New York Dolls

this page does a fairly thorough accounting of their gigs and personnel changes:

http://www.fromthearchives.com/nyd/chronology.html

I was curious as to whether CNN had a story up--they do.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/entertainment/sylvain-sylvain-death-scli-intl/index.html

Would they have 10 years ago? Doubt it.

rolling stone interviews johansen on loss of sylvain:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/david-johansen-sylvain-sylvain-1115612/

I'm not big on latter-day performances, but a friends' brother (who saw them in 1974: "The few spectators there really didn't get the Dolls that night") posted a clip on FB of something he shot at a Burlington show in 2010. It's clear, Sylvain introduces the song, and Johansen throws flowers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CQtDl-fiYw

i enjoyed steve conte having to unlearn how to play guitar as he progressed in his thunders role. he sort of got it by the end. not quite though. he would still insert random thunderisms here and there, but there was nothing random about JT's playing. his parts might have sounded anarchic but they were through-composed. even if you watch those dolls videos up there he is more-or-less playing what he played on the records. his style was sui generis -- like a greek chorus. very conscious of the lyrics.

holy shit, how to age with dignity, i guess? from an old witness.

Revisiting some of their stuff this morning. I love this band, but I want to say they're better served by their obscure indie releases than the two major label albums that people are more likely to know. The live Paris album from 1974 is just f-ing fantastic. I'm not sure which release is the best, but if you stream it on Spotify, French Kiss '74 + Actress - Birth Of The New York Dolls sounds a LOT better than the Paris Burning release on the same service.

Glad to see A Hard Night's Day up on streaming services too, I love that CD. Stuff's been reissued in many configurations, but that one probably sounds best. No surprise given who put it out and how it was done by one of the guys at Battery Mastering (all Sony engineers who have done a ton of stuff for them).

Never listened to either of those, thanks for the tip!

This is sending me further down time travel rabbit hole I was already exploring.

yeah thx for the recommendation- excited to dig in!

Don't pick it up!

You're welcome! There's more stuff for diehard fans, but in terms of sound quality and the quality of the music, the 1973 studio demos produced by Paul Nelson (A Hard Night's Day) and the 1974 Radio Luxembourg show in Paris (French Kiss '74) are the best records out there by a wide margin.

The NYFF just announced the premiere of "Personality Crisis: One Night Only, Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s documentary featuring a man who, like Scorsese, is a New York institution, entertainer David Johansen, singer-songwriter of the 1970s glam punk groundbreakers the New York Dolls, and his reinvention as hepcat lounge lizard Buster Poindexter."

!

NY Daily News says film features features a 2020 Cafe Carlyle performance by Johansen,

Just came back from the film's second screening. (Premiere was Wednesday night at Alice Tully Hall, today was at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater with a Q&A afterwards.) Contrary to the clips seen in the film, Johansen apparently isn't all that talkative, at least these days or at least when it comes to talking about his past. His daughter wound up interviewing him for the film (possibly due to the pandemic - they all took place at his home in various locations and from what I can tell, only his wife and daughter were around) and she said she was a little concerned that he'd offer up only monosyllabic responses. But he complimented the film, saying "it was a version of myself I can live with" and "in the wrong hands this could've been VERY sordid!" He also answered a few questions, remembering that his first encounter with Scorsese's work was going to an arthouse theater with Sylvain Sylvain in I think the LES (joking it was "clean") and watching Mean Streets. He said he may have smoked a joint beforehand, but when the film started, he honestly thought it was a documentary.

I love the Dolls but I don't know very much about Johansen. The film does capture what's presumably a full set. (They filmed two shows and wound up using all the footage since both shows used very different angles - Johansen complimented the DP Ellen Kuras saying she can get up really close with the camera and be easily ignored, which he considered a real talent.) Weaved throughout is the archival footage and interviews on his work and life, and it actually does make sense of his career. For example, he was in a band in high school, but it's his discovery and time with Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company that gets far more attention and draws out the most vivid memories. To him, it was going to "heaven" after the hell of working in a dank basement where he discovered the costumes that would lead him to the Ridiculous Theater. In fact, it makes the Dolls cross-dressing more understandable. In his interviews he claims women's clothing was the only affordable clothing they could find that made them look like rock stars, so they went with it, but I don't think it's a stretch to say the idea of wearing those clothes felt more comfortable and organic after his time with Ludlam. (They even dug up one photo of a theatrical production where it looks like Johansen and at least one or two other men are on-stage wearing dresses.)

