Outsider freekz, make haste! It’s time to get back to The Future – the one promised back when rock and roll was king, remember? J.T. IV believed in the promise – and now, the late mystery man behind barely-released private press 7” records of the ‘80s like “Destructo Rock” and “Cosmic Lightning”, as well as a film holding the Guinness record for worlds-longest – 85 hours! - has been called back to our mortal coil, to live out his glittering, rapacious dreams once again. 

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 releasing his inner star AT LAST with glee and vengeance, his antisocial visions flying high atop a raging funnel of distorted guitars and blunt rhythms. Or couched, childlike, within a heartbreaking billow of acoustic guitars – a schizophrenic split that only magnifies the deep display of feeling. 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 J.T.’s slim (and impossible to find anyway) discography. Of these nineteen tracks, eight are covers – and the preferences of J.T. IV, from the Velvets to Mott the Hoople, Roxy Music, Lee Hazlewood, The Kinks, Eno and Stephen Sondheim, sharpen our vision of the misfit adrift: on the outside looking in, but maybe just a few steps away from his goal? The Future unfolds like an epic, as both sides of the J.T. persona – street-smart, damaged rocker and heartstruck poet of the scene – live again, together, in the best performances of his short career.
 

On this first preview track, "Jet Lag Time Drag", J.T. IV broadcasts the unsecret desires shared by his brethren among the 70s youth cognoscenti – glam forward, Bowie proudly worn on their glittering sleeves, with debauchery, irreverence and irony between the sheets, while buzzsaw guitars and horns echo the galvanizing new sound from the hits of Mott and Roxy Music, sonically reduced by J.T. to a sludgy proto-punk roar.

These songs emanate from the 80s, but we find them potently renewed in the polarized world of today, making The Future a worthwhile destination for everyone who ever had a heart touched by the transgression and freedom promised by rock and roll. Face The Future on 2xLP on January 20th 2023.