Do they have talent? YOU be the judge:

Another one from the Dark Age:

can't see the video's cuz i have a crappy dial-up connection.

what do you mean do they have "talent"?

what is your view?

........ Back of David Johansen's jacket in Personality ....
Is it Marilyn Monroe or his sqeeeze at the time Cyrinda Fox.... ????






ROCKMAN

Way ahead of their time - vision, passion, and great songs. Not to mention a gutarist without whose urban squall one cant imagine the Sex Pistols to name just one. Various chemical problems led to some uneven performances.

For sure they weren't the best musicians in the world and their early songs sometimes lack of a catchy hook and all but you have to see it in context. They were unique at the time. They did sleaze rock 10+ years before Hanoi Rocks, Faster Pussycat and Guns 'n Roses, they had an image nobody else had. Without the Dolls some way more popular bands would have never seen the light of day. They inspired a many.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-05-02 09:59 by Bimmelzerbott.

It's just great to see a band NOT lip-syncing...and Johnny at top of his game.

The first punks!!

I get the punk godfather thing but I hear and see them worshiping at the altar of the Rolling Stones.

Johansen even looks like Mick for a couple of seconds in the Personality Crisis clip when the camera shows his profile.

The Dolls, Aerosmith, The Hives are just a few of MANY great bands who have emulated the Stones in looks and style

<<Do they have talent?>>

Well, individually not the most gifted players, but a fantastic raunchy, sloppy, fun band, with two records full of great songs.

saw the current New York Dolls last month, dont want to get into a history debate, but will say the band I saw blew the roof off, brought the house down and are keeping rock n roll alive and LIVE....NOW.....they all ripped it up, Id never even heard them before, new or old. ....but this was the real deal....and yeh Ive seen the Stones about thirty times...but theyre not playing ! Catch em if ya can

What surprises me is that none of you got the joke: my original post was paraphrasing Don Kirshner as he introduced the Dolls on "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" in 1974.

Damn, it's too bad we don't have a youtube version of THAT performance.

yeh I was clueless but thanks for turning me onto these clips.....rock on !!
frustration and heartache is all I got!

Ah, now I get it, funny I missed that the first time, especially since I know that intro like the back of ma hand. It's on the vhs copy somebody made when that re-aired, on cable tv here in Canada, in '83 or '84.

I remember how exciting it was to be able to actually see live Dolls footage. I was obsessed w/ the band back then, age 16-18 (couple friends called me Dolls Man), and everything was so much harder to find. The albums were out of print, so I had to order a Japanese copy of Too Much Too Soon ( $20 + was a huge expense at the time). Never would have believed it if you told me that 25 years later, there would be hours and hours of old footage out there (thank you Bob Gruen !) and the reconstituted Dolls would be visiting our neck of the woods pretty much annually.

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bassplayer617
What surprises me is that none of you got the joke: my original post was paraphrasing Don Kirshner as he introduced the Dolls on "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" in 1974.

Damn, it's too bad we don't have a youtube version of THAT performance.

Oh! it's the Kirshner thing! (sorry, couldn't veiw the clip). yeah, i've got that show (4 songs i think) on VHS. brilliant! and Kirshner's a lot sleazier than the Dolls ever were, hahahaha!

Talent? Individual talent? Sylvain pretty much occupied the area Keith Richards does, and can probobly do, from a technical standpoint, anything Keef can. plus he's a great songwriter.

Arthur "Killer" Kane- not a great technician, but had a great booming approach to bass; and his 'zooooops', especially when when coinciding with Jerry Nolan's rolls, were very exciting.

Jerry Nolan- in my top 5 for greatest pure Rock n' Roll drummer (from the Charlie Watts School of Heavy Backbeat). his fills have the precision to hold the whole mess together and always make it move forward.his cymbal work is amazing (he took lessons from one Gene Kruppa, and supposedly taught Peter Criss how to play. Criss didn't get it, i don't think!).

Johnny Thunders- aside from Chuck Berry and Robert Quine, THE most easily and quickly identifiable sound in Rock n' Roll history. even more unique than Richards. the man played the blues the way all those north Mississipi guys like R.L. Burnside did- "onky know 3 chords, but i know em REAL WELL". also a great songwriter and equally unique singer.

