Gig review: New York Dolls

Published on Friday 11 December 2009 20:29

NEW YORK DOLLS **** PICTURE HOUSE, EDINBURGH

THERE aren't many rock singers who look like they're having as much fun on stage as the New York Dolls' David Johansen, a man who appears to be a real-life Saturday Night Live caricature of Mick Jagger.

Alongside him, guitarist and only other surviving member from the early days, Sylvain Sylvain is possibly the campest man to have played such a fiery set. This was a nostalgia show, a blast from the past by a band firmly entrenched in rock history. Yet, for a band who have had such tragic history there was a sincere and wonderful lack of affectation here.

Instead, there were just strings of classic songs, from Dance Like a Monkey to a rough-edged selection of bluesy Bo Diddley covers near the end. Pills, of course, the band have made their own, but this merged into Hey Bo Diddley and then their own Trash, which was finished off by a burst of Mickey & Sylvia's Love is Strange – also a Diddley composition.

While the earlier parts of the set had been more measured, by now they were racing and boisterous versions of Jet Lad and Personality Crisis were stretched out with quite epic finales from this still-credible last gang in town.