Buster Poindexter: This Debonair Guy’s Still a Doll at Heart

The list of activities that are hazardous to health gets longer by the day.

Smoking. Drinking. Defoliating the back yard. And now: dancing the rumba at Disneyland.

Just ask those recent visitors to the Magic Kingdom who recklessly attempted to exercise their right of assembly in an unauthorized rumba line behind that suave, drop-dead-gorgeous icon of sophisticated entertainment, Buster Poindexter.

For the uninitiated, Buster Poindexter is the nom de pompadour of David Johansen, the subversive ex-lead singer of the New York Dolls whose current, alter-ego act is both a tribute to and a sendup of the Ultimate Lounge Singer.

Those who missed Poindexter during his weekend on Disneyland’s Videopolis stage, or last Friday in Los Angeles at the Greek Theatre, have another chance to see him in the Southland when he plays Thursday at the Bacchanal club in San Diego. (He was scheduled to play the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim on Wednesday, but the show was canceled last week because of slow ticket sales.)

Perhaps in those other venues, hip-shakers can get away with murder, but at Disneyland, you rumba at your own risk.

Actually, whoever booked Buster into the Magic Kingdom might have known they were dancing with danger. If they had done their homework, they would have learned that there is more to Buster Poindexter than the nattily tuxedoed singer who caterwauls a la Louis Armstrong.

Between that spiffy, mile-high pomp and those pointy, patent-leather pumps stands the same man who, as a member of the Dolls, used to dress up like a skid-row hooker and who helped set off the entire punk-rock movement with his outrageously sloppy, who-cares musical attitude.

(It doesn’t bother Buster, though, that the general public might not be aware of his place in rock history. “I don’t think about the past so much,” he said from New Yawk. “I think people think about ‘now.’ If I was in France or something, it would be different. There you can coast--you don’t have to do anything the rest of your life. But in this country you are just as good as your last project.”)

Anyway, the keepers of all things good and right at Disneyland should have realized that what makes Poindexter’s act so rowdy isn’t his music, a delirious revival of ‘40s ballroom swing, jumpy Caribbean rhythms and lounge pop that was blown from the Videopolis stage by a ragin’ full-force big band and a couple of streetwise-looking female backup singers.

Disney’s watchdogs ought to have paid more attention to the act’s subtext--a former social outcast who is having the last laugh on respectable society--that was so beautifully crystallized right in their own litter-free empire.

Perhaps Buster planned all along to infiltrate the park with his insurrection-inspiring rumba. It has all the makings of a carefully orchestrated plot, what with publicity materials that refer only to the Buster Poindexter character, never to Johansen or his sordid past.

Apparently nobody who works at Disneyland used to frequent the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa, which became Orange County’s punk rock headquarters in the late ‘70s after owner Jerry Roach booked Johansen and saw the potential of the new punk market.

Whatever the excuse, Poindexter ended up on the Videopolis stage in front of whole families ! It wasn’t the first time Buster has played to a mixed audience. “When I first started,” Johansen said, “the roots of Poindexter was to do something to entertain my peers. Those people are there as the core audience. But it turned out that little kids also love the show--they look at Poindexter like a cartoonish character in a tuxedo. And we get a lot of grandparents too.”

Still, Buster had to check his characteristic martini glass at the gate. (No alcohol at Disneyland, remember--”even if,” as Johansen said, “it’s a faux cocktail.”) In its place was a paper Disneyland soft drink cup. (There’s no way to be sure, of course, that the cup actually contained a soft drink.)

But then, he told a couple of mildly risque jokes, one of which prompted a few shocked parents to storm out of the show with kids in tow. (No references to sex at Disneyland, remember.)

And then he threw a few barbs at the First Family of the Happiest Place on Earth--Mickey and Minnie Mouse, who arrived on stage outfitted in colorful calypso fashions to help close the set with Buster’s Latin-flavored hit “Hot, Hot, Hot.”

“That’s a bee-YOU-tee-full dress Minnie. Is that new? Ya know, I used to own one just like it when I was in the Dolls!” (Really risky territory here--no transvestism in Disneyland, remember.)

“And how about a big hand for Mickey on his 60th birthday,” Poindexter said, skillfully working in the park’s latest advertising campaign. “And another hand for his long-suffering wife, Minnie. . . . No, no--just kidding, Minnie.”

Whereupon, he chided Mickey for indiscretions past, advising the rueful rodent to “take it easy this year. You remember what happened at your birthday party last year when you wound up on the front page of the Herald!”

And from there, he tossed all restraint out the door and led the band off the stage and into the crowd, alternately thrusting one leg to the side and then the other in time to the pulsating, tribal beat.

At the earlier shows, with temporary seating set up on the Videopolis dance floor, order had been maintained. But this time, for the late show, the chairs had been cleared and, like a mob frenzied at the sight of any movement, the crowd fell in line behind Buster and his Banshees of Blue.

A full-on rumba was in progress .

Quickly, those vigilant, clean-shaven (no facial hair for Mickey’s henchmen, remember) security personnel jumped in and halted the offenders before they began having too much fun. After all, isn’t that the way tragedy always happens? You start with an innocent rumba step or two, and all too soon you’re into the hard stuff: sambas, merengues and cha-chas.

I’m just relieved that the performer was Buster Poindexter, not Chubby Checker.

I shudder to think about the disaster of unprecedented proportion that might have erupted after a chorus of “Limbo Rock.”