New York Dolls

not that the other stuff abt johansen cant be true, but it completes the story a little more fully with johansen’s experience

i have probably seen johansen more than any other performer, and am looking forward to the film, but i almost wish they'd filmed a buster poindexter show over this one. in modern times he's been using a guitarist named brian koonin as his musical director. koonin is a talented guy, but his background is musical theater (apparently he was a replacement guitarist in hair?). he is perfect for buster, but rock'n'roll is not in his blood, so my heart sinks when i see him leading johansen's rock endeavors. koonin was actually part of the first dolls reunion shows, and their first reunion album, playing keys. i got the sense he was sort of a security blanket for johansen. but economics (and, i strongly suspect, sylvain's urgings) eventually forced him out.

those early buster poindexter gigs at tramps were a joy, by the way. he got to indulge the side of himself that had picked all those great cover songs for the dolls. singer as dj. the lounge thing was an in-joke that really worked in that small-club context. you never knew what was coming next. and the players were great too. the bassist is with dylan now and one of the backup singers is with springsteen.

I finally saw Buster Poindexter a wee bit later at The Bottom Line and it was fine but I got the impression that some of the magic had already worn off and hardened into shtick. I also saw the aforementioned bass player, Tony Garnier, with another act he was playing with at the time, Robert Gordon.

yeah that's an unfortunate characteristic of johansen's acts -- at some point he loses interest and they become rote. i remember one embarassing evening at the westbury music fair where an audience member was shouting out the punchlines of buster's jokes before he got there.

Wonder if he told the one about someone asking him if he knew Madonna and him replying (in a very strong New York accent): “Know her? I went with her!”

forever mourning the demise of the Harry Smiths project, those records were absolute gold

he brought brian koonin along with him for that project too. he was like a different person onstage with the harry smiths. buster poindexter was famously verbose, but with the harry smiths he was respectful almost to a fault, mumbling a few brief words of introduction before each song.

those records are so good - and on that audiophile label, such an unusual thing.

yes, chesky. very fancy. i'm not sure whether i've ever heard the 2nd one.

Slight derail, but here is Tony Garnier with Robert Gordon…and Chris Spedding!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK4hDssJ9NA

i guess armond white still writes film reviews?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/david-johansen-makes-scorsese-great-again/

Great posts this year, holy shit & thanks all! Re the xpost metal gigs, I can see why he got tired of arena rock, went to Dexter, back to record-collector roots and smaller crowd intimacy and fun, sharing in-joeks and vinyl tastes w fellow veteran kidz---but man, those David Johansen albums could be really satisfying, intriguing, the way, as I mentioned on the Roxy Music Live thread, having heard the RM shift toward a new mainstream, still speculative, exploratory in the mid-to-late-70s--para-, then moving toward post-disco per se (also on that thread, others mentioned Eagles probes, milestones of the Cars, then Blondie, Talking Heads).
Johansen's s/t solo debut was exciting in part because he took the Lou Reed approach, with unrecorded or released songs from his old band along with newer ones---but also exciting, to me personally, because it was much bolder, less flimsy-seeming than Lou Reed, tapping also the best of arena rock, with JOE PERRY at the peak of Aerosmith's only great decade, and fitting him into this hip post-Dolls arena context that Reed was moving toward (realizing that it didn't have to beSally Can't Dance vs. Metal Machine Music: BOLLOCKS DICHOTOMY, as somebody virtually said way upthread, re original Alice Cooper band vs. Dolls).
So I think I actually enjoyed most of these David albums more than Dollshead xgau did, but overall his descriptions of them and BP albums later seems fair and hopefully encourages others to check them out (with so much free streaming, why the hell not)
https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist2.php?id=322

And a very refreshing interview with the B-52s on this morning's Weekend Edition reminds me that they were gonna call it a day or at least a hiatus with 1989's Cosmic Thing (with key member Rickey having died of AIDS), but then "Love Shack," on the radio and MTV, brought the bridge-and-tunnel masses surging, oh my---

agree with xgau that 'buster's spanish rocket ship,' the final buster album, is a stealth johansen solo album and worth a checkout.

The doc did touch on the Harry Smiths. Johansen talked about how he got to know Harry Smith - apparently when he was young he liked to hang with these much older individuals he found interesting because he thought they had a lot of wisdom to pass down. (It didn't sound like they were particularly close though.) Johansen does Howlin' Wolf covers really well.

Within the film, he also talked about his early dabbling in politics, specifically with Up Against the Wall Motherfucker. He knew Abbie Hoffman from that.

Again this was a Buster Poindexter show at the Carlyle. Maybe not the usual numbers under that persona, but it wasn't the Dolls' sound (which I'd actually prefer) at all, not until the last number when they do "Personality Crisis." I think Brian Koonin was the guitarist too - I'm not familiar with him so I can't remember but he was at the premiere and they do have a big credit for the band so it'll be easy to confirm when you watch it.

Musikladen apparently has a YouTube channel. Guests are really hit or miss, but some are spectacular like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uiwkr8TqAEM

Also, Lincoln Center posted that Q&A for Scorsese's David Johansen film, which will be on Showtime April 14:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo29mCz_X_c

xgau on the doc ("These doubts proved somewhere between unfounded and paranoid, which I credit partly to Scorsese’s skill and more to Johansen’s genius.") https://open.substack.com/pub/robertchristgau/p/just-enough-before-its-too-late-david?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

We watched at least half of that doc on TV, and thought it was fairly basic/boring... didn't realize it was Martin Scorsese.

I can't access it yet, postponing having to confront how lukewarm I am about seeing it.

i enjoyed it -- i've spent enough time musing on the three-dimensional chess game that is his interior life that i'm not gonna stop now -- but it's not for everyone. unless you have a hankering to hear cocktail lounge versions of the johansen songs from the three dolls reunion records that nobody listened to.

Finally saw One Night Only - really enjoyed it, way more than I was expecting to tbh

Xgau’s observation in that review upthread is so otm, re the Buste persona transforming anarchic New York Dolls songs into the love songs to humanity they always were deep down

Plus you really see so clearly how deliberate Johansen is about what he chooses to reveal of himself, in all of his ventures - there is a craft to it all, even among the chaos, and so seeing the personas/poses all lined up, new and archival, alongside the interviews with his daughter was really quite moving …. the whole documentary becomes a sort of zoetrope, where if you keep your eye trained & look through the crack at just the right angle for long enough you can ~almost~ see the whole person spool out before you.

And the Carlyle performance stuff is shot so beautifully <3

Yeah, I think it was Ellen Kuras- great cinematographer, and Johansen complimented her, saying she got close without making herself seem intrusive.

I just saw it and enjoyed it but thought some of it was awkwardly edited -- the way Scorsese would suddenly cut away from old footage bugged me. Sometimes when he would go quickly from DolLs rendition to Johansen solo tour rendition to Carlyle lounge version it worked and not other times. Plus to fit in with the title and theme the lounge versions are largely longer.

Tyler W posted this old YouTube link to New York Dolls at the Waldorf Astoria on Halloween in 1973. As he noted Will Hermes wrote about this chaotic over packed late starting gig in Love Goes to a Building on Fire book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQVDL-B80d0