Photos by Cheryl Georgette.
When I talk about dinner and a show I’m usually referring to the raccoon death cage matches that happens on my fire escape while I eat ramen out of a shoe. But Buster Poindexter at City Winery is the real dinner and a show shtick kids. The whole operation feels like some type of voyeurism into an era we were abruptly barred from. Buster and his band on stage in suits, smoking jackets and the like. A chair, a piano with a drink station set up. Everything beautiful, glamorous and slimy.
David Johansen transformed from himself into the cat in a hat, the lounge lizard, Frank Sinatra if he were sincere about his insincerity, Buster Poindexter. Buster spends the night performing a nearly 20 song set, stopping to engage with the audience in a crossover between surrealist banter and stand up comedy with quips reflecting a dark humor and comedic self-awareness “we’ve got beautiful moments planned for you tonight” and my personal favorite “I love when I hear the applause because it gives me a break from this obsession with death.”
Watching Buster it’s clear that something is happening. What is this something? Pure entertainment? Pure chaos? Pure irony? It’s whatever you call watching a New York Doll sing yabba dabba doo. And Poindexter is absolutely mesmerizing, eyes glued to him as he slinks around the stage, glass in hand, mixing drinks in between crooning his way through calypso songs.
The wildest part of the night was when the set seemed over, Buster Poindexter joined by his wife on stage, performed a rendition of the soccer anthem heard around the world “Hot Hot Hot.” Seemingly reluctant to perform it (I would be too) I’m still not sure that he sang it, I recall it being a lot of gesturing to the crowd who ended up singing it for him. Leaving the stage with his wife, a conga line of middle aged people formed behind him before rounding the stage and joining him in one of the more excruciating displays of the night.
All in all though, it was a couple of hours where I too was given a break from thinking about death.
Buster Poindexter is back at City Winery this Saturday July 8th and again August 12th. Tickets (starting at $25) and information here.
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