Pop Quiz: New York Dolls

Pop Quiz: New York Dolls

Aidin Vaziri | Maybe the New York Dolls don't have the best luck, what with 80 percent of the members dying prematurely and all. But for an entire generation, their grubby hard rock and amazing drag getups pretty much set the rules. Morrissey, the former president of the band's United Kingdom fan club, basically begged the surviving members to get back together for the 2003 Meltdown Festival, and aside from yet another member dying two weeks later (bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane), everything has been going great since. In fact, original members David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain just recorded their first album in 32 years, "One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This." We spoke with Johansen, 56, who spent the '80s as lounge lizard Buster Poindexter, by phone from New York.


David Johansen of the New York Dolls
Q: Are you happy Morrissey called you?
A: Oh, yeah. I'm always happy when he calls me. He's a good guy. Do you mean as far as getting into this fine how-do-you-do?
Q: Yes.
A: It's good. It's just a kind of thing that fell together by happenstance, like most of the things I've ever done. It seems to be the natural place to be at this point.
Q: Did you have to go back and listen to the old albums for inspiration?
A: I did listen to them before we played in London for the first time. I thought they were really f -- musical. What are people talking about? The rock press used to throw rocks at us.
Q: The New York Dolls invented everything: hair metal, punk rock, the Smiths.
A: I wouldn't take that responsibility.
Q: Doesn't your band belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
A: I don't really play that. I don't really know what that's all about. What is that, anyway? I know there's a building in Cleveland and they have somebody's shoes in there or something. What is the point of that?
Q: Those shoes belong to the guys from Hall & Oates.

Pop Quiz: Corinne Bailey Rae

Pop Quiz: Corinne Bailey Rae

Aidin Vaziri | While Norah Jones is off indulging her punk fantasies in fishnets and black eyeliner, British sensation Corinne Bailey Rae has stepped in to fill her sophisticated folk-jazz flats. Her self-titled debut album has already gone double platinum in the United Kingdom and gold across Europe. Now America is falling for the charms of the disc's seductive first single, "Put Your Records On," which is all over VH1. Rae's music has also been featured on "ER" and "Grey's Anatomy." The best part? The former church singer already got the rock bug out of her system as a teenager when she fronted Helen, a riot grrrl band inspired by L7.

Corinne Bailey Rae
Q: How many hours did you ride around on a bike in the video for "Put Your Records On"?
A: How many hours? It was quite a lot, actually. Three or four hours?
Q: Wow. Is that a new world record?
A: No. I mean, it wasn't all cycling, but it was about finding a good spot, finding hills and winding our way down. It was good fun.
Q: When you aren't on two wheels, what's your idea of fun?
A: I really like reading. I like escaping off into a different world, so I've read five books in the past four weeks. That's been really good. I also like to speak to my family a lot. I built up a massive phone bill last month. The phone company got in contact with my mum because they thought my phone had been stolen.
Q: What kind of stuff do you read?
A: I read a lot of women authors.
Q: So do I -- most of them write for Penthouse Forum.

Review: Mew "And The Glass Handed Kites"

Review: Mew "And The Glass Handed Kites"

Mew "And The Glass Handed Kites": Aidin Vaziri | You get the impression that Mew singer Jonas Bjerre bought the cheapo English-Danish translation dictionary. Surely, he didn't mean to name a song "Saviours of Jazz Ballet (Fear Me, December)." Or "Apocalypso"? Come on. Maybe he's just horsing around because he knows that his band's distorted prog rock is so awesome that if he didn't throw in some stupid titles every now and then, all the other bands like the Mars Volta would just break up, like, "Well, the best record ever has already been made, so why even bother?" Take songs like "Special," "Chinaberry Tree" and "White Lips Hissed." Each one is like a secret math equation: Pixies + Radiohead x Cocteau Twins - Nickelback x 1,000.

