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ONE
McGARRETT Not much use against a Chinese agent packing heat. Look elsewhere. |
TWO
McGARRETTS We're getting warm. Not a bad read, but not worth a full APB. |
THREE
McGARRETTS The Big Kahuna! The Free World is safe with this sort of inspired writing. |
 BOOK ME DANNO Rock 'n' Roll in Print and on DVD |
NASHVILLE RADIO - Jon Langford (Verse Chorus Press)
OK, a thumbnail history lesson for those who weren’t paying attention earlier. Jon Langford is a Welsh musician whose early career with Leeds punk legends the Mekons took a strange left turn in the 1980s, when he was inspired to explore the dark and lovely heart of America’s country & western mythology. This exploration took several forms- via music with bands such as the Mekons themselves, the Sadies and the Waco Brothers, and also in pictorial form, as etchings or paintings.A recent visit to Australia saw him and a pickup band drawn mainly from Sydney playing shows in places as diverse as the Tamworth Festival and an inner city Melbourne backyard, where I was lucky enough to be present and to pick up a copy of this fine book & accompanying CD, as well as a copy of his latest recorded work, “Gold Brick”, after the (outstanding) gig.
It makes no sense to talk about anything he does as being separate from the other. The passionate and slyly humorous man you get chatting between songs in the live setting is fully present in his art and his music. So of necessity, this “book review” may well talk about a lot more than a book.
The artworks featured range from black and white etchings and scratched faded paintings, inspired by the music and lives of the figures of early C&W stars like Hank, Bob & Johnny. Many of the pictures used are taken from old ads found plastered on the walls of fading bars and honky tonk joints, and many contain sly political commentary, like those that imagine Joseph Stalin meeting Hank Williams in the Cold War 1950s. They are arranged by theme - two of the strongest are a sense of justice, in the anti-death penalty works, arising from his involvement in the "Executioners Song"s compilation series and a sense of loss for the early spirit of C&W. He has a feel for community too, whether that of the Wales he grew up in or the back streets of Nashville & Chicago.
The 18-track CD included adds another layer, taking the themes expressed and running with them, expanding the pictures from static images into full blown stories. It’s one thing to see the “Death Of Country Music” artwork- including tombstones which he exhibited in Nashville- and read the lyrics, but to hear it as a full-fledged song really makes the whole thing come alive. Not included here are any the recent series Langford has done based on Clinton Walker’s book “Undiscovered Country” which covers Australian indigenous artists who were or are working in the form. Langford was probably the only man on earth who was interested to hear what the Warumpi Band were like as a live act in the early pre-reggae days, when they still played sets packed with Chuck Berry & Slim Dusty tunes- and I was happy to share my memories with him.
The show I saw was pretty amazing - to be sitting barefoot in the grass with a bunch of friends drinking a cold beer, while the setting sun caught the BBQ smoke haze and an eight piece band did a shimmering, gently countrified version of the Go-Betweens’ “Your Town”, before nailing a furious “Folsom Prison Blues”…it was a million miles away from my usual haunts, and all the better for that.
The book is locally distributed by Dulcet Tomes, who tell me that copies are available at most of the decent stores that run a book section, or any of the better book stores. If you get stuck, you can probably get it via mail order from Polyester Books here in Melbourne. - TJ Honeysuckle
NO MORE HEROES
By Alex Ogg (Cherry Red)
Of course being Ostralian carries with it some baggage when it comes to summing up the original UK punk scene. The vanguard were undeniably great but a lot of the bands that followed were style over substance. You can't help but wonder about a movement that gave the Saints short shrift and spat in Radio Birdman's face when both hit the Old Dart. But when I read a book like Alex Ogg's 730-page labour of love and become sufficiently moved to go back to those old Clash, Damned and Pistols records."No More Heroes" is an alphabetical book of biographies, using many primary sources (first-hand interviews) to piece together the history of the bands were that there. There have been others, but what distinguishes this book is that it goes beyond the accepted wisdom and unashamedly offers up opinion. Where a band clearly fell outside the prevailing sharp parameters of punk, Ogg makes it clear, but he doesn't dismiss them because of that. Ogg's summation of the paper facade that was the working philosophy of The Clash is critical, but he doesn't go in with an ideological blowtorch. Similarly, his treatises on the Pistols and the Damned are delivered with off-beat aides and good humour.
Maybe the most off-beat entry is that of Johnny Moped, whose focal point, Mr Moped, has his story told through the prism of personal bemused experience. "No More Heroes" also lays out the most intricate history of the London SS I've ever seen. Of course we know their output was non-existent, but their status as a jumping-off point for many other bands is enough to win them inclusion.
There are a few hundred listings - "from the Anal Fleas to Zyklon B" - and the author's original vision of a book exhaustively covering every facet of the scene from 1976-80 had to be whittled down to a manuscript half its original size. There's no shortage of obscure bands along with the main names. If there are any glaring inaccuracies, I've not picked them up.
The strength of "No More Heroes" is in the detail and the quality of the writing. Ogg doesn't stop at 1980 and briefly goes on to outline where various band members went. Each entry has a (CD Age) discography. Incisive forewords by David Marx(The Aggravators) and Captain Sensible are cream. About the only deficiency is a detailed index or cross referencing but after assembling such a bulky, readable and detailed book, who can blame the author? I'll be dipping in and out of this for a long time. - The Barman
THE DAY THE COUNTRY DIED - A HISTORY OF ANARCHO PUNK 1980-1984
By Ian Glasper (Cherry Red Books)
Being no real fan of third and fourth wave British punk and ambivalent about politically-driven music doesn't make me think less of this 470-page opus, a stunning collection of first-hand interviews with the bands who would have put real anarchy into the UK. For every Crass, Subhumans or Conflict there's a lesser-known band among the 80 profiled, and the way author Ian Glasper has set about tracking down and interviewing all the main players is awe-inspiring.You can make a case that the Brits had more than most to complain about in the '80s and for every stylized, fashion victim punk band there was a genuinely angry and downtrodden anarchist outfit in the background. You can also theorize that American hardcore never reached the same levels of political or social angst than their cousins across the Atlantic. Glapser doesn't theorize on what happened and why; he tell it like it was, largely through the words of the participants.
A few of the voices he's given space to may surprise with AYS (Admit You're Shit) an obvious inclusion that will rankle, given their singer's White Separatist views. Chumbawamba's place might be open to debate too but Glapser defends their agitator status which he says wasn't diminished by their signing to a major label. Seems like that one's been debated in other places about other bands many times over.
The listings are divided into sections according to the bands' geographical origins and there's an exhaustive appendix of websites and discographies. The pictorial content is adequate when you consider that most of the bands in these scenes operated well below the public radar, in many cases to avoid the law. - The Barman
KICK OUT THE JAMS: THE MC5 – (MRA Entertainment)
This has been around a while but only recently secured Australian release via enterprising distributors MRA, so it won’t be hard to find on local shelves. What needs to be said from the get-go is that this collection of cobbled-together home movies set against a live MC5 soundtrack would be hailed as a masterwork if there wasn’t any competition.
Strictly speaking there isn’t - but every man and his dog appears to have picked up a bootleg copy of the tragically unreleased rockumentary, “The MC5: A True Testimonial”. Then there’s Bro Wayne’s own “Sonic Revolution”, which is more about the reformed MC3/DKT’s first show at London’s 100 Club a few years back. It's a so-so show compared to some they'd play further into the reunion/reincarnation but it does include some historical/contextual bonus material focusing on the original band, so it’s playing to a similar audience.
Compilers Leni Sinclair and Carey Loren were impeccably qualified to assemble their own disc. Leni is the former wife of ex-MC5 manager/spiritual guide John Sinclair, and shot the footage on a movie camera back in the day. Loren was a Michigan art student and founding member of Destroy All Monsters. I’m not sure whether he was in the MC5’s orbit but he’s certainly seen a lot of “fade to acid” teen exploitation movies like “The Trip”, if the garish colour special effects used to pad out and enhance the ageing black-and-white footage is any pointer.
There’s value in “KOTJ” for MC5 fan-atics - it’s just debatable if newbies will be riveted. There’s a degree of repetition to fill out the program and some of the footage appeared in both “Sonic Revolution” and “MC5: ATT”. There’s plenty of scene-setting footage of the Cass Corridor (original home to the band and The Artist’s Workshop, before downtown Detroit got too hot for them all) and the live footage from Ann Arbor’s Gallup Park is outstanding. It also underlines just how inadequate the backline of bands playing anywhere but stadiums was at the time.
John Sinclair’s original film clip for “Kick Out the Jams” is appended as an extra (and has been widely booted all over the place) but works in a funny sort of way, sped up as it was to add some energy that, in retrospect, wasn’t required.
The other “bonus” is a rambling, sometimes inaudible interview with John Sinclair and his local diner meal. While it’s rude to eat with your mouth full, I’m cutting him some slack and assuming the guy had a massive attack of the munchies. Which brings me to conclude that the whole shebang (especially the documentary proper) is probably best viewed at stun volume - with a bucket bong within arm’s reach. - The Barman
UNBELIEVABLY BAD - Issue 4
It's a worry when the latest edition of Australia's best hard copy rock and roll zine hits the postbox and you haven't gotten around to reviewing the previous issue. Such is life. What I can tell you is that this one came in an envelope bearing the name of one of the country's biggest publishing houses. Go figure, 'cos a quick perusal of the credits shows the folks from "Unbelievably Bad" haven't whored themselves to Corporate Australia just yet (although I'll confess to a pang of envy that the smart bastards might have snavelled a barrowload of cash from some cashed-up cretin desperately seeking cred).Heading up the Reasons to Buy This is a worthy interview with Brett Currotta of '80s Sydney hardcore innovators Massappeal, whose re-issues on Chatterbox have also landed in our post box (who's a whore now?) Great stuff all round. The Mummies were a band so bad/good that they merit posthumous investigation if you don't own any of their stuff. Owen Pengilis pitches the questions while Trent Ruane bats back the answers with more than a little self deprecation. Even greater stuff.
Which brings me to the Australian tour diary by Nashville Pussy's Ruyter Suys whose sordid road tales explain why the photos of Blaine Cartwright make me suspect his bandmates Superglued his eyes shut while he was passed out. The Holy Soul's Owen Pengilis contributes his own European tour diary but it pales by comparison on the excess scale.
Unbelievably Bad doesn't constrain itself to one area of the arts so the ongoing multi-part interview with gore producer Herschell Gordon Lewis will be of interest to some . Interviews are the strong point. I'll read Mission of Burma but I'm no fan of Slayer. You may feel exactly the opposite.
