Britney is NOT the New Liza: How the New Gay Visibility May Be Unwittingly Selling Us Down the River

"I can acshually shing, ya know!"

At what cost freedom? This concept is weighing heavily on our mind lately. In a recent Advocate article titled "Losing Dorothy Parker", writer and musical theater enthusiast Joel Derfner wonders aloud what will become of gay culture now that a version of gay culture is put more and more on display in the daily lives of Americans from one end of the country to the other. You'd probably be hard-pressed to find even a member of Wasilla, Alaska's Assembly of God who has not sat casually on the couch at one time or another taking in a Bravo reality show(and let's be serious... Bravo, as far as ordinary Americans are concerned, is the gay network).
There is a transwoman engaged in an affair with a Baldwin brother weekly on network television. Ellen Degeneres has recovered from the heavy-handed lesbification that imploded her sitcom to become the second most-watched talk show host in the country who just married her TV star girlfriend in a California-approved ceremony. The sort of homo-hugging fag haggery that Madonna pioneered in the 80's is now de rigeur for a whole generation of stars. Lindsay Lohan is now officially in a lesbian relationship(we remain not entirely convinced that she is really a lesbian, her new enthusiasm for flannel aside) with a soft butch celebrity DJ that we've all known about forever anyway. We've known about it forever because they've been everywhere with it for months, doing everything short of reenacting Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly's love scenes from Bound. It has also been reported on, almost daily, by raging gay gossip bogger Perez Hilton. Both Hilton and comedian Kathy Griffin have been calling for American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken to come out of the closet since what seems like the dawn of time. This week he finally answered their prayers on the cover of a national magazine. Griffin and Hilton are currently in search of new punchlines.
We are, of a fashion, literally everywhere. We cannot be ignored, we are certainly visible and yet there are those of us who remain unable to celebrate. Now, as in days not long past, for every 'mo caught up in the rapture of increased visibility and tenuous "acceptance" there are those of us who remain suspicious of what this means to our gay sensibility, culture and largely underwritten history. Generations of information, passed down hand over hand like scrolls written in invisible ink, unreadable by heteronormative eyes, seems in danger of being lost. The more we become absorbed into mainstream society the more we may come to resemble it and the implications of this phenomenon are manifold. The question now is not only what we might gain but also what might we lose.
Unlike, say, African-Americans our history is not much discussed in public schools, even for one month out of the year. As a result, gay experience for the non-gay is almost always seen only in the context of the moment. Concurrently, while we appear on screens of all sizes in increasing numbers, we are most often to be found not in scripted programs that may attempt to flesh out the gay experience in a genuine way but in reality TV where everyone, gay and straight, are presented on the most unreal, exaggerated cartoon plane of existence. Young people watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy don't think about the Stonewall riots or Harvey Milk in the same way that watching Barack Obama campaign for the presidency might bring to mind images of Dr. King or abolition. To borrow from Darby Crash's page in tragic gay history: what we do, who we are and where we have come from truly is secret because our history is not on anyone's agenda but our own. Ever. It has always been thus and we suspect it will remain so for decades(if not centuries) to come.
In the past when gay culture was not wired into millions of homes backed by billions of dollars in advertising money, the curious had to seek it out. We learned gay culture from books, films and actual real live gay people. We also made it up as we went along, shifting its shape to suit new environments and changing times and tastes. There is a richness in that experience that cannot be gleaned from the shallow, dumbed-down gayness that will be sold to future generations. Older generations will always fade away as new ones rise up to enjoy their moment in the sun. All anyone can do is continue to speak of the invisible legacy of the past that made the present opportunities possible. One can only hope our words do not fall on deaf ears.

Mexicans Do It Mejor

¡No le provoca!

Finding shiny gems in a mud puddle is a great feeling, is it not? This is the only way to describe what it's like when Perez Hilton posts music on his blog. Mostly he likes really gay, stupid stuff that we are either bored by or are passionately anti. Sometimes though he likes really gay, stupid stuff we think is awesome, as is the case with Maria Daniela y su Sonido Lasser.
MDSL is part of the Nuevos Ricos roster of electronic acts and is comprised of composer Emilio Acevedo and singer Maria Daniela Azpiazu. Acevedo had previously been active with a group called Titan, also on the Nuevos Ricos label, before starting a new project called Sonido Lasser Drakar and asking Maria Daniela to join in "just for fun". They recorded a self-titled debut and released the follow-up, Juventud en Extasis in December of last year.
Lead single "Pobre Estupida" is frenzied Hi-NRG dance craziness like we had no idea anybody not living on the Continent made these days. It is accompanied by a suitably trippy video, all cascading graphics and Maria Daniela doing what looks to be a variation on the Macarena. Our other favorite track of theirs is the slightly more menacing "Pecadora Normal", which sounds a bit like music for futbol fans to riot to. Our Spanish is nowhere near where it used to be but we swear at one point she says "no he matado a nadie" which translates to something like "I didn't kill anybody!" WTF?!
Neither of their albums are available in the U.S. just yet(unless you feel like paying 30-something dollars on Amazon), although hopefully somebody smart will pick that shit up one of these days. For the moment they are on a West Coast tour so go out and see them if you have the chance and tell them we think they're pretty firme.