Live Review: Gnarls Barkley

Live Review: Gnarls Barkley

Haven't heard of Gnarls Barkley? 'Crazy,' their runaway single, is the hottest hit of the summer: Aidin Vaziri | Like all great summer anthems, the rewired Motown grooves of "Crazy" are currently blasting out of every convertible and baseball stadium from here to Reykjavik. Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" might hold the No. 1 spot on the singles chart but it's Gnarls Barkley's unlikely tribute to psychosis that has people shouting in the streets in some approximation of rotund singer Cee-Lo Green's booming sandpaper 'n' glue voice, "I think you're crrrrraaaaazzzyeeeeee!" The hit's so popular, the group has already forced its British label to remove the single from stores for fear of it turning into the next "Who Let the Dogs Out?" America, meanwhile, is just getting warmed up. On Tuesday, Green and producer Danger Mouse, famous for his work with the Gorillaz and an illicit mash-up of Jay-Z and Beatles tunes, launched Gnarls Barkley's stateside tour with the first of two sold-out shows at the Fillmore. Looking around at the audience, you could tell that "Crazy" knows no boundaries; the crowd looked a lot like a line at the DMV. It wasn't until the insistent rhythm and runaway verses of "Crazy" kicked in that the audience actually lost its head. As cell phones launched into the air, Green dipped his head back, turned the mike toward the crowd and simply let them deliver the surging chorus, "I think you're crrrrraaaaazzzyeeeeee!" They obviously had had some practice.

Pop Quiz: CSNY

Pop Quiz: CSNY

Aidin Vaziri | The worst thing about war is all the old hippies it draws out of the woodwork. But one group most people will actually be happy to see back in action this summer is the original longhair quartet, Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young. Stepping out behind Neil Young's politically charged new album, "Living With War," the group is pulling out all its classic protest songs and some that are just plain pleasant to hear on a sunny day. But how are the four men who didn't tour between 1974 and 2000 going to get along on their third trek together in six years? We got Graham Nash on the phone from the band's Burbank rehearsal space and asked him.

Graham Nash of CSNY
Q: Before the band got together for its first reunion tour, you broke both your legs in a boating accident. Are you planning on hitting the high seas anytime soon?
A: No, no. I'm not going to do that.
Q: No skydiving?
A: No. Did that, but can't do that before a tour.
Q: What about ultimate fighting?
A: Ah, no. No extreme sports.
Q: Do you think you will just stay in bed until the tour starts?
A: A little bit more than that. There's a lot of work to do.
Q: You somehow managed to avoid the stomach bug that downed David Crosby earlier this week.
A: So far, yes. He was actually quite sick at rehearsal yesterday.
Q: And he showed up anyway. It takes real dedication to vomit on your old bandmates.
A: A true friend will be vomited on.

Review: Moloko "Catalogue"

Review: Moloko "Catalogue"

Moloko "Catalogue": Aidin Vaziri | There's a good reason the now-defunct Moloko never released its albums in the United States: Any country that worships at the craggy toenails of Bon Jovi clearly doesn't deserve music this bewildering, beautiful and utterly insane. Singer Roisin Murphy has the kind of smoky, growling voice that can inspire fantasies, especially on sinister symphonic-electro-folk-house songs like "Time Is Now" and "Sing It Back." Her musical partner, Mark Brydon, has obviously never heard of the Beatles or Kraftwerk, and he's better off for it. How else would he have come up with a song like "Pure Pleasure Seeker," the sound of a brass band playing Ping-Pong on the rings of Saturn? The only crime is that whoever put this thing together forgot to include the best tracks this British band ever recorded: "Mother" and "It's Nothing." But you don't mind paying $43.98 for the imports, do you?

Pop Quiz: Keane

Pop Quiz: Keane

Aidin Vaziri | If the best albums are created out of deep tension then Keane has just released one that should top "Pet Sounds," "Abbey Road" and "Pyromania" combined. Recorded while the members of the piano-driven British trio were barely on speaking terms, "Under the Iron Sea" is a dark, angry update of the group's 5 million-selling debut, "Hopes and Fears," and features the hit single "Is It Any Wonder?" We spoke with lead singer Tom Chaplin while the band was in San Francisco last month to play a sold-out show at the Great American Music Hall.

