos by everyone from Michael Monroe to Dictators' bassist Andy Shernoff.

While the likes of Love That Kills, Sorry and Never Get Away were the full on rock 'n' roll snarl you'd expect from Lure, the wistful Golden Days, a mournful look at the way your circle of friends decreases with age as the after effects of a life recklessly lived take their toll and send your associates off to the cemetery one by one, could easily have been a great lost Pogues number while a lurching cover of Ray Charles' Busted and a storming run through the old '50s rock 'n' roll number Party Lights to round things off make this real all killer no filler.

Unfortunately, the Waldos would never really get off the ground. In keeping with the Golden Days theme, Tony Coiro would abruptly pass away just a year after Rent Party was released and Lure would put the group on hold to go back to his day job. He would eventually resurface about ten years ago after retiring from his stock market job and being able to dedicate some proper time to music again. I saw the UK version of the Waldos (featuring Darren Birch and Jez Miller from Gunfire Dance, the latter also being the drummer for steampunk legends The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing) a couple of times during my London days and they didn't disappoint, every bit the tough Noo Yoik street rats of legend with razor-sharp tunes cutting through the air. Great stuff.

I'm glad I did get to see those gigs because unfortunately Lure's passing from cancer last year has comprehensively ruled out any chance of it happening again - Billy Rath's passing a few years ago (I also saw Rath's version of the Heartbreakers at the Dome in Tufnell Park in the early 2010's) means that all four of the Heartbreakers are no longer with us. There would be a second Waldos album, Wacka Lacka Boom Bop A Loom Bam Boo which was another mix of songs from the Dolls/Heartbreakers canon (Don't Mess With Cupid, the anti-Pistols rant London Boys, Nolan's Take A Chance With Me) and a mix of originals. It wasn't quite up to the standard of Rent Party but it's still worth a listen and you can still track it down via Bandcamp. In the meantime, if Rent Party has slipped under your radar until now then I heartily recommend tracking it down. True to its name, this is one that'll make any party go with a bang.