Seven Day Weekend [live]

by Greg PratoWith only a pair of official albums issued during their brief tenure as a band together (1973's self-titled debut and '74's Too Much Too Soon), the New York Dolls has been the subject of numerous postmortem releases. While many just repackaged tracks from the two aforementioned albums, others, like 1992's Seven Day Weekend, collected previously unheard demos from sessions prior to the recording of their debut album (recorded in March 1973 at Planet Studios in New York City). Featuring a total of 19 tracks, the sound quality is excellent -- the band manages to play the tracks even rawer than how they would turn out on their two albums (probably not far from what the Dolls sounded like in concert at the time). In addition, there are several tracks that never made it on subsequent releases -- the title track, "Back in the USA," "Endless Party," "Great Big Kiss," and "Hootchie Cootchie Man." But the real highlights are the rough readings of such Dolls classics as "Jet Boy," "Lonely Planet Boy," "Subway Train," "Vietnamese Baby," "Trash," "Human Being," "Private World," and "Babylon," many of which top the officially-released album versions. Serious New York Dolls fans will definitely enjoy these rough and ready historical recordings.