"I Wus Always Into Them" Dept. - The New York Dolls

It's 1973, dig. All my dumb friends are listening to New Riders and Steely Dan and the fuckin' Doobie Brothers. Gary the record store clerk, who's always the first to know, puts this album in my face - "Check it aoooouuuut, dude!" I'm, like, "WTF, dude? Who are these guys, if guys they be?" Gary slaps the disc on the turntable, drops the tonearm, and we're staring at each other goggle-eyed, our jaws to the floor, and somehow we're both screaming like girls and he turns the volume right up. "THE NEW YORK DOLLS, MAN! IT'S THE FUCKIN' NEW YORK DOLLS!" and a couple of customers are already out the door, they can't take it, but I have to buy this album, man, it's twanging my genome string into a Day-Glo© cats' cradle and my synapses are popping like firecrackers because I HAVE SEEN ROCK AND ROLL FUTURE!

It wasn't to be. The Dolls made a second album, by which time Gary was with the Children of God in a forest somewhere eating mud for Jesus, and I was selling home vinyl repair kits door-to-door, like for upholstery or whatever, which is how I met Janice or whatever her name was.

Swell album. I may lissen to the second.