New York Dolls - New York Dolls
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.87 You Save: $3.07 (51%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.39 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for New York Dolls
Free Music Review: Happy Birthday New York Dolls!
Hit: 5 Stars
It was 30 years ago today (27 Jul 2003) that The New York Dolls debut album hit record store shelves. I think it's safe to say, these thirty years would have been much different had that record not come out. It has been suggested that The New York Dolls emerged in 1973 just as The Rolling Stones relavence was ebbing (a point I might argue if provoked). And, as if things don't happen all on their own, one might look at The Dolls and see a trashier, dumbed-down lip-stick-smeared drag-queen version of Jagger and Richards (especially David Johansen and Johnny Thunders - it's uncanny!) but musically made up of equal parts Iggy Pop swamp-monster sleaze, Lou Reed's gritty street-sense, T. Rex's jangly mess, and the charging glam-jam of David Bowie. The result was The New York Dolls were louder, and even more strung-out than their peers.
Iggy Pop once said that he single-handedly killed the sixties. That may be so, but it wasn't until July 27th, 1973 that The New York Dolls came kicking and screaming, in their high heels and track-marked arms, it wasn't until then that they showed us how good and gritty bad music can sound.
The punk scene would have been much different minus The Dolls. It's unlikely The Ramones would have done it quite the way they did, and The Sex Pistols certainly wouldn't have happened. In fact, Malcolm McLaren managed the tail end of The Dolls before he moved back to England to create The Sex Pistols. Malcolm dressed The Dolls in patent red leather and draped giant sickle & hammer red flags behind them on stage, all this to upset the American public. None of his antics seemed to work with The Dolls, as they were nodding out of consciousness more than half of the time. It may have been easier for Malcolm McLaren to go from a band with two zonked junkies to a band with only one.
'I was trying to do with the Sex Pistols what I had failed with the New York Dolls' --Malcolm McLaren
In fact, Malcolm wanted to hire either Sylvain Sylvain of The New York Dolls or Richard Hell (then of Television) to front his incomplete Sex Pistols.
'Malcolm...he always wanted me to come over and start a group called the Sex Pistols' --Sylvain Sylvain
...and in retrospect:
'It was a stupid idea of mine...no way Hell or Syl would have fit in with the Pistols. Hell and Syl had years on the Pistols...the Pistols were incredibly naïve.' --Malcolm McLaren
The Sex Pistols, on the other hand, perhaps spawned at least partly by The Dolls, rejected the accusation completely on their song called New York. Johnny Rotten explained he and the rest of the band were sick and tired of Malcolm McLaren endlessly going on about The Dolls and The New York scene, which the Pistols felt was too poetry based and arty. New York was their reaction against The New York Dolls.
Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan, after the demise of The New York Dolls, formed The Heartbreakers with Richard Hell (who didn't stay long). Amoung the many great punk songs that Johnny Thunders is responsible for, one is a response to The Sex Pistols nasty New York called London Boys. It was more brutal than the flimsy musical fight Lennon and MacCartney employed on their albums.
But it was with their debut album, only 11 songs, that the Dolls created all that haggard, whacked and wasted neo-Euro clumsy art rock. A fantastic set of stripped down freak-out garage-boogie.
