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Album Review: The Who And The Dolls

© Clark F. Paull, III

On the New York Dolls' first album, the cover photo showed Arthur Kane, Syl Sylvain, David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, and Jerry Nolan in all of their platformed, spandexed, and roller-skated splendor, The Dolls have been alternately iconized, lionized, and blamed for everything from punk rock to Hanoi Rocks, having displayed a hip sense of heroin chic and total indifference to the mechanics of the music business in the process.

Up to this point, other entries in Universal’s voluminous "20th Century Masters:The Millennium Collection" series have anthologized everyone from Rare Earth to Hank Williams to Rainbow, with a few odd ducks like The Tubes and Oingo Boingo thrown in for good measure, all solid, workmanlike anthologies targeted at the casual fan who's only going to get one disc by a particular artist.

Taken at face value, this one does a fair job of accomplishing what it sets out to do - show what the big fuss was all about in the span of 11 songs and 30-some-odd minutes. Although the band's first album understandably led some to believe they were not of this world, "Too Much Too Soon" may be more representative of their trainwreck approach to record making, Johansen braying over the din of Thunders' Chuck Berry-in-a-padded-cell leads and the unheralded but perfect drumming of Nolan, unafraid to to tip their hats to their R&B roots in covers of "Stranded In The Jungle," "Don't Start Me Talkin'," and "(There's Gonna Be A) Showdown."

Track selection is evenly divided between each of the two albums and while part of me wants to grouse about what songs should have been included (I'd swap Thunders' sneering "Chatterbox" for strutting, no-big-deal "Lone Star Queen"), it's somehow oddly encouraging to see the boys getting shelf space somewhere between Madonna and Outkast.

Besides, in addition to getting the tawdry piano that drives "Personality Crisis" and Thunders' tortured backing vocals in "Trash" (perhaps their finest moment), the inclusion of their cover of Bo Diddley's "Pills," showcasing Johansen's honking harp work, the rest of the band chugging along behind him and sounding as if it could all fall apart at any moment, is worth celebrating.