Bouquets and Brickbats
To David Johansen, the rock singer and actor who died in his house on Staten Island at the age of 75 in February. Johansen made rock history as the lead singer of the New York Dolls whose eponymous 1972 first album and the 1974 follow-up Too Much Too Soon helped invent punk rock before British fashionista puppets the Sex Pistols ever got into it. In his later years, Johansen delighted everyone from fans of his lounge-lizard persona Buster Poindexter (“Hot! Hot! Hot!”) to appreciators of his appearances in films like Scrouged and Let It Ride. Johansen’s career is proof that you don’t have to sing in a British accent to be a punk rocker (Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, we are looking at you). To Beyonce. Sure, she and her husband Jay-Z are neck-deep in the revolting backstage-sex-and-blackmail-Puff-Daddy-baby-oil-party stuff that powers the rap industry, and large parts of the music industry broadly, and no doubt Hollywood and national politics as well. On the other hand, she is a …
