Last year was when queerness became respectable while taking over the world.
It was the year that the ghost of Jesse Helms, the memory of Anita Bryant and their religious right conservative ilk prayed would never arrive. What scared the shit out of them was not only that we forced ourselves at the table to demand our fair share (the countdown on the elimination of DADT and the continued battle over gay marriage) but also forced ourselves all over the place: television, movie screens, top 40 radio, cable, and into high schools (the "It Gets Better Campaign").
This was the year an openly gay Black man was nominated for major Oscars (Lee Daniels for Precious for both director and producer/picture), an unabashed pop star flaunted her massive gay following while taking back the airwaves (Lady Gaga), a major rock star's celebrity was ignited specifically because of his homosexuality (Adam Lambert) and a TV show with blatant queer DNA took off on prime time (Glee). It was also when straight actors gladly played gay and quit bitching about kissing another guy (James Franco, Colin Firth, Ewan MacGregor, Jim Carrey), when pop stars of every dimension jumped out of the closet almost monthly (Ricky Martin, Rostam Batmangli of Vampire Weekend, Brian Hill of the Soft Pack, country star Chely Wright), when straight and gay celebrities spoke out blatantly against bullying and teen queer suicides, where we had an out bisexual pro wrestler (Orlando Jordan), and when out gay celebs started families without nary a peep of protest (Neil Patrick Harris, Wanda Sykes, Sir Elton John). So is this the start of a new era? Well, the decade is still young.
Music-wise, the economy still forced the recording industry into a tailspin while the major conglomerates kept dying a slow tortured Camille-like death, and big-ticket tours routinely lost money or had to be cancelled entirely—which didn't mean that there was a shortage of great music online or on smaller stages. There were so many great shows that I did catch that I didn't even try to list them all here. Still, the ones that got away; Bob Mould @ OTSFM, Kid Sister @ Millennium Park, Antennas Up @ the Beat Kitchen, Chris Issak @ HOB, Melissa Manchester @ SPACE, Nick Lowe @ OTSFM, Crystal Bowersox @ The Lights Festival, Los Lonely Boys @ A Taste of Chicago, Eli "Paperboy" Reed @ the Bottom Lounge, Kepi Ghoulie/the Queers @ Reggie's Rock Club, the Ponys [in the rain even] @ Wicker Park Fest, Talk Normal/ Buke and Gass @ the Empty Bottle, Kaki King @ the Park West, Adam Lambert @ The Venue, Joan Armatrading @ HOB, Rob Thomas @ A Taste of Chicago, The Homoticons at the Trannie Hootenanny @ the Hideout... You get the picture.
Hard as it was, I whittled my list selectively to the albums, shows and books on music that made 2010 memorable for me. "Best of?" That, after all is a subjective phrase but it does point up the fact that music and creativity are far from sputtering. What cranked my tractor in 2010...
1. "Fuck You" (unedited), by Cee Lo Green on Universal Records (single): This is the break-up song for our times. It certainly maintains the high-quality mark of 'fuck-off' anthems such as "Messin' With My Mind" by Labelle, "Respectable" by the Rolling Stones and "Don't Ask Me How I Am" by OK Go.
2. The Ravonettes @ The Cubby Bear, April 22 (show): It hardly mattered that the eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajkull volcano stranded most of the band in Europe; singers/guitarists Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo performed anyway. Raveonettes' music has always been off kilter by its nature (Wagner and Foo compose mathematically instead of creatively) but boiled down to a shrieking two-piece it got harsher, more abstract, unpredictable and, for lack of a better word, downright thrilling. It was a once-in-a-lifetime oddball gig.
3. The Charlie Deets Band @ The Empty Bottle, Dec. 1 (show and album): Pure mojo. Never mind that Deets comes off like the ultimate hollow-eyed geek in his hoodie or dances like Gumby hooked up to a nuclear reactor—the man and his band are pure fury, motion and drive. And it certainly didn't hurt to have a dancer onstage (a guy who looked like a truck driver and wore a muscle-Tee with "White Boy" stenciled across the front) who technically was not so good. But who cares? The band, the dancer and the new album, The Power of Suggestion (Paribus Records), are all heart, and that's what counts. With every sloppy jerk of the head and clumsy ass shake I'd take these guys over most stadium shows any day.
