And you’re a prima ballerina on a spring afternoon…
David Johansen
I am positively crushed by the news that David Johansen has Stage 4 Brain Cancer. While not particularly well-versed in malignancy protocols, I will assume that as little anyone wants to hear the term Brain Cancer, the experienced is rendered worse by the affixing of Stage 4 at the beginning of the phrase.
Accompanying his daughter’s announcement of same (and adding salt to the proverbial wound) was the disclosure that the family is broke and needs external help to finance his care.
But let’s back up a bit. I’ve a good deal to share about my man David Jo, and, seeing as how I am finding the current landscape of the Capital Economy virtually indiscernible, I’m gonna go ahead and share it.
For the uninitiated, David is the founding lead singer/principal songwriter for the divine New York Dolls, who exploded on the scene in the early ‘70s and paved the way for virtually every glam/punk outfit that came after. They were local boys who dressed up in stilettos and makeup yet attacked with such massive masculine energy as to astonish everyone who encountered them.
The story of The Dolls is one that has been repeated many times throughout history. A quick rise to fame. An inability to sustain the surge. Years of obscurity for most of the players, albeit with flashes of brilliance along the way. And, of course, it is a tale rife with bitter tragedy.
To wit — just as they were conducting their first studio sessions for their magnificent self-titled album, their original drummer: Billy Murcia, stuffed to the gills with barbiturates and alcohol, drowned, Jim Morrison style, in a bathtub at age 21. He is forever immortalized in a Bowie classic (“Tim in quaaludes and red wine, demanding Billy Dolls, and other friends of mine”). They replaced him with Jerry Nolan, who made it to 45. Their other frontman – Johnny Thunders – perished from a heroin overdose in 1991. He as Fellow guitarist/Syrian Jew Sylvain Sylvain nearly lived out his natural 3-Score/10, and would’ve celebrated his 74th birthday on Valentines Day. But then there’s bassist Arthur (Killer) Kane, who like Sid Vicious after him, could barely play a note, but who, at > 6.5 feet tall (and this without his platform boots) was perhaps the most visibly outrageous member of a visually outrageous band.
The Dolls: Syl, Johnny, Killer, Nolan and David:
When The Dolls split up, he bounced around the scene a bit, and then disappeared. In 2004, leading Dollsoligist Morrisey undertook to find him, and eventually located him in a Los Angeles Mormon mission, where he lived/served as Assistant Librarian. He roused him to play a reunion gig at the at that year’s Meltdown Festival – held in late June at London’s Royal Festival Hall.
Having done so, Killer Kane returned to the Latter-Day stacks of his L.A. library. And died 22 days later.
Which leaves only Johansen. He put out a couple of great post-Dolls solo records, and then, improbably, completely revamped his image, rocked a pompadour, and assumed the handle of Buster Poindexter, under which he scored a series modest hits out of old Louis Prima covers like “Hot, Hot, Hot”. He even briefly served in this new persona as the leader of the Saturday Night Live Band.
I saw him early in his Poindexting days, at a gig at Columbia University. I wasn’t digging his new image and so I was the guy who kept yelling “Vietnamese Baby” and “Personality Crisis” from the crowd, which I don’t think he appreciated. But ultimately he took my advice – ditched BP and became DJ once again.
And now he lays dying of Brain Cancer at his Tribeca home. And looking for financial support to ease his last days. I took the lead and stroked him a few bucks. And you can do the same, at:
https://www.sweetrelief.org/davidjohansenfund.html
What on earth we will do without him is another question, but as Napoleon once said: “the graveyards are full of indispensable men”. It is my fear that few will note, or even notice, his demise. No matter I reckon, there are those of us who will feel the full extent of this loss and continue to honor him — as long as the band plays on.
How transient our existence, how quickly that which we hold most dear crumbles to dust, paves the way for something new! I was further reminded of this when contemplating the reality that the #1 and #2 rated NCAA hoops squads faced off this Saturday. Duke vs. Kentucky? Kansas against Connecticut?