Rick Chesshire's double-page cartoon is, as usual, up to scratch and there's the usual varied slew of reviews, although there seem to be less this issue. No bonus CD with this issue (their bank manager must have woken up to what was going on) but you get a cute little badge in a mini ziplock bag stapled to the cover. Maybe we'll send them one of ours. Now stop fucking around and send five Aussie bucks plus postage to these guys and ask for a copy. - The Barman
NEW YORK DOLL: FROM ROCK STAR TO ROCK BOTTOM AND BACK (Madman Films)
The history of the New York Dolls reads like a modern day tragedy. With their combination of original rock’n’roll spirit, lurid costumes and decadent lifestyle, the Dolls reshaped the musical landscape of the early 1970s, and laid the foundations for every one from Kiss through to the raft of 80s high haired glam metal bands. But there’s always a morning after the high spirited night of rock success and excess. Original drummer Billy Murcia died on tour in England in 1972, while the lifestyle of rock’n’roll’s original junkie couple Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan finally caught up with them in 1991 and 1994 respectively. While singer David Johansen found occasional success in his alter ego Buster Poindexter and in minor film parts, Sylvain Sylvain’s talents remained under-appreciated for too long. Oh, and who was the bass player again? That tall guy with blonde hair, who didn’t move much on stage? Whatever happened to him?
Arthur ‘Killer’ Kane is his name. Kane began his life as guitarist in Dolls before Johnny Thunders (originally drafted in to play bass) turned up one day with a raft of Chuck Berry riffs, and Kane, recognising Thunders’ greater prowess, graciously conceded his guitar position to Thunders. Kane became the Dolls’ bass player combining with first Billy Murcia, then the equally ill-fated Jerry Nolan, to create the rock solid rhythm section that underpinned Sylvain and Thunders’ guitar exploits. Kane stands out like a sore thumb in archival footage of the Dolls – Johansen pouts like a camped up Mick Jagger, Thunders and Sylvain grunt and grimace like the proto-guitar heroes they were and Nolan thrashes his kit like there’s no tomorrow (which, given his lifestyle, was always a chance). But Kane just stands there, pumping out the bass lines with relentless precision.
While Thunders went on to become a much mythologised rock’n’roll icon, Kane struggled to cope with life after the Dolls, struggling with alcohol and drug abuse, personal insecurity and animosity toward his former bandmates. There were a few bands, none of which are of any relevance except to punk rock genealogists. He drifted across the US to Los Angeles, winding up on social security benefits, living on borrowed time. Finally, after years of decline – and falling out of a second story window – Kane found solace in the Mormon Church, getting a job in his local Mormon history centre and reuniting with Johansen and Sylvain for two unforgettable shows at the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London. Just when things seemed to be on the up for Kane, tragedy struck again, with Kane diagnosed with leukemia shortly after returning from London. Two hours after diagnosis Kane was dead, affirming for many the curse that plagues the New York Dolls. New York Doll tells the story of Arthur Kane from his time as an employee in the local Mormon history centre, through to the New York Dolls reunion shows in 2004 and Kane’s tragic death. Director (and fellow Mormon) Greg Whitely first met Kane in the congregation of Whitely’s local Mormon church in Los Angeles. New York Doll screened at last year’s Melbourne International Film Festival to very positive reviews.
It’s a tragic tale, and Arthur Kane is obviously a bitter man trying to find salvation in his religious affiliation. He’s bitter at David Johansen (though it’s unclear whether Johansen has done much to consciously fuel their long standing rift), bitter at the merciless ability of the rock’n’roll world to dump former stars in a pathetic world of oblivion, bitter that 30 years after the apex of the Dolls’ popularity Kane has nothing to show for it except his stories. But things begin to turn around when Kane is told that Morrisey is keen to organise a Dolls reunion show as part of the 2004 Meltdown Festival. It appears the reunion is already in motion when Kane finds out about it but Kane manages to re-learn his bass lines (and buy his bass back from the pawn shop where it’d been held for many years) and return to the stage with Johansen and Sylvain. Two weeks after the successful reformation shows Kane goes to hospital to seek treatment for some flu-like symptoms; shortly after he’s dead.Arthur Kane’s is a tale that deserves to be told. It’s a narrative of excess followed by nothingness and meaninglessness. Kane comes across as just some old guy working in a Mormon temple – the commentary of his (elderly) fellow Mormons is great footage to watch (and reminded me of the footage in The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle of the lady purporting to be Johnny Rotten’s vocal coach).
Kane is filmed in the back of the bus taking him to his place of employment, recalling the times when he’d be ferried about in a limousine. His work in the history centre allows him to discover his father’s death, giving him some qualified level of closure on that front.There’s some useful commentary from fellow musicians (Bob Geldof, Morrissey), contemporaries in the New York scene (including Bob Gruen and Leee Black Childers) and Dolls biographer Nina Antonia. The film isn’t heavy on archival material (but does include that classic ‘mock rock’ comment after the Dolls appeared on the Old Grey Whistle Test during its first English tour), although to concentrate on the Dolls per se would be to detract from the focus on Kane.DVD extras include interviews with Greg Whitely and Morrissey (whose desire to see the surviving Dolls back on stage led to their inclusion on the Meltdown Festival program) and David Johansen singing a Mormon hymn.
Ultimately you’re left with a sense of sadness at the life of Arthur Kane. Bass players tend to be the most forgotten and often forgettable members of rock bands, yet it’s arguable they’re the most important – without Kane’s rock solid bass lines Thunders and Sylvain would have had nothing to build on. With New York Doll Greg Whitely has at least given Arthur Kane some well deserved public currency. It won’t make up for the years Kane lost in the wilderness, or bring him back from the grave, but at least people will know who he was, what he became. - TJ Honeysuckle
GRIT, NOISE, AND REVOLUTION – David A. Carson (University of Michigan Press)
“Little white punks from the suburbs” playing “high output electronic music instruments.”
OK, I confess. The quote is a complete fabrication, a hybrid of a revelation from SRC’s Gary Quackenbush spot welded to a line excised from a 1968 mandate from the city of Ann Arbor prohibiting live music in its parks in the wake of several free shows featuring the likes of Seventh Seal, the Up, and the Prime Movers. Apparently neighbors didn’t appreciate the noise. Go figure…
But it cuts right to the quick of David A. Carson’s groundbreaking and impeccably researched treatise on Detroit’s storied, influential, revered and in some instances overblown rawk prototype, a timeline with stops at 1940’s blues, 1950’s R&B, and 1960’s Motown and garage before it all collapses under its own weight – not to mention a raft of drugs and repression from “the pigs” - in 1972.
The two marquee names here are of course The MC5 and The Stooges, without whom this chronicle would have been much briefer and infinitely less engaging. If you’ve stumbled upon this URL, chances are you’re familiar with what both bands brought to the stage, studio, and county lock-up and any attempt on my part to canonize them further would be futile and completely unnecessary. Besides, Carson has it covered in spades.
Beyond the frontlines, though, is what MC5 manager John Sinclair dubbed a “guitar army” of lesser known acts, at least outside of Wayne, Oakland, Washtenaw, and Genessee counties, looking for liberation from the path of least resistance to the auto plants and, in many cases, merely an opportunity to bay at the moon. With Marshall stacks. The contributions of The Amboy Dukes, Rationals, Bob Seger System, Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, Underdogs, Unrelated Segments, Third Power, The Frost, and The Up are no less important to what Carson has termed “the birth of the noise” than those bands on whom fate has been kinder, “kinder” being relative of course when it comes to the MC5 and The Stooges.
Nearly 40 years on, Sinclair’s complicated wet dream of revolution in the streets of Detroit with the MC5 as his toy soldiers seems woefully misguided, hopelessly naïve, and completely out of the wheelhouse of a bunch of guys from Lincoln Park primarily consumed with smoking dope, dropping acid, and playing on “10.” But what do I know? When all of this began, I was a callow sixth-grader from the lily-white hamlet of Dearborn whose idea of subversion was a record with the word “motherfuckers” on it.
The Stooges’ revolution was conducted on stage, their debut at the Grande Ballroom preceded by 15 minutes of an amplified, water-filled blender played through the PA followed by Iggy’s grand entrance in a nightshirt, whiteface, and an aluminum foil Afro wig. A vacuum cleaner, washboard, and golf cleats completed the stage crew’s “to do” list. Peanut butter, glass shards, and the habitual torture of Ron Asheton's wah pedal would come later.
Although R&B and Berry Gordy’s Motown sound was an undeniable influence on nearly all of the above (the “nearly” thrown in for The Stooges’ benefit - who knows what they were thinking?), thankfully Carson doesn’t spend too much time belaboring the connection. Let’s face it – bookstore shelves are sagging beneath the collective weight of volumes dissecting the long shadow cast by Hitsville U.S.A. and the influence of R&B on rock ‘n’ roll in general. Do we really need another recap?
Carson digs deeper into the story than just the bands, exploring the role of the audience, radio stations, managers, promoters, producers, and the vortex from which it all seemed to spiral out of control; the Grande Ballroom. Without the efforts of people like Jeep Holland, Dave Leone, Russ Gibb, and Robin Seymour, our story may well have played out with a much different coda and certainly a much quieter one.
It’s tempting to describe “Grit, Noise, and Revolution” as definitive, but there’s simply nothing else out there to compare it to in terms of breadth, cheap, voyeuristic thrills and, above all, readability. I wonder if Carson can cozy up to the adjective “revolutionary”? - Clark Paull
There was a time when I thought Steve Earle hung the moon.
Back in the dark ages, I had a 90-minute Maxell mix tape I made (from vinyl, natch!) comprised of the best of his first four albums that I listened to incessantly, relentlessly, and enthusiastically. Equal parts early 70's Rolling Stones, late 70's Bruce Springsteen, Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash, those four albums, with and without The Dukes, were nothing short of triumphant - scary good - crammed with tales of steel belts hummin' on the asphalt, two-pack habits, and motel tans, layered with a liberal coating of twang and unvarnished bliss. Earle seemed poised to take over Nashville, if not the world.
Maybe it was the six failed marriages, the crack addiction, or sudden career shift to yardbird, but Earle lost his way, marking a brief near-return to the glory days with the "Train A Comin'" and "I Feel Alright" albums before apparently deciding that making some sort of grand political statement was more important than writing a really good song. Regrettably, I gave up on him years ago.
This DVD is the fleshed-out version of Earle's first ever appearance on "Austin City Limits," originally edited down to 30 minutes for television broadcast, and it showcases a guy giddy with the thrill of using guitar, drums, and amps to make a beautiful noise without worrying about the global implications of making rock and roll music. And at the risk of causing some people heartburn, make no mistake about it; this is rock and roll, not country (or at least not your daddy's country). The spark in Earle's eye, like the Great Wall of China, was probably visible from space that night, as he leads the Dukes (Ron Kling, Ken Moore, Bucky Baxter, Harry Stinson, and Mike McAdam) through a 17-song set drawing from his first two albums ("Guitar Town" and "Exit 0") with just a taste of the yet-to-be-released "Copperhead Road" in "The Devil's Right Hand."
