When Utah native Spencer Stout uploaded his marriage proposal to boyfriend Dustin Reeser last fall he did Australia's Betty Who? ( aka Jessica Newham ) a whooping favor. With Who?'s song "Somebody Loves You" as the soundtrack, the video went viral; in as little as four and a half months, it has been viewed more than 12 million times.
Who? can't be dismissed as 2014's queer adopted viral darling quite so easily. The video clip is so heartfelt, genuine, and unpretentious that it has not only pointed attention back to the fight for marriage equality in Utah but rescued the Internet from the likes of Psy and Miley Cyrus. So just who the hell is Betty Who? and what is her deal?
As evidenced by her recent sold-out show at Schuba's, Who? is a full-figured pop goddess who sings like a siren and knows exactly what to do with a pop hook and a killer back beat. Her self-released EP, The Movement, has already snagged her a major label deal with RCA and this show, as part of the Tomorrow Never Knows Festival, was more of a tease then a finale.
Once she got onstage in front of her stripped-down trio and nearly blew out Schuba's sound system with an explosive remodel of "You're In Love," an evening-long running joke emerged. Since The Movement's four songs were the only selections that her audience was familiar with Who? kept apologizing while dropping samples of her upcoming follow up. The reality was that the lack of familiarity afforded her the chance to rip through a set packed with surprises.
The new "Heartbreak Dream" came off as an explosive pop epic not dissimilar from her "High Society" but her bare, acoustic reading of Miguel's "Use Me" was intensely personal, emotionally barbed and the emotional show-stopper of the night.
But Who? clearly adores being a pop star and though "Use Me" brought the tears her heart belongs to naked hooks and ass shaking. The live setting for "You're In Love" let the hooks run rampant at the expense of the recordings deep groove and even "Giving Me Away" seemed more winsome then the recorded version. Who? was actually serious when she gushed about the Spice Girls and then tore into a brutal cover of "Say You'll be There." Then for the encore came..."Somebody Loves You," and the place went apeshit.
If Who? revels in the joys of pure pop, the Reverend Horton Heat ( aka as James Heath ) literally wallows in his love of rockabilly. Where there have been any number of posers in the past ( remember the Stray Cats? ) and with only a few true practitioners surviving ( Wanda Jackson, age 76, and Sleepy LeBeef, 78 ), straight-up rockabilly has been looked down on as a quaint trend absorbed under the "roots music" umbrella.
Heat never gave a flying fuck about "roots" music or that dirty word "quaint" and, since 1989, he and his band have taken all that is unsubtle about rockabilly, amped it up and spiced it with his own oddball sense of humor. Heat is all about throwing a party and dispensing with pretense and it's a delight that his brand-new Rev ( Victory Records ) isn't much different from the other eleven albums in his discography. As expected the CD has plenty of twang but just as much percussion and its hardly a mystery why his shows attract rockers, rockabilly fans, and punkers in equal measure.
At his nearly sold-out show at the House of Blues recently, the entire evening pretty much went up for grabs early. After a positively sizzling set by label mates Nek Romantics, Heat and his band casually walked onstage and lit into the new "Victory Lap" and "Smell of Gasoline." On the third song, "Psychobilly Freakout," the cork came off and the song morphed into an extended fiery punk jam. ( Yes, the slam-dancing had commenced at this point. )
Heat's new songs slipped right in with the time worn classics and there was a cohesion in the show that felt odd but welcome. The goofy "Let Me Teach you how to Eat" fell right in with the surf-billy "Zombie Dumb," "It's Martini Time," and "Marijuana" while "The Jimbo Song" was as leery as a coked-up sing a-long of "The Hokey-Pokey." Guest Deke Dickerson brought some clean-cut country into the mix which, though it was a nice switch and provided some breathing space, dampened the energy in the room. Even that was a set-up for Heat to glide through the hypnotic blues crawl "Drinkin' and Smokin' Cigarettes" with a deeper gravity then the night seemed to afford.