I’d recently vowed in these pages to cobble together a ‘lil NY Rocker collection, and I’ve been making good on this important promise (to myself). Yet I’d never, ever seen any ones with this typeface, one of the first four mythical issues, in the wild – that is, until I came upon New York Rocker #4 and struck up a bargain with its seller at the 2025 San Francisco Art Book Fair. This 1975-76 era is one of my favorites for rock music writing due to its anticipatory excitement, with much undefined underground exploration in the air and on the fuckin’ streets, with absurd decadence and drug bottoming-out the norm. Nowhere was this more the case, of course, than in New York City. 

I don’t really know a whole lot about cover star Cherry Vanilla, except that she was central to the first moment I ever become acquainted with “punk rock”, her famous “Lick Me” photo having been part of Time magazine’s July 11th, 1977 punk rock article that absolutely blew my mind and maybe scared me a little bit at the age of 9. Her interview here is sober, reflective and humble, and it’s a far cry from the she-devil harlot I’m sure imagined her to be when I saw that photo. Still not quite sure what she did in the grand social whirl of the time, though this bio is a start. This is followed by a Duncan Hannah photo sesh with Andy Warhol and Talking Heads at The Factory on May 26th, 1976, and then a terrific article & photos of John Cale at the Ocean Club in July ‘76, with one Lou Reed backing him up, and a hopped-up Patti Smith jumping on stage, unasked, multiple times to get involved.

Hilly Kristal, CBGB proprietor, pens an article about his own Live at CBGB Vol.1 comp, with special praise for The Shirts, Tuff Darts and Mink De Ville. Me, I’m just glad that there was a band called The Shirts at one point in history. They look like total street rockers with matching white jumpsuit/pant combos – outstanding. There’s an exceptionally catty gossip column called “Pressed Lips” by Janis Cafasso, whom I understand may have been Johnny Thunders’ girlfriend at one point in time and features in various Dolls lore I found online. I wonder if she ever did illegal drugs? Her column is a gem – honestly, this sort of real-time lens into at-the-moment scene machinations is a far better history lesson than anyone’s dimly-remembered memoir. Here are a few of her insights from the Bicentennial summer:

• “Where have all the groupies gone? Not much time from shaking go-go these days I guess. Money first, sex second. Tsk-tsk, calling Sable…”
• “By the way, Richard Hell, the king of crinkle (somebody please find him an iron) has gotten a new group and now for some serious attempts at sound??? God loves all the bewildered beatniks!”
• “Two nights in a row the Mael brothers, as in Ron and Russell, could be seen ogling little Tina of Talking Heads…”
• “Can we please put Bobby Blane, the new Dolls organist in a straightjacket and nail his shoes to the stage so he doesn’t have to offend the audience with his mincing and peacock strutting. Best quote of the evening in reference to Bobby Blane was from Wayne County who said ‘I just loooove the Dolls new lead singer’. And that about sizes it up. Two Mick Jaggers in the same group is a bit much!!”. 

Great stuff, am I right? Just for some context, the David Johansson-led final-wave of the NY Dolls were running on fumes at this point; Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers were reemerging in a big way; and Richard Hell’s “new band” talked about here, post-Television, would of course be Richard Hell & The Voidoids. 

But wait, there’s more. Victor Bokris has a short story called Coffee Shop; he’d go on to write biographies of several of the folks we’ve already mentioned here. Milk & Cookies get very defensive: “We just don’t want to be known as a wimpy, trite pop band”; “We’re not the Bay City Rollers”; “There’s some meat to our songs”. You be the judge! By far the most interesting piece to me, after the gossip column, naturally, is the deep dive by Craig Gholson with Richard Lloyd of Television. He talks about some early Television songs he sang, like “What I Heard” (great!!!) and an “X-rated” one called “Hot Dog”. He talks about the break he took from the band “to straighten out some personal problems” (i.e. drug addiction). He speculates what might be on their upcoming debut album; “Kingdom Come” is discarded for being too long and “Double Exposure” for being too old. Titles, too, have been rejected: See No Evil and Repeatinginging (whew on that last one). 

And more! Sneakers from North Carolina (Chris Stamey, Mitch Easter etc) get what I imagine was probably their first interview; The Runaways get a dopey one as well; there’s a great posed photo of The Heartbreakers, we get a wacky check-in with The Ramones, already olde-timers by this point but still with only that first LP out; and New York Rocker #4 closes up incongruously with Lance Loud’s paean to Robin Williamson of The Incredible String Band, mounting a comeback or whatever you’d want to call it with his “Merry Band” in New York City that month. What a time to be alive, the quote-unquote old struggling to stay relevant and the new struggling to be born, and everyone still under 35 years of age.