Report by KTL
fsktl@uaf.edu

Well, I’m finally here. (Well, actually, I’m here, you’re there. But we’re all online.) But first to all my little friends my apologies for not writing from the con as I usually do my best to do, knowing how the lists all throb with panting anticipation. A few things happened that kept me from the keyboard as quickly as I should have been there. BAD little con-goer!

A few quick tidbits before we get into Lucy’s concerts. First off, the first day of the con, the first day of Lucy’s show, the hotel internet suddenly crashed.

Now, we are SUCH geeks. People were draped all over the lobby uploading pictures to various other people, getting online to see who had put what out there and then finally getting on Xena lists to tell everybody what they’d done and notifying folks about what others had done. I absolutely believe it was us who made the hotel internet stagger, stumble and then die outright. Yay us!

Can’t remember what the other tidbits were at the moment, so let’s go right on to Lucy’s first concert.

Oh wait-I remembered one. Before the concert, looking at the clips Sharon put up on Lucy’s site of the rehearsals and the creative process Lucy was going through, I found it totally absorbing to see just how hard she was working to give us yet again something totally new and different. Lucy loves change-ups and fresh approaches. And really puts her heart and endless energy into trying to give us something well done and not just endless repeats of what she’s done before. Particularly the clip that Sharon titled, “Lucy directing” struck me very forcibly with how much she thinks about us and how to please us when she’s creating a new show from scratch.

I thought she looked just so cute in those clips. So earnest and determined. And then Sharon zoomed into a WAY tight close-up of her face and just her face filling the screen and held the shot for a fair amount of time. And I sat there just realizing all over again just how physically beautiful Lucy is. That’s something that I heard more than once at the con. (And more than just in my own head.) A number of people declared that Lucy is more beautiful now than she’s ever been. I think so too.

The first night concert: There was a major sound problem. The band sounds were played too loudly. But it was erratic. There were some people there who heard everything Lucy sang perfectly and some who couldn’t hear anything but the band. In the back where I and our usual Lucy concert going group do our impression of barflies during Lucy’s concerts, all we could hear was the band. And the sound from them was too loud to be clear-it was muffled from overload. Very frustrating.

I remember that at the first Roxy show, the first night, Lucy looked up into the sound booth and said something along the lines of, “They are here to hear me sing. If they don’t hear me sing, they’ll get mad. And you don’t want a bunch of Xena fans mad at you. Unlike Xena, THEY have no mercy.” She was trying to make it clear to them that their usual sound mix of mind numbing decibels of band music crashing out of the speakers was not really our style.

But particularly for this show, because this performance was a musical narrative rather than just a set of either separate stand alone songs or songs with the same theme, it was very important to be able to hear the songs to get the story.

A young person’s sexual awakening is a classic, age old story, (that usually ignores those embarrassing “Playing Doctor” moments of very early childhood and skips right to the late teen years). Lucy’s take on this was both common and complex. While the show was very explicit physically, Saffy’s emotional evolution was more subtly portrayed, implied in simple and quiet gestures which even more than the more physical scenes needed the lyrics of the songs to be comprehensible.

The other problem with the songs for this audience was that many of the songs were not known to many of us. I kept asking people around me if they knew what the names of the songs were (“C’mon-we just heard at least two words of that song Lucy’s singing-tell me what song it is!”) MANY songs nobody knew the name of. (We did guess at some-we nailed “Temptation” after actually figuring out what Lucy and the back-up signers were singing after they repeated it about 35 times in the song.) But none of us had ever actually heard that song before.

I do try to get a song list made while at the concert. Normally, that’s the only notes I take at a concert, unless something tasty happens. At one point, I asked one young woman, “Do you know the name of this song? I think I’m too old to know it.” She answered, “I think I’m too young. I have no clue.”

In my notebook, I see that I did get “Find Somebody to Love.” But then my next note is, “They SO love Lucy” which was not a song, but my thought on watching the folks crowd the stage and stare mesmerized up at her. My next note is, “Second song-none of my friends knew.” Then I have written down “He went to hell.” Which was just a piece of the lyrics but I thought I could find someone who might recognize the song from that snatch.