4. "The Farmer's Daughter" by Crystal Bowersox, Jive Records (single): Decades of coiled rage unleashed—a blunt, acidic kiss-off to an abusive alcoholic mother that balances determination and freedom along with the bile. This song and Bowersox's voice redefine liberation in unexpected and refreshing ways.
5. She and Him, Volume Two, Merge Records (album): Hardly a vanity project for a slumming movie star, She and Him's sophmore record is a pure delight thanks to Zooey Deshanel's (of 500 Days of Summer) airy vocals and M. Ward's sly and subtle craftsmanship (guitars, mandolins, vibes, you name it). There's a slight country tinge melded with the chastness of early '60s girl groups that make this the perfect soundtrack for a breezy late summer day. And yeah, "Gonna Get Along Without You Now" is still lodged in my head seven months after I first heard it.
6. Little Girl Blue; The Life of Karen Carpenter, Chicago Review Press (book). Randy L. Schmidt's biography is both a Cinderella story and a tragedy with addictions, forced marriages, sibling rivalry, back office politics, bald faced greed, mental illness and a subversive wicked witch of a mother who gives Joan Crawford and Lillian Farmer a run for there money. The most painful aspect of the book is Schmidt's engaging approach to Carpenter; you actually feel you know her and she grows on you in such a way that it makes it difficult to finish the book knowing the outcome. After reading this book you'll never hear a Carpenter's song the same way again.
7. Party Animals, Da Capo Press (book): Robert Holfer's juicy, tart biography of Allan Carr covers almost the same period and locale as Little Girl Blue, but seems worlds away. Party Animals is a great big trashy tell-all on Carr—an outsized, overindulgent (in appetites as well as schemes) gay man who figured early on that he would never fit in the world and solved that problem by becoming such a success that he made the world fit him. Carr is remembered for his catastrophic production of the 1990 Academy Awards ceremony (it was so bad that a movie studio sued) and his disco-killing Can't Stop the Music (a multimillion-dollar musical starring the Village People that denied its queerness). But what the book brings out—between his fits of overeating, orgies and obsessing over unattainable straight men—is the man's shrewdness, his persistence and luck. Like its subject, Party Animals is a big fat tome of snark, juice and tons of dishy details (I had no idea that Nureyev was an uber bottom), and I doubt if Carr would have it any other way.
8. OK Go, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, Capitol (album and videos): OK Go's new album was hardly expected—a severe turn from straight-ahead literate rock pop into trippy psychodelic funk reminiscent of Prince (circa 1985), vintage Funkadelic (Maggot Brain) and the frustrated wimp-pop of Stephan Bishop ("On and On"). Front man Damian Kulash, Jr., displayed several varieties of personality (wonderment on "WTF," cynical exasperation on "Needing/Getting," zipper ripping lust on "I Want You So Bad I Can't Breathe," and exhausted defeat on "While You Were Asleep") amidst the trappings, taking OK Go to an entirely new level. The video for "This Too Shall Pass," with its Rube Goldburg contraption and the band falling through it in real time, got all the hype but the real gem was the one for "White Knuckles," with hilariously deadpan bassist Tim Nordwind, a pack of dogs, and a goat frolicking around him. Ok I admit it ... it's adorable.
9. Ray Davies @ the Riviera, March 6 (show). A mostly solo show from the most British of Brit rockers where between Kinks classics ("Tired of Waiting for You," "A Well Respected Man," "Victoria") he talked freely of immigrating to post-Katrina New Orleans, getting mugged and viewing life from the perch of his sixth decade on the planet. There was a blast of barreling rockers with the opening band, the 88s for a finish ("Low Budget,""You Really Got Me," "Come Dancing," "All Day and All of the Night" and, naturally, "Lola") that didn't erase the evening's nostalgic hue. Davies doesn't do sentimentality well so all that fuzzy warmth was upended with his cutting cynicism and snark, which made for a memorable evening.
