More Old Weird America

” It was the best of times it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to heaven, we were all going the other way ”( Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

New York Dolls, Circa. 1974

Hard to tell if The New York Dolls were the fallen aristocracy in Dicken’s novel or a rise of the Peasant class. Suspicion is on the side of the former, though the fall of the angels was so precipitous its not easily discernible amidst the smoke and rubble. The needle served as a guillotine for a few members. Its a mass of contradictions; hip and anti-hipsters, music sloppy yet powerful.They were  the best band and the worst. An aesthetic that encapsulted post war American influences into rock music that rolled, both malevolent, ironic and funny. They were just bad enough to be good.  Parents could pour  their children Kiss; the Dolls remained under lock and key in the liquor cabinet.

”When we met thats the way we looked. Thats how we met essentially— by seeing each other on the street and saying, ‘Hey do you want to start a band?’ And we went into a room and played, and thats what we sounded like. It was as simple as that. Its almost like we’re idiot savants.”

They were the ”B” side of  the Invisible Republic, what Griel Marcus would refer to as ‘‘the old weird America’‘ except the context and time was unsettling and the juxtaposition of genres had the melting pot of America boiling over the edges of the cauldron.