Free Music Review: The All-Time Extreme of the Rock and Roll Dream
Hit: 5 Stars
No band in the 1970s (and damn near any era) captured both the solipsism and the oddly believable clash of angst and braggadoccio that marked the urban teen castaway with deadlier empathy and chutzpah than did the New York Dolls. Their dime-store crossdressing version of the Rolling Stones's appearance (with cracked lead guitarist Johnny Thunders playing the existentially dissembling Keith Richards to singer David Johansen's up-yours Mick Jagger) threw the fey pretentiousness of the early-70s glitter movement right back into the movement's face; and their music, which was the sum of some very dissonant and amateurish parts, actually bore more than overtones of vintage R and B, even if bassist Arthur Kane was about the sorriest excuse for a rock bassist of his breed.It hardly mattered. If any band this side of the MC5 personified inspired amateurishness, the Dolls were they, even if they lacked the MC5's political self-consciousness. The first Dolls album was overendowed with it, enough so that the next two generations of punks would have to admit to its influence. "Personality Crisis," "Looking For A Kiss," and "Trash" would prove irrevocable punk classics, but the rest of the album (with the possible exception of the clumsy "Private World") was only too memorable if you had the guts to ride it out - particularly the absurdist tour-de-farce, "Frankenstein," and the surprisingly panoramic "Subway Train". There remain those who question Todd Rundgren's just-short-of-a-wall-of-sound production, but nothing is really lost in the translation, and the Dolls' signatures - Johansen's more-enthusiasm-than-depth voice (he would soon enough find himself in possession of one of the great lost white soul voices, when he eventually began a sublime if underappreciated post-Dolls solo career), Thunders's angry-hornet guitar distortion, Jerry Nolan's tom-tom-overweight drumming style, Sylvain Sylvain's almost punctuation-mark rhythm guitar - slash through with deadly aplomb.
The surprising thing of it all is, their first album actually holds up as something beyond a period piece. Not even their least discriminating fans would have guessed it, but almost thirty years after it was unleashed, "New York Dolls" still sounds both fresh and daring. Maybe because one thing we'll never lose is groups of kids from any side of life plugging in, cranking up, and looking to catch that rock and roll lightning, in all its glory and danger, no matter what they had in the way of even raw talent. Few bands of any time exemplify that adolescent fantasy - in all its romance and prospective self-immolation - with the shooting-star panache of the New York Dolls.
Free Music Review: NO PERSONALITY CRISIS HERE!
Hit: 5 Stars
The New York Dolls debut is simply one of the greatest debut albums in the history of rock. That isn't hyperbole. Released in 1973 the album, produced by Todd Rundgren, was so far ahead of it's time that it's fairly modest sales are contributed to the fact that audiences weren't ready for what their ears were hearing. The album was punk rock before the term existed. Unfortunately low album sales and drug problems ensured that the Dolls would burn out very quickly after only 2 proper albums but that surely doesn't mean they didn't leave an incredible impression on the music world. The punk scene that followed was highly influenced by The Dolls' raunchy styled-Stones riffing in your face rock and roll. Listening to Guns-N-Roses on "Appetite" The Dolls influence is clearly apparent. Like true pioneers, those that followed were the ones that reaped the benefits.
From the opening scream of David JoHansen's vocals and Johnny Thunders' raw Keith Richards' styled riffing on "Personality Crisis" we are introduced to a dark world where paranoia, drugs and seedy living are ever so delightfully present. The second song "Looking For A Kiss" epitomizes the debauchery that is present throughout the album:
"When everyone goes to your house, they shoot up in your room
Most of them are beautiful, but so obsessed with gloom
I aint gonna be here, when they all get home
They're always lookin at me, they wont leave me alone"
These themes hardly venture into different territory from the hypnotic "Frankenstein," to the sexy imagery of "Bad Girl," and again the paranoia of the funky "Private World." The only reprieve from this dark world is the acoustic ballad "Lonely Planet Boy." Even the cover of Bo Diddley's "Pills" fits in accordingly and showcases the Dolls' ability of interpreting other artist's songs and fully making it their own. As done by The Dolls, the song takes on a whole new meaning than the Diddley version. Throughout the entire CD JoHansen sings like a demon possessed and the tag team guitar frenzy of Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain provides some of the best and most powerful riffing and soloing this side of the Richards/Taylor combination circa the early 70's.
By the time punk began to take off in the late 70's The Dolls were already no longer. But it's obvious to everyone after listening to this CD that this is where it all began, even if they didn't have a name for it yet.
