Thursday, August 07, 2008
Lookin' For A Kiss
New York Dolls, 1973 on The Old Grey Whistle Test. This is from a recent compilation program so forgive the chatty text strips. 1973, I was sick of rock music, everything on the radio sucked. All I wanted to do was listen to Jazz, Blues and Reggae...then I saw this very strange record in the bins and put it on my turntable and immediately had a PERSONALITY CRISIS!
The New York Dolls, in so many ways, one of the most influential groups ever. Sloppy as shit never sounded so good!
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3 comments:
I'm posting this for TEOK because he tried to post this last night when blogger was down due to a scheduled maintenence!
Great comment, it rocks!
From the Engineer of Knowledge:
Wow! New York Dolls. I saw them in Baltimore the summer of 1974. I had a friend who was living in Baltimore at the time and she knew this girl who had just cut a record (did a lot of Rolling Stone cover songs along with some originals) and she was opening for New York Doll in an outside concert on one of the old shipping docks around the Fells Point area of Baltimore. Well a group of my friends and I went to the concert to see the girl belt out her renditions of the Stone songs. She was pretty good and then the Dolls came on. I did not know much about them only that they were a hot act in New York at that time. Well, they were like watching a car wreck in slow motion. You stood there in disbelief but could not turn your eyes away. The lead singer pranced over to the bass player who looked like he was 7 feet tall (I should add at this time that we had all indulged in questionable substances :-) ) and gave him a kiss on the cheek, then pranced back to center stage. The music sucked due to just one beat without any refrains, and the next song sounded just like the last one…..and it was a great unbelievable train wreck that we all loved and would do again the next night.
Now to bring us up to the current date. Late one night a few months ago, I was channel surfing and came on a Public Broadcasting channel and there was the Dolls doing a live performance in Chicago. The lead singer was bragging on how tight his ass was still was, and then broke into another song that sounded just like the last one. I called one of my old friends (Who is now a regional sales manager for FedEx trucking) who was with me that night soooooo many years ago and told him to turn his TV to that channel. We both just sat there in our own respective homes on our own separate couches, past our bed times because we are now old farts, and once more were together again on that night, on the shipping dock, in Fells Point area of Baltimore, wishing we had some questionable substances to indulge in again.
I saw a couple of items on Television here in france on the reunited Dolls.
I was a real David Johanssen fan, he was really the ultimate entertainer in his Buster Poindexter period...
He was Louie Prima reincarnated as a punk Las Vegas showman, then to see him at almost 60 with long hair and the voice still intact....
Since the original Dolls broke up, Johnny Thunders died of leukemia in New Orleans in the early 90's and The Bass player, Nolan died after playing a gig in London after they reunited in 2004.
The revamped Dolls still is performing and they do a killer version of the Janice Joplin standard, Piece Of My Heart.
This was ground breaking performance art and pretty harrowing live auto destruction on stage at the time, but hell, Johanssen sounds better than ever!
I see you have been busy Microdot. I have to catch up.
I stumbled across the same concert on PBS. It must have been 3AM eastern time. I really liked the song Take a Good Look at My Good Looks.
You can check it out here if you wish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RleHDHk5o8
P
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