Buster Poindexter at the Loft at City Winery

In the late 1960s, David Johansen was the lead singer of the Vagabond Missionaries, a band based in his home town of Staten Island, New York. In the early 1970s, he became the lead singer and songwriter for the New York Dolls, a band that revolutionized the New York club scene but whose two albums failed to register with the general public. After the demise of the New York Dolls in 1976, Johansen launched a solo career. In the late 1980s, Johansen took on an alter ego, Buster Poindexter, and performed a cabaret mix of jazz, lounge, calypso, and novelty songs, and ultimately joined the house band on Saturday Night Live. Johansen acted in several films during the 1980s and 1990s, including Scrooged and Car 54, Where Are You? while also performing in clubs both as David Johansen and Buster Poindexter. Johansen then turned to country blues with his group, the Harry Smiths, named as a tribute to Harry Everett Smith, who compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music. From 2004 to 2011, Johansen led periodic reunions of the New York Dolls. In addition to local performances as either David Johansen or Buster Poindexter, Johansen also hosts a weekly program, David Johansen's Mansion of Fun, on satellite radio.

More than halfway through his set tonight at the Loft at City Winery, Johansen explained that he usually performs as either David Johansen or Buster Poindexter, but that tonight the audience would be treated to both personalities. Some songs were performed in Poindexter's cabaret persona, and other more blaring songs brought out the Johansen rocker in him. While his audience would have been happy with either side of the entertainer, tonight he was probably more Johansen; he opened and closed his set with songs he sang with the original New York Dolls, and the majority of the remaining songs were from his catalog with the more recent Dolls lineups. Johansen/Poindexter embodied thoughtful lyrics in dark, slightly mysterious tones, backed by piano, guitar, bass and drums. The net result was that Johansen was primarily a charismatic performer, and secondly a compelling stylist whose husky, gritty vocals just as easily jolted or entranced a listener.

Setlist:

1. Funky But Chic
2. Melody
3. Better Than You (New York Dolls song)
4. Temptation to Exist (New York Dolls song)
5. Plenty of Music (New York Dolls song)
6. Making Rain (New York Dolls song)
7. Talk to Me Baby (New York Dolls song)
8. Lonely Planet Boy (New York Dolls song)
9. Kids Like You (New York Dolls song)
10. Dancing on the Lip of a Volcano (New York Dolls song)
11. Totalitarian State
12. Maimed Happiness (New York Dolls song)
13. Frenchette
14. Wandering Spirit
15. Take a Good Look at My Good Looks (New York Dolls song)

Encore:

1. Personality Crisis (New York Dolls song)