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The New York Dolls are the original boys of punk. “What’s Punk?” you say. It is the sound of unrest, the music of political anger, the screams of joy and frenetic moving of the body. It is the pain of doing something cool and the realization not to care. The New York Dolls echoed their voices across the Atlantic Ocean to answer the call of The Clash coming from England. Influenced by the blues but glammed to the max, they dressed in absurd platforms and had crazy long hair and wore more glitter than your average eleven-year-old girl. While most glam and big hair bands went to seven-minute monster ballads in the eighties, the Dolls were the masters of the two to three minute electric punk song. They record companies didn’t know what to do with them, glam/queer junkies that put on the best show around, a combination of sound and flair that could not be ignored. The scene and music that they created influenced the likes of The Ramones, Kiss, Motley Crue and gave way to the CBGB that would see the likes of Blondie and Televesion make their starts. The Smiths’ Morrisey, once the president of the Dolls fan club, convinced to the surviving members David Johansen, Syl Sylvain, and Arthur Kane to reform to play the Meltdown Festival in 2003. I managed to see them play at Randall’s Island right after Kane passed away from Leukemia in 2005. A great show, playing among other greats, Iggy Pop, Bo Didley, (whose song “Pills” was covered by the Dolls on their first album) along with The Strokes and Big Star. This time they were playing the Motherfucker party at Avalon. Johansen, glistening in his studded shirt played a mixture of old songs, even cover “Piece of My Heart,” that Janis Joplin made famous. The two surviving members are said to be putting together a new album to for 2006. It was a night to give respect to the musical history of this city gritty; one can only imagine what it must have been like to have been in the Punk scene in the early ‘70’s.
Tags:
avalon, new york dolls, punk, randalls island
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Posted on 3/10/2006
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