![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Am reprinting here my New York Dolls piece from 1997, this being the second post in a three-post series. What you're reading today is simply the three original footnotes to the part of the piece that I'd reprinted Wednesday. What's lost in this reprint is the way that, in my fanzine, I'd had the text and its footnotes snaking around each other, as if the parts of the story were in conversation with and against themselves.
At the start of each footnote below, I link its location in Wednesday's post's text, if you'd like to see where the sentence I'm commenting on lives in context. (Am linking to the Substack version because its software allows me to single out and jump from text to footnote and back. The simple HTML I use in Dreamwidth and LiveJournal doesn't let me set that up, so on those platforms you have to scan the pieces to where I put superscripts and asterisks and such. Better off following my links to the Substack.)
Thanks to the University of Georgia Press, who published my book Real Punks Don't Wear Black (and here), where I reprinted this, and are letting me reprint this now.
Footnote 1 (link)
"It'll be pretty hard to explain why this image meant so much to me."
But I do want to talk a little bit about how the band sounded, since not only did they play dress-up – you know, like little kids let loose in their big sister's wardrobe – they played music. Really, it was a lot like how they looked. It was tough – it was a hard r&b sound, like the Stones infusing soul with nasty blues riffs – but it was warm too; Johnny played thick guitar, it was almost syrup, with a noisy blues-whine and a way of careening up into the right pitch rather than hitting it head on, and he would play pretty counter melodies or his guitar would harmonize against the singing. The style was influential. The Dolls invented a sound I call "the loud pretties" meaning they'd mix the noise and the hard blues and the ugly yowls with loud beauty, so the clamor and the beauty were inseparable, all one big roil (I'm contrasting this with how, say, the Beatles or Raspberries or Cheap Trick or Sweet would put pretty vocals merely on top of raunchy instrumentals). The Clash and Nirvana played later versions of the loud pretties. Of course the Dolls were about ten times more fun. They brought back a lot of the rock 'n' roll silliness from the pre-Stones days: animal sounds, novelty tunes, shoo-wop shoo-wop oompahs. Rare for the "progressive-rock" era, especially since they didn't seem like an oldies band doing it. They sounded like little kids let loose in their big sister's record collection – but then gone off on a rampage, with the sound attached to their raving ugly beauty. Except I also have to say that they didn't quite do it: They rumbled forward, but their rock sound never quite got a roll to it, though they tried. This is what I meant way back in WMS #5 when I said that the Sex-O-Lettes sounded the way the Dolls looked, really got on record with the rolling in-your-face exuberance the Dolls were shooting for. And I was certainly implying then that disco could do it but "rock" couldn't anymore. This is why the Dolls are only 27 on my albums list, rather than number 1.
New York Dolls "Jet Boy" (on the Old Grey Whistle Test)
Footnote 2 (link)
"As if I just didn't care how I looked."
I realize that this doesn't convey very well how I actually dressed. The fact is I don't remember. Teen popularity/nonpopularity was so traumatic for me that my mind froze and I wouldn't pay attention. And that was part of my rebellion, too, not to pay attention. I liked summers because I could wear T-shirts. All T-shirts were white then. I think I wished that I could wear single-color pullovers in other months, as I'd worn when I was a little kid. I didn't like shirts with collars and buttons. But I always wore them, because that's what my mother bought for me. To buy my own shirts would have taken money that I used for records and books. It did not occur to me to tell my mother what I wanted. As it is with traumatic subjects, I wanted to turn them off, not bring them up. I remember making two fashion decisions in high school. The first was to wear my shirts tucked in, despite the cool trend that said wear them out. I tucked them in because wearing them out made me look heavier. Second, in tenth grade I let my hair grow long, a complicated decision (no matter how I looked, I'd be giving in to someone) that was simplified for me by the fact that it caused great conflict with my parents, who tried to forbid it. My dad said that he was upset that a generation of young men was looking like fairies. This was just the thing to make me resist him.
Given that my mind is blank, I've gotten my childhood friend Jay Carey to describe how I looked.
Frank Kogan: Probably it was my exquisite handsomeness that allowed me to get away with everything. I don't remember who bought the jeans. It may have been me. You'd think I'd have remembered. There were school rules against jeans when we started (also against girls wearing pants). This outraged me in principle, but I can't remember when the rule was allowed to lapse. I don't remember pulling the "undershirt" ploy until after high school, though Jay's memory may well be correct. The undershirts she's referring to are the white T-shirts I mentioned above. In high school I think I only wore – as undershirts, that is – the regular Stanley Kowalski undershirts that my mother bought me, which are as deep as V-necks and so wouldn't have been visible (they used to be called, generically, "undershirts"; Hanes and Fruit of the Loom now call them "A-shirts" or "athletic shirts" to distinguish them from white T-shirts, which are now also called "undershirts"). After high school I was only wearing dress shirts (1) when I had to work at an office, or (2) when I'd run out of clean pullovers – which unfortunately was often, since I was still generally unwilling to spend money on clothes when there were records out there, still unbought.
( Footnote 3, David was asking if you – if *I* – could make it with the monster of life )
At the start of each footnote below, I link its location in Wednesday's post's text, if you'd like to see where the sentence I'm commenting on lives in context. (Am linking to the Substack version because its software allows me to single out and jump from text to footnote and back. The simple HTML I use in Dreamwidth and LiveJournal doesn't let me set that up, so on those platforms you have to scan the pieces to where I put superscripts and asterisks and such. Better off following my links to the Substack.)
