Little Steven’s Underground Garage Rolling Rock & Roll Show:

New York Dolls, Supersuckers, Chesterfield Kings, Charms with American Plague

November 30, 2006 @ City Hall

American Plague – This Knoxville band won the AT&T Blue Room Battle of the Bands for the opening slot on this show.  They’ve been together for several years now, but I had never gotten to hear them yet.  Having heard Jaw’s band Malignmen back in the 1990s I was expecting something a little more unique.  These guys delivered a fairly standard-sounding Social Distortion-influenced set which didn’t make a huge impression on me.

The Charms – The second band of the evening also failed to grab me.  Standard, if well-played, rock & roll music with unimpressive female lead vocals.  I can only imagine that putting said singer in a skintight leather outfit makes up for any shortcomings with most listeners.  Their drummer’s flashy rock star performance didn’t go too well with his mohawk, either.

The Chesterfield Kings – I’ve been a fan of these garage veterans for several years.  This is the second time I have seen them live; with that in mind I’d call this show standard for them.  Singer Greg Prevost’s prancing and posing is ludicrously entertaining.  At least half the set consisted of songs from their current album, Mindbending Sounds Of The Chesterfield Kings (highlights:  “Non-Entity” and the Little Steven-produced “I Don’t Understand”), with great delivery.  I was especially glad to see they came prepared for Prevost to play organ on a couple of songs (e.g. “Running through My Nightmares”); the organ is subtly essential to The Chesterfield Kings sound.  Now, if only they’d play a few songs from 1982’s Stop! next time around…

Supersuckers – I’ve only recently checked out some of these guys’ recordings.  It was interesting to compare their live performance to their studio work.  The Supersuckers turned out a good, if perhaps not as phenomenal as I had been led to expect, set.  Far from being an expert on these guys, I still get the feeling that certain things, like the country rendition of “Creepy Jackelope Eye” and the dramatically extended “Born with a Tail” as a closer, would come across better in a longer set.  Finally, Eddie did earn anti-star credit by hanging out at the T-shirt stand for much of the evening.

New York Dolls – Damn.  I’ve listened to some of Johnny Thunders’s Heartbreakers, but hadn’t heard the Dolls themselves much, and having seen David Johansen in movies did not come close to preparing me for hearing him perform here.  His deep, resonant speaking voice apparently translates to a powerful singing voice; the other thing I noticed was the fact that his pitch stayed near-perfect despite the effortless sound of his vocals.  Sylvain Sylvain and the “nouveau” Dolls held up their end as well.  I had read somewhere that Sylvain’s lead vocals on “Can’t Put Your Arms around a Memory” sucked, but he actually sounded pretty good to me.  Since I had never gotten around to checking out the New York Dolls I give them lots of credit for drawing me right in.  The set was tight, the songs were catchy, and the band looked like they were having a great time.  Older songs included “Puss in Boots,” “Trash,” and “Pills,” while the band also played several songs from the recently released One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This: “Dance Like a Monkey,” “We’re All in Love,” “Dancing on the Lip of a Volcano,” and “Gotta Get Away from Tommy.”  The word was that the Dolls were going to stick around and autograph copies of One Day It Will Please Us..., which is also cool.