Sunday, October 25, 2009
The Regency Ballroom
1290 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94109

Gossip with We Are the World and MEN

It was approaching midnight, and I found myself at The Edge in the Castro. Sunday night, and it was surprisingly slow in a neighborhood that’s usually busting at the seams with shrieky gay boys getting drunk at Badlands (a.k.a. “Sadlands”) or just the standard parade of partiers streaming in and out of the gay bars. Besides me, there were maybe four guys at The Edge—the two bartenders and a couple of random sad-sacks sitting at the end of the bar. “Not getting laid tonight,” I observed. At that point, Tracy Chapman began playing on the stereo.

“Cause finally the tables are starting to turn. Talkin’ ‘bout a revolution.”

Stay with me here. I quote this song for a reason.

Just a few hours prior, I and a packed house of other screaming queers had been dancing our asses off at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco. The occasion? The Gossip was in town, hot off the heels of their latest album, Music for Men. Flanked by guitarist, Brace Paine, and drummer, Hannah Blilie, the ferocious Beth Ditto was a mess of flaming orange hair and an emerald green dress, cinched at the bust by black spandex threatening to make her already ample bosom spill out into the crowd. “Now them’s some knockers,” I thought to myself.

I had never heard of Gossip until about a week ago when my editor asked me to review their show. Among other things, he suggested that I look at it from the perspective of “how the worlds of indie music and queer folk intersect.” Yeah, sure, easy enough, right? And yet here I sit, impatiently tapping my keyboard with my index finger. Where does this fit in the continuum of queer indie music?

My conundrum is rooted in my own refusal to call the Gossip punk rock in spite of how the anti-ingenue is depicted in the press. While certainly not pop music, it comes across as more retro-70s soul plus moog with a dash of garage thrown in. At times they sound like they’re cut from the same cloth as Le Tigre and the Scissor Sisters. To me, punk is dissonant. It growls. It’s guitars played wrong and strung together in a slap-dash attempt at crafting a melody. Of course, I’m totally paraphrasing (and weakly stereotyping) a genre of angry, rebellious music rooted in the 1970s which is why, in 2009, it’s also, well, kinda obsolete. So let’s just eschew this whole idea that the Gossip is in-your-face punk and leave that mess to the greedy A&R guys who still see it as a way to market fresh-faced rock moppets with colored hair. Just a few songs before Ditto took the stage, MEN front-man-woman, JD Samson, declared that Gossip saved her life. And that is what stuck with me throughout the night.

Upon arriving at the Regency Ballroom, I surveyed the scene at the doors. Typical San Francisco street fashion. But since this was an event, there was also lots of black. Sheer shirts—on the men. Shorty-shorts and the type of eye makeup that would make Siouxsie Sioux proud (again, on the men). Inside I found myself standing behind a cadre of pear-shaped Latino gay guys who looked like they had found the last known Chess King store left on earth. It was an extremely multi-ethnic crowd all around. The opening band was We Are the World, and all I’ll say about them is that they looked and sounded like electro hip-hop ninjas. I think I saw them during my sophomore year in college as part of someone’s communications studies master’s thesis…

Even though the gay Latino contingent found them pretty rockin’, all the other cool kids in black and geometric bobs looked rather nonplussed. In between We Are the World and MEN, I met a meek lesbian hipster with a Caesar haircut who moonlighted as a DJ for a radio program focusing on queer positive music and social issues. No surprise, she was ready to pee on herself for Beth Ditto. Then MEN took the stage and ran through a few songs peppered with references to political humping and SILENCE=DEATH stage props. I was a bit surprised to see these slogans still being used in this day and age, but then I realized something. We’ve still got a long way to go.

There must’ve been a good 30 minutes that passed between MEN’s last song and Gossip taking the stage. When Ditto finally did make her entrance, she asked, “Any gays here..?” Now I’ve never been one to need earplugs at a concert, but at that precise moment in time a gazillion ear muffs would not have fended off the deafening roar that went up through the crowd. Bitches, it was on. Disarmingly sweet in between songs, Ditto’s voice packed the power of a generation of queer boys and girls who had long past hit the glass ceiling that began and ended with a mirror ball. “This song is for all the men who are in love with each other,” Ditto declared as if any explanation was needed. And much of that love was reserved for Ditto, the connection between singer and fans never so palpable. If the fat guy with a rainbow t-shirt, hands in the air, and lost in the ecstasy of the moment was any indication, it was hard not to believe that JD Samson wasn’t the only one who was being saved by the Gossip that night. Even for an old stodgy codger like me, I couldn’t help but appreciate the absolute unashamed openness in which we were allowed to express ourselves. Queer music, for queer people. Do you get that? I guarantee you that nothing like this happened at the Treasure Island Music Festival the week before.

After the Gossip closed the show with “Heavy Cross,” Ditto literally embraced the crowd at the front of the stage causing me to get crushed in a stampede of 5’5” lesbians rushing at her at once. There was an encore, of course. Ditto reemerged in an all-black spandex number before launching into a cover of Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” It was oddly appropriate. At the end, Ditto led the crowd into an a cappella rendition of Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” It was a fitting end to a concert that seemed to address the problem of being queer through the salve of music.

In retrospect, it would be easy to take potshots at Beth Ditto. There’s been no shortage of fat girls who can sing. From white-girl 60’s belter, Mama Cass Elliot, to the ever-widening girth of Aretha Franklin, to Jennifer Hudson’s anthemic portrayal of Effie in Dreamgirls. Personally I like to think of Ditto as more like Meatloaf with sass. And really, I mean that as a compliment. Because the road to divadom is littered with the old, tired carcasses of bubble-headed pop princesses whose steel pipes and ear-splitting vocal range are the staple of extended dance mixes everywhere. And whether it be old standbys like Madonna who everyone in the gay community is supposed to be indebted to (really, given that she’s still got a career well past her relevance, can we not call it even?) or Pink’s disingenuous attempts at distancing herself from her contemporaneous nemesis, Britney Spears, there’s always this need to pander to the gay community. Most recently Lady Gaga dropped her name into the bucket. Their struggle is the struggle to be famous, and it drives me fucking nuts. Instead, gimme the zaftig hard-rockin’ baby-mama with a set of boobies that can knock you out cold. Because while the shrieky gay boys at Badlands are content to dance their lives away to whichever dance diva is ruling the turntables at any given, I’ll spend the night turning the tables with the Gossip to get this revolution moving.

Heavy Cross

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