Red Patent Leather

Infobox Album |
Name = Red Patent Leather
Type = Live album
Artist = New York Dolls


Released = 1984
Recorded = 1975
Genre = Glam rock
Length = ?
Label = Fan Club
Producer = Sylvain Sylvain
Reviews =
* Allmusic Rating|4|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:20d7gjer86ib link]
*Robert Christgau (C+) [http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?id=998&name=New+York+Dolls link]
Last album = "Lipstick Killers - The Mercer Street Sessions 1972"
(1981)
This album = "Red Patent Leather"
(1984)
Next album = "One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This"
(2006)

"Red Patent Leather" is a 1984 live album by the earlier disbanded New York Dolls. The show by the Glam rock group was recorded in New York a decade earlier, in March 1975, just a month before the group broke up while on tour in Florida. [ [http://www.mp3.com/albums/141425/summary.html Live in NYC - 1975] , mp3.com]

The New York performance was recorded at the 2,000 capacity "Little Hippodrome" club. The shows were the last performed by the group in New York, and as such they made the small unusual venue famous. The venue itself closed later that same year.

Band performances were rare at the "Little Hippodrome", a drag and comedy club which was located at 227 East 56th Street, between Second and Third Avenues. The club was named after the Hippodrome Theatre, a nearby landmark Theatre District building in Midtown Manhattan that had been torn down in 1939.

The group dressed in red for the show and decorated the club with a faux communist red theme, and dubbed the event 'Red Patent Leather' in their press release, which explained::"This show is in co-ordination with the Dolls' very special 'entente cordiale' with the People's Republic of China."

The press release also claimed that the intended backdrop behind the stage would even include "a huge red flag bearing the hammer and sickle" [ [http://streetsyoucrossed.blogspot.com/2005/10/from-hip.html From the Hip] , "It's All the streets you crossed not so long ago" blog, October 18, 2005, from Nina Antonia, "Too Much, Too Soon" London: Omnibus, 1998, and Village Voice ad, March 30, 1975]

The "Little Hippodrome" club closed that year as well, and later in 1975 that location re-opened as "The East Side Club," a gay men's social club.

The Song "Pirate Love" would later be used in Johnny Thunders's next band The Heartbreakers. [ [http://www.eastsideclubnyc.com/index1.htm East Side Club home] ]

Track listing

# "Red Patent Leather" (Johansen, Sylvain) – 3:37
# "On Fire" (Johansen, Sylvain) – 3:29
# "Something Else" (Eddie Cochran, Sharon Sheeley) – 2:25
# "Daddy Rollin' Stone" (Otis Blackwell) – 3:39
# "Ain't Got No Home/Dizzy Miss Lizzy (Henry, Williams) – 3:57
# "Girls" (Johansen, Sylvain) – 3:45
# "Down, Down Downtown" (Johansen, Thunders) – 4:15
# "Pirate Love" (Thunders) – 4:12
# "Pills" (Bo Diddley) – 3:13
# "Teenage News" (Sylvain) – 3:49
# "Personality Crisis/Looking for a Kiss" (Johansen, Thunders) – 5:41
# "Stranded in the Jungle" (Johnson, Smith) – 3:48

Personnel

*David Johansen - vocals
*Johnny Thunders - lead guitar
*Sylvain Sylvain - rhythm guitar, piano
*Arthur "Killer" Kane - bass
*Peter Jordan - bass
*Jerry Nolan - drums

References