The film even makes his time with Buster Poindexter seem logical. The Carlyle show is supposed to be "Buster Poindexter doing the songs of David Johansen," which sort of explains why the setlist is heavy on torch songs (and why the rockers have a light lounge jazz arrangement, save the final number which revives the sound of the Dolls on "Personality Crisis"). But footage of the Buster Poindexter most probably know, looking slick and clean cut in an immaculate suit, doesn't show up until late, and it was supposedly a cabaret act he created because he was tired of touring and wanted a gig that he could do for his friends near home. During his solo tours before that, he was playing ice hockey rinks opening for metal bands (which he didn't like at all, mentioning they would call their magazines "books"). You get the feeling that it's not the rock but the theatrical elements of being in the New York Dolls that truly took hold of him. That's why something like Buster Poindexter is more palatable than the metal tours. (His Milos Forman story backs this up. He really wanted to star in Hair and Forman really wanted to cast him, but someone - Galt MacDermot? I forgot which, it's not a musical I actually like - refused, claiming he couldn't sing.)

Morrissey appears and he actually gives the best interview on the Dolls - this was archival, taken from the time he got them to reunite. This was also around the time I was introduced to Morrissey's solo work, and it was bittersweet remembering what that was like. A smart, witty guy who IIRC even made some cutting remarks about George W. Bush when he stopped by Chicago and gave an amusing reaction when some in the audience pushed back at his criticisms of Bush's policies. Feels like a lifetime ago.

I thought Sylvain Sylvain designed and made clothing which had him in London pre-Dolls and meeting Malcolm McLaren at that point. Which lead to a reacquaintance later and from that the management role.
So wondering how much of his clothing the band wore. Syl's that is. May need to reread the memoir which is really good btw.

No idea, I’m going by an interview with Johansen in the film, so there could very well be different answers and different perspectives on the matter from everyone else.

yeah thats what i knew the story as too, what steveolende says. sylv’s family were like tailors or clothiers in garment district & he could sew and also knew where to source cheap clothes & understood women’s sizes etc, ie was pretty well versed in fashion

not that the other stuff abt johansen cant be true, but it completes the story a little more fully with johansen’s experience

i have probably seen johansen more than any other performer, and am looking forward to the film, but i almost wish they'd filmed a buster poindexter show over this one. in modern times he's been using a guitarist named brian koonin as his musical director. koonin is a talented guy, but his background is musical theater (apparently he was a replacement guitarist in hair?). he is perfect for buster, but rock'n'roll is not in his blood, so my heart sinks when i see him leading johansen's rock endeavors. koonin was actually part of the first dolls reunion shows, and their first reunion album, playing keys. i got the sense he was sort of a security blanket for johansen. but economics (and, i strongly suspect, sylvain's urgings) eventually forced him out.

those early buster poindexter gigs at tramps were a joy, by the way. he got to indulge the side of himself that had picked all those great cover songs for the dolls. singer as dj. the lounge thing was an in-joke that really worked in that small-club context. you never knew what was coming next. and the players were great too. the bassist is with dylan now and one of the backup singers is with springsteen.

I finally saw Buster Poindexter a wee bit later at The Bottom Line and it was fine but I got the impression that some of the magic had already worn off and hardened into shtick. I also saw the aforementioned bass player, Tony Garnier, with another act he was playing with at the time, Robert Gordon.

yeah that's an unfortunate characteristic of johansen's acts -- at some point he loses interest and they become rote. i remember one embarassing evening at the westbury music fair where an audience member was shouting out the punchlines of buster's jokes before he got there.

Wonder if he told the one about someone asking him if he knew Madonna and him replying (in a very strong New York accent): “Know her? I went with her!”

forever mourning the demise of the Harry Smiths project, those records were absolute gold

he brought brian koonin along with him for that project too. he was like a different person onstage with the harry smiths. buster poindexter was famously verbose, but with the harry smiths he was respectful almost to a fault, mumbling a few brief words of introduction before each song.

those records are so good - and on that audiophile label, such an unusual thing.

yes, chesky. very fancy. i'm not sure whether i've ever heard the 2nd one.

