Belatedly Liking Stuff: Buster Poindexter (NSFW lyrics)

Yes, really - I'm now listening to a bit of Buster Poindexter.

I can't even claim cool points by insisting that I'm getting into his stuff performed under his actual name, David Johansen, the front-man of the super influential "punk before it was punk" New York Dolls. Although the band never really sold a lot of records, they were later heralded for ushering in what would become punk music in many circles.

No, I'm straight up listening to Buster Poindexter, the snarky and smooth jazz singer persona that Johansen adopted after a couple of his solo albums didn't perform so well.

In particular, the YouTube link above is "Heart of Gold", which I stumbled upon while watching an old Saturday Night Live this weekend. In the late 1980s, Poindexter served as a singer for their house band, and he apparently did songs on live broadcasts to fill time. In an otherwise nondescript episode that featured the immortal Bronson Pinchot (Serge from Beverly Hills Cop) hosting, and some cute guest appearances by supermodel Paulina Poriskova, Poindexter steals the show with a performance of "Heart of Gold." How good was it? Well, in the original broadcast, it ended the show - typically a slot given to crappy or risque sketches. In the repeats, it was edited to shortly after Weekend Update, in front of the second performance by some guy named Paul Young.

Poindexter is just weird as heck, like a tongue-in-cheek version of Richard Cheese. While Dick does obviously humorous versions of songs, Poindexter's feel sincerely artistic and GOOD, even while I feel like he is smirking as he sings. Johansen performed and composed them when he was in his late 30s and early 40s, and from listening to his tracks, I almost get the feeling he is mocking the listener with shit like "Hot Hot Hot" and "Hit The Road Jack." Both are unbelievably bad and cheesy now, the type of song only someone younger than 13 can possibly like, or something that relatives would dance drunkenly to at weddings. Yet for months in the 1980s, they dominated the charts, and I imagine Johansen laughed like a bastard on his way to the bank. Heck, even Rolling Stone got a bit swept up in the feeling, judging from their review.

The second-best example of the cheesiness, since I refuse to link to "Hot Hot Hot":