Parallax In Wonderland – Sonny Vincent (Dead Beat Records)
Tracking the career of New York City punk original Sonny Vincent is a tall order. The man is nothing if not prolific and he’s has had more labels than a printshop out the back of a bootleg distillery.
This album was first unleashed in 1998 (on vinyl only as “Hard In Detroit”) and the latest iteration, on CD and LP on Cleveland label Dead Beat, has been re-mastered and is a marked sonic improvement.
First, an aside: The original wasn’t my entry point into the raw music of Sonny Vincent, but it's where the relationship really took off. You can draw a line through earlier bands like Testors and Shotgun Rationale, but “Parallax” coalesced everything that makes Sonny’s music great: frenzied punk energy, guitars and melody, laced with passion and verve.
In what would become a career hallmark, Vincent was aided and abetted by an all-star cast: Wayne Kramer, Captain Sensible, Steve Baise (Devil Dogs) and the Asheton brothers all threw their lot in with him, a one-time street kid from New York City who’d since been domiciled in Minnesota (playing with The Replacements’ Bob Stinson, no less) and would go on to live in Europe. The album was recorded in Berlin, California and Detroit.
The claustrophobic, in-the-red mix of the original was an issue but it was outweighed by the quality of the songs and their delivery. Sonny sang his arse off and the players (big names and otherwise) all brought some magic.
The master tapes were no longer in existence and re-mastering can only do so much, but what’s been achieved by Sonny and engineers Alex Carlton, Maor Applebaum and Noah James over long and expensive studio sessions is remarkable.
There’s more separation between the instruments, greater definition in the bottom end and you can actually hear the late Scott Asheton’s mammoth drumming. “Rock Action” was a frequent US and European tourist with Vincent’s bands and coming up with an album that did his legacy proud was part of the motivation behind the sonic makeover.
It’s like a massive wet blanket was lifted off the backline and the album was allowed to breathe.
And the songs! “Knifeman” kickstarts the record’s heart like a defibrillator and the sonic hits keep coming. “Good Ideas” pummels and “Dedication” shimmies like the son of “Shake Appeal”. The furious “I Do What I Want” is as good a warning as you’re going to get in the Motor City before a mugger jolts you senseless.
You can seek solace in the mid-tempo “Lost Again” or you can chuckle along to “French Music” and imagine Ron Asheton peeling off those licks with a filter cigarette stuck between his teeth as he breaks into a wicked grin.
Buy it in whatever format suits. If CD, you’ll cop two extra live tracks with Steve Baise and Scott Asheton on a German tour.
