BIRDLAND WITH LESTER BANGS (Add On)

Stop the presses, Bob, this one’s THE best rock ’n’ roll album of 1986—it’s got Springsteen and Thelonious Monster beat seven ways from Sunday! Soon after this album was recorded, (in NYC, April 1979) Bangs and Birdland parted company, with the band mutating into the Rattlers, even as the brutally wordy Bangs clutched his beloved fantasies of betrayal (takes two) to his breast and trudged off to Texas. Down there Lester recorded Jook Savages On The Brazos with the Delinquents, but even that amazing set sounds a bit nrftiddy compared to the naked clarity and raw fire of this new/old Birdland recording. Listen to songs common to both sets, like “Kill Him Again,” and note how much more existentially terrifying Bangs’s warbly drawl sounds framed by Birdland’s angular rhythms, especially the fat, abrasive guitar of Mickey Leigh. Bangs conquers all his demons on this one.