New York Dolls announce the release of their brand new unabashed live album. Recorded in December of last year at NYC's Fillmore East, this disc captures ten prime tracks from the reunited Dolls: "Babylon," "Trash," "Jet Boy," "Personality Crisis," "Rainbow Store," "Looking for a Kiss," "Puss 'N' Boots," "Dance Like a Monkey," "Pills," and "Lonely Planet Boy." Its everything you have come love about the Dolls over their giant spanning career, yet still keeps you on your toes and wanting more.
Morrissey recently exclaimed this with a fervor that somehow made his chronologically impossible claims seem plausible. Watching footage of the 'Dolls onstage two years ago at the behest of one of their biggest fans (who was curating the prestigious Meltdown Festival in London) one realized just how vast - and heretofore unsung - their influence truly was.
Everyone knows the famous logo: chrome lipstick, scrawling that name across an unseen mirror, but it's more than the great brand. It's not about the androgyny either. Skinny boys were wearing make up long before them. Little Richard. Elvis. It's not even about the music, as the Dolls themselves were always quick to credit 50's R&B numbers or early 60's girl group productions as their own influences.
Really, what makes the Dolls so eternal is the attitude - it got into rock's water supply and never left. Kiss, Aerosmith, The Ramones, Blondie, The Sex Pistols, The Damned, Motley Crue, Guns N' Roses, Hanoi Rocks, The Strokes, The Libertines and just about any gang of strutting rockers who are convinced that their band could take your band and possibly your whole town in a pretty for pretty, ugly for ugly throwdown. The Dolls, and their disciples win, not just with brawn but with what guitarist Sylvain Sylvain calls "plenty of intellect and plenty of sex."
Thirty five years into their existence (thirty one since they disbanded down in Florida in a haze of smack withdrawal and managerial anarchy), with three men down, they can still take your band, pretty for pretty, ugly for ugly, onstage, and now, with the long (long) awaited follow up to 1974's awesome Too Much, Too Soon, on CD too.
"You know how England is," David Johansen quips in his Staten Island drawl, thick as South Ferry sludge, "We made a big noise over there, and we were having so much fun, we decided to keep going."
"The phone didn't stop ringing," Sylvain adds, "The kids wanted this. Kids of all ages."
An album's worth of brand new New York Dolls compositions, as unlikely as it may have seemed in 2003, was a foregone conclusion after wildly successful festival and live dates that spanned the past two years. They were a reunion when they re-started. Now, with replacement members feeling comfortable stepping into the stack heels of departed legends like Johnny Thunders, Jerry Nolan, and most recently Arthur "Killer" Kane, they're a gang once more.
"It won't be very long that we'll be together longer than the original band was," Johansen laughs.
Fall 2008 Dates
Oct 29 - Ventura, CA - Ventura Theatre
Dec 3 Madrid, ESP Joy Eslava
Dec 4 Santiago, ESP Sala Capitol
Dec 5 Baracaldo, ESP Rockstar Live
Dec 6 Zaragoza, ESP Oasis
Dec 20 - Los Angeles, CA - Nokia Club w/ X
Dec 27 - New York, NY - Fillmore at Irving Plaza
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