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Sunday, June 20, 2021

New York Dolls - Complete Early Studio Demos 1972-73



Size: 397 MB
Bitrate: 320
mp3
Ripped by: ChrisGoesRock
Artwork Included

The New York Dolls were an American rock band formed in New York City in 1971. Along with the Velvet Underground and the Stooges, they were one of the first bands of the early punk rock scenes. Although the band never achieved much commercial success and their original line-up fell apart quickly, the band's first two albums—New York Dolls (1973) and Too Much Too Soon (1974)—became among the most popular cult records in rock. The line-up at this time comprised vocalist David Johansen, guitarist Johnny Thunders, bassist Arthur Kane, guitarist and pianist Sylvain Sylvain and drummer Jerry Nolan; the latter two had replaced Rick Rivets and Billy Murcia, respectively, in 1972. 


On stage, they donned an androgynous wardrobe, wearing high heels, eccentric hats, satin, makeup, spandex, and dresses. Nolan described the group in 1974 as "the Dead End Kids of today". After Thunders, Nolan and Kane all left in spring 1975, Johansen and Sylvain continued the band with other musicians until the end of 1976.

According to the Encyclopedia of Popular Music (1995), the New York Dolls predated the punk and glam metal movements and were "one of the most influential rock bands of the last 20 years". They influenced rock groups such as the Sex Pistols, Kiss, the Ramones, Guns N' Roses, the Damned, and the Smiths, whose frontman Morrissey organized a reunion show for the New York Dolls' surviving members in 2004. 

After reuniting, they recorded and released three more albums—One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This (2006), Cause I Sez So (2009) and Dancing Backward in High Heels (2011). Following a 2011 British tour with Alice Cooper, the band once again disbanded.

Sylvain Sylvain and Billy Murcia, who went to junior high school and high school together, started playing in a band called "the Pox" in 1967. After the frontman quit, Murcia and Sylvain started a clothing business called Truth and Soul and Sylvain took a job at A Different Drummer, a men's boutique that was across the street from the New York Doll Hospital, a doll repair shop. Sylvain said that the shop inspired the name for their future band. In 1970 they formed a band again and recruited Johnny Thunders to join on bass, though Sylvain ended up teaching him to play guitar. They called themselves the Dolls. When Sylvain left the band to spend a few months in London, Thunders and Murcia went their separate ways.

Thunders was eventually recruited by Kane and Rick Rivets, who had been playing together in the Bronx. At Thunders' suggestion, Murcia replaced the original drummer. Thunders played lead guitar and sang for the band Actress. An October 1971 rehearsal tape recorded by Rivets was released as Dawn of the Dolls. When Thunders decided that he no longer wanted to be the front man, David Johansen joined the band. Initially, the group was composed of singer David Johansen, guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets (who was replaced by Sylvain Sylvain after a few months), bass guitarist Arthur "Killer" Kane and drummer Billy Murcia.

The original lineup's first performance was on Christmas Eve 1971 at a homeless shelter, the Endicott Hotel. After getting a manager and attracting some music industry interest, the New York Dolls got a break when Rod Stewart invited them to open for him at a London concert.

In the band's early days, the New York Dolls performed at the Mercer Art Center, where Ruby and the Rednecks opened for and were influenced by them.

Billy Murcia's death
While on a brief tour of England in 1972, Murcia was invited to a party, where he passed out from an accidental overdose. He was put in a bathtub and force-fed coffee in an attempt to revive him. Instead, it resulted in asphyxiation. He was found dead on the morning of November 6, 1972, at the age of 21.

Once back in New York, the Dolls auditioned drummers, including Marc Bell (who was to go on to play with Richard Hell, and with the Ramones under the stage name "Marky Ramone"), Peter Criscuola (better known as Peter Criss, the original and former drummer of Kiss), and Jerry Nolan, a friend of the band. They selected Nolan, and after US Mercury Records' A&R man Paul Nelson signed them, they began sessions for their debut album. In 1972, the band took on Marty Thau as manager.