There's nothing fancy here, musically or technically, from Earle's white t-shirt and jeans to the timeless, unforgettable, and heart-swelling tales he pours out from a seemingly bottomless well to a brazen and actually quite welcome lack of bonus features on the disc itself. Although the performance (and lightning in a jar) captured here is nearly 20 years old, it still beats (hands down) anything that's come out of Nashville since, including Earle's last several albums. Let the hate mail start rolling... - Clark Paull
IN A WOUNDED STATE - THE DEMISE OF ANN ARBOR'S MUSIC UNDERGROUND - Photography by Stefan Peterson (Glass & Metal)
You think your hometown is traveling poorly for live rock and roll venues? Ann Arbor photographer Stefan Peterson has been closer than most to his own backyard - a place, as if you didn't know, that's steeped in the real stuff - so to see the underground music scene driven down to the point of near extinction has been a low blow. Stefan's graphic, 88-page photo book chronicles the years 1994-2002 in stunning style.A fair part of Stefan's musical world was taken up by Mazinga, a pretty good surf-meets-space-punk Ann Arbor band whose guitarist Chris "Box" Taylor is still a fixture on the Michigan scene as a member of Powertrane Featuring Scott Morgan, and The Avatars, a gritty pop-rock band with loads of great songs. Another name you might pick up on is future Von Bondie Jason Stollsteimer, who cut his teeth in an early version of the band called The Baby Killers (hailing from just up the road from A2 in Ypsilanti). John Brannon (Laughing Hyenas), Scott Morgan, Ron Asheton (Stooges) and Deniz Tek (Radio Birdman) are others who images dot the pages, but the focus is the (literally) subterranean network of basement clubs and parties that kept the cops busy and mainstream venues like The Blind Pig supplied with bands and punters.
I can tell you from personal experience that Ann Arbor is a nice place but it's also its gentrification that's at the crux of the underground music scene's withering, according to Peterson. Rents have gone up, musicians have moved out, and the few venues still receptive to live music cater to a different crowd that didn't grow up there. Perhaps the crucial blow happened a couple of years back with the closure of the Performance Network Building, a low-cost rehearsal complex just aver the road from the Blind Pig and in the shadow of the Washington Street Bridge where Scott Asheton famously totalled the Stooges' equipment truck (and almost himself) more than 30 years ago. You can work out pretty quickly that it's a divided town, with the locals on one page and the seasonally ebbing and flowing university population with their hip hop and jam band tastes on another. Stefan captures the state of play with a simple but effective shot of a street sign banning skateboarding (but not roller blading).
But it's the bands that this book is about and they're captured in their stark, shadowy glory. Using minimal equipment, cadged photo paper and primitive facilities, Stefan Peterson has imbued his photos with energy and a palpable sense of grimy sweat. Lots of the bands he's shot you'll never have heard of - but you might just pick up on some common bond from your own hometown scene. Grab a copy at Stefan's website which is here.
- The Barman
IGGY AND THE STOOGES - LIVE AT THE LOKERSE FESTIVAL (MRA Entertainment)
So here's another reformed Stooges show and it only seems like yesterday that "Live in Detroit" landed with a howl and a an ungodly thump. It's an Australian-only release so far, so we really are the Lucky Country.What compels you to grab this 2005 show from Belgium's Lokerse festival? Besides the obvious fact that "it's the fucking STOOGES, maaaaan", this is a much better shoot than the hitherto only other official release. "Detroit" was (obviously at times) a feed from the big screen cameras, with his Igness disappearing into darkness now and then. There's nothing like blasting the Stooges through a 5.1 system cranked up to ear-damaging volume but having the visuals to match is a significant bonus.
Not that the live experience can ever be replicated, but this disc goes close. The performance is right up there with the reformed Stooges and there's the slight variance that was evident when the boys hit Down Under for the Big Day Out. By that, I mean the sandwiching of a freeform jam called "Mindroom" in-between "1970" and "Funhouse". You also cop the customary stage (staged?) invasion in "Real Cool Time" and "No Fun".
The only drawback is the wayward special effects applied in post production. The European production team must have imbibed far too much of that strong Belgian beer or they're huge fans of Roger Corman's "The Trip". Either way, you get used to it after a while and rest assured that the quality of this shits all over a bootlegged Serbian MTV show that's doing the rounds, There's more cutaways in that one than a tribe of starving cannibals at a human body parts swap meet, so rest assured this is the DVD to have.
The Stooges themselves are right on song and have this festival thing nailed by now. No bonus material but the shebang is nicely packaged with a glossy 24-page booklet, chockfull of I-94 Bar writers (Patrick Emery, Iain Clacher and yours truly) ranting about or speaking to Michigan's finest. - The Barman
LOLLIPOP IS BURNING FESTIVAL - Various Artists (Lollipop)
I might be swimming against the tide being a fan of Franco punk, but this showcase festival featuring five of the biggest names on the formidable Lollipop Records label should be compulsory viewing for those snide types that reckon Frenchies don't rock. Some of it is heavily derivative, but what's old to you might be new to some spotty-faced teenage kid who should spend time learning three chords of his own rather than being glues to Playstation.This is a multi-camera shoot from Paris venue Noveau Casino in November 2004 and it's top quality production, well lit and mixed superbly. The names might be unknown to many outside their home country and most within, but don't let that detract from enjoying it. No Holy Curse, The Outside or Cowboys From Outer Space (they're on different labels) but enough to maintain interest.
The Hatepinks come across as a French Damned without the ghoulish make-up of their UK cousins when they became a cabaret act. They're a four-piece with a heavy reliance on the guitarist who's pretty sharp. "I'm a Divorce" is a lot of fun and the rest of their five numbers aren't far behind. They're theatrical and have loads of energy.
Jerry Spider Gang are something of an institution, having a string of albums and singles to their credit. I liked some of their 45s but thought they pulled up short in the album stakes. Might have to re-assess that assessment on the strength of this performance. Live, the twin-guitar configuration gives them license to push on into heavy psych territory. It's foot-to-the-floor but the songs have a degree of depth and they're closer to the New Bomb Turks than the Pistols.
All of these mini sets are sandwiched between scene-setting shots of bands setting up or being interviewed. My French is non-existent, so the chats go over my head, but their existence show a lot of work went into producing this disc. The other striking thing is how many of the band members are into skinny striped ties. A trail of used fits wasn't the only thing the Heartbreakers left in their wake in France.
Neurotic Swingers don't have many chords but they use the ones they do like to good effect, attacking their songs like a Gallic Clash. The singer doesn't quite have the Strummer vocal thing down pat, but it's all staccato riffing and singalong choruses in the style of "Give 'em Enough Rope". Catchy and cool.
Petit Vodo is a bent blues sort of thing, centred on a one-man band who's augmented by drums and bass player. The album I heard wasn't my cup of Earl Grey, but the material seems more rocking in the live context. The Briefs aren't a band I've heard much of and are a real sting in the tail, ripping through songs like "ephedrine blue" and "Where Did She Go?" like four-bleached blond mods on meth. It's more bouncy than spikey and more infectious than Avian flu.
But wait - there's more. As bonuses you get a Kevin K song from Croatian TV with his former French backing band The Real Kool Kats (the full-length isn't here but it's great), some low-fi footage from the Gasolheads' final gig, the Neurotic Swingers' "Please Hate Me" filmclip and more from the Manikins and Petit Vodo. Value plus. - The Barman
ALL DOLLED UP – The New York Dolls (MRA)
Trading a previously unheard tape of a cult band was akin to somebody rifling through your underpants drawer without you knowing, I once heard an indie shop owner tell an Australian muso of note. Although it was obvious where the guy’s comment was coming from, I can’t help thinking that there’s a pile of previously unheard/unseen performances out there of bands we know and love just screaming for wider release. And so it is with “All Dolled Up”, the collection of black-and-white home movies of the New York Dolls shot by eminent New York photographer Bob Gruen and his then wife, Nadya Beck. Put simply, this is one of THE best releases of 2006.
If you were rifling through the Dolls’ underwear, you’d bet your candyass that whatever you’d find would be frilly, illegal or a combination of both. These dishevelled pretty boys were tottering around on high heels at a time when it was more fashionable to be slick than trash. They took excess, outrage and sloppiness to new highs (or lows, depending on your outlook) and in doing so, unwittingly carved a foundation-encrusted path for a whole new way of looking at rock and roll. (The Dolls also opened the doors of mainstream acceptance to bands like KISS and the Darkness, but we won’t hold that against them).
Much of this footage has been circulating via a Japanese bootleg DVD, but in nowhere near this quality. Labelling “All Dolled Up” a documentary is a misnomer as it’s really an unconnected series of performances and interviews that won’t make sense to the uninitiated. It’ll come together after viewing the generous amount of bonus material (an interview with the Dictators’ Handsome Dick Manitoba and a Gruen-narrated slideshow) but I’m guessing most viewers will have at least a smattering of knowledge before they join this Endless Party. The others should grab a copy of Nina Antonia’s “Too Much Too Soon” before settling on the sofa with popcorn and remote.
This is a visual Access All Areas pass to the goings on of one of the most important bands of the pre-punk era. Gruen’s connection to the band came about shortly after they started to rise to prominence. He was what we’d now term an “early adapter” with a video camera, and filming the Dolls was a natural extension to shooting them on still film. In all, Gruen and Beck shot 40 hours of tape, joining the Dolls on their first West Coast tour and pursuing them into their dressing rooms and familiar NY stamping grounds like Max’s Kansas City. We see band members playing footsie with groupies, being farewelled by relatives and generally doing the sorts of things that bands do on a day-to-day basis.
These are the post-Billy Murcia Dolls, so they’re well down the track of being major label artists. If they’re not yet fully-inducted masters of excess, they’re very much on the cusp of the home stretch of their apprenticeships. Taking that into account, the striking thing is how very much ALIVE they all look. That’s not meant in an unkind way (three of the Dolls doing more decomposing than composing these days), but this is a band that cops most attention for its riotous, decadent ways. While that hard-earned rep is undoubtedly accurate, the needles and the downward spiral only kicked in once the music industry had all but kicked them out. This footage shows a band at the peak of its glittery, rough-edged powers with energy to burn and an optimistic fire still burning in their bloodshot rather than pinpoint eyes. Johnny Thunders comes across in interview footage as your average, baseball-loving Brooklyn kid, a lucid larrikin who’s a thousand miles (and smack hits) away from the burned-out shell he’d become, once he became enslaved to his latter-day junkie-outlaw image.
Onto the bonus material: The Gruen slideshow commentary is a highlight, with him coming across as a guy sitting in your loungeroom walking you through his scrapbook, as is the 82 Club performance (in drag) where the songs are played in full rather than excerpted. This and the Handsome Dick Manitoba interview (filmed in his very cool bar Manitboas, naturally enough) is the stuff for obsessive Doll-o-philes.
