When most people think about the New York City underground music scene of the mid to late '70s, bands such as the Ramones and Blondie often come to mind.

These bands represent the rise of a genre of music that at the time was revolutionary and dared to bridge the gap between music and graphic art. If the Ramones represented a grotesque caricature of what rock 'n' roll was about, then certainly the Dead Boys were the MAD magazine of the New York punk scene.

The band's first and best release, 1977's "Young Loud and Snotty," has both image and sound. The vacant stares of the band on the cover reflect their narrow outlook on life, and the sound contained therein is nothing short of well-orchestrated chaos, if there is such a thing.

There's a certain amount of tragedy behind the Dead Boys. The tragedy is in both the Greek sense and in vocalist Stiv Bators' early demise. From the beginning, the album shoots straight to the top and reaches its musical plateau within the first two songs. The speedy pace is broken up with "Not Anymore," which is a melancholy tune of love lost.

The songs "Caught With the Meat In Your Mouth," "Hey Little Girl" and "I Need Lunch" bring the group's sexual revelry to the max before diving down into the depths of Stiv Bators' subconscious with "High Tension Wire," "Down In Flames" and the "Not Anymore/Ain't Nothin' To Do" medley. The previously mentioned three songs reflect the band's familiarity with failure, and in the end became the key element that split the band apart.

Not everyone would agree with or approve of what the Dead Boys present throughout the course of "Young, Loud and Snotty," but then again, winning over pop culture's fiends was never their main goal. If anything, the band's main goal was to shock as many people as possible while rocking them out at the same time.

The Dead Boys capture the same rock 'n' roll bravado and intensity as Iggy Pop and the Stooges or any British punk band up to 1978. This isn't too bad for a group of ruffians from Cleveland.

What the album and musical style might lack in flair and complexity, the lyrics make up for in honesty and subject matter that most young people can identify with even today, making the Dead Boys' "Young, Loud and Snotty" a recording that, surprisingly enough, carries over from one generation to the next.