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DVD
Publisher: Mvd Visual
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Live, NTSC
Actors: Thunders Kane & Nolan
On January 4th, 1987, core New York Dolls members Johnny Thunders, Arthur "Killer" Kane, and Jerry Nolan performed an informal reunion at the Roxy in LA. Sadly, of the three, only Arthur Kane lived long enough to briefly enjoy the Dolls formal reunion.
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| One of the best live performances in modern music. |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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It's shot horribly, it's pretty much a bootleg, but hell that seems a hell of a lot more Johnny Thunder's than a smooth-shot, HD performance right? Johnny Thunder's seems sober here, which is a rarity, and he's in top shape. He's not as trashy as usual, but the performance is packed with plenty of energy and feeling.
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| IF YOU WERE WONDERING WHAT ALL THE FUSS WAS ABOUT.... |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Finally some footage of Johnny that shows why he was and remains a true guitar legend. Johnny's drug problems have been well documented and unfortunately much of the video that's available out there doesn't really show how he could play when he was really on. I'm sure there are many who have seen some of these clips and wonder "why all the fuss about this guy?...doesn't really seem like he can play all that well." Finally, with this release, comes a show captured on film of Johnny Thunders is truly great form. Here you can really see the genius, soul, the raw power of his guitar playing. I know that some others have commented on the low production value, one camera, etc. Doesn't matter - you can see what you need to see, and that's Johnny Thunders playing guitar like no other ever could! Highly recommended.
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| It's About All You'll Get |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Yes, the video looks like a home movie, yes the sound could be better BUT if you're a Johnny Thunders fan like I am, it's a great way to see him in action. He's in good voice, his guitar sounds great and he gives his all in some of his best songs. On the negative side, you can't see Kane and the audience acts like it's asleep. Buy it anyway. Johnny's not coming back!!!
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| Sounds great |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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The sound is better than on a lot of Thunders albums. This is a great performance from all 3, Thunders is notable for a lucid and very affecting performance. Yes, the visual production is primitive, you can hardly see Jerry and Arthur, but, on the basis of the quality of the performance alone, as well as its uniqueness, I decided halfway through it was a keeper (having rented it first) and I scarcely buy DVDs. I have read it was a bootleg that the estates of Thunders and Kane authorized release of.
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| Toeing, And Hoovering, The Line(s) |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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"You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory" finds Johnny Thunders reuniting for a one-off gig at the Roxy in Los Angeles with two other dead guys (Jerry Nolan and Arthur Kane, natch!) and ex-London Cowboy Barry Jones sitting in for a surprisingly AWOL Walter Lure about 12 years after the New York Dolls' star darkened forever in Florida of all places.
All three ex-Dolls were face down in their own dusty legend by this point, starting to unravel or maybe just completing the process. Stopped. Finished. Lost it. Thunders had degenerated into a potty-mouthed malcontent, in part to reinforce his adoring public's expectations of drug-induced dysfunction while they craned nervously for a view of the exits. Here, though, he's downright cordial.
If, as Syl Sylvain opines in Nina Antonia's Thunders bio, there's nobody more charismatic than someone who looks as if they're about to drop dead, these guys are positively messianic, stubbornly continuing their grubby, ramshackle offensive on a world gone day-glo, acid washed, and perfumed new wave. What hadn't yet killed them appears to have made them stronger.
Thunders musters enough weapons-grade guitar noise to knock a maggot off a garbage truck, Kane and Nolan manage to punch in and out on time despite rumors of extended hallucinatory vacations, and while Jones may not be the on-stage foil that is Waldo, his guitar sounds like it's strung with barbed wire, a barroom bust-up to Thunders' mangled trainwreck.
It's doubtful that "Memory" was ever intended for mass consumption, shot with a primitive pre-MTV technique and one camera up above and to stage left, grainy and poorly lit, but the performance itself is a spleen venter which drags the lake of Thunders, Kane, and Nolan's past with only a short acoustic respite from Thunders, mucking about like some insane conductor on the verge of some great discovery, thrown in for texture.
Like "All Dolled Up," this disc points to humanity's morbid curiosity with the fallen and by this time, the New York Dolls' vaults must be getting to be a pretty lonely place. Of course the master tapes of that Syl Sylvain & The Teardrops album are collecting dust somewhere, begging for digital upgrade and giving purpose to my life, if I uh, had one that is.
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