By early eighties standards, 45 Grave were huge innovators. As Death Rock pioneers, they indulged in a hybridized sound (goth/punk/rock) at a time when "flavors" of punk seemed like an impossible luxury, and their "hit", "Party Time", made them one of the first SoCal punk acts to enjoy a measure of MTV success. They also hooked into the whole reunion tour/live album trend a whopping 17 years before Gang of Four; Only the Good Die Young was recorded at one of their 1988 reunion shows in Hollywood. It has also been rumored that Courtney Love "borrowed" much of her personal style from zombie-lookin' 45 Grave frontwoman Dinah Cancer (hey, it was funny back then!), but missed the bit about it being ironic.

Unlike most of today's cash-hungry nostalgia acts, 45 Grave actually sound tighter here than they did on their first go-round (hunt down their other commercially available live recording, Debasement Tape, for a circa-1983 comparison). Their performance is still a little looser than you'd expect from most of today's media-aware punk bands, but they fit a bunch of their "hits" and a smattering of their trademark humor into the hour-long set. The brief but incendiary "My Type" tells you everything you need to know: Dinah Cancer was ready and willing to break her doom-ridden sulk when the material required it, drummer Don Bolles and late bassist Rob Graves make a versatile rhythm section, and guitarist Paul Cutler's fleet-fingered playing draws from a far broader and more rock-traditional pantheon than today's punk bands would dream of tapping. Essential tracks like sludge-anthem "Wax", thrash-happy "Evil" and the always-popular "Fucked By the Devil" receive energetic, earnest, audience-pleasing renditions, and the group's signature hit, "Party Time", slips free of its funereal lead-in to remind us why so many mid-eighties metalheads eventually turned to punk for their riff fixes. Between the relative lack of stage banter and the quality of the recording -- good for '88, almost bootleggy by modern standards -- you might not get a good feel for the band's irreverent humor, but there's clearly an ocean of difference between them and, say, Bauhaus -- po-faced songs like "Sorceress" notwithstanding.

Rykodisc's new edition of Only the Good Die Young doesn't seem to differ from the 1989 original. Above and beyond the disc's lack of bonus tracks, this means that "Take Five" is still second in the track listing. Yes, we're talking about the same "Take Five" that Dave Brubeck made famous, and while the band's damn-near-nine minute version makes an entirely credible reference to the iconic tune, it's also a chaotic, noodly, structureless fever dream that would work better at the end of the set. It's not unusual for a punk band to roll out something relatively inaccessible early in their set, the better to clear the proto-yuppies, industry slimeballs and johnny-come-latelies away from the front of the stage so their fans can get in there. That may well be what 45 Grave were doing here, but when you're craving "Bad Love"'s maudlin slouch or "My Type"'s incendiary furor, you'll have a hard time keeping your finger off the "skip" button for the full 8:39.