Capt. Al's 21st Century: Special "How Do You Say "There is Nothing Like a Dame" in Yiddish? Edition

[Hey, everybody -- greetings from La Ville Lumière!

As attentive readers will recall, long-time Friend of PowerPop© Allan Rosenberg, aka Capt. Al, has been toiling on a series about his fave recent artists for us for a while now. (The first installment of these musical musings, about Feist, appeared here back in July.)

And now, without further ado, here's the next to last installment. Take it away, you old sea doggie!!!]

Welcome to the “Best Rock&Roll Music of the 21st Century, Part VII”, by Captain Al!!!

We now come to the section where I honor the best utility players on the field. All all-stars in their own right, these great women musicians don’t get the recognition their solo careers deserve but are nonetheless masters at their position.

And because I'm a big time fan of Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women I’m going to start by mentioning some of the greats who were, in fact, the Guilty Women.

Cindy Cashdollar:
Cindy is not just one of the great women slide/pedal steel players, she is simply one of the greats! She’s also very modest, as my one 30 second conversation with her proved to me, but you'll have to take that on faith.

Lisa Pankratz:
The short version: Pankratz is one of the most jaw droppingly good drummers of either gender I’ve ever seen! One time at an end of a performance I witnessed, the rest of the band left the stage while she remained behind the drum kit totally exhausted. She just sat there unable/unwilling to move while she got herself back together (and felt proud of herself at how good she had just been) before exiting the stage. Yes, I’m just imagining that, but in my mind it’s true! And I bet you I’m correct!!! 😎

Christy McWilson:
Mcwilson? She sings like a feisty (heh) angel! Christy has released solo albums, been the singer of the 1990’s band The Picketts (they’re wonderful) and sang with Dave Alvin for decades! Here she is with Dave & The Guilty Women singing one of her original songs “The Weight of The World”.

Kristin Mooney:
And now we take a break from les femmes coupables, although the spirit remains the same. Anyway, besides sporadically releasing her own solo work, Mooney has sung with Peter Himmelman, on the road with The Pretenders and is a top studio session vocalist. Here she is performing on Peter’s “Furious World” webcast show and nailing the song “Let Me In." Originally, this was a song Peter featured on, but as you can hear, she sang it so brilliantly it became totally hers.

Okay, everybody -- thank you guys for sticking around for this series, and I hope you've enjoyed it. Next time, i.e. in the final entry, I'll feature my very favorite performer of our current century.

And I bet you’ll never guess who she is!

--- Captain Al

Hmm. I'll take that last as a challenge, mon ami -- and I can't wait to find out. In the meantime, thanks again for hipping us all to some very cool artistes.

And oh yeah -- actual new posting (from the Paris of actual France -- NOT from Forest Hills, the Paris of the Northeast) resumes demain!!!

La Fin de la Semaine Essay Question: Special "Vacation All I Ever Wanted" Edition

Okay, kids -- here's the deal.

A certain Shady Dame and I are getting ready to head off to the Continent for a week or so. Starting tomorrow.

Excuse: Desperately neeeded relaxation. And yeah, this may not be the smartest thing we've ever done. I mean, given what we are all currently enduring from the Real Life Bond Villain/Manchurian Candidate administration, who knows what might happen when we go to the airport?

Barring being shipped to a private prison in El Salvador, however, we will be checking in on a more or less daily basis while we're out of the country -- starting on Monday, when Part VII of PowerPop friend Capt. Al's's 20th Century Best-Of series will be here.

In any case, let's go right to today's obviously relevant business. To wit:

...and your favorite (or least favorite) post-Elvis pop/rock/folk/soul/hip hop song featuring a title or lyric snippet/verse in a foreign (i.e. other than English) language is...?

No arbitrary rules whatsoever, although you get extra points if any of them are in Yiddish.

Here's mine, BTW.

Which also has the virtue of being nicely futuristic. 😎

Okay, I was just being silly with that one, obviously. My real favorite -- and this is a bit of a cheat, but it's so fabulous you'll forgive me -- is this one, which I had completely forgotten until I was mucking about in my archives yesterday.

