New York Dolls: Lookin' Fine on Television

The New York Dolls were what kids today might call a “hot mess.” Perhaps fittingly, so is this collection of live-performance clips. Spliced together with no source credits and peppered with bits of vintage interview footage filmed by Bob Gruen and Nadya Beck, this is nevertheless an exhilarating look at early-1970s music culture. While the visuals are black-and-white and often quite grainy, the sound is fine, and the performances are edited so smoothly it takes a minute to register the venue and costume changes within a single song. Singer David Johansen is a cut-up as an interviewee, and he's nicely backed by the rest of the band: guitarists Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain, bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane, and drummer Billy Murcia. The Dolls never had any major hits, but fans will appreciate the versions of “Personality Crisis,” “Jet Boy,” and “Lookin for a Kiss” presented here, as well as footage of a Halloween show the group played at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where their proto-glam stylings are completely upstaged by the audience's own costumes. A brief conversation between Johansen, Thunders, and music journalist Lisa Robinson conducted in 1976 is included here as an extra (by then Thunders had already moved on to his own band, The Heartbreakers). Presented in 5.1 surround sound, this is recommended for larger music collections. (H. Seggel)