Nay – Alabama matched up against Auburn – not simply for roundball bragging rights in their shared eponymous state, but for the top spot on the whole Coaches Poll. Of course, this would make all the sense in the world if we were talking football. But we’re not. The hated gridiron rivals who match up annually in the Iron Bowl have fallen on hard, hundred-yard times. The Tigers finished dead last in the reconstituted SEC, and while the Tide were competitive, they defied downward expectations by failing to make the expanded tourney.
However, on Saturday, in the parallel universe which we currently occupy, the #1-Ranked Auburn Basketball Tigers defeated the #2-Ranked Alabama Crimson Basketball Tide by a score of 94 to 95.
So, the denizens of the Sweet Home State are rim-ward ascendent — as the finest hoopsters from historical hotbeds such as Carolina and Indiana (the latter another basketball haven which somehow sent its long- suffering football team to the above-mentioned championship round) are relegated to the 2nd tier.
But the Tide rolls on. The old replaced by the new. Barring some miracle, David Doll is close to breathing his last, leaving me wondering how he ended up broke. Clearly, he failed to invest the royalties dolled out with parsimony by Mercury Records back in ’73, because the generic broad basket of stocks he might’ve owned has delivered a 60-bagger in the two generations since these records dropped.
And, as the final bell rang on Friday’s session, it tolled in a new all-time high for Col. Naz, with the Gallant 500 coming within a whisper (1 skinny index point) of achieving the same feat. I am partially surprised by these tidings, but then I remember my long-standing mantra that the investing world is laden down with too much cash, chasing an insufficient inventory of available securities to satiate its appetites. Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that participants are tending to shrug off the bad and embrace the good.
Macro data was mixed this week, with both CPI and PPI clocking in above expectations, to the disappointment of those hoping for improbable incremental relief from the Fed. Then, on Friday, and to the apparent delight of at least a few, the Labor Department offered, as promised, a glimpse at January Retail Sales. It was a train wreck. So, naturally, investors decided it was time to buy.
And now the data flow trails off. Nothing is scheduled on the tape until Wednesday week, when NVDA will breathlessly report its results. Probably, the market moves on these utterings, but a) they’re a fortnight off, and b) after that it’s bubkes – probably for the rest of the quarter.
Which of course will train all avaricious eyes on Washington, where the action remains hot and heavy. I can’t even keep track of doings issuing from that quarter, but it seems as though, from a foreign policy perspective, those with whom we have beefs large and small have taken notice of our less-effete attitudes, and are, for now, responding in ways which we hoped they would.
Closer to home, there is a frenzied race on both sides of the spectrum to outflank one another in hysteria as to the appropriateness (or lack thereof) of the World’s Richest Man being granted access to the closely held books of key agencies. For my part, I doubt this will do much harm (though how much good it will do is an open question), but I will cop to being troubled by what appears to me to be a thus-far successful effort by Musk, his boss and his boss’s family to monetize their positions of power. My gut tells me that there will be a price to pay for these actions, and I reckon that it will be the electorate (including sympathetic but non-partaking outsiders such as myself) who will bear the brunt of it.
All of which leaves my mindset more or less where it’s been all along. I don’t foresee a sustainable rally on the cards for us, but I am as certain as I can be that barring some unforeseen disaster, any selloff will be short-lived and of minor magnitude.
Outside of a Trumpian tape bomb, it’s likely to be boring. I think you can buy in safely here, and if nothing else moves you, do it for David.
The Dolls once did a cover of a great Bo Didley track called “Pill”, wherein the hook line goes “I was lying in a hospital bed, a rock and roll nurse went to my head”.
And now David not only needs a nurse but must find a way to pay her. You can help.
A rock and roll nurse absolutely, but she probably need not be a Prima Ballerina, and only heaven knows if he’ll make it to enjoy another spring afternoon.
If he did it would be a Godsend, and, failing all else, I will spare a prayer for same.
TIMSHEL