Buster Poindexter

Poindexter Sings Johansen

Café Carlyle, NYC, April 2, 2019

Reviewed by Elizabeth Ahlfors for Cabaret Scenes

He’s “Funky but Chic,” as the opening song goes. Both sides of David Johansen—aka Buster Poindexter—are currently featured at the Café Carlyle in what Johansen calls a retrospective. Do not look for a show with a definitive timeline. There is no beginning, middle, and end, and there is no “and then we wrote.” He has a song list before him that he refers to frequently, and a dagger-sharp band with five exceptional musicians that have his back—Brian Koonin on guitar, Richard Hammond on bass, Ray Grappone on drums, and pianist John Deley. The result is the free-wheeling Poindexter Sings Johansen, original songs electrified with spontaneous outbursts in a mix of rock, jazz, doo-wop, and Caribbean rhythms.  

Raised on Staten Island, Johansen had his eye on the New York City of the hard rock 1970s and he still does, even after touring the world. He began performing professionally as an R&R singer and eventually founded and became a front man for the New York Dolls, a punk-rock band. In the mid-1980s, living in the East Village and working with Charles Ludlam and the Theater of the Ridiculous, Johansen morphed into a new persona, Buster Poindexter, a quirky lounge singer with a pompadour, high heels, and a martini glass in hand. He became the leader of a new band, Banshees of Blue, and after the millennium he formed a country-blues group, David Johansen and the Harry Smiths.

At the Carlyle, alter-ego Buster Poindexter reverts to David Johansen, reminiscing over the decades, singing original songs and reveling in memories of the wild, bad-boy days that never quite left. He whistles with “Temptation to Exist” and croons the haunting “Melody,” tortured with lost love. Fans fill the room, call out to him, remembering back over the decades their memories and the songs like “Dancing on the Lip of a Volcano” (“I want liberation and joy/In a paroxysm of intoxication, inspiration”). He all his fans, and acknowledges and calls out to them.

Still evident is his wide, mischievous grin, quick laugh, and deep baritone, now grown raspy.  Warning that the show was drawing to a close, he chose “Take a Good Look at My Good Looks” (“close your eyes, keep that picture in your mind cause I’ll be gone”). But there was still the encore, “Personality Crisis,” a rousing call to move on as the band, lifted by enthusiasm, played him off.