CONCERT REVIEW: Marc Almond, The Bowery Ballroom, New York City
- Wilson Neate
Marc Almond made his first impression on most of us at the start of that decade horribilis known as 'the 80s'. Bearing that in mind, it would probably make sense to situate this review by talking a little about hearing his work with Soft Cell for the first time, about being 16 and proudly sporting a 'wedge' haircut, experimenting with eyeliner, and trying hard to look like Simon Le Bon. It would make sense to recall wearing baggy black, pleated trousers along with those embarrassing black suede ankle boots, and trying hard to smoke and drink a lot at some dreadful, sweaty adolescent disco. Above all, it might be appropriate to mention failing miserably to cop a feel - let alone cop off - throwing up a great deal and trying to kid myself that I was, indeed, having fun.
But of course none of that entered into my experience. And besides, as Marc Almond told us last night, he'd rather forget the 80s too.
Still, despite what he says, Almond's tongue is firmly in his cheek. At the start of last night's show he remarked, albeit with a staged grimace and a wink, that 'that song' he recorded with Soft Cell had brought him the terrible curse of fame and that he'd like to put it all behind him now. But of course he delights in an ambivalent relationship with the decade of his rise and fall from mainstream pop stardom. He wants to distance himself from his past glories--in particular, the song that dare not speak its name - yet, at the same time, he's clearly proud of that personal flock of brilliant musical albatrosses that hang around his tattooed neck.
This fraught relationship with the past is absolutely crucial to the cultivation and perpetuation of his own personal mythology and to his performance of Marc Almond. And it's no surprise that his website is called The Theatre of Marc Almond ( http://www.marcalmond.co.uk ) since, on record and on stage, he's consistently acting out the story of the star and all of its possible narrative variants.
His recordings are littered with the human detritus scattered in the wake of fickle fame: the drug and booze addled burn-out, the forgotten icon, the fallen star, the idol fallen on hard times, the self-destructive celeb and the former child star. In equal measure, Almond focuses on the stars we are - to coin his phrase - that is, the camp notion of everyday lives as performances and the possibility of a fleeting moment of glamour and accomplishment amid the banalities of the quotidian.
On stage, in addition to his ambivalent lyrical and musical mapping of the tumultuous geography of stardom, he weaves those myriad identities together in his banter with the audience, metamorphosing from one character into another, in high dramatic style.
At the start of last night's show he hammed up the part of the needy, faded star, promising to play our old favorites as long as he felt waves of love and adoration floating up to him over the footlights in return. After that, he became the rock and roll cliche for us, attributing memory lapses in the 80s to "too much acid". He acted out - with supreme irony - the part of the arrogant, bitter star contemptuous of fame. Later, telling us about some of his darker days, he took on the guise of the post-fame crack-up unable to venture beyond his squalid room and away from his supply of alcohol.
But the best role that he performed for us was that of the star fallen to his absolute nadir, clutching his trusty "carrier bag full of tranquilizers". Pure Judy Garland.
Beyond the verbal dimension--the story-telling and self-mythologizing--he translated those identities into dramatic physical gestures during the songs. He became the reluctant star refusing to come into the spotlight, finally yielding to imagined beckoning; he became the conquering hero kissing members of the audience, allowing himself to be pawed; and finally he was the genuinely flattered star clutching at the rose and the boxer shorts thrown on stage for him at the end of the evening. How the gentleman standing next to me managed to get them off without my noticing is a question I'm still at a loss to answer.
Almond is a masterful showman and his performance is total theater, a perfect combination of voice, gesture and music. And it wasn't just the quality and variety of that performance, but the sheer quantity that was impressive too. Without a dull moment--backed only by Rick May (keyboards/synth/bass) and Neal X (guitar)--he played a two-hour-plus set of more than thirty songs that sampled his entire career and foregrounded the rich and diverse texture of his oeuvre.
