The new Peter Laughner box set from Smog Veil Records is surely one of the most substantial reissue projects of 2019. The set, 5 CD's plus an additional single, sets the record straight on one of the seminal artists of the American punk boom, and a musician who was in the right place at the right time. What's here is, simply, a musical bridge from the Bob Dylan-inspired music of the late Sixties and early Seventies, to the more bristly and abrasive stuff that percolated out of New York City a bit later. What you hear when you listen to the simply-titled Peter Laughner box set is both the evolution of one artist, and also the evolution of American rock-and-roll during the Nixon/Ford/Carter years.
Disc one, called 1972 (Fat City Jive), is not really my cup of tea, but it is vital to hear this to understand just what an extraordinary transformation was happening in American music in the first half of the Seventies. Some of this stuff ("Sidewalks of New York", "Good Time Music") has a nice energy about it, but it's only on "I'm Waiting for My Man" that one understands what a sea-change is about to occur. Laughner, here performing in radio sessions, puts a lot of life into these cuts but the material is, frankly, dated stuff for fans of punk. Disc two, 1973 – 1974 (One of The Boys), finds the singer wanting to be Lou Reed. And the truth is, that he nearly succeeds in that goal. "Rock and Roll" sounds fantastic, as do other Lou Reed covers here, with Laughner imbuing these cuts with more enthusiasm that Lou likely did in the era. If so much of the Peter Laughner mythos is being etched here, it's being etched thanks to work already done by other artists. Still, Peter is finding his voice here, even if he needs help.
Disc three, 1973 – 1977 (Pledging My Time), finds Laughner turning his attention to his original compositions. Some of these cuts are fairly bleak, like "(My Sister Sold My Heart To) The Junk Man" or "Rain on the City", but others, like "Baudelaire", are far better and more interesting. Attentive listeners can hear debts owed to not only Reed, but Tim Buckley, and while Peter Laughner approaches this stuff with something approaching seriousness, the material rarely feels too heavy. It is, throughout, at least illuminating, if not entirely compelling. Disc four, 1974 – 1977 (Rock It Down), is more essential. A cover of "Ain't It Fun", the Dead Boys number, by Pere Ubu-adjacent Rocket From The Tombs is grimy and dire. I loved it. Similarly, "Prove It", a Television cover, has a nice, ramshackle charm in the live version here on Peter Laughner. If Laughner's touch is hard, hard enough to make "Pablo Picasso", a Jonathan Richman cover, seem more serious than even John Cale's cover which, famously, came out before the Modern Lovers' one, it's also a touch that is nimble when approaching this and other classics of American punk.
By disc five of this set, 1977 (Nocturnal Digressions), and one sort of starts to understand the cult that's grown up around Peter Laughner. Apart from his major hand in the Cleveland music scene, and his part in both Pere Ubu and Rocket From The Tombs, Laughner embodied that whole live fast, die young-thing. I don't want to romanticize that, but there's some real fire here that suggests someone living on the edge. There's talent all over the place on this final disc, from runs at "See No Evil" by Television and a stab at "Slim Slow Slider" by Van Morrison, but there's little of Laughner himself. One can hear the guy sort of finding his voice, but covers like "Wild Horses" do precious little to remove the whole tragic-but-talented junky-vibe that hangs over something like this.
Despite my harsh cynicism, the fact of Peter Laughner's talent is not in dispute, and his place has long been assured in the history of music in Cleveland. For that reason, Peter Laughner is recommended for students of punk in the USA, and for those interested in the place that gave birth to Pere Ubu and Rocket From The Tombs. I mean, there's not much here that sounds at all like those bands, but it's interesting to hear this stuff and realize why those bands needed to exist, and the void that was being filled by artists like Peter Laughner, who were bringing the sounds of New York punk out to the Midwest and beyond. Tragically, Laughner died young and he never got to see how this material would lead to an entirely new form of music in America's counter-culture.
Peter Laughner is out now via Smog Veil.
[Photo: Cynthia Black]