A fascinating and essential package, if a little perplexing for the unitiated. - The Barman
ALL DOLLED UP (Music Video Distributors)
YOU CAN’T PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND A MEMORY (Music Video Distributors)
Six years into the new millennium and we’re all suddenly and inexplicably once again just tourists on the spinning planet New York Dolls, Big Apple dreamers who went to the edge of teen beat stardom and looked down, content to lift a few drinks, crank a few chicks, and wreck a couple of hotel rooms. Anything greater would have been just too much hassle.Their reputation is based as much on their cross-dressing, mutant Revlon cover girl good looks and radiation-mutated R&B sonics as the copious amounts of demon alcohol and industrial-strength chemical enhancements which colored and ultimately darkened their world. More on those in a second.
Calling “All Dolled Up” – the 40 hours of dysfunctional family movies shot by photographer Bob Gruen and his wife Nadya Beck and pared down to a more workable 95 minutes - a “documentary” is quite a stretch, but semantics aside, it works fine as B&W newsreel footage - sans narration - of what many believe to be the first punk rock band, before there even was such a term. Call me “provincial,” but I’d argue in favor of The Stooges.
Although live footage of the Dolls in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco dating back to 1973 and the release of their eponymous debut album crackles with equal parts studied disaffection and all the tenderness of a primal therapy session at Rikers Island, all of the song clips on display here are just that; short snippets which unfortunately all fade to black and segue into backstage and life-on-the-road segments seriously devoid of anything remotely approaching scandalous, shocking, or debauched. No hoovering of medicinal powders, no needles, and no spoons. Zilch. Nada. Color me slightly disappointed. “Cocksucker Blues” this ain’t. But it’s obvious the punch was spiked.
What we get instead is a foppish David Johansen endlessly poofing up his hair and worrying about make-up and costumes, a surprisingly clear-eyed and chipper Johnny Thunders sprouting what looks like a rabid Scottish terrier from his head, a swarthy, assless chaps-clad parody of Raggedy Andy in Sylvain Sylvain, an Arthur Kane who acts as if he’s had a brain tumor for breakfast, and an all-business Jerry Nolan who apparently preferred to stick to the plot, at least until he joined the Heartbreakers.
Salvation awaits in the bonus features, however, where the truncated live material is revived – free of edits - and breathes new life, Gruen and Beck’s camera work nothing fancy, resembling nothing so much as local access cable TV from the planet Jupiter, the band continuing to tear away at the rock ‘n’ roll dream and in the process, spinning the genetic roulette wheel of glam which ultimately came up on everyone’s number from the Ramones to Hanoi Rocks to damn near every hair spray band to set foot on Hollywood Boulevard.
“You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory” finds Thunders reuniting for a one-off gig at the Roxy in Los Angeles with two other dead guys (Nolan and Kane, natch!) and ex-London Cowboy Barry Jones sitting in for a surprisingly AWOL Walter Lure about 12 years after the Dolls’ star darkened forever in Florida of all places.
All three ex-Dolls were face down in their own dusty legend by this point, starting to unravel or maybe just completing the process. Stopped. Finished. Lost it. Thunders had degenerated into a potty-mouthed malcontent, in part to reinforce his adoring public’s expectations of drug-induced dysfunction while they craned nervously for a view of the exits. Here, though, he’s downright cordial.
If, as Sylvain opines in Nina Antonia’s Thunders bio, there’s nobody more charismatic than someone who looks as if they’re about to drop dead, these guys are positively messianic, stubbornly continuing their grubby, ramshackle offensive on a world gone day-glo, acid washed, and perfumed new wave. What hadn’t yet killed them appears to have made them stronger. Thunders musters enough weapons-grade guitar noise to knock a maggot off a garbage truck, Kane and Nolan manage to punch in and out on time despite rumors of extended hallucinatory vacations, and while Jones may not be the on-stage foil that is Waldo, his guitar sounds like it’s strung with barbed wire, a barroom bust-up to Thunders’ mangled trainwreck.
It’s doubtful that “Memory” was ever intended for mass consumption, shot with a primitive pre-MTV technique and one camera up above and to stage left, grainy and poorly lit, but the performance itself is a spleen venter which drags the lake of Thunders, Kane, and Nolan’s past with only a short acoustic respite from Thunders, mucking about like some insane conductor on the verge of some great discovery, thrown in for texture.
Both of these discs point to humanity’s morbid curiosity with the fallen and by this time, the New York Dolls’ vaults must be getting to be a pretty lonely place. Of course the master tapes of that Syl Sylvain & The Teardrops album are collecting dust somewhere, begging for digital upgrade and giving purpose to my life, if I uh, had one that is. - Clark Paull
UNBELIEVABLY BAD Issue # 1
Dunno about you but I grew up with 'zines. And in Sydney in the '80s, there were heaps of them. Some of the opinions were worth about as much as the paper they were photocopied on, but that wasn't the point. You grew to recognise the writers and the music, books, TV shows or whatever that they were into. Knowing what they liked meant that what they said the next time around was a rough barometer for what a slice of culture was like. Plus, in many ways, 'zines were the Internet's predecessor as a cultural conduit for speeding the word.
There's a cast of thousands behind this Sydney 'zine and their efforts are unbelievably good ("aw shucks," I hear them say) if the debut issue is anything to go by. Sixty pages fat and lots of reading in close-typed interviews with Ed Kuepper, Happy Tom and Euroboy from Turbonegro, D.C. hardcore legend Ian McKaye, the Hot Snakes and The Stabs. The black-and-white production is tidy without being too slick, with Ben Brown listed as a contributor (check out your Hellmen record covers for elucidation).
There's a stack of reviews covering the Aussie zine scene (naturally enough) where faves like Off the Hip get a generous mention, plus a bonus CD full of the worthy and the unlistenable. That's one of the joys of zines, however - you never know what you're going to cop but it's always an interesting ride. - The Barman
1001 ALBUMS YOU MUST HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE - Edited by Robert Dimery (ABC Books)
You can tell it's nearly Xmas. Besides the sound of ciccaadas and banal Best Of (insert name of mainstream artist here) CD collections in the air, the bookshelves are starting to groan with the weight of glossy tomes calculated to draw a large measure of consumer spending power. In recent years in Australia, we've been hit by telephone-book proportioned books on the Stones (two of 'em), the Who and punk rock in general, hence this one. And the good news is that if you're open-minded and curious by nature, it's worthy of you putting down your ($A65) hard-earned.
While you can level the accusation books like these are based on a mainstream view of the musical word so as to appeal to as many potential purchasers as possible (and you'd be right), show me the album enthusiast that doesn't own a stack of those landmark recordings (even if they're tucked away behind the ones by Wire, Roky and Lou that radiate street cred). OK, this isn't a guide to underground rock per se but there's a fair spread of lesser-known acts documented. Only a fool ignores the social significance of Yes, Genesis and Phil Collins in motivating forces for punk rock, even if they've ignored shamefully Radio Birdman and included only passing nods to the Ramones (I mean, one album only makes it?) and the Saints.
Editor Robert Dimery sets a lofty benchmark - how do you make sense of a title like this when subjectivity sets in? - and ropes in a hefty panel of international writers to pen the mostly single-page critiques of each album. Arranged chronolgically, the bulk carry tracklists and mildly opinionated rants. Needless to say, my choice of 1001 albums might be wildly divergent from this but there is a lot of common ground in the earlier entries. As for some of the others, who can say they haven't taken fascination in examining a car wreck?
There's an artfully-written foreword (presumably in the Australian edition only) from Triple Jay music director Mark Kingsmill, who is surely the best thing about our national yewff network and a guy with catholic and not slavishly commercial tastes. Kingsmill 'fesses up to his long-standing addiction to both lists and ABBA singles - that similar afflictions beset large numbers of people around the world is which is surely why this book exists. - The Barman
FRIED CAT - Issue 5 (12pp - free)
Fried Cat is my fave zine at the moment and i don't live within hurling distance of Geelong. Issue Five is the best to date - if Fried Cat is the chef's special then dish me up a double serving! Our mates from France, Holy Curse, cop the cover spot (and the interview inside will look familiar to regular I-94 Barflies - great to see the word being spread) but there's plenty more to interest. The record reviews section is really finding its feet; lots of critiques (Dirtbombs, Beasts of Bourbon, Johnny Casino, The Blue Van) and nicely opinionated. The quickfire interview with multi-city Aussie band The Unfuckable is a hoot and this month's Iommi Vice cartoon strip puts one of Geelong's favourite sons, Bored! and Powder Monkeys guitarist John Nolan, in his rightful place i.e. on a pedestal. Regular columnists Mosrite Man (who delivers an amazingly insightful look at record fairs) and Dr Deaf (the resident Gonzo) are being given more space for their regular rants - and that's A Good Thing. - The Barman
FRIED CAT - Issue 3 (12pp - free)
This is the third issue of the irreverent Australian zine from Geelong, Victoria, and it's evident that Friedcat is spreading its literary wings and writing about the wider scene. A re-print of our own Patrick Emery's Kim Salmon interview, a great chat with The Atlantics (by Robert Lastdrager), a history of the Psychotic Turnbuckles and a slew of CD and live reviews make for an entertaining read.
We're fans of Rick Chesshire's 'toons and they're a mainstay of Friedcat, so what's not to like? His "Ioomi Vice" strip is a classic. No zine is complete without a good rant and Dr Deaf provides same. The latest column hit the target (The Eagles and accountants) better than its predecessors.
Was a time that zines like Friedcat rocked just about everybody's world - if you had the remotest interest in anything other than the indolent crap that's clogged the airwaves and mainstream media for more years than it's healthy to count. To a large degree, the WWW has opened a new and more accessible channel of distribution, but it has created two new problems. The first is how to sort the metaphorical cream from the crap and find what you're after. The second is that most people can't browse the Web while sitting on the shitter. Hence, the printed form will never disappear. I'd like to see the Cat pop up as a downloadable .pdf . Until it does, you'll have to write to PO Box 1518 Geelong 3220 Australia (and be a good Catlover and include a stamp or two, OK? - The Barman
END OF THE CENTURY: THE STORY OF THE RAMONES (Rhino)
Other than maybe The Who and the Sex Pistols, no other band has been as shrouded in myth (some would say hamstrung by it) as the Ramones. I still say The Beatles don't count because, quite frankly, I detest them almost as much as paying taxes. Direct all hate mail care of The Barman - my e-mail inbox is packed tigher than Disco Appreciation Night at Menjo's.
