Jack, Keeping Track. I've been going through old issues of Poetry...

GT, yes indeed, that was a time. Sounds to me as though you would skip off onto the road again at the drop of a hat. The Dolls played my university in early '75. At the time, most people in the UK dismissed them as a parody of the Stones, but I and a few of my friends saw the essence of something else. Over the course of '75 and '76 we found ourselves listening to and following acts that fell into a similar groove and who together formed a large part of the basis for the emergence of UK punk. A lot of people don't realize how important the element of theatricality was to UK punk. Glam rock, of which I too was a fan, and like you, especially of Ian Hunter, was the real template: the Damned, the Pistols and the Clash all focused heavily on their visual impact, cued by forerunners like Sweet, T-Rex and Bowie. The band I and a couple of friends formed for all of 15 minutes in 1976, the Tourniquets, was conceived entirely as a Dadaist performance piece, complete with starting pistol, surgical gowns and liberal amounts of bandages and ketchup. Along with the Dolls, other acts that helped create the swamp gas that fueled punk included the Tubes, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Dr. Feelgood, Neu! and even Alice Cooper. As to David Johansen, I would strongly urge you to seek out "David Johansen and The Harry Smiths," the first of two CDs of classic country blues tunes Johansen recorded in the 1990s with a crack band that called itself the Harry Smiths after the great collector of American folk blues. You won't be sorry. It's tremendous. The second CD, Shaker, is good too, but the first one is a revelation.

That third Ravens TD was pretty, wasn't it? But I think I will gag if they are still in the playoffs and receiving TV coverage after this weekend.