Some holidays are filled with more trepidation than others but why is it that Halloween -- which has a rep for being so damn fun -- so often feels as gut-twisting as New Year's Eve when stupid shit comes up, like what to wear? Am I cool? Will someone love me tonight? Ever? Maybe tonight, forever? But I digress.
This year I wasn't really up for being out but I tied a furry green boa around my neck and put on my Marie Antoinette t-shirt and as always, felt like Harry Haller in Steppenwolfe at the masked ball, though I found it gratifying that the first person I met and danced with a was dressed as Marie Antoinette, by way of Prague.
And thankfully, onstage Jessica 6 made it worthwhile
You gotta love a lead singer who admits to her/his own strangeness, and not as an affectation of a wounded, misunderstood soul, nor as a gesture of bonding through disarming, nor the old I'm a creep an a weirdo nobody loves me line (which never fails to win the groupies over) but instead, as in the case of Nomi Ruiz, who sings "Baby yes I'm straaange..." as a forthright expression of her passion which is a component to be reckoned with in order to love her en toto. And it's chicks like these that can be interesting though she -- or rather the personas in these two songs -- may be the chick a guy might write off as a crazy bitch after being lucky enough to sleep with her, while she in fact has her own thing going on, however problematic it emerges for lovers who may just merely be interlopers in her self-dialogue, maybe like Stella Schnabel in director Ry Russo Young's film, "You Wont Miss Me".
And instead of say, lamenting male post-coital regret with a line like "They get what they want and they never want it again" which Courtney love expressed so well (check Gena Rowland's delivery of this sentiment in Cassavettes's film A Woman Under The Influence) Ruiz instead speaks of seeing the light and wanting again what she'd written off/rejected/been coy with (I think) and when in the second performance in this clip she hits the song's climax, transforming in an anguished voice words that might have been dance music clichés -- "Lay with me...see the light the light the light" -- into a big-hearted plea, no E required and likely wasted on the cynical, she just killed me softly like Dennis Hopper got done by Orbison in Blue Velvet. 'Nice one.
By way of pre-empting shallow comparisons: to compare her to MIA is like comparing MIA to Santi: it says more about the person making the comparison than the two subjects being compared...and you you might compare her to Madonna -- and you'd be partially right, but only if you recognize that Madonna came to NYC in pursuit of a style and sound being created by girls like Nomi Ruiz thirty years ago in NYC. She reminds me of Claudine, my third grade friend's tomboy sister who ran around looking goofy in a super-hero cape, but you knew she would grow up a beauty.
Of course, with Jessica 6 as her Popcult ID, she clearly understands the value of The Pose (and of course, I don't use "pose" disparagingly herein) joining that great tradition of groups named after novel figures in dystpoian Sci-Fi films, like Human League, or Heaven 17. Insert more names here, dear reader. In this case Ruiz and crew are giving the nod to "Logan's Run", and I daresay Ruiz would do a fine job as the acrobatic fembot portrayed by Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner...
Thanks to Team TriBeCa Grand, Team Girlie Action and TeamJ6.
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4:06Jessica 6 - Not Anymoreby ademali44,547 views
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