what are these young homosexuals doing

Fresh. Pearly. Pink.

Q. What’s the guaranteed #1 best way to make anyone look more amazing, no matter how fabulous they looked before?

A. Put them in drag!

I must admit, this is both a truth universal and one of my personal favorite music video tropes. A couple of years ago (what?! 2007, where did you go? and how can we bring you back?!) Mouse on Mars and Mark E. Smith of The Fall teamed up to be Von Sudenfed and brought us the sexual & entrancing “Fledermaus Can’t Get It,” the video for which is undoubtedly one of the great achievements of that year. In fact, I think my friend Hilly and I spent most of that year watching it.

I can’t start it without watching it all of the way through, as I’m completely captivated by the various drag personalities taken on by each of the three men. Is she wasted? Is that blue lipstick? If so, where can I get some???

In this vein, the Canadian DJ Silencefiction has recently released a new single, “Lipstique (featuring Fauxnique),” which is a sort of prequel to the Von Sudenfed video. Listen up kids, because this is important: it teaches you how to put on drag makeup (insofar as this can be taught, of course). But again, it’s absolutely fascinating and pretty sexy to watch people put on drag:

The “Fledermaus Can’t Get It” video is great because each of the six characters is clearly such a hot mess– it’s like watching a sexy trainwreck. The “Lipstique” video is great because you see the evolution of drag, and in the end are rewarded with six fully-transformed characters. And both are great, really, because what’s better than sitting at home on a Sunday morning watching music videos with drag?

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28
Jan 09

No such thing as no regrets

Wouldn’t it be fantastic to be able to actually live life without regrets? I know a few people who claim to live without regrets, but I think everyone has a least a couple buried in the back of their closet. Even if you don’t have the sort of personal-lifestyle-opportunity regrets that cut close to the bone every time you think about them, you probably have a few of the caliber I’m about to talk about, namely missed rock ‘n’ roll moments.

Musical junkies always have a little list that they keep in their mental back pocket of all of the bands they want to see live. Some bands break up way before you’re of concert-going age, or before you’re even born, and there isn’t much you can do about it. Some bands only toured a couple of times and nowhere near a place you could get to. Some bands, though, toured and came close to you, and you thought to yourself, “I’ll see them the next time around,” and then tragically, stupidly, there is no next time.

For me, Sleater-Kinney falls into that last category. Three women who are gods of rock. Thundering, muscular drum beats with fine veneer of cymbals washing over them. Searing, incisive guitars that have made those far greater than I pump both their fists and go weak in the knees. Not to mention the sheer face-melting hotness of having Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker, and Janet Weiss all in one room together in the first place (Carrie is more my type, while Mimi Smartypants has a thing for Corin. Who likes Janet? Wait, who doesn’t like Janet?)

Carrie, Janet, & Corin

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26
Jan 09

Epilepsy is Dancing

When I was in college, I would often wander over to visit my friend Lucy, who no matter what time of day always had something interesting going on.

11:30pm and she’d be whipping up a delicious tempeh stir fry. 3:00am and she’d just have found an old poetry anthology and want to show me some fabulous obscure poem she’d just rediscovered.

One especially memorable night I turned up and she had an “amazing new drag queen CD” that she wanted to share with me. She fired up “Hope There’s Someone” from I Am A Bird Now, and I felt warm shivers run down my spine and into the depths of my gut. That’s how I heard of Antony Hegarty, and the utterly mind-blowing Antony and the Johnsons.

Their new album The Crying Light just came out a few days ago, and this is the video for the first single, “Epilepsy is Dancing.” Every new thing they release, I think I’ve finally reached the end of whatever tremulous emotional range there is inside of me that responds to them. And once again, they’ve pushed me to a new place.

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23
Jan 09

Anatomy of a Smiths song: Rusholme Ruffians

In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I should get it out of the way and tell you now– I’m a big, giant, freakish fan of The Smiths.

I didn’t used to be. I used to consider them overrated and even boring. I believed what people said about Morrissey, that he was the Pope of Mope, a touchstone for depressive teenagers, with flat, one-dimensional lyrics.

Then a couple of things happened. A friend played “Cemetery Gates” for me to cheer me up one night, and after I scoffed (The Smiths? To cheer me up?), I realized that she was right, and it was a beautiful, clever, cheerful song. With references to Keats and Oscar Wilde, no less.

I started giving Mozzer et al more of a chance, and a couple of years later, when I went through a particularly rough spot, I realized what fantastic companions The Smiths can be. They’re occasionally genuinely angsty, enough that you can properly empathize with them, but the lyrics are brilliant and have so many facets that you’ll find yourself laughing, or at least quirking a smile, at the most unexpected moments.

I also need to mention that Morrissey, the singer and lyricist, and Johnny Marr, the guitarist and melody-maker, are perhaps the most perfect songwriting team in all of western (alterna)(pop)(rock) history. To my personal taste I would definitely place them above Lennon/McCartney, and their break-up was certainly no less a tragedy.

Having said all this, and having recently been on the topics of both Morrissey and Elvis, I’d like to examine one of their minor gems, “Rusholme Ruffians.” If you’re unfamiliar, take a moment to listen:

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19
Jan 09

Just a country boy that combed his hair

LIFE has recently made their archive of images available to be searched via Google Image Search. I was digging around today, and decided to see what they had in the way of Elvis. As expected, there were a number of photos of him in uniform, and a few of him tearing it up onstage. What I could NOT have predicted were a lot of images that looked more or less like this:

Teenage girls showing off their Elvis Presley hair styles. Taken by Grey Villet, 03/57, in MI.

Evidently LIFE did some sort of photo-essay in 1957 about how popular it was for TEENAGE GIRLS* to get their hair cut & styled like the King’s**. There are a number of photos of one girl in particular,

“getting her cut like singer Elvis Presley”
“examining her Elvis Presley hair styles” [sic]
“showing off her Elvis Presley-like hair style to her friend” (who looks a lot like her grandma)
“talking to an unidentified man”, and finally
a man looking at two teenage girls with Elvis Presley hair styles

I know that 1957 was a very different time, being half a century ago, but can I take a moment to just say

LESBIAN
I mean seriously, did these girls go get their hair cut like Elvis so they could then go to sock hops and MAKE OUT with each other? Did they sit in front of mirrors and masturbate, thinking of Elvis? Did very confused 15 year old boys sit in their rooms with pictures of Elvis, masturbating and thinking of their girlfriends? And how did the BOYS get their hair cut?

Getting your hair cut like your sex idol does take out the middle man***, I suppose. It’s a widely accepted fact that Elvis was smoking hot, but I guess this is our proof that his hotness cut across the board, muddling the boundaries of gender and sex and confusing the shit out of everyone. Elvis! I salute you.

*presumably straight teenage girls, at that!
**the King being Elvis, not a drag king.
***literally! ha!

mitchco a go go!