10. Lollapalooza @ Grant Park, Aug. 6-8 (show/event): Yeah, Gaga headlined but there was so much going on I didn't see or miss her. The line-up was packed with old war horses (Devo, Mavis Staples, Green Day, Soundgarden, Cypress Hill, Erykah Badu), along with rising talent (Chromeo, Foxy Shazam, Gorgol Bordello, the Dirty Projecters) and unknowns (The Soft Pack, Metric, Empire of the Sun, Semi-Precious Weapons) and it was damn near impossible to keep up. And with Perry Farrell floating through the festivities greeting everyone, the positively benign atmosphere and thousands of nearly naked men and women gliding through the 90+-degree heat, everything else this summer seemed entirely washed out.
11. The Gay Blades, Savages on Triple Crown Records @ The Beat Kitchen, November 2 (album and show). The duo of James Dean Wells and Mr. Puppy Mills, a thrash trash outfit from New York, were all wiggling asses and slinging guitars while there sophmore album Savages was a furious hunk of sloppy love. A big wet one.
12. Bettye LaVette, Interpretations, Anti Records (album and show): LaVette's a "soul singer" from long ago (think early 1960s) who redefined the music and transformed it into something shockingly naked, worn and, well, religious. LaVette's gig at the Old Town School of Folk Music was the stuff of legends while her "Interpretations" reimagined music that we felt we knew by heart in unexpected and exciting new ways. In an age where the word "div"a is often used freely, LaVette makes Aretha, Patti, Gladys, Chaka and, yes, even Tina sound lightweight.
13. Just Kids, Ecco Press (book): High priestess of rock and poetry Patti Smith's memoir of her and Robert Mapplethorpe's young love is not only a fascinating tumble through a troubled era (1968-1975) with a who's who of personalities roaming through it (e.g., Sam Shepard, Kris Kristofferson, Janis Joplan, Viva and Todd Rundgren) but also a heartbreaking account of a love that influenced the arts for generations. The most mind-blowing aspect of the book is not the history lesson, though; it's really getting acquainted with Smith and Mapplethorpe before our ideas of either of them were fixed. Long before he figured out that he was gay (got into photography, black leather and S/M) or she picked up a guitar (started writing verse, music and recording) they were two kids swathed in innocence and naivete. The book and its contents are as beguiling as anything Orson Welles could dream up and just as heartbreaking as anything penned by Colette.
14. Diamond Rings Special Affections on Danger City Records @ Empty Bottle, Dec. 1 (show and album): Diamond Rings' (aka John O'Regen) Special Affections was a shimmering, glacial mix of euro-powdered disco, synth pop, blue-eyed soul and thrash rock—that is, until you listened to it a second time. Subversive, seductive, slightly sinister and downright poetic, O'Regen's true intentions are camouflaged by his subtle phrasing and cool tone and the more you listen the more he pulls you in. His show at the Empty Bottle, with shrieks of violent thrash guitar and his unpredictable dance-tantrums poised him, along with Kansas City's SSION, as an aviator for a new queer music; blunt, unapologetically ass shaking, sexy, original, and proudly out.
People we lost in 2010 included: Teena Marie, Solomon Burke (legendary soul singer), Mike Edwards (cellist of ELO), Ari Up (of the Slits and founding goddess of the 'Riot Grrrrrrrrrrrrl' Movement), Alex Chilton (rock god), Lena Horne (legendary barrier breaking singer/actress/personality), Tom Mankiewicz (screenwriter and son of All About Eve scribe/director Joseph Mankiewicz), Douglas Argent (brit TV producer), The Methadones (vintage punk-rock institution), Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (composers/authors of Broadway classics Fiorelli, She Loves Me, and Fiddler On the Roof), Augustina Walker (legendary gospel/soul singer), Bob Guccione (Penthouse publisher and producer of the nortorious X-rated Caligula), Gary Coleman (pint-sized child TV celebrity and adult failure), Tony Curtis (underrated actor and honorary homo for his part in Some Like It Hot), Ingrid Pitt (lesbian icon for her saphic vampire in The Vampire Lovers) and Dennis Hopper (movie icon who gave the adjective "deranged" an entirely new meaning).