I should add that the above is also a clue to where La Dame Ombragée et moi will be seeing the sights by Sunday.😎😎

Alrighty, then -- what would YOUR choices be? Discuss.

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!

Also -- pray for our safe return! Or stage a GoFundMe in case we need a good lawyer! 😎😎😎

A Great Song AND a Good Cause? Hey -- What Are You Waiting For?

From the just released (by Kool Kat Muzik) POP AID 2 (a benefit album for those affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton) please enjoy the incomparable Ronnie D'Addario -- assisted by those two kids of his named collectively...oh, yeah, The Lemon Twigs -- and the swoonerama confection that is his "I Was Your Window."

You know, I just gotta say -- somedays it simply astounds me just how talented a lot of my friends are.

In any event -- you can listen to the rest of the album (which includes mucho other cool stuff stuff by worthies including The Grip Weeds, Thrift Store Halo and a great live track by PowerPop faves The Weeklings) and download it at Kool Kat's Bandcamp page OVER HERE.

I should probably also add that Brian D'Addario (i.e., one half of the Twigs) has a fab gear solo album out just now as well, but our friend Sal over at Burning Wood kinda beat me to it.

Closed for Monkey Business

Way tired, folks. Seriously.

Actual musical stuff resumes on the morrow.

Programming Notes From All Over

You know, sometimes it's really true -- good things actually do come to those who wait.

In this case, I'm referring to a wonderful 2008 rock documentary you almost certainly have never seen.

Here's what I had to say about it at the website of Box Office Magazine at the time.

A love letter from two fans -- writer/director/producers Michael Stich and Fred Cantor -- to a semi-obscure rock group, America's Lost Band is a fascinating retelling of one of the great what-might-have-been stories of American music of the '60s. Those who saw them back in the day have long insisted that The Remains could have been as big as the Rolling Stones. This new documentary on their brief career is unlikely to do as well in theaters as the recent Scorsese-directed Stones vehicle Shine a Light, but it's all but guaranteed to have a long and well deserved success on DVD.

The Remains were more or less a footnote to rock history until relatively recently. Formed by four Boston University students in 1964 -- guitarist/singer Barry Tashian, bassist Vern Miller, pianist Bill Briggs III (the group's preppy heartthrob) and drummer Chip Damiani -- they quickly became the most popular live act in New England thanks to a prescient combo of volume, high energy, British Invasion smarts and American R&B moxie. Over the course of the next year and a half they had a couple of regional hit singles, got to strut their stuff on TV (notably an appearance on The Ed Sulllivan Show) and eventually wound up as the well-received opening act on The Beatles 1966 tour, just in time for the release of their one and only album. They broke up soon after, for reasons that have never been clear (and ALB does little to clarify). Over the years since, however, their name started to loom large in garage rock circles, and several critics -- including future Bruce Springsteen producer Jon Landau, who was an early and frequent booster -- helped keep the flame alive. Their album was finally reissued on CD to some interest in 1991, but it was the 1997 release of an often bootleged studio audition tape -- demonstrating that they really were the fire-breathing live act the legend suggested -- that convinced people there was more here than nostalgia. The band subsequently reformed for the occasional live gig, and they've been recording and touring off and on -- these are middle-aged guy with families and jobs, obviously -- ever since.

ALB, narrated by the J. Geils Band's Peter Wolf (another early fan), tells the story with what little archival footage survives -- grainy 8mm stuff from the Beatles tour and that Ed Sullivan appearance -- and with new behind the scenes footage shot over a period of two days in 2006, culminating in a rousing live performance at an L.A. record store. The Remains themselves come across as regular guys, simultaneously bemused by and proud of the fact that their music has survived, and their enthusiam for it and each other is infectious. If the film has a problem, however, it's a certain lack of drama. All four Remains today are happy, healthy, apparently prosperous and, in general, unscathed by rock-and-roll, which is nice for them but something of a let-down for anybody expecting Behind the Music-style dirt. (Tashian, in fact, has had a long and productive musical career, including a ten year stint as guitarist in Emmylou Harris's backup band.) If you can get beyond that, however, you'll probably be charmed by the story's happy ending -- rock pioneers getting the respect they deserve after all these years -- and the warmly affectionate way that Stich and Cantor let it unfold.