By default, we've now unfortunately reached the point when the assessment of any new product from Forest Hills' finest must be liberally peppered with the phrases "God rest their soul" or "rest in peace" as three-fourths of the original line-up are dirtnapping and blissfully unaware of most of the hubbub surrounding their claustrophobic 20-year van ride across the globe, spreading goodwill and extolling the virtues of Thorazine, Yoo Hoo, Carbona, and psychotherapy. If ever a band was tailor-made and overdue for documentary treatment, it's the Ramones.
For anyone who's been paying attention, though, most of what unfolds in "End of The Century" will be terra firma, from Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tommy finding a common bond (and source of alienation - imagine!) in The Stooges to the early deaths of Joey and Dee Dee (Johnny passed after the film wrapped). The fact that Dee Dee's demise caught absolutely no one by surprise doesn't make it any less senseless. Something about the "cute" Ramone absolutely screamed "doomed" from the start, from his turning tricks on 53rd and 3rd for dope money to his choice of uber psycho-bitch-from-Hell Connie as paramour, although fully cognizant (one presumes) that she once tried to saw the thumb off ex-boyfriend Arthur "Killer" Kane while he was sleeping. Mensa membership isn't required to connect the dots between basement rooms, needles, and spoons and according to photographer Roberta Bayley, nothing would have made Dee Dee happier than joining fellow junkies Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan in The Heartbreakers. Looks like he's finally getting his chance.
Except for short shrifting the band's appearance - indeed star turn - in "Rock 'N' Roll High School," it's hard to argue with directors Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields' results. Besides prying information out of band members themselves, they go to all the right sources - family members, managers, producers, and peers like Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, Joe Strummer, Arturo Vega, Seymour Stein, and Legs McNeil - and ask all the right questions to fill in the gaps, although both CBGB owner Hilly Krystal and slightly-troubled producer Phil Spector are conspicuous by their absence.
Those expecting an aggrandizing portrait of Johnny as the band's personal Mussolini won't be too disappointed and to his credit, he doesn't try to sugarcoat his less-than-sentimental attitude toward either life or former bandmates, Joey in particular. His honesty is brutal, culminating in the admission that when the Spector-produced album "End Of The Century" fell on deaf, dumb ears in the radio industry, he knew "it was all over," from that point forward dedicating himself to keeping the band going and making money, filing any pretensions to stardom and music biz acceptance in folders marked "myth" and "pipedream." Recording with Spector, who held the band at gunpoint for several hours and obsessed over countless retakes of the opening chord of "Rock 'N' Roll High School" may have broken Johnny's spirit a bit as well. I say his bringing a backpack full of rocks to the Beatles' Shea Stadium appearance should be entered in the credit column of his application for sainthood.
In diametric opposition to Johnny's belief that too much thinking can make your wallet grow thin is Joey, a fan's heart beating eternally in his chest but saddled with a cornucopia of physical and emotional maladies and self-image problems, clinging to an 18-year grudge against Johnny over a woman (what else?) like a hyena to a wildebeest leg. Transforming into one of rock and roll's greatest front men on a nightly basis when he hit the boards apparently did little to make those around him, particularly managers Monte Melnick and Danny Fields, any more accommodating when it came to his obsessive-compulsive disorder, both veering dangerously close to madness themselves over his insistence on going up and down flights of stairs several times because he didn't follow a certain strict regimen of touching randomly-chosen patterns of rails and handles along the way.
Suprisingly, Tommy is the man Johnny looked to for approval, suggestions, and ideas regarding the band's early career path, although both he and Dee Dee are quick to discount his musical contributions. It wasn't too long before Tommy realized his heart wasn't in it, so he bailed out after "Rocket To Russia," remaining behind the scenes with the band for a short stint as producer. His replacement, former Dust/Voidoids member Marc Bell, despite guzzling liquor until it ran out of his ears, was sober enough to realize the folly of the Johnny/Joey rift although Johnny eventually shitcanned him for excessive alcohol intake anyway.
One of the biggest surprises about "End Of The Century" is the reappearance of Richie Ramone (nee Reinhardt), barely recognizable and dressed like a used car salesman, who reveals his five-year, three-album stint with the group ended due to a dispute over merch proceeds, i.e., t-shirt money. But Joey loved him, if for nothing else than helping to make their sets two minutes faster. Blondie drummer Clem Burke, as Elvis Ramone, spent a short time at Camp Ramone but according to Johnny, "he couldn't keep up." Re-enter a cleaned-up Marky...
It's hard to imagine coming from a notorious teetotaler like Johnny (according to Richie, Johnny's idea of a party was stopping at 7-11 after the show each night for a small packet of cookies and a carton of milk), but he grudgingly admits that despite Dee Dee's ever increasing drug-addled behavior, he couldn't imagine carrying on in the Ramones without him.
Based on an early clip in which a very young Dee Dee fails miserably to string an entire sentence together to wax ecstatic about their new amps, I'm not so sure he was ever right, drugs or no drugs. Although compelling, his interview segments veer wildly between brainlocked and downright lucent. In one of those moments of clarity, he admits his thankfully brief foray into hip hop was a mistake but the accompanying video clips showing his transformation from punk to wigger Dee Dee King are among the funniest things I've ever seen.
Another coup for Gramaglia and Fields is the sheer breadth of historical live footage they uncovered, particularly an early black-and-white but absolutely scorching "Judy Is A Punk," an all-to-brief snippet of "The KKK Took My Baby Away" (Joey's take on the whole Johnny/Joey/Linda triangle), and clips from their appearance at a Nuremberg rally, er, Brazil stadium show. Most of the bonus features are no great shakes - additional interview footage from a babbling Strummer, Harry, Stein, and the principals, and Marky's demonstration of his Ramones drumming technique. Word to the wise, Marc - lose the wig and let it shine!
Perhaps Hollywood is infatuated with happy endings, but this isn't one of them. Adored, worshipped and revered, the Ramones packed 'em in everywhere but over here in the land of milk and honey, returning from trips outside the continental 48 to annoint the faithful only to play the same old clubs from New Haven to Bakersfield. As the film fades on a long shot of Dee Dee walking down a hotel hallway following a party to celebrate the band's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, it's revealed that he was found dead of a heroin overdose two months later.
A wistful blunder down memory lane, "End Of The Century" is the story of four guys who, depending on your definition, may or may not have been the first punk band, but who certainly woke the world to a new way of doing business. Unfortunately, we may never know the answer to the question posed by a foaming-at-the-mouth McNeil who, in perhaps the film's most poignant moment, wonders why the Ramones music was never played on the radio. Somewhere, a new niche for conspiracy theorists ferments. - Clark Paull
MORRISSEY PRESENTS THE RETURN OF THE NEW YORK DOLLS - LIVE FROM ROYAL ALBERT HALL 2004 (BMG ) - New York Dolls
If everyone who now claims to love the New York Dolls had actually bought their records back in the 70's, past and present members of the band would have been making big coin from royalties for the past 30 years instead of wallowing in relative poverty and obscurity. Admittedly, the Stooges unwittingly invented punk rock in and around the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan back in the late 60's, but the Dolls brought it to art-form level with an injection (no pun intended) of heroin chic that would make Keith Richards blanch, influencing everyone from the Ramones to the Sex Pistols to Hanoi Rocks along the way. I've even seen photos of alt.country flavor-of-the-month Lucinda Williams wearing a Dolls t-shirt. It's your call whether she knows how to spell "irony."
In their heyday, the New York Dolls were fuelled by every substance known to man and while they never actually set the charts alight, they did to anything else that got in their way, as evidenced by the number of dead former members, which now doubles that of the living. To be fair, though, bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane's ticket was punched by complications from leukemia (shortly after this reunion show at the Morrissey-curated Meltdown Festival last summer) rather than anything in liquid or powder form, which is not to say his fringe of blonde hair was ever mistaken for a halo.
Obviously, the biggest question surrounding the reunion was whether Kane, David Johansen, and Syl Sylvain had the right to call themselves the New York Dolls without the late Johnny Thunders or, at the very least, the similarly mouldering Jerry Nolan on board. "Morrissey Presents..." answers that with an unqualified and resounding "yes" even before the end of set opener "Looking For A Kiss." To their eternal credit, Johansen and Sylvain bring a geniune sense of enthusiasm, pride, and mirth to the boards when they could just as easily have phoned everything in. The ever stoic Kane's emotions are a little harder to gauge lurking behind his Thunderbird, but he plunks away with what for him passes for a sense a purpose. One of the eerie things about watching this disc is that it's almost as if Johansen and Sylvain knew Kane's days were numbered, showering him with love, affection, and several smooches on the mouth and forehead. Somewhere, my old man is spinning in his urn.
Johansen's thinner now than I ever remember him - bordering on gaunt - but remains one of rock and roll's best front men ever, something that was mostly overlooked back in the days when he used to dress like a crack, er, Quaalude whore. Despite his career getting lost somewhere between those first two amazing solo albums ("David Johansen" and "In Style") and subsequent turns as Buster Poindexter (a move which broke my heart) and grizzled bluesman with the Harry Smiths, his star remains undiminished. He ain't too shabby on harp, either. The lines in his face are now starting to deepen perhaps in response to years of carrying around a set of lips which have now exceeded Jaggerian proportions, prompting my son to look up from the latest copy of Detective Comics and ask "Hey Dad, who's the old guy?" Later on I checked in the mirror for ear hair.
Sylvain anchors the proceedings, much like he did some 30-odd years ago, and provides comic relief by playfully razzing Johansen about being his lover. For my money, he was always the oddest member of the band (and with five guys like the Dolls, that's saying a lot), content to exist in the long shadows cast by Johansen and Thunders like Marc Bolan's kid brother. His talent as a player and songwriter shine brightly on those early post-Dolls solo albums, minor gems which are long overdue for digital upgrade. His cover of Thunders "You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory," which segues into "Lonely Planet Boy," is one of the highlights of this
show despite making me tear up.
The set list draws from tried-and-true, lived-in anthems from the band's two studio albums which have always received heavy rotation on Planet Paull, like "Puss 'n' Boots," "Vietnamese Baby," "Pills," (yeah!), "Mystery Girls," "Trash," and "Personality Crisis." If you're a hopeless romantic like me, who still wants to believe in the power of rock and roll but deep down realizes it's all over but the shouting, the staggering roar these guys generate on stage is nothing short of triumphant, 90-some odd minutes of soul cleansing, purification, and - dare I say? - a near-religious experience. And to think that just last week, I couldn't even pronounce
"hyperbole."
Complete and humble apologies are due to guitarist Steve Conte (ex-Company of Wolves/Crown Jewels) and Libertines drummer Gary Powell whom this scribe referred to in his Best of 2004 list at the Bar as "ringers." In retrospect, outside of Walter Lure, it's hard to imagine anyone other than Joe Perry-lookalike Conte filling in for the hopeless Thunders. At times, he eerily seems to be channeling Thunders from the beyond but unlike his predecessor, remains upright, resists the temptation to refer to audience members as "douchebags," and makes less mistakes. He positively soars throughout this performance, hits his marks, and leaves the spotlight to Johansen, Sylvain, and Kane. He's my new guitar hero.
