I must say that making the list of my top ten Beatles songs turned out to be good fun. I think I'll do some more lists in the posts ahead for some of my other favourite groups. The Stones, Led Zep, Radiohead, Steely Dan, Wilco, and Sly and the Family Stone come immediately to mind. Wait, there's also the Who and the New York Dolls and Roxy Music and... Maybe it's not such a great idea after all. We'll see.

Speaking of the Dolls, apparently we have a new album to look forward to (Dancing Backward in High Heels) within a couple of months. Can't wait. Their last two (you know, the ones released in 2006 and 2009, after a short hiatus of thirty-two years), One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This and Cause I Sez So, are both among the very best rock and roll albums ever made (as were their first two, but we knew that already), up there with the best work of any of the artists mentioned above. Like I said: Can't wait. Here's "Dance Like a Monkey": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_XEiV-l97o (opening line: "You designed so intelligent/ Ain't no way that was an accident...")

I just re-read some of the things that I wrote about the New York Dolls in June, and while most of it is OK, I think I was a little unclear in regard to their musicianship. Their playing, even now, is hard to describe. It contains a lot of energy, and a lot of blues and fifties-rock knowledge, but it's made up of jagged edges. Of course, smoothness was the last thing they were trying for - like many great artists they were interested in shaking an audience up, and they did it really well. Famously, they were proclaimed the best and the worst new group of 1973 by a Creem magazine poll. They were polarizing, in other words, just like their offspring, punk rock, would be a few years later. But it was clear to me, then and now, which side was right. The late, great Frankie Venom (frontman for Teenage Head) put it succinctly: "If you don't like the Dolls, you're not hip." Amen.

If there's a song that captures all of their qualities, it has to be "Personality Crisis", the first track from New York Dolls (1973) - where Johansen's opening seemed to foreshadow the reaction of the world: "Waaaaaaoo/ Yeah, yeah, yeah / Oh no no no no, no no no no/ Ow"

That says it all.