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Released by: MVD
Released on: 12/6/2005
Director: Bob Gruen, Nadya Beck
Cast: David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, Sylvain Sylvain, Arthur Kane, Billy Murcia
Year: 2005
Purchase From Amazom
The Movie:
Most people know of Bob Gruen because of his extensive work as a rock and roll photographer but Gruen was also one of the first people in the world to clue into the fact that music could also be captured on a then burgeoning format known as video! Yep, Gruen got himself a first generation video camera and set out to see what he could do with it, and what he did with it is actually pretty impressive - he shot over forty hours of footage of the late, great New York Dolls both on and off stage over a period of two years.
What is (presumably) the best of this footage has recently been edited together and turned into this brand spankin' new documentary, All Dolled Up, and it proves to be a reason for much rejoicing for New York Dolls fans indeed. While some of this material has been making the rounds in bootleg circles for years, here it's presented taken from the original source tapes and with a lot of clips and segments that didn't show up on those grey markey goodies.
Presented as a series of instances rather than a coheisvely narrated or structured documentary, All Dolled Up is a fantastic testament and tribute to a band that was way ahead of its time. Consisting of the band's best known line up, vocalist David Johansen, the infamous Johnny Thunders on guitar, Sylvain Sylvain also on guitar, bass player Arthur Kane, and Billy Murcia on drums, we're treated to live performances, interviews, and casual candid and more personal moments from the bands short history together.
There's a wealth of concert footage in here, which will be the highlight for most fans, and it is excellent material, but what makes this stuff as interesting as it is are the pieces in between the live performances, the clips where we get to know the people behind the names and faces we see up there on the stage. One thing that is very obvious while all of this is playing out is just how young these guys were when they started to take off. Thunder here, compared to later era footage shot after and/or during years of hard drug abuse, looks positively radient compared to his later, zombie like appearance as seen in releases like Johnny Thunders - Live In Cold Blood, where he can't even be bothered to stand up for the entire show.
Tender moments like Johnny saying goodbye to his family members at the airport before heading out on the road with the band give us some very human moments to ponder while aggressive and enthusiastic renditions of popular Dolls songs such as Jet Boy and Personality Crisis ground things firmly in rockumentary territory. The bookends to the feature are also a nice touch, which feature the band all dressed up as 20s era mobsters. We see the band do a few TV appearances, hang out at bars, go shopping, and encounter groupies and fans and while some context explaining there where and the when of it all might have made things more coherent, the content more or less speaks for itself most of the time. We see them pose for photographers, rehearse and do soundchecks, getting to and from performances and more. The end result is some great 'day in the life of' moments that compliment the rock and roll footage nicely.
Video/Audio/Extras:
For material shot on an early generation portable video camera over thirty years ago, this footage doesn't look half bad. Yeah, there's some blurring and some softness to the image and the black and white picture doesn't have reference quality contrast but everything is perfectly watchable on this DVD. In terms of the transfer itself, there are only the slightest instances of mpeg comrpession evident here in some of the darker spots, other than that, things are alright. You can't go in expecting this stuff to look like a million bucks, but for what it is, MVDs DVD does a fine job with the visual presentation of the material.
The entire presentation has been re-mastered in an all-new Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix though for the most part it's simply the original mono mix spread out a little bit. There's hiss. There's distortion. There's background noise and sometimes the dialgoue is slightly muffled as is the music, but it is cleaner sounding than the bits and pieces of this material that have shown up in bootleg circles over the years.
Extras? First up are twelve songs performed live by the Dolls from a few different shows played in San Francisco and in Los Angeles in 1973. Up next are the commentary tracks, one from Sylvain Sylvain and a second from David Johansen and a third one from Bob Gruen himself. An interview with Bob Gruen is also found here, conducted by the one and only Handsome Dick Manitoba from The Dictators. Rounding out the extras on the disc is a massive still gallery of over one hundred pictures that Gruen took while following the band, that are presented here with commentary from the photographer himself. Inside the keepcase is a handsome sixteen page booklet of liner notes from Gruen and a bunch of color photographs, as well as disc and documentary credits.
The Final Word:
While the lack of context might make some of this material impenetrable to those not already into the music and history of the band, The New York Dolls - All Dolled Up contains so much great footage of the band from their prime that the already initiated sincerely need to run out and buy this DVD as soon as they can. Add to that some absolutely fantastic extra features and you've got one of the best seventies rock releases to come out in quite some time. An absolutely essentialy purchase!