Usually people are standing, and they’re drunk, and they just want to jump up and down. The main thing for me as Johansen or as the Dolls or that kind of rock stuff, one has this way of doing it that’s not very expansive as far as talking is concerned between songs. Those are the little details that add up to form a show. You want to do a nice song and then you want to do a little something-something that gets a laugh or a groan, and then you want to do a nice song. Is that the best way to describe your show? Shtick-y? But I know a guy.” Knowing Tony as well as I do, I took the guy’s number and he turned out to be a fantastic guy. When I was starting to do Buster again, I guess about three years ago, I called Tony and said, I want to put together a show, and I sent him the material. It’s a funny story how I met him: I used to have a drummer named Tony Machine, I played with him for years and years and years. It’s funny as you go through life on occasion you meet a person who just does it for you, like what a guy. I’ve been playing with the drummer Ray Grappone, and it’s great because I can do shtick with him. Have you been playing with these guys for a long time? I’m considering doing all songs I’ve written, or that have been associated with Johansen or the Dolls. Before a song becomes ensconced it’s gotta go through a couple of hoops for me. Sometimes I’ll sing a song for a night or two and get rid of it and bring it back in a couple of weeks. Sometimes I think, Well, here’s a song that’s a little more well-known, and then I’ll do a little investigation and find out, like, Oh my God, if I do these songs I’m going to be doing Michael Bubl é. Maybe I’ll do one song that I wrote myself, but a lot of the material that I like is fairly obscure. I don’t do original compositions so much. How do you put a show like this together? I couldn’t stop laughing at your show, but then you have these moments when you cover Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth,” and it’s just so beautiful.
Buster poindexter dolls side by side series#
We talked with Johansen about his current run at the Carlyle, his thoughts on Martin Scorsese’s upcoming HBO series Vinyl (it takes place the same year the Dolls released their classic self-titled debut, produced by Todd Rundgren), working with Bill Murray, and whether or not New York sucks now. In recent years Poindexter has found a home at the Carlyle, which is also the location of his pal Bill Murray’s latest film with Sofia Coppola, A Very Murray Christmas (Johansen has a small role as a fly-on-the-wall-type barkeep at Bemelmans Bar). He’s a total survivor.”Įver since the early 1970s, when he made a name for himself as the bare-chested, ribbon-tie-wearing, glammed-up front man for the New York Dolls, David Johansen - Poindexter’s offstage name - has found a way to survive by keeping us entertained, whether he’s bringing a calypso tune to the mainstream with “Hot Hot Hot,” wisecracking as the Ghost of Christmas Past in Scrooged, hosting a radio show, or putting a new spin on the lounge lizard thing by way of his Buster Poindexter act. It’s amazing to see performers living in the fickle life of entertainment, where you could die in ten hours after any bad review or bad performance, surviving. Tonight we’re seeing him as he would have been 40 years ago. There aren’t many places in New York City where you can watch Gay Talese and Paul Shaffer join a conga line while John Cameron Mitchell looks on grinning from his seat, but last night’s Buster Poindexter show at the Café Carlyle in Manhattan is one of them. “I’m a Buster Poindexter fan, so I’m not exactly a novice,” Talese told me after the show.
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