I saw Johnny Thunders in Boston in 1982, about ten years before he died from the inevitable heroin overdose. During the gig, he came on an hour late, absent a bass player, and so loaded he could barely remember more than a few bars of even his most famous songs. At one point he pulled a volunteer bass player from the audience, promptly dubbed him "lame," then launched into a rambling monologue about how he was the star of his high school baseball team until he quit because the coach demanded he cut his hair. Needless to say, the crowd loved every minute of it. "So Alone" features Thunders in a more coherent mode, though it completely captures the raunchy, nihilistic, and genuinely pissed-off spirit that made late-seventies punk so exciting.

Jon Brooks