{"id":15303,"date":"2012-09-01T13:54:24","date_gmt":"2012-09-01T17:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=15303"},"modified":"2012-09-01T14:58:27","modified_gmt":"2012-09-01T18:58:27","slug":"personality-crisis-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/personality-crisis-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Personality Crisis: If Only David Johansen Could Have Allowed Himself to Be David Johansen"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VBmtFSgUGSk?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p><strong>David Johansen<\/strong> is a talent of limited means but huge brass balls. His huge brass balls have always been the driving force in a career that has straddled underground cred and occasionally somewhat anonymous public adoration. <em>Mach schau!<\/em>, David, and more power to you for delivering through the guises of drag queen, lounge lizard, and bloozologist.<\/p>\n<p>Despite his limitations as a singer, I was always intrigued by the &#8220;real&#8221; David Johansen, the wannabe Jagger under all the make-up and nylon firing up songs in<strong> The New York Dolls<\/strong>, the guy who came out of the gates on his first solo album with the excellent single &#8220;Funky But Chic&#8221; and who had a minor hit with a live medley of <strong>Animals<\/strong> songs. That Johansen was a guy I could best identify with. He was still putting across his meat-and-potatoes rock &#8216;n roll with style and fun, certainly, but doing so in a straightforward manner, without the rock star bullshit that had gotten out of hand in the late-&#8217;70s. I was trying to find a way to do something like this with my friends and our little band. This possibly imagined Real Johansen was leading the way toward a rock scene in which I could fit.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lcLzzAQq4PI?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p>Johansen was probably smart enough to know that he didn&#8217;t have a whole lot to offer as a &#8220;serious&#8221; garage-rock singer. Not even Mick Jagger has been capable of keeping a real solo career. Johnansen was no Jagger, and even Johansen <em>In Style<\/em> was no <strong>Bryan Ferry<\/strong>. The <strong>Buster Poindexter<\/strong> gimmick was massively successful, probably paying the singer&#8217;s bill through the rest of his life. Most likely, without the success of that act, the world wouldn&#8217;t have had the opportunity to get to know the even <em>more real<\/em> Johansen of his <em>Anthology of American Folk Music<\/em> guise, <strong>The Harry Smiths<\/strong>. Thanks a lot, Buster.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0xi1mPmlD0w?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<p>Without question Johansen&#8217;s career moves were the right moves for his life. For my own interests, I wish he would have kept pushing as a serious solo garage-rock singer, scraping out a bare-minimum earnings on the small-club circuit with bands featuring former members of other cool, long-extinguished underground bands, like guys from <strong>The Flamin&#8217; Groovies<\/strong>. It&#8217;s no wonder artists sometimes find their fans a burden.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WVrIRwI-f9A?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/personality-crisis-2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/personality-crisis-2\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/personality-crisis-2\/3\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">3<\/span><\/a><\/nav>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Johansen is a talent of limited means but huge brass balls. His huge brass balls have always been the driving force in a career that has straddled underground cred and occasionally somewhat anonymous public adoration. Mach schau!, David, and more power to you for delivering through the guises of drag queen, lounge lizard, and <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/personality-crisis-2\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[175,212,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}