Seventies underground legend Sonny Vincent, who fronted New York City punk band the Testors, will release his new solo album, "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly" March 18th on Acetate Records.

Vincent enlisted former Stooges drummer Scott Asheton and Damned bassist Captain Sensible as his rhythm section on the record. As for the guitar, Vincent plays alongside nineteen different guitarists -- from peers to his musical progeny. Among the guests are older generation rock and punk players including the MC5's Wayne Kramer, the Heartbreakers' Walter Lure, Television's Richard Lloyd, Richard Hell and the Voidoids' Robert Quine, and the Damned's Brian James. And the Eighties art rock and hardcore set, who were weaned on the Testors also make appearances: Thurston Moore and Jim O'Rourke from Sonic Youth, Black Flag's Greg Ginn and the True Believers' Javier Escovedo. The record also taps a more recent generation of punk with the Offspring's Dexter Holland and Noodles, and the Streetwalking Cheetahs' Frank Meyer.

The New York City-born Vincent formed the three-piece, bass-less Testors in 1976. The Testors were almost more legend than a band. The group (which eventually expanded to include bass) was a regular on the city's punk scene and managed to mount a 1977 tour outside New York, though the group, prone to arrests, was barely able to stay on the rails long enough to do much recording. By 1980, Vincent was committed to a mental hospital after a string of incidents that included him setting fire to a barstool at CBGBs, which triggered the venue's sprinkler system. "That was not such a great thing," an older, wiser Vincent says today. "I was a little bit, um, out of control and doing stupid stuff." But short of memories, the Testors' lone piece of tangible ephemera is "Time Is Mine/Together," a seven-inch from 1980.

With the Testors on ice, Vincent spent the Eighties pursuing a variety of creative pursuits, including filmmaking, visual arts, other bands and getting arrested. He started Sonny Vincent and the Extreme in 1981, which yielded one more album than the Testors. In 1988, he and ousted Replacements guitarist -- and fellow troublemaker -- Bob Stinson formed Model Prisoner, a group that proved no more prolific than any other Vincent ensemble. A year later, Vincent formed Shotgun Rationale, easily his longest-running band, which recorded and toured into the mid-Nineties.

Since then, Vincent's lifestyle has been toned down a bit and he splits his time between Berlin and Los Angeles, recording fairly prolifically under his own name. But if Vincent's life has become less raucous, the music remains basic, loud, lively and infectious.

"The Good, The Bad, The Ugly" was supposed to be a ten-day recording session in Detroit, chosen for its rock history, rather than it's more recently minted retro-garage chic. "So many things can affect what you're doing, the mood and the people," Vincent says. "And that's one of the reasons why I recorded it in Detroit. I knew I couldn't go wrong there. I'm not really aware of what exactly is happening with certain scenes. I'm aware of music around me, but I really don't get with the trend. I just do what I do, and that's what makes me happy."

Instead of the wheels coming off, they never stopped turning. Vincent recorded the album with Asheton and the Captain (with the exception of the opening "My Guitar," which features drummer Manu Larnaud and bassist Marc Hacquet) and thought work was done. "I was gonna start putting in my solos," Vincent says. "So I started on this one song, 'Scratchin' on the 8 Ball,' and I thought, 'Gosh, it'd be great if Walter [Lure] can play on this.' So I put it to the side and thought I'd try to contact Walter. And the next song I worked on, I thought, 'Gee, Wayne Kramer would sound great on this.' And that's how it went. I'm not a band, I'm just solo, so I can do whatever I want without breaking up the solid group concept. So that's what I did. I went around the world and got all my favorite guys to play on my album."

The sounds in Vincent's head resulted in a detour of more than a year, as he began to bring on board the talents of various guitarists. "The people I was working with, it was like there was a language," he says. "There weren't many things I had to ask for, because they were already doing it. It was just getting better and better. The quality was happening and the friendship and it was just a positive thing all around."

However, Vincent admits that, at first, he wasn't sure Richard Lloyd was speaking the same dialect. "That was a bit nerve-wracking," he says. "We were in the studio and Richard plugged in and started warming up. And he was just noodling around playing blues riffs. To me it sounded a little bit like Eric Clapton, who I like, but it was not what I was after. I tried to make the best of it. I thought, 'Great, here we are, and it's gonna be like that: Some sort of full circle thing.' But as soon as 'Record' was pushed, it was Richard. You could just hear it. And I had goosebumps, it was just fantastic."

Next up is a bi-coastal tour set for March. Vincent will hit the road with Rocket From the Crypt, who as with the recent Beck/Flaming Lips tour, will back him for a set before playing their own. "It's going to be a nice show, because those guys are slamming," Vincent says. "They sent me an email that said, 'Sonny, we believe we're the best band in the world to play your music.' And they sent me a CD. I played it, went, 'Whoa,' and wrote them back right away."

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly track listing:
My Guitar
Trans-Love (with Brian James)
That Sound (with Dexter Holland)
Tired of the Telephone (with Scott Morgan)
Skag (with Wayne Kramer)
Funny Now (She Blew It) (with Richard Lloyd and Javier Escovedo)
Busted (with Robert Quine)
Scratchin' on the 8 Ball (with Walter Lure)
Crazy Ride (with Frank Meyer)
Yesterday's News (with Greg Ginn)
Flower (with Javier Escovedo and Kim Shattuk)
Down the Drain (with Richard Lloyd)
Animal Farmers (with Robert Quine and Noodles)
South Beach (with Ivan Julian, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke and Don Fleming)

ANDREW DANSBY
(January 15, 2003)