Tom Chaplin of Keane
Q: Have you heard the theory that being the lead singer of a band is kind of like a mental disorder?
A: It is. I absolutely agree. It's very odd. If you drill through the ego you get to this person underneath who's probably weaker than most people. That's the great paradox. I suppose it's probably why so many front men end up on the scrap heap of death and destruction like Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, you know, there are all these casualties -- these people who had all this exterior bravado but inside were a mess of contradictions and unhappiness.
Q: And how are you holding up?
A: I don't know. I guess I'm trying to cope with it.
Q: It must be hard with all the girls and money and parties at your disposal.
A: Of course! But, you know, that's quite a hard thing to deal with. When the girls and the parties and that kind of stuff come along you begin to question if you really believe it, whether you're there for your fame or people want to get close to you because you've got money or whatever.
Q: The short answer is yes.

Review: Thom Yorke "The Eraser"

Review: Thom Yorke "The Eraser"

Thom Yorke "The Eraser": Aidin Vaziri | Blip. Blonk. Phssst. Click. Tihhhs. Could there possibly be a worse way for a solo album by Thom Yorke to start? "Please excuse me, but I've got to ask, are you only being nice because you want something?" the Radiohead singer inquires in a voice that sounds as if he's already going to cry. Maybe it's because he knows the answer: Hell, yes! Buy a drum kit, write a proper tune, down a dozen raw eggs, run a marathon, punch the Loch Ness monster in the face, enter a hot-dog eating contest, listen to Gwen Stefani, have an orgy, do something meaningful with your life instead of obsessing over bad techno records and writing sad poetry. Yorke was clearly onto something when he discovered the Aphex Twin's deliberately impenetrable blips 'n' beeps and used them to reinvert rock 'n' roll on his band's two classic albums, "OK Computer" (1997) and "Kid A" (2000). But by the time Radiohead got around to releasing its latest, 2003's "Hail to the Thief," people were gagging for guitars and actual songs. Now out on his own, the front man has relapsed. "The Eraser" sounds like the soundtrack to one of those PlayStation games where a raccoon has to fight a squirrel in some futuristic tunnel, a cascade of pixelated beats and clipped synthesizer melodies with the added bonus of Yorke's pampered whining. Fact: Even Jean Michel Jarre would consider sound collages like "Skip Divided" and "Atoms for Peace" pretentious junk. "No more going to the dark side with your flying saucer eyes," Yorke sings. What does that even mean? At least "Harrowdown Hill" sounds like a decent demo for a Killers song. All it needs is a melody, some real instruments and, you know, a good singer. Why hasn't anyone bothered listening to Nirvana lately?

Pop Quiz: Paul Oakenfold

Pop Quiz: Paul Oakenfold

Aidin Vaziri | At first everyone thought it was kind of funny that Paul Oakenfold made a living spinning records. And then the 42-year-old British DJ sold out the Hollywood Bowl, played the Great Wall of China and landed gigs working with everyone from Madonna and U2 to New Order and the Rolling Stones. Most recently, his music has been popping up in ads for Coca-Cola and Toyota, as well as in films such as "The Pink Panther." Meanwhile, he's just released a new album of his own work, "A Lively Mind," which includes collaborations with Pharrell Williams, Grandmaster Flash and actress Brittany Murphy, who sings on the first single, "Faster Kill Pussycat."

Paul Oakenfold
Q: I would so hate to be your neighbor.
A: Yeah, especially if I was in the apartment above you.
Q: Do you actually live in an apartment?
A: No. But can you imagine if I did and you were below me? I would be the neighbor from hell.
Q: I heard Tony Blair is your neighbor.
A: That's right, he is.
Q: Does he come over for tea parties?
A: No, he doesn't, actually.
Q: How did you make as much money playing records as he did running the country?
A: There is money in DJ-ing after all, eh? Hard work, commitment, pushing the envelope. I don't sit on my laurels. I don't look back.
Q: You've also worked with U2, Madonna and the Rolling Stones. What does your phone book look like?
A: It looks big, fat and black.
Q: Do you like playing huge places like the Hollywood Bowl or would you rather be playing in some dump in south London?
A: I enjoy it, yeah. I like taking it to the next level.
Q: Do you realize how ridiculous your life is?
A: I do sometimes, yeah.
Q: You play records.