J.T. IV - The Future - 2LP - Gatefold Vinyl

2LP - Black Vinyl housed in a Gatefold Sleeve.

Barely-heard in his lifetime (1961-2002) but hailed as an outsider hero of ur-punk since 2009’s Cosmic Lightning comp, J.T. IV strikes back! 15 unheard-of tracks found on an obscure cassette tape make the schizo split in his music – rabid rock n roll fantasy and cold-eyed acoustic introspection – an epic. The Future is J.T. IV’s mad magnum opus. 

The 2009 comp LP, ‘Cosmic Lightning’, cast his tragic silhouette up on the big screen for all to see: the lost boy, alone in the world, standing before the mic and releasinghis inner star with glee and vengeance, his antisocial visions flying high atop a ragingfunnel of distorted guitars and blunt rhythms. Or couched, childlike, within a heartbreaking billow of acoustic guitars - a schizophrenic split that only magnifies thedisplay of his deep emotions.

‘The Future’ goes even further, excavating fifteen recordings from a previously unheard-of cassette entitled ‘The Best Of Johnny Zhivago Retrospective 1979–1993’, and adding four more uncollected tracks from his slim (and impossible to find anywhere) discography.

Of these nineteen tracks, eight are covers - and J.T. IV’s picks, from Velvets to Mott the Hoople, Roxy Music, Lee Hazlewood, The Kinks, Eno and Stephen Sondheim, sharpen our image of the misfit adrift; on the outside looking in, but maybe just a fews teps away from his goal.

‘The Future’ unfolds like an epic, as both sides of J.T.’s persona - the street smart, damaged rocker and the heart struck poet of the scene - live on together in the best performances of his short career.

A punk of the old order, John Henry Timmis IV was born in 1961 into a dysfunctional, abusive and eventually broken family. By the mid-70s, he was desperate to get out, running away from his mother’s home several times while still a teenager living in the greater Chicagoland area. At wit’s end, she had him committed to the Menninger Clinic for a year or so. Released on his own reconnaissance, he began his meteoric ascent to the mythic level of self-aggrandizement in which he appears here. Inspired by the underground, proto-punk sounds in the air (the likes of which any sharp-eyed young thing might chance upon in the back pages of Creem, Crawdaddy, TrouserPress, etc.) and desperate to be heard himself, J.T. presented like the scabby younger brother of Bangs and Laughner: born only to rock, his musical conception arabid personality crisis of proselyte elitism and nihilist excess.

Now, 20 years on from his passing, ‘The Future’ is ever farther away from the world in which he struggled so mightily - but his stinging iconoclasm, whether screamed from Marshall amps or mic-ed up close, feels ever more powerfully infused with his unique breadth of illness and essence.

These songs represent the two sides of J.T. - and while they emanate from the 80s, they find themselves potently renewed in the polarized world of today, making ‘The Future’ a worthwhile destination for everyone who ever had a heart touched by thetransgression and freedom promised by rock & roll.

Tracklist:

LP 1
1. Space Baby
2. I Wish I Was Your Mother
3. Pictures from the Past
4. The Loner
5. The City Never Sleeps at Night
6. The Fat Lady of Limbourg
7. The Future
8. If There Is Something
9. Sunday Morning

LP 2
1. Jet Lag Time Drag
2. A Fix of Rock 'N' Roll
3. Somebody to Love
4. The Ballad of Oliver North
5. I Love You
6. Out of the Blue
7. Tonight
8. Caroline Says II
9. Celluloid Heroes
10. My Fellow Americans