After two albums as lead singer of the punk rock New York Dolls and five as a power pop solo artist, David Johansen surprised his fans by woodshedding in a bar off Irving Place in New York City, toying with a new musical persona he called Buster Poindexter, a tuxedo-clad lounge lizard leading a horn-filled backup band called the Banshees of Blue. The question "Is he kidding or what?" was inevitable, but the repertoire he developed and the group's approach to it demonstrated that this was more in the realm of an affectionate pastiche than a parody. With his cavernous bass-baritone and outsized personality, Johansen always had at least an implicitly humorous side, especially when he was camping it up with the glitter and glam of the Dolls' heavily costumed look. There was perhaps more of a wink and a tongue in cheek with Buster Poindexter, but that didn't mean that the music was outright comedy. Rather, Poindexter and the Banshees took as their antecedent an act like Louis Jordan & His Tympany 5, presenting son