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It was 35 years ago this week that a bunch of Gotham mongrels donned lipstick and platform heels and shocked the rock world with their protopunk glam pop. The NME's Nick Kent was there to hail the New York Dolls the first time around. -- Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

The New York Dolls are trash, they play rock 'n' roll like sluts and they've just released a record that can proudly stand beside Iggy and The Stooges' stupendous Raw Power as the only album so far to fully define just exactly where 1970's rock should be coming from.

An awful lot of people aren't going to like The New York Dolls, and they'll bring up any number of aesthetic defense mechanisms to substantiate their own viewpoint. Sure, the music is boisterous, defiantly unprofessional and tasteless, aggressive in a precious sort of way – but if those same folks go on to claim that they hate the Dolls but still love rock n' roll, I'll be more than inclined to throw up all over them. You can bet I'm hot-to-trot: this is exactly the brand of music I've been crying out to hear amidst the junk-pile of flatulent technique and lifeless professionalism that has hung like an albatross around the neck of high-energy rock. Who needs all that Chevy-to-the-levee nonsense? For me, the Dolls' appearance is as exciting as seeing a beat-up purple Chevy flashing through Death Valley.

That said, one should state that the New York Dolls are barely competent. They lack that sense of dynamics which made the MC5's Back in the U.S.A. such a masterpiece; but possess that pure teen consciousness that the latter so painfully lacked. By the same token, they're nowhere close to Iggy Pop's manic visions but they counter his gasoline fangs with a kind of irresistibly raunchy "all-dressed-up-with-nowhere to go" third-world desperation.

Listen to "Bad Girl," "Jet Boy" and "Frankenstein" and you're hearing musical street fights, a bastardized brand of hell-cat cacophony teetering on pure anarchy but held together by the kind of attitude that has always stood as the quintessential factor of the rock n' roll statement i.e. total lack of self-consciousness and a commitment to full-tilt energy workouts no matter what level of proficiency you're working at. Bo Diddley knew it, the Velvet Underground osmosed it and the New York Dolls are currently toting the weight in fine style.

For the record, "Bad Girl" is the Velvets' "Sister Ray" stripped down to 3 minutes 4 seconds and dressed to kill. "Jet Boy" is Iggy and the Stooges in a hit-on collision with "19th Nervous Breakdown." The riff is an instant classic. 'Frankenstein' is camp-ominous complete with blast-furnace air-brush. "Lonely Planet Boy" is the first real mutant love-song – the Dolls' own "Child Of The Moon." Bo Diddley's "Pills" is the Stones' original Eel Pie Island grease transmuted into lower East Side sleaze. "Personality Crisis" is near-vaudeville: witty and punkish with the Thunder/Sylvain snake-eyed guitar fireworks biting the edges.

There's much more here to write about but this'll do for starters. You choose your own poison – and I'm feeling fine now. Rough edges abound, but Todd Rundgren has worked miracles cooling out his often impetuous whiz-kid overkill to present a vivid document of the New York Dolls on vinyl.

"I ain't-a-lookin' for no fix – an-know-ah'm – just-a-lookin'-for-a-kiss."

Welcome to the faaabulous '70s.

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