POP MUSIC REVIEW : Thunders’ ‘Show’ Is a Rambling Wreck

Johnny Thunders’ “show” Sunday night at the Coach House was less a concert than some sort of strange public-therapy session for a confused and obsessed rocker.

It started out normally enough. The former New York Doll and his backing band, the Oddballs, churned through a few sloppy-but-punchy numbers, including a good new song, apparently entitled “Disappointed in You,” in which Thunders combined self-pity with a sense of ironic detachment and humorous recognition that life is just a bowl of sour cherries.

Then Thunders left the stage for a while and let his backup singer, Allison Gordy, front the band with some convincingly husky belting. When he returned, Thunders took the 100 or so fans in the house on a trip into his personal twilight zone.

Instead of a performance, the New York-based Thunders delivered a disjointed lounge monologue in which he obsessed about rock critics, about his former band mate David Johansen (who, as Buster Poindexter, has developed a truly entertaining lounge act of his own), about his reputation as a drug addict, and about whatever else popped into his head. Unfortunately, some of what popped into Thunders’ head and out through his mouth was crudely racist and sexist.

Thunders even bonked one listener on the head with a microphone after one of the show’s many up-close bits of give and take, but the fan didn’t take exception. That wasn’t the case with backup singer Gordy, a statuesque woman who swore at Thunders and punched him twice in the body after the pallid, scrawny little rocker had whispered something objectionable in her ear.

When Thunders did start to sing something, he would quickly get sidetracked, tell his band to “bring it down,” and ramble on some more, strolling through the audience with an acoustic guitar to scatter wisecracks, start fragmentary one-on-one dialogues with fans, and strum and sing a few lines here and there.

Thunders’ forbearing band waited patiently, but what started as bemusement turned to frustration, then disgust. The Oddballs didn’t stick around for the finish. While some people in the audience greeted all this with catcalls and pleas for real music, few left. When a show strays this far from the usual script, people tend to stay around to see how it will play itself out.

It finally ended after 2 1/2 hours when, the house sound system having been turned off and the stage hands setting about clearing the band’s gear, Thunders gathered his audience around him campfire-style and continued to talk and sing. Thunders, who had been asking all evening whether there were any critics in the house, finally got one--namely me--reluctantly to step forward in response to a particularly earnest and plaintive plea. That helped the singer focus long enough for a person-to-person rendition of “I Tell the Truth Even When I’m Lying.”

Not a bad song, actually (although most of us critics would object to having our ancestry traced to New York City’s seedy Times Square). Judging from the fragments Thunders was willing to share, two other new songs about homeless people and battered children also contain the heart and raw, unmasked feeling of his best work.

Actually, Thunders’ fascinating but pathetic display at the Coach House cried out more for a psychologist’s opinion than a rock critic’s. One can only hope that when he plays tonight at Bogart’s in Long Beach he can channel his hurts and obsessions into rock ‘n’ roll instead of venting them at random.