New York Dolls was produced by singer-songwriter, musician and solo artist Todd Rundgren. In an interview in Creem magazine, Rundgren says he barely touched the recording; everybody was debating how to do the mix. Sales were sluggish, especially in the middle US, and a Stereo Review magazine reviewer in 1973 compared the Dolls' guitar playing to the sound of lawnmowers. America's mass rock audience's reaction to the Dolls was mixed. In a Creem magazine poll, they were elected both best and worst new group of 1973. The Dolls also toured Europe, and, while appearing on UK television, host Bob Harris of the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test derided the group as "mock rock," comparing them unfavorably to the Rolling Stones.

For their next album, Too Much Too Soon, the quintet hired producer George "Shadow" Morton, whose productions for the Shangri-Las and other girl-groups in the mid-1960s had been among the band's favorites. Mercury dropped the Dolls on 7 October 1975, their contract with Mercury having expired on 8 August 1975 - five months after Thunders' and Nolan's departures from the band.

By 1975, the Dolls were playing smaller venues than they had been previously. Drug and alcohol abuse by Thunders, Nolan, and Kane, as well as artistic differences added to the tensions among members. In late February or early March, Malcolm McLaren became their informal manager. 


He got the band red leather outfits to wear on stage and a communist flag as backdrop. The Dolls did a five-concert tour of New York's five boroughs, supported by Television and Pure Hell. The Little Hippodrome (Manhattan) show was recorded and released by Fan Club records in 1982 as Red Patent Leather. It was originally a bootleg album that was later remixed by Sylvain, with former manager Marty Thau credited as executive producer. Due to Kane being unable to play that night, roadie Peter Jordan played bass, though he was credited as having played "second bass". Jordan filled in for Kane when he was too inebriated to play.

In March and April, McLaren took the band on a tour of South Carolina and Florida. Jordan replaced Kane for most of those shows. Thunders and Nolan left after an argument. Blackie Lawless, who later found W.A.S.P., replaced Thunders for the remainder of the tour after which the band broke up.

The band reformed in July for an August tour in Japan with Jeff Beck and Felix Pappalardi. Johansen, Sylvain and Jordan were joined by former Elephant's Memory keyboardist Chris Robison and drummer Tony Machine. One of the shows was documented on the album Tokyo Dolls Live (Fan Club/New Rose). The material is similar to that on Red Patent Leather, but notable for a radically re-arranged "Frankenstein" and a cover of Big Joe Turner's "Flip Flop Fly." The album is undated and has no production credit, but was issued circa 1986.


After their return to New York, the Dolls resumed playing shows in the US and Canada. Their show at the Beacon Theater, on New Year's Eve, 1975 met with great critical acclaim. After a drunken argument with Sylvain, Robison was fired and replaced by pianist/keyboardist Bobbie Blaine. The group toured throughout 1976, performing a set including some songs with lyrics by David Johansen that would later appear on David Johansen's solo albums including "Funky But Chic", "Frenchette" and "Wreckless Crazy.” The group played its last show December 30, 1976 at Max's Kansas City; on the same bill as Blondie.

Shortly after returning from Florida, Thunders and Nolan formed The Heartbreakers with bassist Richard Hell, who had left Television the same week that they quit the Dolls. Thunders later pursued a solo career. He died in New Orleans in 1991, allegedly of an overdose of both heroin and methadone. It also came to light that he suffered from t-cell leukemia. Nolan died in 1992 following a stroke, brought about by bacterial meningitis. In 1976, Kane and Blackie Lawless formed the Killer Kane Band in Los Angeles. Immediately after the New York Dolls' second breakup, Johansen began a solo career. By the late 1980s, he achieved moderate success under the pseudonym, Buster Poindexter. Sylvain formed The Criminals, a popular band at CBGB.

