New York Dolls - New York Dolls
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Music CD Cover
Artist: New York DollsBrand: NEW YORK DOLLS
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 1990-10-25
Music Label: Island / Mercury
Soundtracks:
- Personality Crisis
- Looking For A Kiss
- Vietnamese Baby
- Lonely Planet Boy
- Frankenstein (Orig.)
- Trash
- Bad Girl
- Subway Train
- Pills
- Private World
- Jet Boy
Free Music Notes for New York Dolls
Free Music Review: A fix and a kiss: the Dolls' debut
Hit: 5 Stars
The New York Dolls' debut in 1973 is one of those rare albums that perfectly captures and expresses a rock'n'roll vision. Each song is composed and performed with a barely-contained chaos, an energy and ferocity that fairly bursts from your stereo--it sounds like it was recorded five minutes ago.
Taking the new trend of "glam rock" to the extreme, the five members of the Dolls were ugly guys in drag who came off like slutty 16-year-old girls. This is not the sleek androgyny of a Bowie or the goofy goodtimes of Sweet, but dangerous, nasty, drunk guys who walked the mean streets of New York in women's clothes at a time when that was simply illegal. The Dolls outdid everybody, especially the bands that ripped them off and outsold them (I mean Kiss and Aerosmith).
Every song here is a vicious slab of New York street 'tude, a spitting Bronx cheer, a cherry bomb lobbed into the music scene of the time. While contemporaneous bands like the Stooges and the Dictators also pursued similar approaches, the Dolls had their ace-in-the-hole: David Johansen.
Johansen's gutterbum's Mick Jagger swagger and big-lipped smarm and especially his lyrical bon-mots are what really make the Dolls. His lyrics are at once hilarious and deadly serious--none of the apocalyptic monosyllabic dumbness of Iggy (Disclaimer--I love the Stooges), none of the retardo-"Mad" magazine embarrassments of the Dictators here:
"Well everyone's gone to your house
To shoot up in your room
But most of them are beautiful
And so obsessed with gloom
I aint' gonna be here when you all get home
They're always pickin' on me
They won't leave me alone"
It's also captures everything about the Dolls' world that made them great: a celebration of the gritty urban life, the beauty and madness of the mean streets, the confusion and inferiority young people feel, as well as the drug-infested culture they were a part of. The opening song, "Personality Crisis" is exhilirating, Johansen screaming and the guitars blister the walls. The unformed personality of the protagonist is melting under the strain of the modern world: "Wondering how celebrities ever meet? Lookin' fine on television!"
Other songs sting in equal measure: "Frankenstein" is a raging, 6-minute paean to teenage angst and sexual confusion--"Do ya think that you could make it with Frankenstein?" The end of "Vietnamese Baby" in its crescendo of futility and accusation: "Whatcha gonna do/Now that it's over?" has always seemed to me the inspiration behind the climax of the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen."
"Subway Train," "Pills" and "Bad Girl" are remnants from a lost period of rock'n'roll: unabashed rave-ups, all hyper energy and guitar slashings. "Jet Boy" concludes this work of genius, and here Johansen reveals he's not the rock'n'roll stud, but Jet Boy: Jet Boy stole his baby! He admires the guy from afar, "flying around New York City so high." In this last song you'll also get the greatest work from guitarists Sylvain Sylvain and Johnny Thunders--I've got a video of them performing this live and it is stunning. I think every glam/metal/hard rock duo copped all their moves from these two. (Thunders' post-Dolls band the Heartbreakers put out the sloppy classic "L.A.M.F" a few years later).
This is a trashy, filthy, raunchy, funny rock'n'roll gem with nary a misstep that rivals anything else from the genre. Its air of urgency, teenage anxiety, and sheer abandonment keeps it in my Top 5 of greatest rock albums.
New York Dolls Poster
Limited edition Japanese pressing has been remastered and comes packaged in a miniature LP sleeve. Along with the Stooges, the New York Dolls were largely responsible for pioneering the sound and attitude of punk, and this, their self-titled debut, is one of the founding documents of post-'60s rock. Outrageous, shambolic, and bursting with energy, the Dolls borrowed from the amped-up, bluesy swagger of the Rolling Stones, the pop confections of Phil Spector, and the campy theatricality that would flower with the glam movement, yet brought it all together with a visceral impact that recalled the jolt of early rock & roll. Mercury. 2006.In 1972, when rock & roll was all but dead in Manhattan, five cross-dressing glam punks from the boroughs convened and began hammering out crude, sub-Chuck Berry rock for the downtown in-crowd. It took another year before a record company dared to sign them, thus foisting The New York Dolls on an essentially uninterested world. Taking their cue from the band's guitarist/Keefalike Johnny Thunders, hardcore Dolls fans pooh-poohed Todd Rundgren's production as wimpy: twenty-five years after its release, songs like "Personality Crisis" and "Looking for a Kiss" sound more trashily invigorating than ever. With the Rolling Stones finished as a vital force by '73, the doomed Dolls were there to step into the void. A classic. --Barney Hoskyns
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