Next note: “New Zealand school girl outfit”. American Catholic school girls seldom wear long ties-but Brits do. This is why I considered it NZ or at least a Brit version.

Then I have, “3^rd song?” And then I try just writing down whatever lyrics I manage to hear, “Keep moving on”. “Pleasure Dome” “Temptation”. And then the comment “Sweater off-blouse-midriff bare.” (Which is not lyrics-it’s a description of the state of Saffy’s dress by this point.) Then more possible lyrics/song titles, “Just one thing?” “Who’s That Girl?”

Then a comment, “Xena tradition. Dark haired girl’, because while watching Gloria starting to seduce Saffy, I  remembered Lucy’s comment on one of the Fin commentaries that “I think Xena likes those Asian girls.”

That night I just plain abandoned making up a song list, but later got it from other folks after the second concert.

Here it is:

“Gloria in Excelsius Deo”

VIVALDI?

Somebody To Love
Go To Hell
Welcome To The Pleasure Dome
She-bop
Be My Gir
Losing My Religion
White Lines
Gloria
Temptation
Tainted Love
Power Of Love

And after the story had ended and they were taking their bows, Lucy sang Hallelujah and Let’s Dance

We have two conflicting but not mutually exclusive theories on why so few of us Americans knew these songs. Some folks claim it’s ‘cause they’re punk. (And apparently, we’re not.) The second theory is that they are songs known best in Britain and her last vestiges of empire, or more tightly defined as “The U.K., Oz and En Zed.” I was assured by more than one of the aforementioned nationalities that “These were huge hits, HUGE hits at home.”

This second theory was upheld by Luce when she was onstage at the con. She was talking about the rough first night and how the band had had little time to practice-and that the drummer and one of the other musicians hadn’t shown up for the first rehearsal. (Hey-only woosy bands need a drummer to keep time!) And she laughed as she told us that when she gave the band the names of the songs, they had never heard of them. And she said, “These were HUGE hits when I was like 13 or 14.”

So, I guess on this point, I can honestly say, “I’m with the band.”

Okay, let’s get a little more succinct so I can go to bed.

The second night was WAY better than the first. The sound problems were corrected so we could hear the lyrics. And now that we had seen the show once, we had a better idea of what was happening and could follow the action better.

The curtains open and the band is on the stage. Three people enter and walk over to where the back-up singers’ mikes are. They’re carrying lit big church procession candles and I think they were all wearing robes at this point. The short middle one is also wearing a little hood with horns on it. They sing a part of the Mass, “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” Wild Vivaldi music spills orgasmically from the electric keyboard. And Lucy comes out wearing the classic Catholic school girl uniform plaid skirt (not rolled up at the waist as some grrls used to do-it’s just damn plain short).

They all start to sing, “Somebody to Love.” A nun (played by Cat Crimins) runs onstage and orders the school girl to stop what she’s doing, calling her, “Saffy, Warrior Princess.” Lucy acts startled and scared. But is soon on her way to hell in a handbasket.

She sees Gloria (who was the horned back-up singer and has now shed her horny hood and robe and is wearing mostly nothing and as my note says, Saffy’s “Fascinated by the girl”. Gloria comes on strong, (there’s lots of delicious facial expressions from Lucy-HUGE eyes as she takes in what Gloria is doing for/to her. By “She-bop” Saffy is blindfolded and my note says (and you can read the surprise just from my handwriting) “Fake oral sex?”

During one of the more quiet moments in the back near the bar, I hear Ed behind me saying, “THAT was fabulous.”

I recognize the lyrics, “Look so fine, I really want to make you mine” though I don’t really know what the title of the song is, I’m guessing it’s “Be My Girl”.

After that song, Ed says, “RAW energy. ENERGY!” (He says it with great energy.)

