Take the Guitar Player for a Ride Review

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Take the Guitar Player for a Ride ReviewThis is going to be hard. Okay: listeners who only know Laughner from the Lester Bangs obituary or some o/s punk webzine shouldn't expect snot-clogged shrieking ala Richard Hell. I/o/w, this isn't punk. Laughner's voice and mentality are steeped in 1960's streetwise hipster argot, and on first spin most of it sounds like a less assured Lou Reed trying to do "Blood On the Tracks." One song in particular (won't say which) sounds like it was penned in a musty corner of Warhol's Factory while "Spanish Harlem Incident" played. So, not the Clash.
Many of these are bedroom demos, or, more to the point, parents'-house bedroom demos. (Young musicians will get the distinction.) They're full of the high-end fuzz of a cheap microphone, the cagey feel of being overheard by Dad, but also the plowing fury of someone who wants to break out.
What hits you first is its sheer heart. If only Lou Reed could've hit those notes, Dylan come up with those riffs, Tom Verlaine turn those phrases! This is great music, heartbreakingly great at moments, but it is so crushingly sad. Sad far beyond the work of fellow corpses Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison. Those artists knew their talent, so no matter how angst-hobbled their songs, spirit poured from every chord. Hearing them can be a renewal in which you are touched by life at its rawest. Peter Laughner--well. You feel the life, quiveringly real, you believe he means every word, more than you've ever meant anything--so what if the phrasing all sounds like "Berlin", Laughner felt "Berlin" way more strongly than Reed ever did--but none of it sets you free.
Kim Gordon once defined rock 'n' roll as the public act of believing in yourself. Laughner didn't believe, and that's the sad clot at the heart of this music. His songs are impassioned, his voice urgent and wonderfully wry, his lyrics arresting. But his flailing for joy makes you sadder than Morrison ever could with all his art-directed gloom.
Pain is the sharpest parameter of our lives and, if honestly expressed, casts the shadow of its opposite. Whatever wound Laughner carried in him (and you feel it, believe me) fueled his art but sucked down all else. His is a losing battle captured live, the death-throes of a great talent that never knew itself, that thought it needed death to be real. I love this album, and I've only felt strong enough to listen to it five times.Take the Guitar Player for a Ride Overview

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