I stand by the above, but as alert readers have probably guessed, my prediction about the film's DVD(!) success was, shall we say, overstated; in point of fact, the film has never (up till now, and read on) made the transition to home video/streaming/et al.

I am happy to say that's about to change, however; more than 15 years after America’s Lost Band screened at the Nashville Film Festival and elsewhere, the rock doc will finally be made available to the general public, although as a re-edited 27 minute short and not as the feature-length film that I was lucky enough to see back in the day. (The backstory: There were some licensing costs/rights issues connected with the first part of the film—primarily related to Beatles footage/visuals—that held up distribution for all this time.)

In any case, ALB will start streaming nationwide April 8 on various PBS platforms the day after Connecticut’s PBS station, CPTV, broadcasts the television premiere.

Check, as they say, your local listings; I've seen the new version and it's WELL worth your time.

Oh, and in the unlikely case you're unfamiliar with The Remains, here's a track from the abovementioned studio audition tape.

Pretty cool, no?

Like I said -- check your listings and watch the film.

Monday's Cartoon Chuckle

Tomorrow: Interesting news about a cool rock documentary you may have missed.

La Fin de la Semiane Essay Question: Special "Authentic Frontier Gibberish" Edition

Oh sweet jeebus, is there nothing this senile cretin and the moronic courtiers around him won't insult our intelligence with?

From the NY Times:

Touring Kennedy Center, Trump Mused on His Childhood ‘Aptitude for Music’

“I have a high aptitude for music,” he said at one point, according to people at the meeting. “Can you believe that?”

Asked about the anecdote, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, did not directly address it but said that the president “is a virtuoso and his musical choices represent a brilliant palette of vibrant colors when others often paint in pale pastels.” Mr. Cheung said that, given Mr. Trump’s roles as president and Kennedy Center chair, “there is nobody more uniquely qualified to bring this country, and its rich history of the arts, back to prominence.”

Words fail me.

Okay, that off my chest, let me assuage your anxieties by noting that there will be nothing but actual music posting (mostly about new stuff) next week, honest. Cross my geriatric heart.

And that brings us right along to today's business. To wit:

...and your favorite (or least favorite) post-Elvis pop/rock/country/folk/soul/doo-wop/novelty song featuring nonsense (i.e. meaningless) syllables in its title or lyrics is...?

No arbitrary rules -- obviously, what would be the point? 😎

In any case, here's my three faves.

Okay, the Beatles song is sort of a cheat, in that it actually has an important subtext -- in ways that back in the day nobody in the States quite understood (you can read about it HERE). But I still think it fits today's criteria. And hey, it's my blog, so I get the goddamned decisions -- wanna make something of it? 😎😎

I should also add, and for the record, that the Capris thing makes me absolutely swoon. Also: David Seville was a fucking genius.

Alrighty, then -- what would your choices be?

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!

Celebrity Joni Mitchell Impressions (An Occasional Series)

From just the other day, please enjoy charming millenial movie star Amanda Seyfried (and Her Magic Dulcimer©), as she essays Mitchell's classic "California" on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

(The music starts at the 3:58 mark if you want to skip the usual show-biz banter leading up to it.)

But seriously -- that's quite impressive. That kid can really sing.

I mean, yeah, it's not as good as Robert Downey Jr. covering "River" (on Ally McVeal, in 2000)...

...but what is? 😎

Jesse Colin Young 1941 - 2025

From their eponymous 1967 debut album (but actually recorded in 1966), please behold in breathless wonder the aforementioned JCY, with The Youngbloods, and his folk-rock/power pop/Brill building masterpiece "Tears Are Falling."

