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Album Review

Could there have been anything more intense than being 16 and shaking the walls with the new Road to Ruin -- so loud, your brothers' golf trophies fell off the shelves? Only this: seeing them live back then, playing two hours of just their first four, best LPs! Holy "I don't wanna be a pinhead no more," does that come back here, gaping gaga at the longed-for footage of the import double-live LP It's Alive, their most blistering document. Only the budding Buzzcocks and Motörhead came near the frightening hard speed, massive crunch 'n' roar, and slap to the head N-bomb of this band, at their quickest, tightest, and most punishing fury, in December 1977 at London's Rainbow Theater. Frankly, this 14-song shockwave is an alarming kick to the midsection. Oh sure, there are 60 other selections from 24 gigs from those seven glorious early years, before the concept wore thin. And some more from the fallow if respectable final 15 years. You see them mature from a barely fluent raw mess of 1974 to that London lightning raid, along the way memorably storming America's squares on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. It's all so astonishing, still. And looking, movingly, at three out of four dead members, and the equally deceased Max's and CBGB, you feel the awe for the fleeting cultural moment, never to be had again. Except here. ~ Jack Rabid, Rovi