"Pobre Estupida" video:


"Pobre Estupida" mp3

"Pecadora Normal" mp3

Thank you, David Denby: Wall-E rules, Dark Knight drools.

"Dude, our movie is so much better than Dark Knight."

You and probably everyone you know have probably already seen the Dark Knight, seeing as how it is about to topple Titanic in the Most (Undeservedly) Successful Films of All Time sweepstakes but let's discuss it anyway. Our initial attempt to see it on Sunday at the Pavilion in Park Slope was thwarted because all three shows we arrived in time to see had sold out. Through the magic of smartphones(we must get one of those someday) we were able to secure tickets to the last show of the night over on Court St in Brooklyn Heights and well, it really just wasn't worth all the trouble.
That's right. We thought it sucked. Let us talk you through it.
Now normally when we feel seething disappointment with something everyone else thinks is amazing we feel like we're perhaps being just a smidge contrary. After all, if it's good enough for Peter Travers of Rolling Stone to title his review of the film "Prepare to Be Amazed" then obviously we have missed out on something amazing(apparently not amazing enough for four whole stars, though). Fortunately, David Denby of the New Yorker(wherein he also reviews the far superior Wall-E) restored our faith in our convictions by seeing the movie almost exactly the way we did: over-long, oppressively serious, explosively explosive while exploding explosions explode and utterly unexplosive in almost every other way.
Christian Bale, despite being being plenty talented as well as miles and miles more handsome than any of his predecessors, is far and away the least likable Batman ever put on film. As Batman he pronounces every syllable supplied him in a frog's lowest register. As Bruce Wayne he is only slightly less terrifyingly slick than he was as American Psycho's Patrick Bateman. Michael Keaton is probably nobody's dream date but even without the Adonis bod Bale displayed in Batman Begins(and which is sadly barely glimpsed in this installment) he was fifty times more convincing as a superhero because the audience felt his Batman was someone who might actually want to help people. The only time Bale exhibits any charm or seems to not be choked by his own performance is in his interactions with Michael Caine's Alfred. Caine appears to be one of only two actors in this movie having any fun. We'll get to the other one in a minute.
First, will someone please tell us what it is we're supposed to like about Maggie Gyllenhall? Think what you will of Tom Cruise's child bride(whom we begrudgingly admit was totally awesome in Thank You for Smoking) but before Dark Knight never did we think we would utter the words "We miss Katie Holmes". Where Holmes' Rachel was something of an empty vessell waiting to be filled with BatLove, Gyllenhall has transformed her into what can only be described as Maggie Gyllenhall. Somewhat successful in her basic damsel in distress moments, in scenes written to make Rachel look clever she comes across as infuriatingly smug, just like she has in every other movie we've ever seen her in. She plays what must be meant to be an accomplished lawyer as a know-it-all Wellesley undergrad.
The actors are far from the only problem. Often overly noisy and almost entirely joyless, the film seems intent on lecturing the audience on the thin line between hero and antihero. Pity then that you hardly have a chance to consider this message before the film attempts to bludgeon its audience into slack-jawed exhortations of "Woooooow." Batman jumps off a couple of buildings, once being retrieved by a plane outfitted with something called Sky Hook(we are to believe that this technology was hatched in the 60's and then abandoned... likely because it's utterly ludicrous or maybe because the name is just totally lame). Even when the film gets the action right(as in the climactic car chase scene) it hardly makes up for all the things it gets wrong. Aaron Eckhart's DA character's descent into Two Face madness is marred by the sadly more hilarious than horrifying second CGI face he's been outfitted with. The fight scenes are shot so close as to be a total blur and the "second sight" device Batman employs in his final confrontation with the Joker, even in Summer blockbuster terms, is hardly to be believed.
Speaking of the Joker, let's talk about Heath Ledger. We won't belabor the point too much because everyone everywhere knows that this, his last completed performance, is supposed to be brilliant. It is. He is, hands down, the best thing the film has going for it. He plays Joker's anarchic joy in joyful anarchy to the hilt. You miss him when he's not on-screen, and not just because you know he won't be back for the inevitable sequel. Moreover though, his Joker is a far more fascinating vision than the clown prince of crime Nicholson potrayed in the 1989 film. Materialism has taken a back seat to pure, unadulterated menace; for him, money is just paper, fit to be burned in favor of the pure madness that is his lifeblood. Cracking wise, he takes perverse pleasure in being served a brutal beatdown by Batman. He believes in the fun of chaos. Too bad the film he inhabits has too much of the latter and not enough of the former.