Powell looks death in the face and doesn't blink, completely unfazed at the prospect of spotting Nolan behind the traps and what he may lack in stage presence he more than compensates for in sheer sonic braun and a driving, compact, and unflinching timekeeping sense. Without Conte and Powell, it's easy to imagine this whole house of cards collapsing pretty quick.
It's probably a given that without an assist from Morrissey, who wrote a book about the New York Dolls before joining with guitarist Johnny Marr to create background music for running a warm bath and tapping a vein in The Smiths, we'd all (well, some of us) still be sitting around waiting and hoping for this reunion to take place, much like that long-promised new Stooges studio album which I'm going to give one more year before giving up hope on entirely. But it sure would have been nice if BMG could have seen fit to relegate Captain Bringdown's name to the back cover of this disc instead of the front and give the Dolls their moment in the sun for once in their sorry-ass lives.
With the death of Kane, the future of the Dolls' reunion juggernaut remains unclear, but if these guys roll into Detroit, I'll be the first in line - agoraphobia be damned! - Clark Paull
SONIC REVOLUTION: A CELEBRATION OF THE MC5 (DVD)
Well, surprisingly, I ain't against corporate sponsorship; it was cool enough for Turbonegro so it's cool enough for the MC5. Hey, I've been wearing Levi's since the 60's and I don't wear any other jeans, I don't care if the money goes right to the CIA, I aint wearin any other cunts' jeans. Here's the analogy with corporate sponsorship: a big company, say, sponsors retard kids to get on a bus and have a cool day out, living it up at the zoo, eating and drinking till their spastic hearts are content. What's the difference between that and rock 'n 'roll, huh??!! GET ON THE BUS YOU SPASTICS !!
I say nothing can take away the credibility and peak of the MC5, nothing. I do believe, if you picked the WRONG company, say Pizza Hut, it would be less attractive though. . . . .And now the music, well I saw the MC5 (DTK) do two shows in Sydney, and they were much "better" than on this DVD. It's just a fact of life that bands get better into the gigs. Don't get me wrong - this is good, very good. It's just by the time they hit Sydney they had done some 30 gig's and were a rock 'n' roll machine in the truest and purist sense, and man, the "difference" between seeing 'em live and on a benign television screen...well it's an apparent difference, for sure. I love this DVD but loved seeing em live more, this makes me remember how the actual gig felt.
The special guests here joining in the celebration are pretty fucking impressive: Nicke Royale ('Copters), Dave Vainian (The Damned), Lemmy (Lemmy!), Ian Astbury (The Cult). Together, they carve it up through the MC5's treasure trove of all time rock 'n' roll classics. Wayne Kramer still cuts it no problem, possibly better, Dennis and Michael are just concrete; so many Aussie pub bands have used the blueprint from these two guys, it aint funny. They are masters and masterful. We will never snatch the pebble from their hands.
Man, in a year where I saw the Who as well, I'd say rock n roll is here to stay - even if the people who started it wont be here to stay.So brother's and sister's, fell free to catch the kicked out jams, ramma lama fa fa fa your fucking heads off, and feel the memories come to life before your eyes. The times are a changing, hey it won't stay 1969 forever, now. All I want to see now is a comp DVD of the world tour with all the special guests. (I know, I know, I'm greedy). - Ashley Thomson
WILD ABOUT YOU By Iain McIntyre and Ian D. Marks (Community Radio Federation)
The book that accompanied the CD that supported the show. And essential it is, for anyone with an interest in the under-documented, often ordinary but sometimes startling scene that was Oz '60s punk. OK, there were lots of cover bands and six o'clock closing, but that only makes the good bands stand out all the more.
There's a fair case (as the authors make) for regarding Melbourne as the epicentre of things back then, so it's cool to see that city's local government arm pumping some cultural dollars into this package to make it happen.
Thirteen bands/artists merit a chapter each in what's almost a bite-sized and Aussiefied version of "Please Kill Me" (Legs McNeill's rabidly great oral history of NY punk) - although if you're expecting a similarly seamy and steamy traipse through Oz rock's back pages you'll be let down. Most of the participants allude to the sex-and-pills-fueled nature of the rawk back then, but avoid specific details (or have trouble recalling them).
Members of The Elois, The Missing Link, The Throb, The Creatures, The Atlantics and The Purple Hearts (it was a great time for "The" bands) mostly tell their story in simple Q & A form. Lobby Loyde's laconic sense of humour jumps off the pages and makes you want to buy the man a beer, while The Missing Links piece draws heavily on sources like Half a Cow's essential CD liner notes but still manages to throw up some obscure facts.
There are some superb black and white pictures throughout (speaking of, what a bunch of dags The Black Diamonds were!) The shadow of the late Dean Mittlehasuer stands tall over the entire project, being a driving force for documenting the scene. It's a 118-page soft cover effort and eminently readable, the occasional typo notwithstanding. If you want a copy, try the usual Melbourne shops or drop 3CR a line. Buy the CD/Book from 3CR for $A25 (incuding postage) by calling 03 9419 8377 or posting a cheque for $Aus25 directly to 'Community Radio Federation - Wild About You!", P.O Box 1277, Collingwood VIC 3066. If you’re overseas, try e-mailing the Special Projects CoordinatorOh, and it comes with a CD of current Melbourne bands covering old tunes (reviewed here) and it's worth the cover price alone.- The Barman
For those here in the Murder City who are still kicking themselves hard for missing this show last summer (and that would be me), this DVD helps us lick our wounds a bit, but as Creem so humbly admits in the liner notes, it can never take the place of having been there. Conversely, it's not hard to imagine a time when the mere existence of such a souvenir was about as
likely as Joe Strummer checking into the Wooden Waldorf at the tender age of 50. Jaded, me?
Let's get this out of the way up front - Iggy, Ron, and Rock Action (collectively that would be the Stooges - with ex-Minuteman Mike Watt on bass taking the place of the late Dave Alexander) can still dole out quite the sonic smack across the eardrums. Even at the age of 50-something, the three original members of the band, and in particular Iggy, deliver every parent's worst nightmare, the former James Osterberg stripped to the waist and sometimes beyond, finally aging perhaps a bit, but due to some strange combination of genetics and clean living (that's called sarcasm), cut up like a bodybuilder. This confirms my theory that he's not of this world.
The set list draws entirely from "The Stooges" and "Funhouse" save for the title track from "Skull Ring," Ron apparently refusing to play anything from "Raw Power," the album on which James Williamson was handed the lead chores on a silver platter. Just as well, really, because it allows saxman Steve Mackay to merrily squonk away for a few songs. Always thought "Raw Power" was slightly overrated anyway. Complaints should be sent care of The Barman.
As expected, Iggy is quite the cordial host, playing to the crowd, twitching and whirling across the stage with herky-jerky abandon, and dry humping Watt's bass stacks while the others come unhinged behind him with ass-stomping aplomb. It's hard to believe Ron could possibly need all of the effects pedals and stomp boxes laid out in front of him, but can anyone really argue that he doesn't know what to do with them?
As for the camera work and sound? Lights out - literally. Most if not all of this was captured with what appears to be hand-held cameras from various locations in the pavilion at DTE, several shots obscured by the backs of peoples' heads. The center of the stage is well lit, but whenever Iggy moves stage right or left, he disappears save for brief glimpses whenever a flash fires. One of the bonus features is a NYC in-store appearance by Iggy and the Ashetons, shot from an extreme angle to the left of the stage, drummer Scott all but obscured by the others. Admittedly, this quibbling is colored by how spoiled I've quickly become in this quick-cut, MTV, digital, 5.1-Dolby-surround-sound, letterbox world. Other bonus features include sing-along versions of several Stooges songs, i.e. clips from the show itself rerun with lyrics running along the bottom of the screen, Watt
reading his journal entry from the first reunion show earlier in the year at the Coachella Festival, and photo galleries.
In the end, though, it's the exuberant bash the Stooges threw that warm summer night which makes this one worth the scratch, and the sight of about 100 part-time punks - some of whom look like they've drank water that's flowed past a chemical plant - bum rushing the stage (at the insistence of Iggy) during "No Fun" is enough to warm the cockles of anyone's heart. Hats off to the Stooges for their brief reunion tour which saw them taking johnny-come-lately "garage bands" by the scruffs of their necks and thrashing them to within an inch of their sorry lives, and to Creem for documenting this whistle stop on it, both stiff middle fingers to those that would beat them down. Christ, I'm starting to sound like a hippie...
Your results may vary. - Clark Paull
The anticipation that preceded this one in these parts – well, you can guess for yourself. Needless to say, there are hours of entertainment in watching Ig and the boys take it home to Motor City, in a big way.
Your Barman almost swung it to be at this show. A mate from Michigan was unable to take up his ticket and there was a spare swinging in the wind. What’s more, it was a backstage pass! In the end, I couldn’t line up the flights – and it was just as well, so it turned out, as The Great Blackout that hit the entire north-eastern corner of the US of A meant that the originally scheduled show was postponed.
But you’re here to read a review, not a barely relevant anecdote, and it must be said that this was not shot by Stanley Kubrick. Picture quality is OK, at best, and the selection of angles limited – but just don’t expect a piece of slick cinematography. Still, a big screen opus would be the wrong vehicle for a band like the Stooges. They’re best enjoyed, by all accounts, by getting down and dirty in the pit and wrapping yourself up in an atmosphere of barely-restrained chaos. “Live in Detroit” manages to capture that, with the usual DVD limitations.
One caveat to go with that last comment: With the advantage of hearing a good selection of the Stooges reunion shows to date, it’s apparent that the set lists are largely identical - even extending down to Iggy’s in-between song patter. So when Ron whips off his glasses, you just know that the usual invitation from the singer to “get up on this stage…fuck things up” is not far down the track. In this case, the stage invasion is cool; lot’s of dysfunctional meatheads in all sorts of attire (gotta love the “Detroit Fucking City” T-shirt - $9.99 at tourist shops all over the US, insert city name here). The Stooges circa 2004 are, of course, not the out-of-control, chemically-altered freight train that they were in 1973 or even ’68. There’s an element of control and pacing at work, but it’s hard not to pine for a touch more spontaneity at times. Lascivious versions of “Louie Louie” are yet to surface at contemporary shows.
Those mild criticisms aside, this is still as close as it gets to The Real Thing. Iggy remains the perpetual outsider, able to harness power stations of personal energy in frightening proportions. He is in supreme control. Rock Action remains inimitable and charismatic on drums, Brother Ron a lethal weapon on guitar. And if Mike Watt was the right man in the right place when he was invited to become a Stooge - Gary Rasmussen would have been just as acceptable - it also has to be acknowledged that he was a catalyst for this most unlikely of resurrections to occur. His “thud stick”, handled more adroitly than the one brandished by the late Dave Alexander all those years ago, is the integral anchor.