A posthumous New York Dolls album, Lipstick Killers, made up of early demo tapes of the original Dolls (with Billy Murcia on drums), was released in a cassette-only edition on ROIR Records in 1981, and subsequently re-released on CD, and then on vinyl in early 2006. All the tracks from this title – sometimes referred to as The Mercer Street Sessions (though actually recorded at Blue Rock Studio, New York) – are included on the CD Private World, along with other tracks recorded elsewhere, including a previously unreleased Dolls original, "Endless Party." Three more unreleased studio tracks, including another previously unreleased Dolls original, "Lone Star Queen," are included on the Rock 'n' Roll album. The other two are covers: the "Courageous Cat" theme, from the original Courageous Cat cartoon series; and a second attempt at "Don't Mess With Cupid," a song written by Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd for Otis Redding, and first recorded independently for what was later to become the Mercer Street/Blue Rock Sessions.

Sylvain formed his own band, The Criminals, then cut a solo album for RCA, while also working with Johansen. He later became a taxicab driver in New York.

Johansen, meanwhile, formed the David Johansen Group, and released an eponymous LP in 1978, recorded at the Bottom Line in NYC’s Greenwich Village,featuring Sylvain Mizrahi and Johnny Thunders as guest musicians.

In May, 1978, he also released “David Johansen,” on Blue Sky Records, a label created by Steve Paul, formerly of The Scene. Johansen continued to tour with his solo project and released four more albums, In Style, 1979; Here Comes the Night, 1981; Live it Up, 1982; and Sweet Revenge, 1984.

During the later 1980’s, Johansen, ever-evolving, decided to try to liberate himself from the expectations of his New York Dolls perceived persona, and, on a whim, created the persona Buster Poindexter.

The success of this act led him to be invited to appear in multiple films: “Scrooged,”  “Freejack, “Let it Ride”  among others.

He also formed a band called The Harry Smiths David Johansen and the Harry Smithsnamed after the eccentric ethnomusicologist, performing jump blues, Delta blues, and some original songs.

During this period, in the early 1990s, Sylvain moved to Los Angeles and recorded one album Sleep Baby Doll, on Fishhead Records. His band, for that record, consisted of Brian Keats on drums, Dave Vanian's Phantom Chords, Speediejohn Carlucci (who had played with the Fuzztones), and Olivier Le Baron on lead guitar. Guest appearances by Frank Infante of Blondie and Derwood Andrews of Generation X were also included on the record. It has been re-released as New York A Go Go,.

According to AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the New York Dolls developed an original style of hard rock that presaged both punk rock and heavy metal music, and drew on elements such as the "dirty rock & roll" of the Rolling Stones, the "anarchic noise" of the Stooges, the glam rock of David Bowie and T. Rex, and girl group pop music. Erlewine credited the band for creating punk rock "before there was a term for it." Ken Tucker, who referred to them as a proto-punk band, wrote that they were strongly influenced by the "New York sensibility" of Lou Reed: "The mean wisecracks and impassioned cynicism that informed the Dolls' songs represented an attitude that Reed's work with the Velvet Underground embodied, as did the Dolls' distinct lack of musicianship."

When they began performing, four of the band's five members wore Spandex and platform boots, while Johansen—the band's lyricist and "conceptmaster"— often preferred high heels and a dress occasionally. Glam rock "look of androgyny—leather and knee-length boots, chest hair, and bleach". According to James McNair of The Independent, "when they began pedalling [sic] their trashy glam-punk around lower Manhattan in 1971, they were more burlesque act than band; a bunch of lipsticked, gutter chic-endorsing cross-dressers". Music journalist Nick Kent argued that the New York Dolls were "quintessential glam rockers" because of their flamboyant fashion, while their technical shortcomings as musicians and Johnny Thunders' "trouble-prone presence" gave them a punk-rock reputation.

By contrast, Robert Christgau preferred for them to not be categorized as a glam rock band, but instead as "the best hard-rock band since the Rolling Stones". Robert Hilburn, writing for the Los Angeles Times, said that the band exhibited a strong influence from the Rolling Stones, but had distinguished themselves by Too Much Too Soon (1974) as "a much more independent, original force" because of their "definite touch of the humor and carefreeness of early (ie. mid-1950s) rock". Simon Reynolds felt that, by their 2009 album Cause I Sez So, the band exhibited the sound "not of the sloppy, rambunctious Dolls of punk mythology but of a tight, lean hard-rock band."

