“I’m just a poor boy, nobody loves me …”

Saturday night I met up with my cousin Liam, his wife Lydia, and Paul – one of Liam’s friends – and went to go see the Losers Lounge tribute to Queen at the Bowery Ballroom. I didn’t know what to expect, what exactly I was going to see … Neither did Lydia. We kept joking about it. “Uhm … what are we doing tonight? What IS this thing??” But once we were there, crammed up in the balcony of the Bowery Ballroom (the thing was sold out – it was AWESOME), we succumbed to the energy. It was one of the funnest most joyous nights in recent memory. That was the word that kept coming up – joy. What it is is: there is a core group of people, a core band. And they do various tribute nights to different artists, and they invite a cornucopia of talent from around New York (singers, performance artists, etc.) to come in and perform the different songs. It’s hard to explain … but we saw, over the night, probably 30 Queen songs performed, with almost as many performers. And let me tell you: this was not amateur night. They were amazing. And everyone was there for the sole reason of celebrating Queen.

It was one of those nights when you are proud and happy to be what I call “an obsessive”. There are people out there who don’t get obsessed with things, who just don’t have that kind of drive, or who think that you should put away “obsessions” in order to be classed an adult. Etc. I actually don’t KNOW any of these people, because my friends are all obsessives, too. If something comes along in our lives that shouts at us: “I’M INTERESTING. LEARN MORE ABOUT ME” we say “Yes” with no question.

It’s part of the energy of being a “fan”. Many people go through their lives without ever being a true and devoted FAN of any one thing (a band, an actor, an author, whatever). I can’t imagine NOT having a “fan” personality, since I’ve always been this way.

What was SO wonderful and SO joyous about Saturday night was that the Bowery Ballroom was sold out with fellow Queen fanatics – an entire ballroom chock-full of obsessives. Happy joyous obsessives. The band themselves were happy joyous obsessives. It was so COOL to be in such a crowd. So much fun. We would hear the opening strains of this or that song, and – as a massive group – burst into cheers. Since we were up in the balcony, we got a good view of what was going on down on the floor, and it was BEAUTIFUL. Throngs of people, swaying, dancing, freaking out, singing at the tops of their lungs …

It was beautiful. What I liked, too, was that the band didn’t “interpret” Queen, or try to put their own stamp on Queen’s songs. No. When they played “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, you recognized it. Even down to the guitar solos, etc. It was humble, in a funny way. And respectful. But NOT precious. A fine line. After all, this tribute was to a band named QUEEN, mkay? Subtlety was not their thing. heh So the guest-performers would come out, all dolled up for their songs … in that high-camp hilarious way that Queen used to do … and it was a celebration of the kind of music Queen made, and also a celebration of who that band was to all of us. It was awesome.

You could feel the Love in the air. You know? The open-hearted cheering innocent love. A beautiful energy.

We had so. much. fun.

They even did “Flash Gordon” – complete with interjected apocalyptic-sounding lines from the script (“Flash – Flash … I love you! But we only have 14 hours to save the earth!”) And the entire audience screamed those lines along with the performer up on stage. We all know every single song by heart. There was the lead singer in a long red cape, dressed up AS Flash Gordon … You know that the evening is not overly reverent when they decide to put “Flash feckin’ Gordon” on the play list. HA!! This was a night for the FANS.

Another highlight for me was they chose to do “Barcelona”, a song Freddie Mercury wrote for the Olympics when they were held in Barcelona. He was (as is probably obvious) greatly influenced by opera, so he wrote a duet for himself and some Italian opera chick – the song was called “Barcelona”, and I have it on one of my Greatest Hits albums. There’s a full orchestra, the music is bombastic, open … Mercury is singing HIS way, and opera-chick is singing her way – and the result is pretty much goosebump material. I’ve always loved it. Mercury was BORN to create shit like that.

So out onto the Bowery Ballroom stage come two people: a curvaceous brunette woman in a red-satin dress, holding a red rose, and a skinny raggedy rocker-boy in blue jeans and a torn-up T-shirt … to sing the duet. Her soprano busting out the windows, his Robert Plant screeching in counterpoint – the two of them holding hands, and supporting each other, and singing the SHITE out of that song. The place went absolutely MAD. Mad, I tell ya.

So yeah, the night was full of the “hit songs”. (I realized, on an even deeper level, just how unbelievable a song is “Somebody to Love”. Oh. My. God.) But they also did stuff like “Barcelona”, and more obscure stuff – but stuff that those guys up there loved.

And they ended the night with “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions”. The entire cavernous space of the Bowery Ballroom was filled with that thumping beat – the audience clapping along thunderously – screaming at the tops of our lungs: “WEEE WILL WEE WILL ROCK YOU …”

The guest-singer for this one was this guy. (Liam sent me the link today, because we all had been talking about him – “who WAS that guy?” He was just a feckin’ rock star is what he was. He wore a silver sleeveless tanktop, tight PINK pants, and big sunglasses. His hair was long. And he sang the CRAP out of those two songs.) I can’t even tell you how much we dug him.

We referred to him as “tight pants” afterwards.

“Who the hell was Tight Pants? Wasn’t he GREAT?”

His “bio” on that site I linked to says this:

Rene Risque’s yearning for experience is fueled by his vast wealth, allowing his whims total license…

To watch him perform is to see a man who is hypnotically sure of his message, however misguided and self-centered it might be.

hahaha

The guy’s entire life is a piece of performance art. I love him.

One of the other performers (who sang “Fat-Bottomed Girls”) I actually had met and hung out with before. It took me a while to pinpoint it but once I remembered, it all came back. He was what I referred to as “scruffy Elvis Costello dude” at the Bloomsday celebration I attended last year. A huge group of us sat around outside after the Bloomsday stuff was over, drinking pitchers of beer (we were at the bar called, appropriately, Ulysses), and it was 3 or 4 in the afternoon, we had been doing Bloomsday stuff ALL DAY, as well as drinking ALL DAY, and somehow, someone started singing a song from “Oliver!”, which then caught on – until an entire group of us, Irish and Irish-Americans all of us, sang through the entire score of “Oliver!” . Shouting “OOM PAH PAH OOM PAH PAH THAT’S HOW IT GOES …” etc. etc. etc. We were OUTSIDE. In Wall Street. It was so much fun. So anyway, the guy I mention (“scruffy Elvis Costello dude”) acted as our conductor. And there he was on the stage of the Bowery Ballroom, still scruffy, still all in black, with the pale Irish skin, the Elvis Costello glasses, the wacko black hair, singing “Fat Bottomed Girls” – out of his MIND. He’s got a Tom Waits kind of voice, and a pleasantly lecherous and humorous personality – so that song was perfect for him!! It was awesome. Ha!! I met that guy!! (He’s played in a ton of bands – that link is to his website. Joe Hurley is his name.)

It was a great great night. Liam, Lydia, Paul and I had a blast. So glad we went.

On nights like that, I think to myself: “I would never live anywhere else but New York City”. The fact that it was sold out, jam-packed, out-of-control, filled with others who felt like we did about Queen … that it was a night of innocence and singing-along at the tops of one’s lungs (even to Flash Gordon) … just made me LOVE this city.

Saturday night was a display of all the GOOD things that can be found on this sometimes-hard-and-bitter concrete island.