Musically, this is a tour de force. You know the songs, you love ‘em, and they’re delivered outrageously well. Tell you something you don’t know.
The icing on the Stooges cake is the in-store shot at New York City’s Tower Records, coinciding with the launch of Iggy’s “Skull Rings” (which contains four new Stoogetunes). This is Stooges (three-quarters of them) Stripped. Ron plays a barely-amped guitar, Rock pounds away on cardboard boxes (and can’t be seen for half the set). Ig sings and raps his way through a selection of songs, articulating stories along the way. It’s a one-camera affair and, again far from polished, but Ig’s funny and engaging. Worth the price of admission and as essential as the main feature. - The Barman
WILLIE'S BAR AND GRILL by Rob Hirst (Picador/Pan Macmillan, 235 pages)
THE BIG WHEEL by Bruce Thomas (Helter Skelter, 168 pages)
These two books, Willie and the Wheel, make for some interesting comparisons. Both books are insider accounts of life on the road in the U.S., told from an experienced and knowledgeable, but definitely non-American perspective. Rob Hirst is, or was, the drummer for Midnight Oil, while Bruce Thomas is, or was, the bass player for (Elvis Costello and) the Attractions.
Of course when it comes to American odysseys from a non-American, or at least "non-embedded" perspective, Bill Bryson's "The Lost Continent" remains the benchmark against which all others must be measured, but there's not a whole lot of rock'n'roll in Bill's book, so we'll just put that to one side for the purposes of this discussion. In the periods that these books cover, neither author was touring the U.S. for the first time and both bands were of roughly equal stature; big enough to have their own tour bus and usually, if not always, to sleep in hotels offering 24 hour room service (even if they couldn't always afford to avail themselves of it out of their daily touring allowances), but not big enough (nor willing) to play stadiums or to evade the petty humiliations of early morning appearances on breakfast radio to promote their shows (one caller even asking Hirst what kind of a lubricant Midnight Oil is). Hirst's book is subtitled "A rock'n'roll tour of North America in the age of terror" and nominally covers the October/November 2001 tour of the U.S. and Canada, starting with rehearsals on the night of September 10th, the night before... well, you know.
Apart from largely limiting performances of "U.S. Forces" to the Canadian leg of the tour, the tour seems to have gone ahead much as any other, though perhaps with the audiences trying a little harder than usual to abandon themselves to the enjoyment of the show and the band not lecturing them so long and enthusiastically on the subject of U.S. imperialism. Having set himself such a narrow slice of da Oils' 25-plus year history, it would seem that Hirst has left the way open for plenty of further books. Early on he even hints at this himself ("The first blurred years of pubs, clubs and RSLs... of thug promoters, bullyboy bouncers and the Woolworths' bomber, of noise and sweat and beer and brawls, of Holden Commodores reeking of road food farts and cigarette smoke, of irascible night-bell hotel proprietors and the deadly Hume Highway - those years could easily be the subject of another book on its own"), but I fear that such is not to be the case as the rest of da Oils' story creeps in Proust-like as the book progresses, sounds and sights on the current tour continually stirring memories of other nights and other incidents on other tours.
No such issues for Thomas though. He makes it clear in the new intro to his book that he has another book ("On The Road Again") ready for publication later in the year and that he considers the republication of this earlier book, now over a decade old, as mainly a trailer for that. According to Thomas, "The Big Wheel" is the reason why he and Costello parted company originally; the reason why, when the Attractions reformed in 1993, he and Costello parted company again after a couple of years (events to be covered in "On The Road Again" evidently); and the reason why, when Costello subsequently formed the Impostors, Bruce wasn't invited (the Impostors are effectively the Attractions with a different bass player). Oh and it's also the reason why the Attractions did not play a song when they got inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (RnRHoF for short) - it seems that even three or four minutes together on stage with Bruce would have been too much for at least one former bandmate.
Even though Hirst's book has nothing in it likely to upset fellow band members, it still ends with the break up of the band as well, following the departure of Peter Garrett to pursue his political agenda more directly. Subsequent claims that for a while the front running for Garrett's replacement was a near dead heat between Sister Janet Mead (the Singing Nun) and notorious Australian underworld figure Bruce "Chopper" Read should be taken with a grain of salt however.
I'm not sure if Thomas is a better writer than Hirst, but he certainly seems to be trying a lot more overtly. Where Hirst is content to let his narration run along conversationally, Thomas likes to veer off into fantasy reveries and has picked his phrases and polished his metaphors with obvious care and purpose. Not that Hirst is any slouch with the descriptive metaphors either, for example concluding of his first experience of a Las Vegas casino that "the overwhelming impression is of The Jerry Springer Show's audience let loose on a James Bond set" (yeah, I know that technically this is a simile rather than a metaphor, but I think you get the picture). Whether describing his earliest attempts at a drum solo as sounding "like a drum kit being thrown down a stairwell" or relating the embarrassment of finding out the hard way that he's forgotten to turn off his mobile phone (by having it ring mid-song during a recording session), Hirst is frank and matter of fact about himself. Given the Candide meets Alice in Wonderland experiences that life on the road continually throws his way, managing to keep a realistic perspective must have been no mean feat. America may be a strange place, but when a band is "busier than Osama bin Laden's travel agent" (to quote Hirst's Ghostwriters bandmate Rick Grossman), strange sights and stranger experiences tend to become the norm no matter where you are - such as producing an album of songs for the 2000 Olympics (the songs sung by the Australian athletes themselves), only to find out when delivering it to the Olympic hierarchy that the only working sound system on the premises is the one in his car (so in a scene virtually identical to the one in the John Clarke television satire, they all have to crowd into Hirst's old Citroen out in the car park to listen to it).
Perhaps the biggest danger of touring is the likelihood of severe cabin fever brought on by the long bus trips between cities, occasionally compounded by being forced to keep the company of exceedingly unsympathetic hired drivers. Bands are often compared to families, usually highly dysfunctional ones, and once you take into account the many exasperating "cousins" in the road crew as well, it's not hard to see why so many bands end up in the musical equivalent of divorce court. Of course the prospect of actual physical danger is not to be discounted entirely. There's nothing likelier to get the adrenalin pumping than to be told that the venue is in such an unsavoury area of town that the band should "only go outside the building if it's on fire". In this context, a bandroom notice such as "Mickey Says, Let's Keep This Wall Penis Free" hardly raises an eyebrow (no, you'll have to read the book for that one). Yet despite all the years (and all the miles), you get from Hirst's book the sense that he'd have been happy to continue to go on the occasional tour with Midnight Oil well into old age, as long as there was any interest from punters and promoters. The "brain-load of decibels and the familiar pub-stench of ash, sweat and beer", not to mention the enforced separation from friends and family (real, blood-relative family that is), are compensated for by the diverse, entertaining and sometimes even enlightening experiences of new places and new faces, experiences that not even the odd "lombard" ("lots of money but a real dickhead") can spoil completely. There is also the chance to see ourselves as others see us. In the case of a barely post 9/11 U.S.A., that was hardly at all apparently; mention of Australia in the U.S. press being limited to a single cautionary piece in the Wall Street Journal about fake didgeridoos being sold in America.
For me, the only jarring note in the book was Hirst's uncharacteristically disingenuous attempt to contrast this country's treatment of asylum seekers with the open armed welcome received in the U.S. by rookie baseball players from the Caribbean and South America when they are signed up by major league baseball teams. It seems to me that historically Australia has been every bit as hospitable to gifted athletes from overseas, as the ranks of our Olympic team clearly show, while for impoverished asylum seekers the more honest (and apposite) comparison would have been with America's heavy handed treatment of those Central and South Americans who attempt to walk, run or crawl across the Mexican border without the foresight of first acquiring a multi-million dollar sporting contract...
In comparison to Hirst's alternatively bemused and intrigued travelogue, Thomas's narrative is far more jaded and scornful, bordering on the downright contemptuous ("The promoter had also thrown in a couple of hookers who we kept busy serving drinks. Shona had a swimsuit cut away almost to her armpits, revealing that it must have been trainee day down at the Auckland bikini waxers"). Someone once said that the only sensible reason for writing an autobiography is revenge and while Thomas says of touring that "the enjoyment comes from the sense of detachment and of being a silent observer", there are plenty of instances where his reportage seems neither detached nor silent, but rather has a definite air about it of old scores being settled. Clearly touring had well and truly lost whatever charm it once might have held for him by the time he sat down to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard). Interestingly he never refers to any of the other band members by name though, instead alluding to them only as "The Singer", "The Drummer" and "The Keyboard Player".
Having said that, I'd also have to say that Elvis must be extremely sensitive to have felt that anything Thomas says about him was egregious enough to warrant a sacking. Perhaps I'm overly desensitised, but while there is indeed the occasional snide remark about "The Singer", I could not find anything particularly offensive, at least not about Elvis. On the other hand, I could easily understand it if both "The Drummer" and "The Keyboard Player" had strung "The Author" up from the lightfitting of the first hotel room the band was alone together in after Thomas's book came out, as the portraits he paints of them are far from flattering, though often extremely amusing. - John McPharlin
WILLIE'S BAR AND GRILL
THE BIG WHEEL
The New York Dolls: Too Much Too Soon by Nina Antonia (Omnibus Press, 208 pages)
The One And Only: Peter Perrett - Homme Fatale by Nina Antonia (SAF Publishing Ltd.,224 pages)
When the New York Dolls rang in New Year's 1974 from the stage of the Michigan Palace, I'd only had my driver's license for a few short months and didn't have the guts to drive down to the old barn on Bagley in the heart of downtown Detroit (now the site of a parking lot), not that my old man would have given me the keys to his 1967 Galaxie 500 anyway.
So, like an idiot, and despite the fact that I could have stayed home, warm and dry, and listened to a simulcast of the show on WABX, I hopped on my Huffy 10-speed and began pedaling, making my way straight down Michigan Avenue into the madhouse that was the Motor City (all apologies to Ted Nugent) back in those menacing years following the 1967 riots which changed this city forever, a 10-mile trek one way from my house in lily-white Dearborn.
How bad was it back then?
Every night, prior to its eleven o'clock newscast, one of the local TV stations here would announce "It's eleven o'clock. Do you know where your children are?" At least on that night, I'm sure my parents looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.
Nina Antonia seems to have cornered the market on New York Dolls books. As far as I can tell, "Too Much Too Soon" is the only one on the market and unless Syl Sylvain, David Johansen, or Arthur Kane decide to pick up a pen or sit down at a keyboard (it's much too late for Billy Murcia, Johnny Thunders, and Jerry Nolan - they've all given up the oxygen habit), it's probably the only one you'll ever need.
