"The Gayest Show On Earth"

So on Sunday I attended the True Colors concert with The Denton and Laurmo. Michelle was supposed to go, but she got a deathy migraine and was down for the count.

The first half of the show was fantastic: The Gossip, Dresden Dolls, and Rufus Wainwright each put on a hell of a show. The Gossip had fire and punky chutzpah, the Dolls had quirky minimalism, and Rufus had...lots and lots of stripes. Like, everyone in his band was wearing a variety of conflicting striped clothes. He was also wearing lots of sparkly brooches. He also happened to play a fantastic, subtle set of tunes from Want One and his latest, Release the Stars.

The second half of the show didn't really click with me: Debbie Harry of Blondie (sporting an outfit I'd swear I've seen my grandmother wear--if buttoned a little more properly on my grandmother--and a white headband and looking totally stoned out of her mind), electronica gents Erasure (who did all of the instrumentation for their show on a MacBook Pro), and Cyndi "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" Lauper. None of whom I cared a bit about, I'm sad to say. They also had the luxury of longer sets, mostly because the earlier acts are all younger and stuff (which was criminal. I didn't need an hour of Erasure, and thirty minutes of Rufus Wainwright was only enough to whet the appetite). Cyndi Lauper's surprising acoustic rendition of "She Bop" was pretty cool, though.

Margaret Cho, world-renowned fag hag and funny woman, MC'd the evening. She offered up between-set banter ranging from politics to gay culture, and it was all fairly amusing if rather conventional (well, as conventional as anything at a gay pride concert thing can be, that is. Let's just say the topics and positions on said topics were not surprising). Rosie O'Donnell, surprise guest star, did an amusing stand-up stint following Debbie Harry that was quiet enjoyable (and got a lot of mileage out of her tussle with Donald Trump).

All in all, it was a fairly entertaining evening. Rufus and the Dresden Dolls made the evening for me, though watching hundreds or even thousands of gay men and women dance to Erasure was pretty damn funny to watch, too (and dude, someone needs to tell the lead singer he really needs to stop dancin' around. He doesn't dance gay, he just dances poorly. There's a difference).

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Dresden Dolls, "Coin-Operated Boy"