Thanks to the University of Georgia Press, who published my book Real Punks Don't Wear Black (and here), where I reprinted this, and are letting me reprint this now.
Footnote 1 (link)
"It'll be pretty hard to explain why this image meant so much to me."
But I do want to talk a little bit about how the band sounded, since not only did they play dress-up – you know, like little kids let loose in their big sister's wardrobe – they played music. Really, it was a lot like how they looked. It was tough – it was a hard r&b sound, like the Stones infusing soul with nasty blues riffs – but it was warm too; Johnny played thick guitar, it was almost syrup, with a noisy blues-whine and a way of careening up into the right pitch rather than hitting it head on, and he would play pretty counter melodies or his guitar would harmonize against the singing. The style was influential. The Dolls invented a sound I call "the loud pretties" meaning they'd mix the noise and the hard blues and the ugly yowls with loud beauty, so the clamor and the beauty were inseparable, all one big roil (I'm contrasting this with how, say, the Beatles or Raspberries or Cheap Trick or Sweet would put pretty vocals merely on top of raunchy instrumentals). The Clash and Nirvana played later versions of the loud pretties. Of course the Dolls were about ten times more fun. They brought back a lot of the rock 'n' roll silliness from the pre-Stones days: animal sounds, novelty tunes, shoo-wop shoo-wop oompahs. Rare for the "progressive-rock" era, especially since they didn't seem like an oldies band doing it. They sounded like little kids let loose in their big sister's record collection – but then gone off on a rampage, with the sound attached to their raving ugly beauty. Except I also have to say that they didn't quite do it: They rumbled forward, but their rock sound never quite got a roll to it, though they tried. This is what I meant way back in WMS #5 when I said that the Sex-O-Lettes sounded the way the Dolls looked, really got on record with the rolling in-your-face exuberance the Dolls were shooting for. And I was certainly implying then that disco could do it but "rock" couldn't anymore. This is why the Dolls are only 27 on my albums list, rather than number 1.
New York Dolls "Jet Boy" (on the Old Grey Whistle Test)
Footnote 2 (link)
"As if I just didn't care how I looked."
I realize that this doesn't convey very well how I actually dressed. The fact is I don't remember. Teen popularity/nonpopularity was so traumatic for me that my mind froze and I wouldn't pay attention. And that was part of my rebellion, too, not to pay attention. I liked summers because I could wear T-shirts. All T-shirts were white then. I think I wished that I could wear single-color pullovers in other months, as I'd worn when I was a little kid. I didn't like shirts with collars and buttons. But I always wore them, because that's what my mother bought for me. To buy my own shirts would have taken money that I used for records and books. It did not occur to me to tell my mother what I wanted. As it is with traumatic subjects, I wanted to turn them off, not bring them up. I remember making two fashion decisions in high school. The first was to wear my shirts tucked in, despite the cool trend that said wear them out. I tucked them in because wearing them out made me look heavier. Second, in tenth grade I let my hair grow long, a complicated decision (no matter how I looked, I'd be giving in to someone) that was simplified for me by the fact that it caused great conflict with my parents, who tried to forbid it. My dad said that he was upset that a generation of young men was looking like fairies. This was just the thing to make me resist him.
Given that my mind is blank, I've gotten my childhood friend Jay Carey to describe how I looked.
Jacqueline Carey: You dressed in high school as if your clothes were chosen by someone else – presumably your mother. You wore various colored slacks and dress shirts, patterned but based on the color white. They were generally opened at the collar to reveal an undershirt underneath. This is a look I don't really remember on anyone else except Sandy [her husband]. Eventually (and reluctantly) I took over the job of buying his clothes from his mother, and I bought undershirts with V-necks, thus radically revamping him.
One difference between the two of you is that he often wore blue jeans with dress shirts, and you almost never did. I remember my amazement when you showed up in (straight-legged) jeans one day in high school. In fact, I'm still curious: Who bought them?
Yours was probably a pretty smart approach to fashion; it somehow took you completely out of judging range. I remember Susan Long (much later) saying, "How does he get away with it? He wears polyester, he's not even ironic about it, but he gets away with it."
Frank Kogan: Probably it was my exquisite handsomeness that allowed me to get away with everything. I don't remember who bought the jeans. It may have been me. You'd think I'd have remembered. There were school rules against jeans when we started (also against girls wearing pants). This outraged me in principle, but I can't remember when the rule was allowed to lapse. I don't remember pulling the "undershirt" ploy until after high school, though Jay's memory may well be correct. The undershirts she's referring to are the white T-shirts I mentioned above. In high school I think I only wore – as undershirts, that is – the regular Stanley Kowalski undershirts that my mother bought me, which are as deep as V-necks and so wouldn't have been visible (they used to be called, generically, "undershirts"; Hanes and Fruit of the Loom now call them "A-shirts" or "athletic shirts" to distinguish them from white T-shirts, which are now also called "undershirts"). After high school I was only wearing dress shirts (1) when I had to work at an office, or (2) when I'd run out of clean pullovers – which unfortunately was often, since I was still generally unwilling to spend money on clothes when there were records out there, still unbought.
( Footnote 3, David was asking if you – if *I* – could make it with the monster of life )
CROSSPOST: HTTPS://KOGANBOT.LIVEJOURNAL.COM/393737.HTML
CROSSPOST: https://koganbot.substack.com/p/new-york-dolls-part-two-youre-so
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