David Johansen- up there with Jagger and Otis Redding for that big, friendly, fog-horn voice. great songwriter, overall highly entertaining personality, genuine nice guy (ya gotta meet the man, he's a riot!).

Saw Thunders in '82, apparently in March 23, if we
shall believe this source [eiitps.wordpress.com] (nevertheless they name the venue wrongly, me ol' grammar school)
- a helluva show from a elegantly (??) wasted rock and roll dude..
I do lurrrrrrrv the Dolls.

Saw Thunders two consecutive nights (Marquee, London '88) and the first night was everything I hoped it would be while the second was more like what I was expecting but entertaining nonetheless. He came out the front door early in the evening, when myself and one other person had already gotten in line to get in, nodded at us, raised his arm for a cab and sped off and I couldn't help thinking "Wow, is he ever short !".

Agree with you wholeheartedly on the breakdown of the Dolls' individual talents, Muppet. A guy on this board a few years ago was very firm in his conviction that Jerry Nolan was an amateur (something like, "I've been a drummer for twenty five years so let me tell you...) and scoffed when I suggested that he swung, but that is exactly what he did. If I recall, buddy also suggested the Dolls were all hype and couldn't hold a candle to Kiss. To each their own, obviously, but I've always felt that if you can't dance to the Dolls, you're missing a rock 'n' roll gene or somethin'.IMHO.

my first ever club show, when i was all of 16, was at First Ave. in Minny, 1980, seeing Gang War with Thunders and Wayne Karamer from the MC5. Amazing show- i bought a ticket not knowing if they'd let me in due to age, but i had to try.

So i put on my 'two-tone' Specials-style suit, complete with pork-pie hat and shades, smoke a big spliff, and head downtown.
no one checks me ID, i tip on in, the Hypsterz (now the Mighty Mofos) are just finishing their set, doing the fastest version of "Can't Explain" i'd ever heard.

then the intermission music- the club sound system is louder than the Hypsterz! and it's playing "Hot Stuff" (and not Donna Summers!). i've never heard anything so loud! and i'm stoned and getting whe whirlies! a few more songs and Gang War is on, and it's total mayhem! Johnny is really funny and rude, and that guitar is otherworldly. Kramers great too, but John starts getting @#$%& up, and leaves the stage cuz, according to Kramer, "he ripped his pants". meanwhile the bass player keeps shaking up beers and squirting them at the audience. at one point, while Johnny's off stage and chaos is reigning, the bass player goes into the audience, gets punched in the eye, comes back onstage with an ice pack over his eye- and proceedsto shake up more beers and douse the audience! Kramer's calmly asking for security, (he had just been released from prison not to long ago, don't think he needed this stuff); a couple who looked like Chrissie Hynde and Keith Richrds were dancing like mad and kept bashing into me, and every time the girl would appologize and smile at me and i'd laugh and hug her or the dude, they were so friendly and rock n' roll and spirited (in a good way).

musically it was probably pretty rough (still never heard a boot of the gig), but atmospherically, it was a perfect show. made me wanna make music like that, and ever since, i have!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-05-03 01:27 by Muppet HiFi.

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andrewm
Saw Thunders two consecutive nights (Marquee, London '88) and the first night was everything I hoped it would be while the second was more like what I was expecting but entertaining nonetheless. He came out the front door early in the evening, when myself and one other person had already gotten in line to get in, nodded at us, raised his arm for a cab and sped off and I couldn't help thinking "Wow, is he ever short !".

Agree with you wholeheartedly on the breakdown of the Dolls' individual talents, Muppet. A guy on this board a few years ago was very firm in his conviction that Jerry Nolan was an amateur (something like, "I've been a drummer for twenty five years so let me tell you...) and scoffed when I suggested that he swung, but that is exactly what he did. If I recall, buddy also suggested the Dolls were all hype and couldn't hold a candle to Kiss. To each their own, obviously, but I've always felt that if you can't dance to the Dolls, you're missing a rock 'n' roll gene or somethin'.IMHO.

Right on, andrew.

the Dolls first drummer, Billy Murcia, wasn't real good, maybe that's who your man was referring to.

