RIP David Johansen

First Dolls album is an all time fave

[nypost.com]

Heartbreaking news. RIP.

Not a surprise, given his current circumstances. Alas. May he get the band back together in the great beyond.

Gutted. One of the great pleasures of living in NYC was seeing him all over the place. Even well after the Dolls played their last show in 2011, he would perform onstage in different guises: the Lou Reed tributes, playing with the Harry Smiths at the Brooklyn Folk Festival, etc. There was also the Scorsese film, which he discussed at the New York Film Festival premiere, but I'd also see him taking in shows himself. The last time I saw him was after a Jonathan Richman show at The Bell House in Brooklyn, almost a year ago to the day. Knowing the roles he and Richman played in reshaping rock music and the doors they opened for so many people, it was mind-blowing to see just the two of them and Johansen's wife hanging out together long after everyone else had gone home. They were contemporaries, but I had no idea they socialized together, much less kept in touch after all these years. I'm really going to miss seeing him around.

FWIW, besides the first two New York Dolls and his self-titled debut, I thought his other great records were usually live recordings and more esoteric releases that were easy to overlook. Specifically:

The March 1973 demos recorded by the New York Dolls at Planet Studios, NYC (best heard on the CD A Hard Night's Day, mastered by Vic Anesini from the original master tapes). Every song on the debut and most from the second are heard here in arguably superior form.

The New York Dolls' Live In Concert (Paris 1974) (released under various titles with different artwork) recorded at Radio Luxembourg. (Worth tracking down on YouTube - their Midnight Special appearance from October 1973. There's also an amateur video of their Waldorf Astoria show from Halloween 1973, but the sound quality is abysmal - still worth seeing for those of us who caught up with the Dolls way too late.)

The David Johansen Group Live recorded July 21, 1978 at the New York's The Bottom Line - only half of it was originally released as a promo LP, but the entire show was finally released in its entirety on CD in 1993

Live It Up, which I think did all right commercially speaking. David Letterman's social media accounts just posted a clip of him promoting it on his show back in the day.

The David Johanson Group Live - Do you mean the picture disc?
I love that thing.

If that's the promo LP, yes, but I have the CD, which is the entire concert - more info on Wikipedia:

[en.wikipedia.org]

[www.discogs.com]



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2025 10:56PM by Aitch.

Yep, per that Discogs listing, that's a bootleg pressing of the original promo LP.

I forgot how tough it was to find the New York Dolls and DJ's solo records on CD. This was right before the Dolls reunion (or at least before the second incarnation's debut), and IIRC both of the original Mercury albums were once again OOP and the first solo album was impossible to find. You could resort to Napster, but to me Napster was the aural equivalent of microfiche - good to uncover a record of something buried in the past, but it was always going to be a far-from-ideal copy. Fortunately DJ's solo recorded were eventually reissued on CD with good sound quality, which is how I eventually bought those, but I still have the old Dolls CD's that I spent quite a long time tracking down. Probably would've been much quicker if I was able to splurge, but I was a poor student who couldn't spend that much on a CD.