SYLVAIN SYLVAIN / SYL SYLVAIN & THE TEARDROPS - Sylvain Sylvain (Acadia)
Sweet Jesus… I nearly burst an aneurysm when I realized Syl Sylvain’s first two solo albums had FINALLY been released on disc, seemingly on the sly back in June. Then I crawled out from under the rock I’ve been living under.
Without the big block lettering on the cover of his eponymous debut, you’d certainly be forgiven for not recognizing the newly shorn and bequiffed former New York Doll, the assless chaps, toy pistols, holsters, and white Les Paul jettisoned in favor of retro rockabilly togs and a big black acoustic guitar. Imagine a less-swarthy Tav Falco and you’re nearly there.
Sylvain may have mid-wifed the birth of the Dolls, but his star was quickly eclipsed by David Johansen’s lips and Johnny Thunders’ Scottish terrier bouffant and opiate crusades. Here he pays Johansen back by using the $2,000 up-front money from a David Jo European tour to fund the demos for the album and then luring away most of the hot shit band (Buzz Verno, Bobby Blain, and Johnny Rao) that recorded the “David Johansen” album. And I do mean “hot shit.” How these guys have flown so low under the radar for the past 30 years remains one of life’s great imponderables on a scale with Phil Spector’s defense table tonsorial splendor, the glorious upset of the University of Michigan by Appalachian State, and silicone breast augmentation.
“Teenage News,” performed by the Dolls on stage during the brief, clueless weekend they found themselves under the guidance of Malcolm McLaren, who had them so hoodwinked they were wearing red patent leather and flying the hammer-and-sickle before it all came full stop in a Florida trailer park, is a stammering, stuttering, bubblegum masterwork which purloins the “woo-oo-oo-oo-oo’s” from “Trash," the wolf whistles from “Babylon,” and the gunshot from “(There’s Gonna Be A) Showdown,” the band running up each others’ backs to get to the finish line. A hit single in a perfect world, but back in 1979 the suits at RCA were too busy brainstorming new and exciting ways to repackage the Elvis Presley back catalog.
“What’s That Got to Do with Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “14th Street Beat” are all Big Apple chutzpah and charm, Blain and saxophonist Jonathan Senator Gerber driving the former and making it swing, the latter a breathless, white-knuckle subway ride where the brakes go out. But there’s a few hanging curveballs here as well, like the noirish, spy themey “I’m So Sorry,” the girl group swoon of “Deeper and Deeper,” and moody album closing instrumental(!?) “Tonight.”
For 1981’s “Syl Sylvain and the Teardrops,” Sylvain returns for another kick at the cat alongside drummer Rosie Rex and bassist Danny “Tubby” Reid, the latter playing an entire set with his fly open, opening for Squeeze at a Detroit strip mall club called Nitro that same year - a show this scribe still rates as one of the best he’s ever seen. The downright infectious and second ideal-world smash hit in as many albums, “Crowded Love,” is one hell of an opening mission statement, Gerber’s honking, circular sax hook imprinting itself on your frontal lobe for another good 25 years.
Bonus points accrue with the Spector/Springsteen pastiche of “I Can’t Forget Tomorrow,” “Formidable,” and “Just One Kiss,” throwing shadows of former glories across the walls of your memory and exposing the tender side of a guy who once resembled the nightmarish offspring of a tragic one-night stand between Raggedy Andy and Shirley Temple. In leopard print. And while you’re having a chuckle at the E-Street reference, be forewarned Gerber features so prominently on both discs he may as well have been plastered on the front wrapper alongside Syl ala Clarence Clemons on “Born to Run.”
The Teardrops exit stage left with “It’s Love” and “No Dancin’,” a rockabilly romp and a Latin-tinged, power pop doozy which may be where Johansen got the idea for his shameless turn as Buster Poindexter, directing countless drunken conga lines with “Hot Hot Hot.”
Both of these albums fizz and bang with the bustle of Sylvain’s beloved New York City and expose him as the living, beating heart on the Dolls’ anatomy chart, no less important to their well being than Johansen’s pout, Thunders’ sneer, Arthur Kane's nearly severed thumb, and Jerry Nolan's track marks. Here’s to Acadia for getting them back in print. - Clark Paull