The dolls, Like the Stones, or the Clash, were esentially a dance band, which is the primary function of rock n' roll music (still!). Nolan knew JUST what to do (and what NOT to do) to fire people up and get people moving. very rare ability to find these days; many 'modern' drummers are more chops oriented, have a "harder" approach, are more "rock"-centric. but they are not necessarily as "groovey" or swinging as people like Nolan, or Watts or Al Jackson, or Topper Headon.

a great drummer has to operate as a sort of 'traffic-cop' for the band, and that's exactly what Jerry did with the Dolls and later the Heartbreakers.

Great story, Muppet ! Hey, a friend of mine from Winnipeg drove down for that show in Minny, said it was amazing. And, yes, there is a recording of that gig, I've got it on cassette somewhere. He said he waited around outside the hotel where the band were staying the following day, saw Thunders being carried out to the bus/van/taxi/ whatever but did manage to get Kramer's autograph on his then-current 'Harder They Come'single which he later gave to me. Just looked again at what he wrote: 'To Kerry, Best of Luck always, Wayne Kramer 7/31/80'.

Oh,and the guy on here was definitely referring to Nolan as the amateur. I recall he made a big deal out of "leaving" the message board not long after.

l love the dolls saw them many times in nyc,and talked to them a few times at Max Kansas City,Johnny Thunders was always very nice and friendly,and on a good night they could be the "greatest rocvk band in the world".

"No dope smoking no beer sold after 12 o'clock"

Saw The NY Dolls several times in 73 and 74 in Atlanta, New York and LA.
Richards was a large, really good club in Atlanta. The Dolls and Lynyrd Skynyrd were on the same bill.

Ronnie Van Zant and his band were somewhat taken aback by the clothes and make-up but at a certain point both bands realized they both had the same dreams and they got along just fine.

I'm sure this will piss off the Skynyrd haters of IORR.

I saw the New York Dolls play Hara Arena in Dayton, Ohio, it was in 1974, they were on a six(!) band bill with Billy Cobham headlining. You can't make this stuff up, it was the seventies after all.

Anyway, Blue Oyster Cult is why I went to the show in the first place. But the show was running so late that the Dolls were relegated to the very end of the show. They finally came on at about 2:00 AM. All we heard about that band back then was that they were a bunch of queers and that they sucked. But my buddies and I stayed around to watch them, there wasn't 400 people left out of about 8,000 in the original attendance. When they busted out on stage they looked and sounded insane to my 16 year old eyes and ears. They were so friggin' great. Many years later I was talking to the original local promoter of that show, Tom Weiser, and I asked him what the story was that night. He told me all kinds of crazy things, but one thing I remember he told me was that Cobham cost him $2,500 and the Cult cost him $1,500 and the other four bands were $500 each. But the funny thing to me was that he said that the Dolls wouldn't accept a check for the $500 and they made Tom drive them to his record store (the legendary Forest Records on Wayne Avenue in Dayton) and they made him pay them in cash. So The Dolls left Dayton, Ohio, at about 4:00 in the morning with five one hundred dollar bills in their collective pockets. So cool.

By the way, this is a Stones board after all, the Stones played Hara Arena twice in the 60's. Once as a quartet, Brian Jones didn't make it the first time. And I have the original poster to that November '64 show framed up and hanging up in my basement. I saw The Who there in 1971. It still kills me that my parents let me go to that show, as I was so young. It was so packed that people were hanging off the rafters. The owners of Hara didn't really care about the fire marshall in those days. LOL.

I have the orig. Don Kirschner Rock Concert from 1974. First gen. plastic container. They have talent.

The Dolls return to San Francisco this month for the 4th time since they reformed...the past 3 times they destroyed the place...well worth the effort to see them...a great rock & roll band.....peter

Yep, got my ticket for Vancouver in three weeks. They killed last year.

just ordered me copy of 'Cause I sez So' from Amazon.

Haven't seen the 'new' Dolls yet; I reckon theyre a bit on the "rock" side, but the songs are still great, the singing's still great, the hooks are there, the soul is there, the humor, the life -affirming whatever! Not many of these "get up and go!" type bands around anymore.

Savor em before another one dies (not trying to be funny here).

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cbtaco19
I get the punk godfather thing but I hear and see them worshiping at the altar of the Rolling Stones.

Johansen even looks like Mick for a couple of seconds in the Personality Crisis clip when the camera shows his profile.

Thats imo the very core of punk = rock and roll. The chain:
Rollin'Stones > Dolls > Pistols

ROCK SCENE - July 1975



ROCKMAN