Free Music Review: New York Dolls
Hit: 5 Stars
New York Dolls *****
Easily one of the all time greatest rock n' roll albums and bands, not to mention one of the most influential albums of all time. The New York Dolls came on like culture shock on high. The mixture of raw, raunchy, true-blue rock n' roll and drag was just more then some could take. Concidered by many to be one of the main precurcers of punk along with The Stooges, The MC5, and The Velvet Underground among a few others, and this is not far concidering the attitude, the fast, sharp delivery, JoHansens vocals, and well Johnny Thunders. But when it comes down to it, the Dolls are just a really great rock band and this is their self-titled debut album.
The model like David JoHansen handling vocals, the silent Arthur Kane lending some bass, JT soulmate Jerry Nolen on drums, the fantastic showmen that is Sylvain Sylvain on guitar, and of course Johhny Thunders (JT) on lead guitar. With a line up like that you just can not go wrong. The writing team of Thunders and JoHansen brought us such classics as the bands signature 'Personality Crisis' as well as 'Bad Girl,' 'Subway Train' which JT would later redue, and the live favorites 'Private World' and 'Jet Boy.' Sylvain also lent writing credits to such classic as 'Frankenstien' and the anti-smack song 'Trash' which is among the bands best songs. 'Looking For A Kiss' 'Vietnamese Baby' and 'Lonely Planet Boy' were all penned by JoHansen. Plus the one cover 'Pills' which the Dolls made their own. These are the songs that fill up the majority of the bands set list in concert and are the songs that they are known for more then they songs on their second album, Too Much Too Fast, and later with a second lineup.
Growing up very much in love with the sounds of sixties girl-groups, especially those produced by the crazy, yet brilliant Phil Speckter and basic three minute don't-bore-us-get-us-to-the-chorus rock n' roll the New York Dolls tried to fuse the two into one and as a result we have one of the most important albums of all time influencing everyone from David Bowie to Sid Vicous to Aerosmith to just about every late 1980's band to come out of L.A. This is very much one of the greatest albums of all time, and is one album that desearves to be in EVERYONES collection.
Free Music Review: Hello Dolly
Hit: 5 Stars
After recently seeing the movie, "New York Doll," I was jogged back to a time before we ever knew about The Ramones, Graham Parker, Cracker, and The Psychedelic Furs. This was sometime around 1973 where the glam sound was subtly mutating into early punk. And The New York Dolls may have been ground zero for that morph.
With the possible exception of The Velvet Underground, I can't trace any more seminal linkage to what was to come in the late seventies than The Dolls. Listening to this CD is like going back before the time of Constantine: no Sea of Marmara, no Anatolia, no Ephesus, no Byzantium. Just Rome as the center of the universe in the way The Beatles and the Stones staked an Augustinian claim to that center. The eastwardly itinerant Constantine seemed to be swiping at the wind; who could expect anything to come from that.
But listening to this eponymously titled debut, you begin to see the shape of things to come. At the time of its release, I remember the song "Trash" being introduced on a local New York FM station as the flagship cut from this raw new band out of the dross of Hells Kitchen. I remember thinking it to be a discordant, sneering mess of cacophony, scratching it off my list, searching more for the mellifluous sounds of emerging early seventies semi-prog Brit acts like The Strawbs, The Electric Light Orchestra, and Stealer's Wheel in addition to new acoustic, Dylany singer songwriters like Elliott Murphy, Daydo, Ralph McTell, Nick Drake, and, of course, Jackson Browne.
The Dolls simply didn't register on my new-bands-to-follow meter. But hearing them now, and placing them into the context of the post-Constantine period in rock and roll, I can suddenly feel their greatness. How they, maybe singlehandedly, constructed a new musical cosmos through a counterpoint of Shirelles cooing and Peter Wolf goof-shouting.
If you were alive in the early seventies, this is a great way to go back to a time in your life that was right at the dawn of modernism. As Chrissie Hynde said in the movie, The New York Dolls were "the one pinhole of light" coming out of this time. I still like Elliott Murphy, but there is no arguing with the vital sensibility The Dolls created that is with us today.