Long time readers are aware that I'm a humongous fan of the original (with Jerry Corbitt, the Lennon to Young's McCartney) pre-hippie incarnation of the Youngbloods; I am firmly of the belief that their first three LPs are among the absolute finest of their era.

I should add that they were an absolutely awesome live band, and it is a major cultural tragedy that no in-concert recording of them from their glory days has survived.

I should also add that I saw them at the Cafe au Go Go (a quintessential small NYC jazz club going rock) in late 1966, and they sounded exactly -- I mean EXACTLY -- like the stuff from the debut album. Which is to say, just like the song above.

Freaking amazing, and in large part because of Jesse's superb bass playing and his tensile high tenor(?) vocals.

Hey, as I've been saying a lot lately -- this death shit is really starting to piss me off.

Just an Old-Fashioned Drug Song...

Okay, I'm pretty sure you've never seen or heard "White Rabbit" done quite this way.

I was unfamiliar with those kids until I chanced across the above yesterday, but I gotta tell you -- that's one of the greatest things in the history of things.

I mean, I think I want to marry the fiddle player, which is a phrase I never expected to be using at any point in my life, let alone now. 😎

Also: the rabbit suit in the back is absolutely priceless.

Aww...These Guys Are Such Sentimental Romantic Old Fluffs!!!

From their fab and gear/just released new album Dumb It Down, please enjoy veteran NYC punkish power popsters The Rabies and their charmingly melodic (and obviously timely) valentine to an "Adderall Girl."

I was previously unaware of these guys, but it turns out that -- apart from being the auteurs of a lot of wonderful music -- they're quite an interesting story.

The short version: The band (the members of whom had known each other since kindergarten) first got together musically in 1981, and they were ubiquitous at CBGBs and on the college punk circuit; they also released a couple of 7" singles, including (in 1982) the fabulous ("My Girl's a) Hologram." After failing, alas, to conquer the world, they got on with their lives and went their seperate musical ways. Staying in touch as friends, however.

Cut to the 21st Century: Upon discovering that original copies of "Hologram" were going for two hundered bucks on Discogs, they wisely reunited, and eventually decided to record the (almost) new album in question (comprised of recently written originals, except for the aforementioned 80s version of "Hologram," which leads it off).

I should add that said album, which is one of the most exciting aural experiences I've had with my clothes on so far this year, was actually mastered at legendary Abbey Road studios. Which is, you'll have to admit, pretty fucking cool for a bunch of aging snot-nosed punks. 😎

Anyway, you can find out more about the guys at their Bandcamp page OVER HERE, and from whence, of course, you can stream/purchase the entirety of Dumb It Down (and some swell older recorded efforts) in digital form.

More important, while you're over there, you can also order a copy of the actual 12-inch vinyl version of the new album...

...an artifact which is quite as rewarding as you'd suspect, I'll tell you that for free. 😎😎

La Fin de la Semaine Essay Question: Special "I Can't Give It Away on Seventh Avenue" Edition

[I originally did a Weekend Listomania on this topic back in (egad) 2009, and I probably did something similar more recently, but I'm too lazy to do the research. In any case, given our current troubling times -- specifically the misadventures of Eric Adams, the latest in Fun City's run of inexplicably awful Democratic(!) mayors, it struck me as newly relevant. In any case, enjoy. -- S.S.]

And speaking, as we were in today's title, of that great moral philosopher Michael Phillip Jagger -- who amongst us has not at some point been moved by his poignant cry "Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don't mind the maggots!"?

Which brings us to today's business. To wit:

...and your favorite (or least favorite) post-Beatles rock/pop/soul/country/folk song referencing (either directly or by implication) New York City and its environs is...????

I haven't got a least, but my favorite? It's a tie, and don't gimme any of that Alicia Keys shit or I'll come to your house and shove a BLT in your kisser.

The Dion song, of course, is from his epochal 1989 Yo Frankie comeback(!) album (produced by Dave Edmunds). And let's be honest -- as you can hear from it, Mr. DiMucci may be the best single motherfucking singer ever to come out of those aforementioned pavements.

As for The Trade Winds -- c'mon. There's never been anything funnier than a hit record/blues lament for a surfer transplanted to NYC.

Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!

It's Feline Thursday: Special "Your Cat is Born Toulouse" Edition

Attentive readers will recall that, back in January, I sang (albeit not literally) the praises of "synth-driven power-poppers" (from Seattle, Chicago and Vancouver) Autogramm and their spectacularly fab new single "Born Losers."

Hey -- what can I tell you, I'm a sucker for a guy in a Yeti suit.

But now, as they used to say -- sounds so nice, let's do it twice! And this time, with a pussy!!! 😎

Okay, in case you're wondering what I'm talking about, here's their even newer (yet equally fab) single "Randy."

Take it away, guys!

"Randy” was originally slated to be released as part of their latest album Music That Humans Can Play, but was omitted as the subject of the lyrics became inaccurate. Being a self described “cat band” they naturally -- after some deliberation -- decided to re-record the vocals and dedicate the content of the lyrics to their drummer’s cat, Randy.

Autogramm drummer The Silo explains the lyrics he penned for the song.

"It's a letter to a good friend, in need of a little confidence push. Everyone needs an ego boost sometimes. Even if they’re a cat.” Listeners will delight in lines like “If you think you wanna jump up on that countertop, well baby you’ve got the tools. The world’s looking for a pretty cool dude, and maybe that dude is you.”

“Randy” will remind listeners of Devo, with tick-tack rhythms, motorik basslines and a quirky bounce that subtly points to influences like The Dead Milkmen and The Cars. Guitarist Lars Von Seattle aptly describes the new release as, “Nuevo juevo punk pop for allergic feline lovers. Blazing guitars, squiggly synths, bumping bass, and deftly thrashing drums collide in a spirit of uplift for the irrepressible Randy in all of us”.

Okay, that's a freaking riot on every level, I think.

In any case, you can hear more from those guys, plus order/stream the above stuff, over at their Bandcamp page HERE. .

Wednesday’s Cartoon Chuckle

Heh.

Actual music postings resume tomorrow.

Assuming the forthcoming Trumpian economic catastrophe -- i.e., The Tesla Chainsaw Massacre© -- fails to materialize.

Cross my heart. 😎

Your Tuesday Moment of How Cool is That?

From a 1992 rehearsal for I'm not quite sure what event, please enjoy George Harrison and company and a rollickingly wonderful update of the Revolver classic "Taxman."

As I said, I don't know what the occasion of that was -- the footage apparently derives from MTV -- but it's an absolutely delightful performance.

The musicians, however, seem identifiable. The white-haired bass player would seem to be Will Lee (then of the David Letterman Show band); the drummer is likely Steve Ferrone (then of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers) and the guitar player -- having the seeming time of his life imitating the original Harrison solos -- is obviously the great Mike Campbell (whose guaranteed to be fascinating autobiography, I should add, will be available over at Amazon next week).

In any event, just fabulous.

Coming tomorrow: Actual new music by a band that isn't world famous!!!

[h/t Jai Guru Dave]

Okay, How Did I Miss This One?

From their 1998 Mermaid Avenue, please enjoy the inspired coupling(heh!) of Billy Bragg and Wilco that is "California Stars."

In case, like me, you apparently slept through the late 90s, Mermaid Avenue is comprised of previously unheard lyrics to uncompleted songs by Woody Guthrie, with Bragg and Wilco providing contemporary musical accompaniments.

The deal is that this came on the sound system while lunching at my local watering hole the other day and it blew me away, both strictly as music and when I found out who was responsible. Seriously -- I practically fell off my bar stool (no, I wasn't drinking) when the artist credits came up on Shazam.

I should also add that if "California Stars," in this iteration, doesn't strike you as quite ineffably moving, then you're obviously having more psychological trouble coping with the depressing realities of life during The Pee-Wee Hitler© administration that you've yet come to grips with. 😎

La Fin de la Semaine Essay Question: Special "Literary Hoo-Hah" Edition

So hi, kids. Everybody okay, despite what's going on in the world due to The Pee-Wee Hitler© administration?

