L-U-V & OMFUG (New York Dolls, CBGB's)

I just saw THE NEW YORK DOLLS at CB-FUCKING-GBs.

The NEW YORK DOLLS.  CBGB's.

Okay, then:  2/5 of the original New York Dolls.  Well, actually, 1/5, because Sylvain Sylvain was an early replacement – but that doesn’t matter, because he was definitely part of THE Dolls.  So 2/5.  But c’mon:  I was four when Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan left the group; they’ve both been dead for fifteen years.  And while Arthur Kane was alive when the band reformed, at Morrissey’s request, a couple years ago... he died, too, just a month before I saw these Dolls for the first time.

And yes, they’ve been playing quite a bit.  There were a pair of overpriced gigs at Irving Plaza, a turn at the ill-fated Across the Narrows, and – just a month ago – the Motherf*cker party at Avalon.  Along with, I’m sure, performances in unimportant places (i.e. places outside New York).  The band’s actually coming out with a new album, so they should be playing even more.

But this was AT CBGBs.  The New York Dolls, at CBGBs.

Stop.  You’re killing me.  No, it wasn’t the Dolls at the Mercer Arts Center.  Or fucking Max’s.  Those places aren’t there, anymore.  Soon this one won’t be, either – at least it won’t be here, and won’t be the same.  I honestly don’t know how much of a connection there is – if any – between the Dolls and this room.  This club is the house The Ramones built, a place that back in ’75 even Doll-worshipping losers (like, say, The Ramones) could get on stage and do their thing.  This club is where Punk Rock was born, but the Dolls were pre-punk, or proto-punk, proud punk grandparents.  No Dolls=No Ramones=No Punk.  No Dolls, and CBGB's exists only as a barely-remembered bluegrass joint.

What I’m saying is:  Punk belongs here.  It is important that they were here, tonight; it was important to me to see them here.  It was a living, rocking connection to a chunk of musical history – a lot less tenuous than watching Buster Poindexter (née David Johansen) dueting with Chloe Webb (who played Nancy Spungen in a fucking movie) during commercial bumpers on Saturday Night Live.

It was the New York Dolls at CBGB's.  And they were awesome.

Which could be seen as a problem.  After all:  Historically, legendarily, aren’t the Dolls supposed to be awful?  Strung-out, falling off the stage, slow-motion set-long trainwrecks? 

In a way, I think, that’s why Sylvain invited punk survivor Gyda Gash and her heavy-metal pack of She Wolves (finally, a Wolf band you don’t have to bother remembering) to open.  They were bad, and they knew it:  “The louder you clap, the faster we play,” frontwoman Donna She Wolf promised.  Still, they were not nearly as awful as their myspace would suggest.  They had one song I really liked –

- and more importantly their attitude was right-on.  The whole point of this club is that anyone – ANYONE – can get up on that stage and rock out.  You can, I can, the She Wolves can.  Yesterday I made up a band called “Our Lead Singer is Also a Semi-Talented B-List Actor;” what say four or five of yous join me up there some Audition Night in the near future?  While I suppose one of us should probably be an actor of little note, none of us would actually have to know how to play our instruments.

But Sylvain can play, and Johansen is a really engaging frontman, and the musicians with whom they’ve surrounded themselves – Fancy Pants Delancey and Steve Conte and the rest – are polished and fun and all that.  Sober, possibly:  Johansen would occasionally hit whatever was kept in a pair of eyedroppers toward the back of the stage, but I’m guessing that had more to do with the state of his throat than his state of mind.  He also kept a music stand with, one assumes, lyrics; but they had new songs, and he rarely got caught reading cue cards. 

The old Dolls image is gone, too.  There’s no truck stop tran-glam at work beyond Johansen’s belly shirt and some mock-bling.  Sylvain looks downright dapper, if a little like Joe Pesci.

It’s good that they’re good.  And real good.  Because what the Dolls play – “This is what we call punk music, folks,” Sylvain chided after telling us it was the “quietest this place has ever been” – could, at this point, be seen as so generic it might need a trick or two, a few pairs of heels, some smack.  But they believe in their material, they sell their material.  Whether they’re relevant or not – that’s something they must be wondering themselves.  There’s a new song called “Plenty of Music” which Johansen introduced as “superfluous.”  But there’s nothing more relevant than fun, and they’re a whole lot of that.  Of all the concerts I’ve seen over the past couple weeks – and there were eleven over the course of eight days, in there – this is the one that left me jazzed enough to write all night.

“Shake those little monkey hips!” they screamed in their best new song, one possibly inspired by the debate over Intelligent Design.  Or that new British group.  Whatever.  There were six (I think) new songs, and a Janis Joplin cover (“Piece of My Heart”).  “Private World” was dedicated to Kane, and the now standard combo of Johnny Thunders’ “You Can’t Put Your Arms ‘Round a Memory” and “Lonely Planet Boy” went out to the late guitarist.  The rest of the set list is here.  They didn’t play my favorite, “Frankenstein” (which I posted last week; you should, of course, own that first album), which is a shame.  But what they did play was extremely satisfying, especially when this show could have been exclusively used as a showcase for new material.

The crowd was strangely sedate.  They seemed to arrive late and only exploded at the very end.  Was it because there were so many (ahem) old people, there?  Or:  Because there were too many young people?  Were people too busy looking around for visiting celebrities – Debbie Harry was in attendance, and I heard Matt Dillon and (yawn) Kurt Loder – to notice that David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain were here, too?  Hey, guys, up on stage!  The New York Dolls are playing CBGB's!

I can’t speak for everyone there, but:  It took a little while for the whole thing to register.  The-New-York-Dolls-were-playing-CBGBs.  Right-there-in-front-of-me.  A good part of the show felt like a photo-op – even more so than that tragic Arctic Monkey show at the Merc.  So many flashes were going off I never had to use mine.  Some of it was the very human recognition that This Is An Important Moment and We Must Preserve It.  If any event should inspire such a feeling, it would be this:  We’ve already lost three members of this band, and in six months’ time we’ll lose this stage.  We have to save something, here, while we can.  Snap-snap-snap.

Thank goodness we snapped out of it.  It took until the second-to-last song of the main set, but “Trash” got the front of the room bouncing and shoving and screaming.  “Jet Boy” – oh, my God.  What use is it to record the moment if you’re not going to enjoy it while it’s there?  Best to realize there will be plenty of opportunities later to say something like, “I saw the New York Dolls at CBGB's!”

Some people were purely, quietly obnoxious:  One guy near me held his camera above his head for almost the entire show, so folks behind him got to enjoy a stunning view of his arms and his LCD screen.  Then there were three people who had, having arrived early, positioned chairs – and a table! – in the middle of the floor; long after all the other furniture had been dragged off to the side, these people steadfastly refused to acknowledge common courtesy and let the folks behind them move up a foot.  Here’s one of them:

Even when security took away his wife/girlfriend/companion’s chair, he wouldn't let go of his.  Pathetic.

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Some more pics at my Flickr account.

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More Dolls Luv:

Jukebox Graduate (pics on Flickr), Amphibologist’s LJ (pics).  Brother Lawrence has more pics on his Flickr account, as does Death of a Party.

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Oh, and this:  There’s a new Replacements song in the works (via).  Could there be a tour?  Hide the booze... and Tom Petty’s wife’s clothing.

Like, oh... now:  I saw THE NEW YORK DOLLS at CBGBs.

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tags: cbgb  replacements  new york dolls  cbgbs  

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