...and I think I hear carol singers, with their old, familiar, traditional songbook, heading this way...
RIP, Vanilla LushOnly today and tomorrow to go, and the Festering Season's over for another year. Hoorah!
Bah Humbug.
Showing posts with label Supreme Fabulettes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Supreme Fabulettes. Show all posts
Tuesday, 24 December 2024
It's the eve...
Saturday, 23 December 2017
Mood music
Probably the only thing I would like to unwrap on Monday
A lovely Xmas carol, courtesy of house faves The Supreme Fabulettes!
Bah Humbug.
Thursday, 14 March 2013
I used to get my pee-pee out in the shopping mall
"I didn’t have a choice about being gay – I mean I literally fell out of my mother’s womb and landed in her high heels!"
In her review in Beige magazine, the estimable Dame Vesta Bules describes Mr Leslie Jordan's new one man show Fruit Fly as "a series of reminiscences told in a delicious Southern accent that makes Blanche Devereaux sound like a trucker."
And indeed it was thus - as we settled into a bijou and largely curtained-off Leicester Square Theatre last night [it didn't seem to be sold out, more's the pity] for an intimate evening with the star of Sordid Lives and Will and Grace, a man who has variously been nick-named "the American Ronnie Corbett", "a pint-sized Alan Bennett lookalike" and (by the man himself) “The Gayest Man I Know”.
Opening the evening's entertainment was the latest big name in drag entertainment, The Supreme Fabulettes (Miss Vicki Vivacious, Miss Maddison Lee and Miss Vanilla Lush), protégés of Boy George and purveyors of some of the best vocal harmonies in the business. They glittered, they pouted, they captivated the audience with ther "tribute to the girl groups and singers" - the Supremes, Tina Turner, Adele, ShangriLas and so on. They truly lived up to their stage name (they even showed a spoof cartoon of them as superheroines!), and we loved them so much we vowed to catch one of their full shows some time.
The appetiser over, it was time for the full meal - as Mr Jordan hurled his petite form on to the stage, and dragged us, hilariously, through the history in Polaroids of his evolution from an obviously gay boy in deepest darkest Chattanooga, Tennessee to the showbiz treasure we know today. He painstakingly described cherished trips to the beauty parlour, where he absorbed the mannerisms and bitchiness of the Southern belles ("I wanted to be Miss Varlene: "I don't want my hair teased, I want it terrorised!", she said"), his precocious development as a growth-hormone-infused pre-teen “choirboy slut”, his trips, in drag, to the black jazz club "Miss Odessa's Good Time House", a venue his family and neighbours would have been horrified to know he was frequenting - all illuminating and deliciously salacious stuff.
However, the man is so adorable, so mischievous - “Don’t you dare judge me!” is just one of his winking asides to the audience as yet another shocking anecdote (gonorrhoea at thirteen, deciding to quit college and become a female impersonator at seventeen, drink-and-drug-fuelled twitching and general whore-dom becoming his hobbies) causes a collective sharp intake of breath - while he minces back and forth across the stage, that we instantly fell for him and his honesty.
The point of this extravagant, meandering out-pouring of fun, frolics and madness (and, inevitably, moments of sadness)? To explore the eternal question: "Do gay boys become like their mothers?" Although his relationship with his beloved Daddy and his struggles with his masculine concerns (football, fishing) are a source of almost tearful soul-searching - Mr Jordan always felt, especially after Daddy's early death, he was a "disappointment" to him - and his jealous relationship with his twin sisters ("That's...uh...I forget her name!") is a perfect illustration of where his penchant for attention-seeking came from ("I used to get my pee-pee out in the shopping mall to get attention!"), it is his enduring love for Momma Peggy-Ann that is real crux of the Leslie Jordan story.
"I thought that my mother was a fairy princess because she was so pretty."
From his upbringing as a tiny "sissy", playing with his treasured umbrella and trying on his sisters' petticoats ("Don't show your Daddy" became a mantra), through the tempestuous upsets of Leslie's teenage sexual revelations, through her remarriage that almost alienated her from her son and brought on her bizarre psychosomatic illnesses, it is Miss Peggy-Ann who emerges as the star of this particular show. Indeed, it is the fabulous tale of her triumphal appearance on an all-gay cruise ship as Leslie's guest, and her soft words on meeting two elderly lesbians in a fifty-year relationship, that is the final touching story he tells to end this magnificent evening - when asked on the cruise if she was a “fag hag” she said, “No, I’m a fruit fly”, and thus gave the show its title.