Good to hear it.

And which leads us to today's business. To wit:

...and your choice for best or worst book about any aspect of pop/rock/soul/jazz/country/folk music is...?

No arbitrary rules whatsoever -- you can pick a biography, a compendium of essays, a photo album, or even an anthology of psychotic ramblings...everything's cool.

Anyway, in case you're wondering, my choice for the worst is clearly (don't even attempt to argue with me) this 1981 total piece of crap by the now mercifully forgotten Albert Goldman.

Which falsely and maliciously places a disgusting racial slur directly at the heart of rock's creation story.*

For that alone -- and don't even get me started on his John Lennon "bio" -- Goldman deserves an eternity in a molten dung heap in Hell.

Oh -- and the other all-time worst (trust me, it's not even a contest) is this piece of utter mid-Sixties drivel by first generation rock crit Richard Meltzer.

Meltzer's an interesting guy -- he co-wrote some cool songs for Blue Öyster Cult -- but sorry, an umlaut doesn't justify...

...a book as crappy/silly as this pompous collegiate horseshit.

As for the best? Oh come on -- you didn't see these coming? 😎

Pretty cool cover art on both of those, no?

BTW, I have no idea who's responsible for the impressive frontispiece of Gender Chameleons, but the design for The Simels Report (a masterpice which may or may not come out sometime this year) was done by my beautiful and brilliant art director girlfriend. Who as you know is working cheap. 😎😎

I should add that that Gender Chameleons is apparently available at eBay for a modest $180.00!

Pretty hilarious.

Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!

_________________________________________________

* I'm not gonna reproduce the offending passage, but let's just say it involves a very famous quote from Sun Records auteur Sam Phillips that Goldman, because he's a shithead, deliberately misrepresents.

Okay, Vinyl Rules, Okay!!!!

The short version: I just learned that some friends of ours (no kidding -- two lovely people BG and I are privileged to know socially) have invented, and are marketing...the Tune Table™!!!

Words fail me, except...what a brilliant idea! I mean, like that's the coolest thing in the history of things. And I say that as somebody who (as attentive readers are aware) didn't have a turntable, or start listening to vinyl seriously again, until late last year.

And I want one of those, and don't you? Duh. 😎

Seriously -- if you do (and who wouldn't?) hie yourselves to the Tune-Tables website at the link up top toot sweet to find all the info you need. And tell 'em PowerPop sent you!!!

Oh hell, here's the official Tune Tables™ link again!

Wednesday’s Cartoon Chuckle

Heh. And I say that as somebody who was a rabid Springsteen fan before it was fashionable. 😎

Wails From the Crypt: The New York Dolls [January 1974]

My very first non-audition (i.e. written while on staff) piece in The Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review.

Enjoy.

If you were an adolescent in the Chicago area around the winter of 1965, then chances are your favorite band was the Shadows of Knight. The Shadows were five suburban kids who became, for a variety of reasons, the absolute kings of the teen-band circuit. First off, they were pretty good musicians, and they could imitate the heavier British Invasion stuff of that era (Stones, Yardbirds, etc.) better than anyone else in the area. Second. they had what we used to call charisma; they were all moody types who could fake being English on a visual level, and they had the lifestyle down pat. (There were lots of stories circulating about lead singer Jim Sohns' being busted before a concert for...ahem...well, let's say activities involving an underage teenage fan and leave it at that.) Eventually, they got a national hit with their cover of Them's "Gloria," which they had already made into the Chicago Teenage National Anthem, and then they promptly faded into obscurity, leaving behind a couple of entertaining albums and some very nice memories. I bring all this up because somewhere, I suspect, at this very moment, they are having a quiet laugh about the rise of their most obvious spiritual heirs -- the New York Dolls.

