Mr. Johansen was prolific in multiple genres, from blues to calypso, and achieved his greatest commercial success in the late 1980s and early ’90s with his pompadoured lounge-lizard alter ego, Buster Poindexter. But his 1970s heyday with the New York Dolls, a band of lipstick-smeared men in love with trashy riffs and tough women, had the most cultural impact, inspiring numerous punk, heavy metal and alternative musicians.Thursday I was screaming that we all just hafta accept the stone-cold fact that as great as the Dolls’ first album was everything else they did kinda "who cares", but I also want to be clear that this only highlights how amazing that album is, not only the songs themselves but the influence it had on a lot of the music that I've spent my life loving and will continue to love. And while I'm handing out flowers here, I have DT & the Shakes' doing the Dolls' Personality Crisis to thank for unlocking a lot of that very music. (I tried to find video of them playing it but bupkiss.)
The first Dolls album is up there with the Pistols one in the “band only ever needed to drop one album to change the world” genre.
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