His post-Soft Cell years were represented by material drawn from almost every period. From his Marc and the Mambas albums we were treated to "Untitled," "Black Heart" and "Catch A Fallen Star" - the latter being his own nervous breakdown set to music, as he informed us. From Stories of Johnny he played the title song and from Mother Fist, "Saint Judy," the bleak, harrowing tale of the martyred star. From The Stars We Are, Almond revived his late 80s pop hit "Tears Run Rings" and from Enchanted he gave us "A Lover Spurned," the song whose protagonist makes Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction sound like one of the sisters from The Waltons. From Tenement Symphony he did a vibrant high-energy, house version of "Jacky" (during which we all got to sing the last line of the chorus) and from Fantastic Star the thumping, glam influenced "The Idol," the epic chronicle of the horrors of stardom and its shifting fortunes. There was, of course, much much more but I haven't even mentioned the new material yet.
Almond's performance of tracks from this year's Open All Night attested to the fact that he's at the peak of his creative powers. Among the offerings from this record that he regaled us with were "When Bad People Kiss," "Black Kiss," "Bedroom Shrine," "Sleepwalker" and the real winner, "My Love." Open All Night emphasizes the richness and diversity that has always characterized his music, incorporating white soul, synth pop, trip hop, jazz, Latin beats, tinges of drum and bass, doomy torch songs and dark ballads. Amazingly, this depth and range were underscored last night, even though he was backed only by two musicians.
Almond's epic performance took us on a musical odyssey through his own personal city of night, his vision of a world after dark and a dark inner world. His is a well-trodden physical landscape of streets lit only by neon signs, back alleys, seedy clubs, squalid rooms, louche strip bars and an emotional landscape of doomed love, misery, betrayal, loss, melancholy, lust, desperation, self-destruction, and excess.
The characters who people this noir terrain are brilliantly drawn, evocative of the characters of Brecht and Weil, Genet and Rechy and, indeed, as memorable as any literary personage. They stay with you long after the songs are over--although, in some cases, you'd much rather they wouldn't.
In the theatre of Almond last night other actors were enlisted to further flesh out his unique vision and to bring his world to life. Sporting nothing but a white thong and running shoes, a youngman named "Ivan" worked it on a podium at the back of the stage as Almond sang "Lonely Go Go Dancer" to him. Later, an enormous drag queen named "Perfidia," dressed in a beautiful scarlet gown, played Almond's muse while he sang "Champagne." With her boa draped around his neck, Almond gleefully buried his face in her impressive cleavage as the song reached its conclusion.
Toward the end of the evening he treated us to the oldies "Sex Dwarf," "Bedsitter," "Seedy Films," and "Say Hello Wave Good-bye"--during which he climbed into the audience sans microphone and encouraged a round of community singing. In the final round of encores, having re-emerged wearing a Hustler T-shirt, he called out "Oh no, oh no . . . what's that sound?" as the opening chords of "Tainted Love"--the song that dare not speak its name--finally and inevitably rang out. At first he reeled with his hands over his ears in mock confusion, shock and terror and then did a perfect imitation of the way he used to dance in 1981.
On stage at least, Marc Almond is looking disturbingly good at 42, still apparently fresh faced, youthful and sprightly. In fact, he looks exactly the same as he did when he shot to stardom nearly 20 years ago. Somewhere in an attic in Southport there has to be a portrait of an aging. grotesque Almond propped up alongside the one of Dorian Gray. And his voice is as strong and as full of character as ever, even unaccompanied: at the conclusion of one song, a member of the audience was so moved that he called out "Diva!" in appreciation of Almond's vocal performance.
As a songwriter there are few to challenge him these days. While he's on a par with Nick Cave in the word-heavy, story-song category, Cave is often hoist by his own petard, length and absence of (intentional) humor being his lyrical stumbling blocks. Almond, on the other hand, communicates a consistent sense of play and irony which always bails him out.
Marc Almond turned in a performance that left you with the word "genius" on your smiling lips. It may have been completely polished and scripted, right down to the banter, the jokes and the raised eyebrows, but it was carefully and lovingly crafted for our pleasure and therefore completely sincere. Best of all, he served up a rich, camp pastiche, effortlessly shifting in and out of musical and lyrical identities. He was part Norma Desmond, part Jacques Brel, part Judy Garland, part Pee Wee Herman and part Tom Jones, but always Marc Almond, Fantastic Star.