Wow. We Are Incredibly Retarded.

Pregnant pause aborted! We are back! Not to dwell on things that no one else will find all that fascinating but by way of explanation we wanted to say that we were experiencing issues with our webhost that we were uncharacteristically loathe to call and remedy. Who likes to be on hold? No one has actual live operators anymore and talking to some computer about our problems with our computer communicating with their computer just seemed so outrageously boring and postmodern... and we never get bored! Okay, occasionally we get bored with postmodernism.
In any case we have on our own discovered a way around this ridiculously simple to fix matter and resolved to continue music blogging. We're sure you're thrilled. We know we are. A real post is on its way sometime in the(piky swear) not-too-distant future but meanwhile why don't you sit back, relax and enjoy a sweet, soulful spoonful of the Royalettes. Ta!

The Royalettes - It's Gonna Take a Miracle

Thank you, Tina Fey! Sorry, Brad Renfro.

Not to totally ignite fires among the veritable dozen of you who actually read this thing but it can't have escaped everyone's attention that the media's treatment of the Democratic candidates has been, shall we say, less than balanced. Not since Sarah Silverman put Paris Hilton on blast at that gaudy MTV thing that nobody watches anymore(including us, like the rest of you we saw it on YouTube since the "M" now pretty much stands for Moribund) have we been so moved by a comedian's ability to put our own thoughts into words broadcast across the airwaves for millions to see and hear. Right on, Tina. Bitch is the new black.



While we're on the subject of unfair imbalances, was anyone else at all shocked by the omission of Brad Renfro from the Oscars' traditional "In Memoriam" montage? We think this teaches us a valuable lesson about today's times: it is only acceptable to die young, troubled and beautiful if you've left behind an adorable child who will never truly know you and/or been nominated for an Oscar. Guess you showed him, Heath.

Hey, Get a Load of Julie Christie!

Julie Christie has never played even a minor role in our love of movies. Despite the fact that our eldest sister was named after her character in Doctor Zhivago, to our knowledge up until a few days ago the only films we had ever seen her in were 1975's Shampoo (which so bored us as a teenager we didn't even realize that our childhood idol Carrie Fisher was also in it) and Nashville. We only really noticed her in Nashville probably because Karen Black improvised the line, expressing her character's disbelief that Christie was a film star, "She can't even run a comb through her hair!" Color us ignorant if you will but we are now prepared to devour her entire filmography after seeing Sarah Polley's utterly unforgettable(ba dum bump!) Alzheimer's weeper Away From Her.
The story concerns Fiona(Christie) and Grant Anderson(Gordon Pinsent, also quite magical), a married couple coping with the onset of Fiona's Alzheimer's Disease and her subsequent entry into a home for the similarly afflicted. On his frequent visits, Grant must contend not only with Fiona's faint memory of him but also with her newfound attachment to a gentleman patient while also sensing he may be being punished for previous transgressions. To say that Christie's performance is incredible is a genuine understatement. She plays it all with both unforced charm and effortless gravity.
Were it not for our belief that Marion Cotillard's performance as Edith Piaf in La vie en rose was pretty much the knockout characterization of the year we would give our left arm to see Christie pick up what could be her second Oscar. She probably will anyway. Despite having already obtained a little golden friend for Darling in 1966 the Academy is highly likely to honor the established film icon once again rather than the largely unknown-on-these-shores Cotillard(even though her Piaf is far more transcendent than Jamie Foxx's wobbly but apparently Oscar-worthy Ray Charles could ever hope to be). It'll be glorious either way... even if the lady still can't run a comb through her hair.

Cover Lovers.

