anyone who’s read this blog over the past year and a half knows how much i love the Live at the Rehearsal Hall/At the Concert Hall tapings. they’re always, always great shows and the performances are frequently blow-your-hair-back fantastic. KT Tunstall, k.d. lang, Divine Brown and Rufus Wainwright are some of the ones i’ve covered here, and i’ve also been lucky enough to enjoy kick-ass tapings featuring Beck, Jann Arden, Chantal Kreviazuk, James Blunt, Stars, Diana Krall and, of course, Serena Ryder.
but yesterday's might have been my favourite one of them all for three reasons:
1. because it was a christmas show featuring multiple artists doing songs of the season
2. because of the wonderfully perfect company i had
3. because one of the performers was so weirdly over-the-top camp that it almost – ALMOST – defies description
i will nonetheless endeavour to describe it for you...
the taping was in the late afternoon, and i met up with my party an hour before showtime. b-dub, in dapper new duds and every inch the matinee idol, was my plus-one; his equally suave and handsome husband, dan2 (i’m calling him dan2 so that you don’t confuse him with dan of ericanddan), had also been invited, and he brought their totally awesome and fun friend m-dub (no relation) as his date. we were a giddy (if chilled) quartet ready to enjoy some holiday merriment, and the show did not disappoint.
easily the longest LATRH/@TCH taping i’ve attended, the show featured several well-known talents each doing two or three songs. some rocked the house, some were beautifully wacky and moving... but one, one was perhaps under the influence of something that made for a truly terrifically terrible set of tunes. let’s call this person “Hinges.” i’m choosing that moniker because this singer’s songs all featured, among other bizarre tics, the repeated, silent opening and closing of her jaw at the end of sung lyrics... as though a hinge was loose or imaginary chewing of a gigantic wad of gum might be happening.
Hinges took the stage and looked somewhat odd. certainly different than the last time any of us had seen her perform, but we couldn’t pinpoint precisely how or why. the outfit was a mess – way too small around the waist (resulting in a distracting bulge-y effect), rather unflattering up top (her breasts were kind of sitting on a bustier-created ledge of sorts), and inexplicably tacky at floor level (white patent-leather boots? oh dear...) – and what followed was just as mystifying.
Hinges, despite being a seasoned artist, delivered what i can only describe as a drag-worthy interpretation of cher doing carols.
now, Hinges is a singer whose voice has wowed many over the years and who was quite the huge star for a while... but she took to the stage yesterday and kind of lost her mind. or her magic. or both. she sped through lyrics, speaking them in indecipherable blurs more than singing them, and only occasionally holding a note for an extra few beats to remind us she’s a chanteuse. she’d sing in a baby voice and then suddenly drop a thousand octaves and bottom out with bass. at one point, during one well-known christmas classic, she even started adding “one time! one time!” to the end of the chorus. for real.
she also kept licking her lips (like cher), or twirling her tongue (like cher)... and she never, EVER took her eyes off the camera. seriously. you know how the contestants on American Idol follow the camera when they’re performing, as a way of (one assumes) reaching through the TV screen to communicate their music/emotion/desperation for votes to the audience watching at home? you know how annoying and cheesy and borderline creepy that is after a while? well, Hinges locked in on that lens from note one and never let go. i’m not even sure she realized there was an audience in the room, since she performed to that camera and no one else. b-dub actually said at one point that he felt like turning around in his seat to see whom Hinges kept staring at so intently.
between-song banter was awkward and unfunny, and Hinges ended each performance with “what? for me? oh gosh! thank you so much!” faux-preciousness that was so eyeroll-inducing lame and inauthentic that queen-of-post-performance-humility herself, melinda doolittle, would fold her arms and go, “cut the schtick, Hinges. no one’s buying it.”
to say that i had a very hard time maintaining my composure would be an understatement. from the first few overdramatic, overly cher-like gestures and warbled words, i was a goner. i couldn’t even look at b-dub or have him in my peripheral vision, because i knew i’d immediately dissolve into a puddle of hysterical giggling. come to think of it, thank goodness Hinges wasn’t looking at the crowd as she sang because she would have seen tears forming in my eyes (for all the wrong reasons) and those tell-tale shoulder-shaking convulsions one experiences when one is trying to hold back peals of laughter at inappropriate times. i honestly have no idea what happened to Hinges, or what she might have “consumed” before the show, but it was not her finest hour. like, at all.
it was, however, a fine, fine, FINE experience for my show-going pals and me.
b-dub and i were seated in one row, while dan2 and m-dub were seated elsewhere, so we couldn’t really compare notes as the taping happened, save for the occasional pained expression or mimed look of sheer confusion we exchanged. it was almost three hours (!) later when the whole thing wrapped up and we peeled our numb asses off our seats to excitedly dish about what we had all just witnessed.
thankfully, everyone was on the same horrified page.
the next two hours were spent eating (mostly) sub-par food at a restaurant with craptacular service (strangely fitting), dissecting Hinges’ myriad poor choices (“doesn’t she have a stylist?! whyyy did she sing like THAT?!? what was she doing with her tongue?!?”) and trying to rationalize what might have happened to cause such a dramatic musical misfire. man, was the whole evening ever 13 kinds of fun.
i don’t know that we really came up with any logical explanations for the unhinging of Hinges (save for colourful theories about pharmaceuticals and/or hooch), but we certainly enjoyed trying. and, just like the most perfect present ever received or the tastiest shortbread cookie ever consumed or the humiliating drunken-holiday-party faux-pas you’ll never live down, the memory of Hinges will remain in our hearts and minds for many, many christmases to come.
