Chastain Park shows off its True Colors
June 17th, 2008 by David Lee Simmons in Humor, Music, News, Photo Galleries, Pop Culture
You’ll have to forgive me if I wax a little nostalgic after watching the True Colors Tour’s opener of a two-night stand last night at Chastain Park. We all have our B-52’s stories to tell around here, so I’m sure hearing one from someone who didn’t live in Atlanta until that last two years probably won’t dazzle anyone. But they’re fun to tell anyway. But first, about last night … well, before that, here’s the True Colors credo, as pulled from its site …
The goal of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) equality is at the heart of True Colors. From day one, the tour has sought to raise awareness about the discrimination the GLBT community still faces and raise significant funds for the organizations that work everyday on their behalf. This year, the True Colors Fund of Stonewall Community Foundation has been created to enable increased and efficient fundraising for the tour’s national non-profit partners through various revenue sources.
The brainchild of the Human Rights Campaign and the tour’s headliner, Cyndi Lauper, the True Colors is an entertaining mix of music, comedy and wee bit of get-out-the-boat speechifying. And what was most impressive about the proceedings was how little pontificating was done, even considering comedian Rosie O’Donnell’s sour-grapes rant on her tenure on “The View.” Actually, Rosie was quite funny and more than a little melancholic as she recalled her late mother, and how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Her point: Teach your children well. Point taken, Rosie, who’s got four kids and brought at least some of them along for the ride. But she was at her funniest when she grabbed a chunk of her own flab in a righteous display of healthy body self-image and yelled to an absent Donald Trump: “I’m gonna rub some of this on his orange, bald head. Here, ya prick!” And if the crowd still didn’t dig her plus-size sexiness, she recalled how, when in Mexico, she was all the rage with the menfolk, one of whom explained to her, “Bone is for the meek; meat is for the man!” Good stuff.
I missed the opening act the Cliks, but got there in time for Tegan and Sara, a Canadian twin-sister singer-songwriter outfit that could otherwise be called the Indigo Twins as interpreted by Bjork (squared?). They were all cute and poppy and acoustic, and were predictably irked by all the dining going on in their midst. When the applause wasn’t as raucous as they’d hoped, Tegan yelped, “We know all of you are holding two glasses of wine, so … .” Good one, Tegan. I’m sure no one’s ever cracked that joke at Chastain, bless your heart.
Lauper popped up onstage in lieu of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” regular Carson Kressley, the evening’s MC, to give a little shout-out and to introduce Rosie. (Hey Carson, don’t quit your day job. The gay humor felt rented from a bad drag show, and only intermittently hit the mark. And that short-cropped ’do, all blond and sleeked back with product, made him look like Crispin Glover in a not-good way.) Lauper was funny even while delivering one of the tour’s basic points: “Voting for the American president is more important that voting for the American Idol.” Standing on a front-row chair, she implored in her best Brooklyn drawl, “Please vote. I’m not gonna tell ya who to vote for, but I’m gonna tell ya to vote.” She looked to her left, perplexed at a fan. “Am I buggin’ ya because I’m standing on your chair?” One sip off a front-row fan’s martini, and she was off.
Rosie followed, and then the B-52’s, which brought back so many awesome memories I wouldn’t know where to begin. You see, growing up in Tallahassee in the 1970s and ’80s, I had a severe case of Athens Envy, so bummed was I that I didn’t live in a college town that wasn’t the epicenter of alternative rock. (No, I was only five hours from it.) So my friends and I settled for loving the B-52’s from a distance, making them one of the staple bands for our annual beach-party weekend down on the Gulf Coast, “Rock Lobster” being the weekend’s anthem. Like I’m sure so many others, we even made a caravan trek up to Atlanta in the summer of 1990 to see them perform at Lakewood, with Ziggy Marley as the opening act, on their Cosmic Thing tour. (I even recall us trolling through Little Five Points, munching on Fellini’s pizza, grabbing beers from their pickel barrel and paying on the honors system, and buying those now-hilarious, positive-energy crystal necklaces. Good Lord!) And of course they delivered the goods in concert. They were so feel-good, the fans didn’t even get mad at each other. No pushing or shoving, no standing on a chair to block someone’s view. You just didn’t do that at a B-52s show.
In fact, I remember seeing them the previous fall, on that same album’s tour, at a free show down in Gainesville during the University of Florida’s homecoming week. There were like 13,000 people at the bandshell, and twice Fred Schneider proved how he could literally control the crowd. At one interval, he told people to stop crushing each other and spread out. They did, just like that, like Moses parting the Red Sea. At another point, just as Kate and Cindy were launching into that sweet-harmony intro to “Roam,” Fred noticed a fight break out between two dumb-asses. He halted the song, and scolded the two: “Hey, stop that! Or we won’t continue playing!” And they stopped, just like that.
Back in real time, the B-52’s looked pretty good for their age, with Cindy wearing her middle age naturally and Kate looking like she’s still putting up a bit of a fight. Fred’s close-cropped gray hair topped off his black-and-white shirt-pant ensemble, and he looked relatively trim. Keith Strickland looked positively ageless, like he’s drinking whatever Prince is drinking. Knowing they were doing one of those short/sweet sets, the deftly mixed in the oldies with the best of their surprisingly good CD, Funplex, including the standard-order, Kate/Cindy-harmony-laced “Juliet of the Spirits.” Throughout the set, all the thirtysomethings and above danced with glee, including my old buddy Joel, who joined me from Marietta for a mini-reunion of our own. (We’re both missing that beach-party weekend next week, Joel noted, so this was our beach party.) I spied a quartet of New Millennials sitting at their table, expressionless, while we all bopped around to “Private Idaho” and “Roam.” They didn’t seem to get it. But when “Love Shack” came on, they lit up. Ah, commercial radio.
Then came Cyndi, who turns 55 next week and even on close inspection looks at least five years younger. With her short-cropped bleach-blonde ’do, shorts/shirt/vest/tie ensemble, she marched up a Statue of Liberty prop and sang her heart out, delivering the hits with glee. But she caught the crowd delightfully off-guard with an acoustic rendering of her homage to wacking off, “She Bop.” Once again, she dropped down into the crowd with her chordless mic, threading right past us as she sang.
The whole gang came out for the encore, a blissfully appropriate rendering of Sly & the Family Stone’s “Everyday People.” Singing off-key was never so fun. (For me, I mean.) To top things off, Cyndi delivered the Tour’s eponymous song, and the night was over. It wasn’t like the old days, but it didn’t have to be. It was close enough. And I got the message. See you at the voting booth.
(Photos by David Lee Simmons)
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