noo yawk punk on dvd (doo-dah, doo-dah)
one of the dangers the resource-constrained (that's me, pilgrim, and probably you too) face when shopping on amazon.com is that once you've bought anything there, they've got your number (or at least your ip address) and they'll take any subsequent opportunity to alert you to other product you might wanna drop coin on.
so, because i apparently once did an amazon search for the new york dolls, the helpful folks at jeff bezos' place have made me aware of the existence of a live dvd from one of the reunion shows the surviving dolls -- that'd be david johanson (aka buster poindexter), syl sylvain, and arthur kane, who unfortunately shuffled off this mortal coil not long afterwards -- played last year (at the royal albert hall, no less, pretty impressive stuff, especially when you consider that the "mc3" played _their_ big london comeback show at the ratty 100 club), and another one by the dead boys, this one dating from their '77 heyday at storied cbgb's in lower manhattan.
granted, i have more sales resistance to this kinda stuff than i once did, but having broken the rock dvd card by scoring the kids are alright (greatest rawk movie of _all time_ imo, especially since they restored the full "a quick one" from the stones' rock'n'roll circus and a coupla minutes of crucial interview footage that were inexplicably deleted from the vhs release) and frank zappa's baby snakes (the appeal of which owes as much to bruce bickford's demented claymation -- as close of a visual analogue to frank's toons as we're ever likely to see -- as it does to the footage of a late-'70s lineup, including terry bozzio and adrian belew, that i actually witnessed in the flesh a coupla times back when i used to go see frank every chance i could), it's gonna be harder to pass these up. sure, the possibility exists that they'll be handheld video quickies like the one of iggy & the stooges playing some football stadium in detroit (which was well-edited, at least, reminding me of nothing so much as my buddy geoff's account of their performance at coachella, where he was pleased to find himself lost in "a crowd of 20,000 people, a hundred of whom came to see the stooges"). the best part of that dvd _could_ have been the "bonus" footage of an instore appearance at some manhattan record store, with scotty bashing away on a briefcase and iggy sitting on a stool (in the beginning, at least), but my enjoyment of that one was mitigated by the fact that the videographers chose to position their single camera at an angle where you couldn't see ron's hands on the guitar. feh.
i mean, i love the dolls 'n' all. they were trailblazing gender-bending trash-rock mofos, they made it cool to play loud and simple again at a time when the rest of the world outside lower manhattan was still listening to emerson lake & palmer, and their early demos, re-released on noo yawk's norton records awhile back, constitute an essential document if you like that sort of thing. but fuh cry sakes, did you see david jo as officer toody in the remake of car 54 where are you? sure, he's lately redeemed himself with the post-o brother roots-music cred of the harry smiths, but can he still do the dolls?!?!? my friend tommy stumbled into a johanson performance on the pier in manhattan when he was in the big apple last fall and said yes, yes, _yes_, and david is, after all, _an actor_, so i'll suspend disbelief on that score. and sure, syl sylvain (ne mizrahi) is a fine rockin' ringletted bolanesque boyo (anybody remember that album on rca that had "14th street beat" on it? i thought not), but the pressing question remains: can you have the dolls without the _real guys_ (read: the junkies) -- to wit, john anthony genzale, jr., and jerry nolan, both now deceased? (the true measure of the greatness of legs mcneil and gillian mccain's please kill me: the uncensored oral history of punk, on the surface just a kloodged-together melange of interviews, is that it manages the not-inconsiderable feat of making johnny and jerry seem like tragic heroes instead of the guys that you probably wouldn't wanna invite to the house that they were in life.) film, as they say, at 11.
the dead boys were, as my grandfather used to like to say, a whole 'nother bag of rice. myself, i always considered 'em, how you say, second string, but people whose opinions i generally respect dug 'em, and even i'll admit that when the me-thinks essayed the dbs' "sonic reducer" from the wreck room stage a few months back, i was mightily impressed. this is the thing you find as you get, uh, more _seasoned and mature_: with the passing of the seasons, stuff you once thought of as mediocre becomes, at least, better than the shit -- the hives? hahahahaha. jet? hahahahaha -- that now passes for the rawk. (i recently came to the realization that, to the majority of people now buying rec...uh, cd's, blues-based rock'n'roll guitar sounds as antique as, say, guy lombardo -- a sobering thought.) and i have a feeling that, were i to purchase this artifact, i'd dig it at least as much as i dig the heartbreakers live at max's kansas city, the raucous rent-party-in-a-jewelcase by johnny thunders' shambolic post-dolls outfit which is still usually where i go when i want to hear some slovenly late-'70s guitar sleaze and rampant audience-baiting. as iggy his own self prolly would say, "you pays your money and you takes your choice."
