Track listing
- 1 That's Poison 5:07
- 2 I Am Confronted 5:52
- 3 It's Too Late 4:45
- 4 Oh Dot! 4:02
- 5 I'm a Boy, I'm a Girl 5:27
- 6 Coconut Grove 4:11
- 7 Take Me to Your Party 4:13
- 8 Oh Dot! (Take 2) 3:22
- 9 It's Too Late (Take 2) 3:26
- 10 We Have Been Through This Before 4:15
- 11 Why Am I Alone 3:45
- Total length: 48:25
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2 Issues
- Release view [combined information for all issues]
-
Actress: Birth of The New York Dolls [p] Demo recordings
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1997 CD CD-0001
2 Reviews
People actually whine about the sound quality of this sacred document? Have you never listened to a live bootleg or a demo tape? You've never walked in on a friend's band rehearsing? I gotta ask cuz considering how long this tape languished in Arthur "Killer" Kane's cockroach-infested closet, it's a miracle how listenable it is. Sure, it's got that recorded in a NYC "Subway Train" tinniness, plenty of outta tune vox 'n' licks courtesy of Mr. Genzale/Thunders (which you know was an every day/few minutes occurrence for him if you've followed his career even peripherally), Billy Murcia's lovably sluggish sense of meter and an overdose of treble here 'n there... but so does almost everything else these guys ever lent their "chops" to.
So, whatcha get is the sound of three moldy junkie corpses still dank with fresh (or not) earth dropping from their thrift-store dresses laying down the skeletal framework of future NY Dolls standards like "Subway Train" (here entitled "That's Poison") and "It's Too Late" (sounding like a completely different tune here until the chorus) as well as sloppy winners like "Oh Dot!" (pure garage worthy of a "Back from the Grave" installment) and what shoulda been reworked as THE Dolls anthem, "I'm a Boy, I'm a Girl."
What really puts that warm tingle in my nethers is that Johnny sounds (as he often did) like his fretting hand was recently run over by a Yellow Cab on the way to score junk-- those "is he a genius or are all his fingers broken" sub-Chuck/Keef squalls that are laughable one second, revolutionary the next. I'm going with the former.
So, whatcha get is the sound of three moldy junkie corpses still dank with fresh (or not) earth dropping from their thrift-store dresses laying down the skeletal framework of future NY Dolls standards like "Subway Train" (here entitled "That's Poison") and "It's Too Late" (sounding like a completely different tune here until the chorus) as well as sloppy winners like "Oh Dot!" (pure garage worthy of a "Back from the Grave" installment) and what shoulda been reworked as THE Dolls anthem, "I'm a Boy, I'm a Girl."
What really puts that warm tingle in my nethers is that Johnny sounds (as he often did) like his fretting hand was recently run over by a Yellow Cab on the way to score junk-- those "is he a genius or are all his fingers broken" sub-Chuck/Keef squalls that are laughable one second, revolutionary the next. I'm going with the former.
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Rough and raw, even by Dolls standards, this one is a snapshot of a band in growth, practicing in their earliest days, pre-Johanson and Sylvain, with Murcia on drums and Thunders on vocals and guitar. Johnny's brilliant, of course, in his sloppy manner, but the whole band hadn't quite gelled yet and some of the songs weren't quite finished... Subway Train makes an early entry, along with some other future classics, but this one, by its very nature, is for die-hards and understanding fans only... That said, it's an interesting portrait of the artists as young cross-dressing men...
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