This was an absolutely top-notch evening, only slightly marred by some over-enthusiastically "participative" members of the audience who had to be told to shut up. I fell ever-so-slightly in love with Leslie Jordan...
Leslie Jordan: Fruit Fly is at The Leicester Square Theatre until 16th March 2013.
Here's a trailer for his last triumphal show (now on DVD) - My Trip Down the Pink Carpet:
Leslie Jordan official website
Saturday, 2 March 2013
Música pop
It is really about time I shared with you once again, dear reader, some of the weird and wonderful musical discoveries I have made over the last - ahem! - few weeks. The last one I did was in January, after all...
First up, our pop Princess Kylie has had rather a busy time of it over the past year, what with 2012 being her Silver Jubilee'n'all. Concert tours, special appearances, The Abbey Road Sessions, she even starred in a lesbian horror movie Jack & Diane! And to celebrate the coming of the new year, she not only changed management - to RocNation (sigh), home of such favourites (not) as Rihanna, Timbaland and Solange - but has released one of the songs from the aforesaid movie. Here's the very unusual Whistle...
To cheer us all up, Boy George protegés The Supreme Fabulettes' latest single is the camp-as-tits A Drag Queen Is A Cowboy's Best Friend:
Speaking of stalwarts of the "alternative" gay clubbing scene in London, Shinky Shonky impresario Boogaloo Stu has a new single out, a typically retro-sounding track - Magic Soul. It gets under your skin after a while...
I have absolutely no idea what the next song is all about as its description is in Hebrew, but it appears to be some kind of promotion for an Israeli restaurant. I don't give a toss, dears, it is from the same producers who brought us Uriel Yekutiel, it has pretty boys and good music, and that's worth something!
I will always have a soft spot for the outrageous Iberian pseudo-Goths Fangoria. Once again I have no clue what they are on about, but they certainly appear to have thrown everything but the kitchen sink into their new single and video:
Apparently the strangely-named Blitzkids mvt entered this song in the contest to decide Germany's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, only to lose to bloody Cascada. Shame, it's quite a good song:
From their forthcoming album of the same name, here's the saviours of electro music Hurts with a taster video for the track Exile. The most recent single is actually Miracle, but I think that is a bit too Coldplay for my liking. I may get used to it eventually. This, on the other hand is excellent...
Known-in-cool-circles Mr John Grant is one of those "poetic" singer-songwriters whose music has never attracted me. Until now, that is, when - on the recommendation of The Guardian no less - I heard the "No Ceremony Remix" of his track in collaboration with Biggi Veira from Icelandic dance pioneers Gus Gus, Pale Green Ghosts. It's rather fab, actually!
Canadian band Young Galaxy have a new single Pretty Boy, which sounds remarkably like Yellow Magic Orchestra. And that is no bad thing:
With eternal thanks to "AyeM8y" at Mean Dirty Pirate blog for the tip-off, here is the remarkable Miss Guy - lead singer of a band called the Toilet Boys, apparently - and Take It Off
We welcome once more with open arms the utterly brilliant Gossip - featuring one of our contemporary heroines Beth Ditto - and their newest release Get a Job!
And finally, with the gayest video on the planet, here's the lovely Del Marquis' first effort away from the Scissor Sisters (since they announced their hopefully temporary hiatus last year) - its Del & Xavier with Tickle Your Fancy!
Enjoy! And let me know what you think...
Monday, 24 December 2012
You made it a drag
It may be the Festering Season, it may be Xmas Eve, but some bitches are still working (at least for one more day!). I am rather hoping I'll be able to slope off early but who knows, with the Victorian workhouse ethic that operates in my office?
So, on this Tacky Music Monday we celebrate the final day in my Xmas countdown in the estimable company of The Supreme Fabulettes, with their new song that was written for them by Boy George - You Ruined My Xmas:
That cheered me up! Briefly.
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