Long ago, multiple interpretations of a song were not at all unusual. When songwriters wrote the songs and singers mostly just sang them the chart success of a song was in fact measured not by the performance of individual versions but by the performance of any and all versions. Songwriters reaped the lion's share of the profits and notoriety. Artists in those days made their money on the road. Radio in those days was largely a regional affair, making an artist's success across the board a rare phenomenon. Songs were mostly entities unto themselves.
One can make multiple arguments for the exact moment the tipping point occurred and the many factors that pushed it along. Increased national exposure due to expanding radio markets, the advent of television, a boom in singers and bands who wrote their own material in addition to covering the work of others, the escalating prevalence of fanzines , even burgeoning changes in cultural mores(such as a decline in demand for the "vanillazation" by white artists of black music) all contributed to the new Artist As End All Be All mentality that by the mid-to-late 60's had the culture firmly in its grip. While it is pretty commonly known that Elvis wasn't the first to record "Hound Dog", you'd be hard-pressed to find an average person who knows that the Dixie Cups were at least the third group to record "Chapel of Love". Even in an era where the songs were still being written largely by people behind the scenes(and artists given almost no creative input outside of occasional refusals of material), the hit version had become the version that mattered and the group ran away with the bragging rights, if not the actual rights(or royalties). Not much later, as songwriters moved further into the shadows and artists further into the spotlight, the modern idea of covers would be born.
We here at Neon Angels On the Road to Ruin simply adore covers. They are like legitimized karaoke, which we also heartily enjoy. If you've already downloaded the Miho Hatori version of Madonna's "Crazy For You" posted here previously, perhaps you understand our enthusiasm. At their best(as in the case of the aforementioned), covers offer the listener perhaps a new spin on a song already loved; revealing dimensions of beauty, depth and plain old awesomeness perhaps unknown even to those most familiar with the source material. Bands interested in covering others' work could certainly take a page from the Cibo Matto/Grace Jones School of Rendering Things Completely Your Own. Covers can even occasionally outshine their origins. Gloria Jones once admitted she liked Soft Cell's version of her Northern Soul chestnut, "Tainted Love" better than her own(we've drawn our own conclusions on that one but okay, Miss Jones, have it your way).
At their worst, covers can seem like exercises in unforgivable vanity. Courtney Love has covered just about every song under the sun, usually in a live setting(at times, from the sound of it, her bandmates sitting by cringing a bit as they plunk along after her), often with unintentionally hilarious results. Sometimes they're just lapses of judgement. While we ourselves listen imagining(wishing!) someone else were singing Rhianna's original probably no one was desperate to hear Mandy Moore's treacly interpretation of "Umbrella", harmless and adorable as she is. Maybe not so harmless on second thought: Moore has actually recorded a whole album of treacly interpretations of others' songs.
Somewhere in the middle lies an entire universe of covers that neither radically improve upon nor necessarily insult the memory of their sources. Maybe they're window dressing for movie soundtracks, b-sides and throwaways or space-fillers on live setlists. While they may pose no threat of erasing the original's impact, they can be a lot of fun. Blondie's live version of "Heroes" may be a pretty exact replica of the Bowie song(Debbie Harry's less-than-Thin-White-Duke-worthy vocal aside) but that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. Except for a slight alteration of title, Stereo Total's approach to their version of the Plastics' "I Love You Oh No" seems to have been to run it through a ditto machine... but most people haven't heard the Plastics' version so "c'est la vie!" Still more covers are just ill-advised attempts to take a song from one particular genre and give it a new outfit(witness the woefully unweildy Black Box Recorder cover of Althea and Donna's reggae confection "Uptown Top Ranking").
Whatever the outcome, the act of performing covers is certainly to be smiled at. It appeals to a basic human desire to align ourselves with the things we admire. It harks back to childhood days spent playing dress-up before the idea we could be anything we wanted became qualifiable and adult concerns rendered our once-immutable belief in possibility into insecurity and cynicism. Covers are, by nature, uncynical. While it may be a lark to hear Courtney Love growl her way through "Hungry Like the Wolf" or groan-inducing to hear Cake stutter through "I Will Survive"; you can be fairly certain that, ironic posturing aside, they want a little of their magic for themselves.

So here you have a selection of covers we're really enjoying lately.

Eleanor Rigby - Aretha Franklin (available on 30 Greatest Hits)

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue - Marianne Faithfull (Bob Dylan Cover)

Sing This All Together - Cibo Matto (Rolling Stones cover from the Super Relax EP)

Until It's Time For You to Go - Claudine Longet (Buffy St. Marie cover available on Claudine)

Out In the Streets - Blondie (Shangri-las cover from the Blondie reissue)

Paint It Black - the Mo-Dettes (Rolling Stones cover)

TV-Glotzer(White Punks On Dope) - Nina Hagen Band (Tubes cover from NunSex/MonkRock)

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow - Ronnie Spector (Ramones cover from the recently reissued Siren album)

This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us - Siouxsie and the Banshees (Sparks cover off the Through the Looking Glass album)

Light My Fire - Erma Franklin (Doors cover)

Use Me - Grace Jones (Bill Withers cover from the Nightclubbing album)

Dance (Demo) - Los Super Elegantes (ESG cover)

When You Were Mine - Cristina ( Prince cover available on Sleep It Off)

So Sad About Us - the Breeders (Who cover from Safari EP)

It should also be noted we are not omnipotent and have occasionally been confronted with the fact that some of our favorite songs are in fact... gasp!... covers. One such example is "Super Cool", which we had always taken for granted to be a Stereo Total original. Well, it's not and we feel no shame in our ignorance. None whatsoever! So, we're bundling the Plastic Bertrand original in with the rest of this gang just for fun.

Super Cool - Plastic Bertrand