Sylvain Sylvain compares the early days of The New York Dolls to members of "The Little Rascals" putting on a talent show in the neighborhood.

"We were really bored with what was going on at the time. Bands weren't writing songs anymore, they were writing operas. They had lost the sex appeal in their tunes." With just a shred of musical knowledge, he and his friends decided to put a band together and, he says, "It was like the Little Rascals. 'You get the curtain from your mom's house and I'll get the pots and pans.' We borrowed all the makeup from our sisters and girlfriends, and it was basically, 'Let's try it for a couple weeks.' "

Taking equal parts from the Stones, MC5 and T-Rex, The New York Dolls were a unique creation, with one high heel in the glam-rock movement and the other stepping into a brash punk future.

But the band itself never put any labels on it.

"It's what the industry needs to sell bands, but we really never dug that title," Sylvain says of the punk moniker. "It was just rock 'n' roll."

Rock 'n' roll with a healthy dose of raunch and an intentionally amateur-ish feel summed up in the band's acquisition of lead guitarist Johnny Thunders. "We wanted him in the band 'cause he was really cool looking," Sylvain says. "He didn't know how to play an instrument ..." He was intimidated by the six strings on the guitar, so they gave him a bass. Two weeks later, he announced he was going to be the lead guitarist.

The Dolls were darlings in the East Village from day one when they formed in late 1971, but managed to divide the wider rock audience. In a Creem magazine poll, the Dolls were voted both the best and worst new band of 1973.

"That was part of the sense of humor with the Dolls. The ones that didn't get it ... I don't know if it's true when they said we couldn't sing, we couldn't write, cause we've proved them wrong."

The rockers who didn't like the Dolls didn't have to deal with them for long. The band -- singer David Johansen, Sylvain, guitarist Johnny Thunders, bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane and drummer Billy Murcia -- was fairly doomed from the start. Murcia died from alcohol and pills on a tour of England before the first album was even recorded. That Todd Rundgren-produced debut, with songs like "Personality Crisis" and "Looking for a Kiss," became a cult classic but was a commercial bust at the time.

While the Dolls laid the foundation for the New York scene that followed -- with the Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Blondie, et al -- the band was pretty much finished around 1975 between getting dropped from the label and the departure of Thunders and replacement drummer Jerry Nolan to the Heartbreakers.

"I blame it all on heroin and booze -- that's what killed the first New York Dolls," Sylvain says. "It's always been like the two faces of theater, comedy and tragedy."

Johansen and Sylvain kept it rolling till early '77 and then worked together on Johansen's solo career (which would later include his guise as R&B belter Buster Poindexter). Sylvain also divided his time between his own solo career and a stint as a New York cabbie. Thunders remained a punk legend till he died of an overdose in 1991. Nolan died of a stroke shortly after.

Then, in 2004, Morrissey came calling. The famed former singer for the Smiths, the president of the New York Dolls fan club in England in the '70s, talked the three surviving members into reuniting for the Meltdown Festival in London in 2004. They did that and a few weeks later, Kane, a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the subject of the documentary "New York Doll," died of leukemia.

"That was a shocker and a 'here we go again' kind of feeling," Sylvain says. "But sometimes that makes the family tighter."

Rather than pack it in, Johansen and Sylvain decided to keep it going with guitarist Steve Conte, bassist Sami Yaffa (formerly of Hanoi Rocks), drummer Brian Delaney and keyboardist Brian Koonin. They added a long-awaited third album to the catalog in 2005 with a vintage blast called "One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This."

The Dolls, who play the Arts Festival Sunday, were also the headliner on the Little Steven Underground Garage Tour.

"David and Sylvain have put together a fantastic band," says Little Steven. "It's really good just hearing those songs done really right. I hate to say it, but it's probably better than they ever played them. Back then, they were a little out of it. We all loved Johnny Thunders, but he liked to, uh, imbibe. This band plays the songs with the same spirit but totally righteously."

How long might this second life go on for the Dolls?

"As long as it's rock 'n' roll," Sylvain says, "and as long as we're being enjoyed and having a great time performing. It's not as if we're out to show you an old nostalgia act of what rock 'n' roll used to be like."

The band's legacy is its unlikely influence on both punk and pop-metal bands.

"And those two camps hate each other," Sylvain says. "They'll never sit down to dinner together."

The New York Dolls play the Three Rivers Arts Festival Sunday after the 6:30 p.m. performance by the Takeover UK.