Disc 1
Blue Rock Studio, NYC June 1972
01. Bad Girl  03:46
02. Looking For A Kiss  03:43
03. Don't Start Me Talking (Written-By – Williamson)  03:42
04. Don't Mess With Cupid (Written-By – Parker, Floyd, Cropper)  03:07
05. Human Being  06:16
06. Personality Crisis 4:13
07. Pills (Written-By – McDaniel) 03:15
08. Jet Boy  05:14
09. Frankenstein   07:03

Escape Studios, England October 1972
10. Personality Crisis 04:04
11. Looking For A Kiss  03:27
12. Bad Girl  03:27
13. Subway Train  04:44

Planet Studios, NYC, March 1973
14. Seven Day Weekend (Written-By – Pomus, Shuman)  03:23
15. Frankenstein  05:43
16. Mystery Girls  02:57
17. (There's Gonna Be A) Showdown (Written-By – Huff, Gamble)  01:34
18. Back In The USA (Written-By – Berry)  02:15

Disc 2
Planet Studios, NYC, March 1973 Contd.
01. Endless Party  06:17
02. Jet Boy  04:46
03. It's Too Late (False Start)  01:27
04. It's Too Late (Full Version)  03:29
05. Bad Detective (Written-By – Lewis)  03:29
06. Lonely Planet Boy  04:07
07. Subway Train  05:00
08. Private World (Written-By – Kane)  03:48
09. Trash   03:10
10. Human Being  05:56
11. Don't Start Me Talking (Written-By – Williamson)  03:20
12. Hoochie Coochie Man (Written-By – Dixon)  04:33
13. (Give Him A) Great Big Kiss (Written-By – Morton)  03:35
14. Vietnamese Baby  03:36
15. Babylon  03:27
16. Bad Girl  03:16
17. Pills (UWritten-By – McDanie)  03:21
18. Personality Crisis  03:58

Part 1: York Dolls
Part 2: York Dolls
Part 3: York Dolls
or
Part 1: York Dolls
Part 2: York Dolls
Part 3: York Dolls
or
Part 1: York Dolls
Part 2: York Dolls
Part 3: York Dolls

ReUp: Buster Brown - The New King of The Blues (Outstanding Blues Album US 1961)


Size: 115 MB
Bitrate: 256
mp3
Ripped by: ChrisGoesRock
Artwork Included
Source: Japan 24-Bit Remaster

Buster Brown (August 15, 1911 – January 31, 1976) was an American blues and R&B singer best known for his hit, "Fannie Mae".


Brown was born in Cordele, Georgia. In the 1930s and 1940s he played harmonica at local clubs and made a few non-commercial recordings. These included "I'm Gonna Make You Happy" (1943), which was recorded when he played at the folk festival at Fort Valley (GA) State Teachers College, and was recorded by the Library of Congress' Folk Music Archive.

Brown moved to New York in 1956, where he was discovered by Fire Records owner Bobby Robinson. In 1959, at almost fifty years of age, Brown recorded the rustic blues, "
Fannie Mae", which featured Brown's harmonica playing and whoops, which went to # 38 in the U.S. Top 40, and to #1 on the R&B chart in April 1960. His remake of Louis Jordan's "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" reached # 81 on the pop charts later in 1960, but did not make the R&B chart. "Sugar Babe" was his only other hit, in 1962, reaching # 19 on the R&B chart and # 99 on the pop chart.

In later years he recorded for Checker Records and for numerous small record labels. He also co-wrote the song "Doctor Brown" with J. T. Brown, which was later covered by Fleetwood Mac on their 1968 album, Mr. Wonderful.

Brown died in New York in 1976, at the age of 64. It is often erroneously cited that Brown's real name was "Wayman Glasco" - however, that was Brown's manager who, after his death, bought all of Brown's publishing - thus unintentionally creating the confusion. Though likely a nickname, or alias, Buster Brown may have been his birth name.

