Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Peter Guralnick is an American music critic, author, and screenwriter. He specializes in the history of early rock and roll and has written books on Elvis Presley, Sam Phillips, and Sam Cooke.
New York Dolls were an American rock band formed in New York City in 1971. Along with the Velvet Underground and the Stooges, they were one of the first bands of the early punk rock scenes. Although the band never achieved much commercial success and their original line-up fell apart quickly, the band's first two albums—New York Dolls (1973) and Too Much Too Soon (1974)—became among the most popular cult records in rock. The line-up at this time consisted of vocalist David Johansen, guitarist Johnny Thunders, bassist Arthur Kane, guitarist and pianist Sylvain Sylvain, and drummer Jerry Nolan; the latter two had replaced Rick Rivets and Billy Murcia, respectively, in 1972. On stage, they donned an androgynous wardrobe, wearing high heels, eccentric hats, satin, makeup, spandex, and dresses. Nolan described the group in 1974 as "the Dead End Kids of today".
Aestheticism was an art movement in the late 19th century that valued the appearance of literature, music, fonts and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to teach a lesson, create a parallel, or perform another didactic purpose, a sentiment best illustrated by the slogan "art for art's sake." Aestheticism flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, gaining prominence and the support of notable writers such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.
New York Dolls is the debut album by the American hard rock band New York Dolls. It was released on July 27, 1973, by Mercury Records. In the years leading up to the album, the Dolls had developed a local fanbase by playing regularly in lower Manhattan after forming in 1971. However, most music producers and record companies were reluctant to work with them because of their vulgarity and onstage fashion as well as homophobia in New York; the group later appeared in exaggerated drag on the album cover for shock value.
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant despite his early death from tuberculosis. He is one of the important Modern Style figures.
John Anthony Genzale, known professionally as Johnny Thunders, was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. He came to prominence in the early 1970s as a member of New York Dolls. He later played with the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist.
David Roger Johansen is an American singer, songwriter and actor. He is best known as a member of the seminal proto-punk band the New York Dolls. He is also known for his work under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter, and for playing the Ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooged.
Lionel Pigot Johnson was an English poet, essayist, and critic.
Arthur Harold Kane Jr. was an American musician best known as the bass guitarist for the pioneering glam rock band the New York Dolls. Kane was a founding member of the Dolls in 1971 and remained an integral part of the band until he was forced out in 1975, shortly after the departure of Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan. In 2004, after decades of estrangement from Dolls singer David Johansen, Kane rejoined the surviving Dolls to rehearse and play a reunion concert in London, which was the subject of the 2005 documentary New York Doll. In addition to his bass playing, Kane was known for his subculture fashion sense and for uttering original aphorisms in his uniquely toned voice.
Peter Albert Neil Perrett is an English singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. He is the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and principal songwriter for the rock band the Only Ones.
Too Much Too Soon is the second album by the American hard rock band New York Dolls. It was released by Mercury Records on May 10, 1974, and recorded earlier that year at A&R Studios in New York City. Dissatisfied with the recording of their 1973 self-titled debut album, the Dolls' lead singer David Johansen enlisted veteran producer Shadow Morton to produce the sessions. Morton, who had been disenchanted by the music industry, found renewed motivation in the band's energy and undertook the project as a challenge.
Red Patent Leather is a live album by the American rock and roll group New York Dolls, released in 1984. It was recorded in New York a decade earlier, in March 1975, just a month before the group broke up while on tour in Florida.
"You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory" is a song released in 1978 by Johnny Thunders, appearing on his debut solo album So Alone and as a single taken from the album. Both the song and album include the guitar work of Peter Perrett of the Only Ones. The title was taken from a line in the "Better Living Through TV" episode of the sitcom The Honeymooners. It is considered by many to be his signature song.
The Decadent movement was a late 19th-century artistic and literary movement, centered in Western Europe, that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality.
This is a summary of 1960 in music in the United Kingdom, including the official charts from that year.
Pederasty or paederasty is a sexual relationship between an adult man and a boy. It was a socially acknowledged practice in Ancient Greece and Rome and elsewhere in the world, such as Pre-Meiji Japan.
Johnny Thunders: In Cold Blood is the authorised biography of American singer and guitarist Johnny Thunders, by Nina Antonia. It was originally published in 1987 by Jungle Records on their Jungle Books imprint in a 'coffee-table' illustrated A4 format, and reissued in 2000 by Cherry Red Books in a paperback format. It was also published in a Japanese edition in 1988 by Shinko Music Pub Co Ltd and an Italian translation in Italy in 2015 by Pipeline Edizioni – Ferentino.
Que Sera Sera is the fourth studio album by Johnny Thunders, former lead guitarist of the New York Dolls and The Heartbreakers, released in December 1985. Unlike previous efforts So Alone and In Cold Blood, only one song on the album features members of his former bands, and relies largely on the reggae-influenced rhythm section of session musicians Keith George Yon and Tony St. Helene, nicknamed the Black Cats, and also features contributions from Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson, long-term collaborator Patti Palladin, and members of Hanoi Rocks.
Irish Gothic literature developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Most of the writers were Anglo-Irish. The period from 1691 to 1800 was marked by the dominance of the Protestant Ascendancy, Anglo-Irish families of the Church of Ireland who controlled most of the land. The Irish Parliament, which was almost exclusively Protestant in composition, passed the Penal Laws, effectively disenfranchising the Catholic majority both politically and economically. This began to change with the Acts of Union 1800 and the concomitant abolition of the Irish Parliament. Following a vigorous campaign led by Irish lawyer Daniel O'Connell, Westminster passed the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 removing most of the disabilities imposed upon Catholics.