It's a cogent look through a haze of dope smoke and pills at a band spinning their wheels in search of the muse, clearly way ahead of any marketer's business plan, as well as that of their own management team. Despite the best efforts of Marty Thau and less-than-best efforts of Steve Leber and David Krebs, the Dolls sort of just escaped, ran around, and did a lot of drugs, in the process creating a highly influential milieu it seems the world is still trying to get a handle on 30 years later. In my mind, there's nothing more boring in a band bio than reading about the hardscrabble lives of the members' parents or grandparents, so to Antonia's credit she gets in and gets out.
By the end of the first chapter, the original lineup is in place and lookin' for a kiss, if not a gig, manager, and comfortable pair of heels. Although I've always considered myself a huge fan, Antonia recounts many interesting aspects of the band's history I'd never heard before, to wit (Spoiler Alert!):* As a teenager, Thunders (nee Genzale) was scouted by the Philadelphia Phillies.
* As the band was forming, founding member Sylvain nipped off to London briefly, leaving the guitar duties to Rick Rivets and Kane, with street rat Thunders on bass. A short time later, Thunders took over the lead chores and prior to Johansen coming on board, also handled the vocals.
* The Dolls were seriously courted by Who manager and Track Records (whom the Heartbreakers later signed with) boss Kit Lambert during their first trip to London for a series of gigs, including one wedged between the Pink Fairies and The Faces at Wembley Pool.
* When Nolan signed on to replace the overdosed Murcia, he received three drumkits and a couch as part of the deal.
* Before Todd Rundgren was selected to produce the first album, the band also kicked around the names of Phil Spector, David Bowie, and Roy Wood.
* Thunders received his first fix from Iggy Pop.
* In Missouri, the band were supported by, and found kindred spirits in (are you sitting down?), Lynyrd Skynyrd, getting, in the words of Peter Jordan, "stoned drunk" together.
* The Dolls were filmed for an aborted Ralph Bakshi film called "Hey Good Looking," with animation to be fit in around them at a later date.
* Jimmy Page thought so highly of Thunders, believing him to be the "next special guitar player," that whenever Led Zeppelin appeared in New York, Page would send a limo around to pick him up.If it's not already obvious, Antonia has really done her homework (despite a dearth of Dolls-related information and factoids out there) and must have busted her ass tracking down the surviving members of the band as well as uber-groupies Sabel Starr and Cyrinda Foxe-Tyler, roadies, hangers-on, and all of the ex-managers for their input.
Yet for all of the critical glory they forged together, the New York Dolls' careers sadly went right down the toilet pretty fast, laid to waste by the now cliche combination of dope, mismanagement, and downright shameful album sales. And as for that New Year's Eve show I went to back in 1973? Definitely in my top ten of all time, due in no small part to a set of disheveled, sleazy gutter rock from the Dolls (for which Sylvain relates to Antonia they were paid $14,000 - God love her!) and the fact that I found a ride home with Pootzer, who let me throw my bike in the trunk of his car.
Mix in equal parts Syd Barrett, Julian Cope, and Thunders and what you're left with is ex-Only One Peter Perrett, another one of the "fatally famous" (read "misguided, yet talented, lacking-in-common-sense doofus who threw it all away to chase the dragon") Antonia seems to be building a career on, whose "Special View" album remains one of this scribe's all-timers (gotta upgrade it to CD, though!). I haven't read her Thunders bio "In Cold Blood," but barfly Ken Shimamoto wholeheartedly endorses it with a caveat warning of iminent depression.
The Only Ones are, of course, best remembered for their only "hit," 1978's "Another Girl, Another Planet," on the back of which the band strove to rise above the London punk ragtag rabble in which they plied their craft. By 1981, it was all over, with Perrett coming out of a nod long enough to briefly consider going it alone.
Truncated as their brief moment in the spotlight was, it's no real surprise that morbid curiosity is the real attraction of "The One And Only: Peter Perrett - Homme Fatale" (first published in 1996), like rubbernecking a freeway smash-up, looking for body parts. Call it fate, but Perrett forged a friendship with Thunders, inevitably based as much on drugs as it was on music, when the Heartbreakers first travelled to England to join Malcolm McLaren's ill-fated Anarchy tour. Ex-Dolls Thunders and Jerry Nolan have historically taken the heat for introducing London punters to heroin (easy targets, eh?) but as far as I know, they never had to put a gun to anyone's head. To Perrett's credit, he admits to dabbling in the drug long before meeting Thunders.
Aside from a few inspired moments early on, Perrett seemed content with drifting through life minus any personal or professional agenda other than selling and ingesting dope with long-suffering wife Zena, getting busted several times along the way but through plain, dumb luck avoiding any incarceration. Keith Richards was keen on producing the band but the only real highlight of his time in the studio with them was a coke-hoovering duel between he and Perrett with the outcome lost in the ether somewhere.
The nadir of Perrett's season in Hell was spending most of the 80's in a bedroom he rarely left, heroin his only companion, physically deteriorating into a scuzzy, unkempt mess, sinking so low that Thunders himself felt obligated to give him a pep talk (imagine!). Finally, on the cusp of the 90's, due to some rather vaguely explained combination of drugs, detox, love, and poverty, Perrett started to snap out of it, deciding maybe music still meant something to him. Since then, his attempts to gig and record again, with a new group christened The One, have been patchy at best.
Strangely, Antonia's epilogue doesn't go far in convincing anyone that this fragile soul is still straight. Stranger yet, perhaps unconfident of her talent as a writer, Antonia is training to be a drug counselor. Go figure... - Clark Paull
MOJO #119 - October 2003
Who would've thought back in the 80's, amidst World Series riots, the city burning itself to the ground every Devil's Night, a multi-million dollar drug trafficking empire known as Young Boys, Inc., and a yearly award as The Murder Capital Of The World (patent pending), that some day it would be suddenly hip to live in Detroit? To those of us who never joined the mass exodus out of this city, not to mention out of Michigan (for a while there, Texas was the place to go), Detroit was as much a state of mind as it was a place that throbbed with a constant undercurrent of violence, menacing attitude, buzzing guitars, and humming amplifiers.
This city was imposed upon me at birth and while I can't wait to get the hell out of here due to a steady decline in the quality and quantity of murders committed within its boundaries, there's something strangely charming and comforting about living in a place where current marketing trends and gimmicks in the music biz are met with a wisened, cynical roll of the eyes. Hell, the White Stripes barely even register on the radar around here.
Mojo, a British publication, can basically do no wrong in my eyes and they do themselves proud with their "50-Page Motor City Meltdown Detroit Special" in the October 2003 issue, managing to capture the essence of this birth-school-work-death burg without over-romanticizing it. Right out of the chute, Wayne Kramer's "The Motor City Is Burning: A Personal View of Detroit," grabs you by the neck and shakes, the former MC5 guitarist reminiscing about the band's early days in a no-holds-barred prose style that's all red meat and arteries bursting wide open and grey matter boiling in flame. He rightfully traces the city's badass reputation to the 1967 riots, the influx of unemployment, heroin, and guns in the 1970's, and the gradual desertion of the city in the 1980's as people around here just flat-out packed up and moved on. It comes as no small suprise then that Kramer annoints Eminem as the heir apparent to the MC5 and who am I to argue? Kramer still looks like he could rip your spine out of your anus and hand it to you with a smile. Hey Wayne - ever think about writing a book?
Although I never "got" the whole Parliament/Funkadelic trip, the excerpt from Lloyd Bradley's upcoming biography of George Clinton isn't quite what I expected in that it touches upon Detroit's reputation as a hotbed for radical politics in the 1960's and how the band gravitated toward and were influenced by it all, becoming the antithesis of Berry Gordy's "Sound Of Young America" over at Motown. Apparently Clinton, guitar god Eddie Hazel, Bernie Worrell, and the rest of the band (photos of whom at the time looked like some sort of Last Supper for pimps) shared many a stage with The Stooges, MC5, and The Amboy Dukes, introducing them to an audience and sonic approach that was truly liberating.
Gabe Soria postulates in his article on The Gories that for better or worse, Mick Collins, Dan Kroha, and Peg O'Neill were ground zero for the modern garage revival, even recording their debut "Houserockin" in producer Len Puch's (ex-Snakeout) Nissan hut next to a bunch of half-built engines. Look no further than drummer O'Neill for the Meg White prototype, right down to the eybrow-hugging bangs. Too bad Collins, Kroha, and O'Neill couldn't play nice together...
Elsewhere, former Creem editor Dave DiMartino takes another look at the Grand Funk Railroad soap opera, tracing the band's journey from blue-collar Flint, Michigan to their unlikely sellout of Shea Stadium, crushing The Beatles' previous sales record in the process. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your love or disdain for the trio), it was all downhill from there, culminating in much litigation against manager Terry Knight, whom the band thought was taking a bigger cut of the net proceeds than he was entitled to (stop me if you've heard this one before). To this day, Knight still maintains the deal was "pretty typical" and as for Mark Farner, Don Brewer, and Mel Schacher? Most of their spare time is spent haggling over who owns the Grand Funk name. Wonder if they got the idea from Styx?
Thankfully, in issue #119's cover story, Jack White (who manages to look like he just vomited in every photo) for the most part stays out of Iggy Pop's way and lets him riff on everything from The Stooges' first gigs to little-known Stooges' bassist Zeke Zettner to the too-much-too-soon nature of the music biz in 2003. Apparently Ig had an epiphany of sorts one day after dropping acid and sitting on an I-94 overpass near the MC5 house, realizing The Stooges had to get the "whoosh!" sound of cars passing by underneath him into their music. The rest, as they say, is history.
Although music made by machines is still beyond me (ditto for standing around a club cheering on some guy cueing up records), Hobey Echlin's brief piece on Detroit as the birthplace of techno is extremely well written and researched and, if I wasn't so stubborn and set in my ways, might even inspire me to give some of it a listen. Nah, on second thought, nothing would make me that curious. While not technically part of the 50-page section which makes up the core of Mojo's tribute to the Motor City, there are also articles on Detroit Cobras, Blanche, Saturday Looks Good To Me, The Singles, and Slumber Party, and native Detroiter Alice Cooper waxes nostalgic about the "West Side Story" soundtrack and 1970 Detroit concert bills the band appeared on with the MC5, The Stooges, and The Amboy Dukes.
In the end, it's one of the photographs accompanying the techno article that best sums up Detroit's post-apocalyptic image; a stark, black-and-white picture of a broken chair sitting on top of a steaming manhole cover with what looks like the Addams Family or Munsters house in the background, windows either smashed out or boarded up, trash everywhere. Maybe it's just me, but isn't glamorizing this town sort of like putting perfume on a pig? If Hollywood discovers us, I'm moving. - Clark Paull