If blues musicians took up residency in Vegas during the late '50s, it might come out sounding like this. Brown's gleeful run through myriad blues related styles (gospel, R&B, doo wop, New Orleans, early rock & roll) casts a vaudevillian sheen over many of the 16 tracks here, placing the performance squarely in the realm of Louis Jordan's own showy style. The fact Brown had a very brief hour in the sun with his unexpected 1959 hit "Fannie Mae" further indicates his pop approach to blues probably was better suited to the lounges of the chitlin circuit than the main venues of blues and rock & roll. 

His almost perfunctory versions of war horses like "St. Louis Blues" and "Blueberry Hill" reveal the downside the situation. But he does have his moments, particularly when he plies a hard, Chicago blues groove à la Little Walter on cuts like "Don't Dog Your Woman"; his harmonica sound borrows from both Walter and Sonny Terry while his singing is punctuated with timely whoops taken straight from Terry's animated vocal style. Even with more than just a few bright moments here, the good amount of watered down material ultimately makes this Brown collection a secondary choice next to prime titles by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Wynonie Harris, and even Big Jay McNeely.

01. Fannie Mae
02. John Henry
03. The Madison Shuffle
04. St. Louis Blues
05. When Things Go Wrong (It Hurts Me Too)
06. Lost in a Dream [False Start]
07. Lost in a Dream
08. Gonna Love My Baby
09. I Got the Blues When It Rains
10. Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?
11. Don't Dog Your Woman
12. Blueberry Hill
13. Sincerely
14. I'm Goin', But I'll Be Back

Bonus Tracks
15. Good News
16. Raise a Ruckus Tonight
17. Doctor Brown
18. Sugar Babe
19. No More
20. Fannie Mae [Alternate Take]
21. Raise a Ruckus Tonight [Alternate Version]

Link 1: Buster
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Link 2: Buster
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Link 3: Buster

Fannie May UK Single 1965

Fannie May UK Single 1965

John Lennon - Milk And Honey Sessions (3CD)



Size: 518 MB
Bitrate: 320
mp3
Found in OuterSpace
Artwork Included

Recorded At The Hit Factory & Record Plant New York City, August – October 1980

Disc 01
I'm Stepping Out
01. Vocal Booth Rehearsal #1
02. Vocal Booth Rehearsal #2
03. Vocal Booth Rehearsal #3
04. Vocal Booth Rehearsal #4
05. Vocal Booth Rehearsal #5
06. Studio Rehearsal #6
07. Take 1
08. Take 2
09. Vocal Booth #1
10. Vocal Booth #2
11. Vocal Booth #3
12. Vocal Booth talk
13. Vocal Booth #4
14. Alternate Take #1
15. Alternate Take #2
16. Alternate Take #3

Disc 02
01. Alternate Take #4
02. Rough Mix Unedited
03. Rough Mix

I Don't Wanna Face It
04. Alternate Take #1
05. Alternate Take #2
06. Alternate Take #3
07. Rough Mix #1
08. Rough Mix #2
09. Rough Mix #3

Don't Be Scared
10. Rough Mix

Nobody Told Me
11. Take 1
12. Take 1 Rough Mix
13. Take 2
14. Rough Mix #1
15. Rough Mix #2

(Forgive Me) My Little Flower Princess
16. Rehearsal #1
17. Vocal Booth #1
18. Vocal Booth #2
19. Alternate Take #1
20. Alternate Take #2

Disc 03
Borrowed Time
01. Rehearsal
02. Over Dub #1
03. Over Dub #2
04. Take 1
05. Take 2
06. Take 2 Rough Mix #1
07. Take 2 Rough Mix #2
08. Take 2 Rough Mix #3
09. Take 3 Rough Mix
10. Studio Talk
11. Gone From This Place

Grow Old With Me
12. Take 1
13. Take 2

No One Can See Me Like You Do
14. Rehearsal

Walking on Thin Ice
15. Vocal Booth
16. Rough Mix #1
17. Rough Mix #2
18. Rough Mix #3

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or
Part 2: Honey Sessions 
Part 3: Honey Sessions