so, because i apparently once did an amazon search for the new york dolls, the helpful folks at jeff bezos' place have made me aware of the existence of a live dvd from one of the reunion shows the surviving dolls -- that'd be david johanson (aka buster poindexter), syl sylvain, and arthur kane, who unfortunately shuffled off this mortal coil not long afterwards -- played last year (at the royal albert hall, no less, pretty impressive stuff, especially when you consider that the "mc3" played _their_ big london comeback show at the ratty 100 club), and another one by the dead boys, this one dating from their '77 heyday at storied cbgb's in lower manhattan.
granted, i have more sales resistance to this kinda stuff than i once did, but having broken the rock dvd card by scoring the kids are alright (greatest rawk movie of _all time_ imo, especially since they restored the full "a quick one" from the stones' rock'n'roll circus and a coupla minutes of crucial interview footage that were inexplicably deleted from the vhs release) and frank zappa's baby snakes (the appeal of which owes as much to bruce bickford's demented claymation -- as close of a visual analogue to frank's toons as we're ever likely to see -- as it does to the footage of a late-'70s lineup, including terry bozzio and adrian belew, that i actually witnessed in the flesh a coupla times back when i used to go see frank every chance i could), it's gonna be harder to pass these up. sure, the possibility exists that they'll be handheld video quickies like the one of iggy & the stooges playing some football stadium in detroit (which was well-edited, at least, reminding me of nothing so much as my buddy geoff's account of their performance at coachella, where he was pleased to find himself lost in "a crowd of 20,000 people, a hundred of whom came to see the stooges"). the best part of that dvd _could_ have been the "bonus" footage of an instore appearance at some manhattan record store, with scotty bashing away on a briefcase and iggy sitting on a stool (in the beginning, at least), but my enjoyment of that one was mitigated by the fact that the videographers chose to position their single camera at an angle where you couldn't see ron's hands on the guitar. feh.
i mean, i love the dolls 'n' all. they were trailblazing gender-bending trash-rock mofos, they made it cool to play loud and simple again at a time when the rest of the world outside lower manhattan was still listening to emerson lake & palmer, and their early demos, re-released on noo yawk's norton records awhile back, constitute an essential document if you like that sort of thing. but fuh cry sakes, did you see david jo as officer toody in the remake of car 54 where are you? sure, he's lately redeemed himself with the post-o brother roots-music cred of the harry smiths, but can he still do the dolls?!?!? my friend tommy stumbled into a johanson performance on the pier in manhattan when he was in the big apple last fall and said yes, yes, _yes_, and david is, after all, _an actor_, so i'll suspend disbelief on that score. and sure, syl sylvain (ne mizrahi) is a fine rockin' ringletted bolanesque boyo (anybody remember that album on rca that had "14th street beat" on it? i thought not), but the pressing question remains: can you have the dolls without the _real guys_ (read: the junkies) -- to wit, john anthony genzale, jr., and jerry nolan, both now deceased? (the true measure of the greatness of legs mcneil and gillian mccain's please kill me: the uncensored oral history of punk, on the surface just a kloodged-together melange of interviews, is that it manages the not-inconsiderable feat of making johnny and jerry seem like tragic heroes instead of the guys that you probably wouldn't wanna invite to the house that they were in life.) film, as they say, at 11.
the dead boys were, as my grandfather used to like to say, a whole 'nother bag of rice. myself, i always considered 'em, how you say, second string, but people whose opinions i generally respect dug 'em, and even i'll admit that when the me-thinks essayed the dbs' "sonic reducer" from the wreck room stage a few months back, i was mightily impressed. this is the thing you find as you get, uh, more _seasoned and mature_: with the passing of the seasons, stuff you once thought of as mediocre becomes, at least, better than the shit -- the hives? hahahahaha. jet? hahahahaha -- that now passes for the rawk. (i recently came to the realization that, to the majority of people now buying rec...uh, cd's, blues-based rock'n'roll guitar sounds as antique as, say, guy lombardo -- a sobering thought.) and i have a feeling that, were i to purchase this artifact, i'd dig it at least as much as i dig the heartbreakers live at max's kansas city, the raucous rent-party-in-a-jewelcase by johnny thunders' shambolic post-dolls outfit which is still usually where i go when i want to hear some slovenly late-'70s guitar sleaze and rampant audience-baiting. as iggy his own self prolly would say, "you pays your money and you takes your choice."
posted by stashdauber at 9:36 AM
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