Slight derail, but here is Tony Garnier with Robert Gordon…and Chris Spedding!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK4hDssJ9NA

i guess armond white still writes film reviews?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/david-johansen-makes-scorsese-great-again/

Great posts this year, holy shit & thanks all! Re the xpost metal gigs, I can see why he got tired of arena rock, went to Dexter, back to record-collector roots and smaller crowd intimacy and fun, sharing in-joeks and vinyl tastes w fellow veteran kidz---but man, those David Johansen albums could be really satisfying, intriguing, the way, as I mentioned on the Roxy Music Live thread, having heard the RM shift toward a new mainstream, still speculative, exploratory in the mid-to-late-70s--para-, then moving toward post-disco per se (also on that thread, others mentioned Eagles probes, milestones of the Cars, then Blondie, Talking Heads).
Johansen's s/t solo debut was exciting in part because he took the Lou Reed approach, with unrecorded or released songs from his old band along with newer ones---but also exciting, to me personally, because it was much bolder, less flimsy-seeming than Lou Reed, tapping also the best of arena rock, with JOE PERRY at the peak of Aerosmith's only great decade, and fitting him into this hip post-Dolls arena context that Reed was moving toward (realizing that it didn't have to beSally Can't Dance vs. Metal Machine Music: BOLLOCKS DICHOTOMY, as somebody virtually said way upthread, re original Alice Cooper band vs. Dolls).
So I think I actually enjoyed most of these David albums more than Dollshead xgau did, but overall his descriptions of them and BP albums later seems fair and hopefully encourages others to check them out (with so much free streaming, why the hell not)
https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist2.php?id=322

And a very refreshing interview with the B-52s on this morning's Weekend Edition reminds me that they were gonna call it a day or at least a hiatus with 1989's Cosmic Thing (with key member Rickey having died of AIDS), but then "Love Shack," on the radio and MTV, brought the bridge-and-tunnel masses surging, oh my---

agree with xgau that 'buster's spanish rocket ship,' the final buster album, is a stealth johansen solo album and worth a checkout.

The doc did touch on the Harry Smiths. Johansen talked about how he got to know Harry Smith - apparently when he was young he liked to hang with these much older individuals he found interesting because he thought they had a lot of wisdom to pass down. (It didn't sound like they were particularly close though.) Johansen does Howlin' Wolf covers really well.

Within the film, he also talked about his early dabbling in politics, specifically with Up Against the Wall Motherfucker. He knew Abbie Hoffman from that.

Again this was a Buster Poindexter show at the Carlyle. Maybe not the usual numbers under that persona, but it wasn't the Dolls' sound (which I'd actually prefer) at all, not until the last number when they do "Personality Crisis." I think Brian Koonin was the guitarist too - I'm not familiar with him so I can't remember but he was at the premiere and they do have a big credit for the band so it'll be easy to confirm when you watch it.

Musikladen apparently has a YouTube channel. Guests are really hit or miss, but some are spectacular like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uiwkr8TqAEM

Also, Lincoln Center posted that Q&A for Scorsese's David Johansen film, which will be on Showtime April 14:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo29mCz_X_c

xgau on the doc ("These doubts proved somewhere between unfounded and paranoid, which I credit partly to Scorsese’s skill and more to Johansen’s genius.") https://open.substack.com/pub/robertchristgau/p/just-enough-before-its-too-late-david?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

We watched at least half of that doc on TV, and thought it was fairly basic/boring... didn't realize it was Martin Scorsese.

I can't access it yet, postponing having to confront how lukewarm I am about seeing it.

i enjoyed it -- i've spent enough time musing on the three-dimensional chess game that is his interior life that i'm not gonna stop now -- but it's not for everyone. unless you have a hankering to hear cocktail lounge versions of the johansen songs from the three dolls reunion records that nobody listened to.

Finally saw One Night Only - really enjoyed it, way more than I was expecting to tbh

Xgau’s observation in that review upthread is so otm, re the Buste persona transforming anarchic New York Dolls songs into the love songs to humanity they always were deep down

Plus you really see so clearly how deliberate Johansen is about what he chooses to reveal of himself, in all of his ventures - there is a craft to it all, even among the chaos, and so seeing the personas/poses all lined up, new and archival, alongside the interviews with his daughter was really quite moving …. the whole documentary becomes a sort of zoetrope, where if you keep your eye trained & look through the crack at just the right angle for long enough you can ~almost~ see the whole person spool out before you.

And the Carlyle performance stuff is shot so beautifully <3

Yeah, I think it was Ellen Kuras- great cinematographer, and Johansen complimented her, saying she got close without making herself seem intrusive.

I just saw it and enjoyed it but thought some of it was awkwardly edited -- the way Scorsese would suddenly cut away from old footage bugged me. Sometimes when he would go quickly from DolLs rendition to Johansen solo tour rendition to Carlyle lounge version it worked and not other times. Plus to fit in with the title and theme the lounge versions are largely longer.

Tyler W posted this old YouTube link to New York Dolls at the Waldorf Astoria on Halloween in 1973. As he noted Will Hermes wrote about this chaotic over packed late starting gig in Love Goes to a Building on Fire book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQVDL-B80d0