My next note says, “Crowd pleaser”. I think that’s a comment from me. Someone – me, Ed, Saffy, says, “I need enough time to get my breath”. (Which, if it was Saffy, is a song lyric.)

My next note claims that someone is having “Wide eyed panting”. I think that was Saffy. Then I’ve got the lyrics, “Life is bigger than you” which is from “Losing My Religion.

Now because we were all having so much trouble hearing the songs, there was a lot more walking around than usual. People were standing at the bar talking. And it struck me at that moment that I missed her patter. I missed her talking to us. I missed the connection she always made with us at her concerts. I’m not saying that she shouldn’t have done a performance piece where she stayed in character-it’s her show and her trip that we’re riding along on. I’m just saying, I missed her focusing on us and directly entertaining us as Lucy. And I heard quite a few people say the same thing the next day, in various ways.

Someone said, “I’m sure there’s a zipper here somewhere”, but I did not write down the source.

By this time, Lucy was stripped down to her bra. And two uniformed sheriffs came in as the strobe lights went off. I have since learned from others that when the strobe lights went off, Gloria painted Saffy’s body with um, I guess paint and that’s what we were (mostly not) seeing. And that’s why Lucy’s nude body suit was covered with paint.

The sheriffs left. (Now-were these really, truly sheriffs or were they male strippers? If they were male strippers, did they have the wrong address? Or did they have the wrong night at the Roxy?)

(Normally when Lucy is on stage, I notice only her. Noting the sheriffs shows how out of the moment I was by then due to the incomprehensible sounds from the stage.)

These are my notes from the strobe light scene “Freeze? Crystals? Snow?” Now I think these are lyrics from White Lines maybe?

I did notice that the strobe lights were lighting up one of the back-up singer’s bra. And now my notes say, “Playing in the snow? At fifty below, THAT’S no fun.” Which is an allusion to the fact that when we left Fairbanks it had been near 50 below for about 16 days or so. Next note: “Huge roars from the crowd during the snow fight”-which ended with Lucy using her hands to wipe herself down. Which prompted Ed to say, “I love having Lucy in my soul.”

Happily, the 2^nd night was MUCH better in sound. And we could hear the lyrics and thus follow the story. It certainly helped too that many of us had seen it unfold the night before and so could watch more closely rather than wondering what was happening and what would be happening next.. And of course, as always, Lucy’s voice is always at the greatest strength and power on her last performance. And that was a joy to hear.

Okay, so Gloria has Saffy hooked on coke, they get into S&M and degradation, coldly using each other’s bodies for their pleasure. But being separate as they use each other.

Now I THINK this is the sequence of what happens next. I worked this out with a few friends after the second night as we discussed the story. But I didn’t write it down. So here it is from memory:

Though they’ve gone so far physically and have done so much sexually, but in the final tally, it’s not enough for Saffy. Gloria wants Saffy to join her in continuing as they have, but Saffy doesn’t want to.

Gloria gets mad and dances around angrily. Then, Lucy’s acting makes it clear that Saffy wants love, not just sex. And wants Gloria to be the one she loves. Saffy reaches her hand out to Gloria and this time Gloria spurns her. But Saffy keeps reaching for her and after a few starts and stops, Gloria takes her hand. Saffy pulls Gloria around her and then they look into each other’s eyes. And their heads come closer. And closer. And closer. And Saffy dips Gloria over into a lip-lock. This is the first time they kiss-they’ve touched, licked and rubbed their own and each other’s bodies, but they haven’t kissed before. Kisses are saved for people who love each other. (We all know that from mass media hooker films 101.)

So actually, in the end, this is a very sweet story of love. Whether woman/woman, man/man or woman/man, it’s love that matters and love that people seek and love that fulfills them. Not coke, not whips, and not religion. Love.

Speaking of love, I think this was a work of love from Luce to us. She planned it out, selected songs to create a linear narrative, selected another musical performer, worked on costumes and props, exposed her acting partner’s and her own body (non gratuitously for once) for realism and then wrapped it all up and presented it to us. That’s love too.

More tomorrow.

KT