staten island advance.

buster poindexter rocks the nursing home.
music legend David Johansen treats his mom and her eger home friends to a hot, hot, hot show.
10.02.2003

When a rock legend plays a nursing home, it's usually a sign that his career is in worse shape than his lucky leather pants.

But when West Brighton native David Johansen (a.k.a Buster Poindexter, a.k.a New York Doll, a.k.a Harry Smith, a.k.a anyone he feels like being at the moment) came to Staten Island's Eger Health Care and Rehabilitation Center in Egbertville yesterday, all it meant was that he loved his mama.

A punk pioneer and the singer responsible for the ubiquitous "Hot, Hot, Hot" (which is likely causing a conga line somewhere in the world right now) Johansen came back to the Island to visit his mother while she underwent rehabilitation at Eger for a broken arm.

The staff at the institution was shy at first, but finally screwed up the courage to ask him to play a gig.

"I thought it was a capital idea," the hipster said, noting how much his hometown has grown. "When I was growing up, Staten Island was like Nyack. I could get lost here now."

He and his band performed for free, packing the small chapel on the nursing home's grounds.

Casually dressed and sporting a goatee, Johansen wasn't showing any signs of his glam-fab or lounge lizard days, and his 53-year-old voice sounded healthy and strong. His playlist was a hodgepodge of whiskey blues, smooth jazz and old standards - and of course the requisite rendition of "Hot, Hot, Hot."

The crowd, over 100 strong, gave Johansen a rousing reaction. Golden rollers danced in their wheelchairs while spry octogenarians swing-danced in the aisles.

"It's the afternoon, these people haven't had a chance to have a couple of pops yet," Johansen quipped after the concert. "They're just rockin' on their meds!"

For some of the residents at Eger, it was more than a chance to rock out. John Lowery was advised by a friend to make sure he didn't miss the concert, and spent the entire time clapping and singing loudly. It was his last day at the home.

"This is the best goodbye present they could have given me," he said. "I've been to a lot of concerts in this place, and I've never seen it this packed."

"Everybody's smiling, everyone is happy," said Vienna Profeta, director of development at Eger, after the show.

After making a name for himself in the 1970s' pre-punk, downtown, boys-in-girly-glam band called the New York Dolls, Johansen hit it big in the '80s as the bouffant-haired swinger, Poindexter. He's tried his hand at acting, too, most notably in 1994's "Car 54 Where Are You?" and the now-finished HBO series "Oz."

He's known for slip-sliding from identity to identity, and after introducing the band yesterday, he proved he hasn't changed.

"And I am Seymour Schlermowitz!" he joked, later admitting that the name just "popped into my head."

Johansen gave his usual parlor shtick between songs, but laid back on the hard stuff for the crowd. Called upon to sing the word "hell" during his rendition of the 1940s hit "Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well," he instead covered his ears.

Even old-school punk rockers watch their mouths when mom's in the audience.