My first exposure to the Dolls, not counting Ed McCormack's feature spread on them in the lamented Metropolitan Review (lamented because when they folded a few weeks later they owed me lotsa bucks) came rather late, by New York standards anyway. In fact, all through the summer of '72, I deliberately put off seeing them. This was largely because of the "New Stones" hype they were receiving; after all, the genuine article had just been in town, having put on one of the greatest rock-and-roll shows I've ever witnessed, and I was in no mood to be charitable. Nonetheless, by the time I finaly got around to them, they had become the undisputed rock darlings of the city, the first New York band since the Velvet Underground (or the Blues Project, or the Rascals -- anyway, it had been a long time) with a legitimate local following.

So the first night I was to catch them at their home-town stomping grounds (the now defunct Mercer Arts Center) I allowed myself to anticipate something really great. There was drama in the air -- the Dolls had just returned from a triumphant English tour (without benefit of recording contract!) where their original drummer had died in a tragic if trendy drug mishap, representatives of almost all the major record companies were in the audience, and there was, in general, a definite feeling of Event in the Making. Finally, the Dolls rushed on stage looking fabulous, there was a quick "Hello, New York!", the band hit into Chuck Berry's "Back in the USA"(a terrific choice), and then...nothing. They couldn't even play the song, and if you can't play Chuck Berry then you sure can't rock-and-roll, as David Bowie recently proved so vividly with "Around and Around." The rest of the set was a total fiasco, equipment breaking down all over, the band ragged and on the verge of hysteria. I left early, and when some fellow critics told me the next day that the second set had been far better, I merely curled my lip. Having been in garage bands myself, I felt that I had seen quite enough.

To be fair, I did go back on a few other occasions, and yes, they were infinitely more together, but I was still bothered by the blatantly second-hand nature of the whole business. Every move they made, musically and visually, was shamelessly and completely derivative of the Stones. Lead singer David Johansen looked, as one writer put it, like Jagger's skinny kid sister, and guitarist Johnny Thunders was a younger, chubbier version of Keith. During a typical performance you could actually sit there picking out where they had gotten their moves; oh yes, Mick did that step on Shindig in '65, and let's see now, Keith vamped the drummer like that on the last tour, and so on. Of course, on that level it was fun, but not to be taken seriously.

Slowly, though, I began to realize that with the Stones so remote and distant, and with Exile on Main Street such a generally depresssing work to contend with, just about any version of them, even a surrogate, was desperately needed. If you were born too late to have been at the Crawdaddy Club in 1963, then the Dolls at Mercer in '72 might be a reasonable alternative. I confess their music was growing on me as well -- granted that their rhythm section can at best be described as adequate (and to be honest, it's not that much worse than Creedence's) and Johansen has a voice like a frog, there was that undeniable energy, and the guitarists were really terrific in the classic (if currently unfashionable) twin rhythm-lead manner. The last time I saw them I was quite charmed.

Well, their debut record has been out for a while now, and I'm a believer -- almost. Of course, I'm disappointed that they didn't have the guts to have Shel Talmy produce them in a two-track mono studio, but Todd Rundgren has done right by them, and the album as a whole has an appropriately anarchic clang to it. More important, the material has finally made sense to me. Underneath the urban chauvinism and the drag posturing, there turns out to be a quirky sort of intelligence at work; Johansen's songs, a mildy silly amalgam of early-Sixties girl group r&b and British story rock circa '66, are actually rather touching.

But the question remains: Is the Dolls' "Trash" a better song and performance than the Shangri-Las' "Give Him a Great Big Kiss"? In other words, do the Dolls transcend their sources the way the Stones ultimately transcended Chuck Berry, or are they merely another nice temporary noise? I have a feeling only The Shadows know, and it looks (so far) like they ain't telling.

I hadn't read that in decades, and I was afraid it was going to be stupid, but no -- it kinda holds up.

And it's gotta go in that forthcoming book of my Greatest Hits that's (hopefully) gonna come out this year. 😎

David Johansen 1950 - 2025

Stealing it from Bill Murray as the Cab Driver from Hell/Ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooged (1988).

As his lounge lizard alter ego Buster Poindexter.

And with the New York Dolls, from their brilliant 2006 reunion album, exhorting all of us to "Dance Like a Monkey."

Now that he's gone, the world is without question a significantly duller place.