Concert Review: Cyndi Lauper / Erasure / Deborah Harry / Dresden Dolls / Margaret Cho / Rosie O’Donnell

by Todd Maternowski

Saturday night at Smirnoff, a dance-crazed horde of Dallasites were treated to a truly unique benefit show. The True Colors 2007 Tour, put together by Cyndi Lauper and sponsored by Logo, the gay and lesbian cable channel, coincides with Gay & Lesbian Pride Month and is intended to promote both the Human Rights Campaign and the Matthew Shepard Foundation, organized in the wake of the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard eight years ago. According to the tour's promotional materials, one dollar from every ticket will go towards the HRC. (Frankly, at $21-76 per ticket -- not including the $11 Ticketmaster "convenience free" and $15 parking -- it would've been nice to see more than a dollar go toward a good cause). The evening's festivities were a mix of classic 80s gay-friendly pop megastars, cutting-edge new artists and the stand-up comedy stylings of Margaret Cho and Rosie O'Donnell.

Margaret Cho opened with some hit-or-miss comic material (yet another tired, too-easy dig at Paris Hilton was most definitely in the 'miss' pile), but got noticeably funnier as the night progressed, hosting the evening with an entertaining combo of vulgar comedy and intelligent political and social commentary. Although she was essentially performing in front of 20,000 gay men, lesbians and myself, she still took some very brave stances (for Texas) throughout the evening, railing on out-of-control Christians, President Bush and even the late, homophobic TV personality Jerry Falwell, whom she hoped would be re-incarnated as a gay sex toy in his next life. Cho's comedy peaked right before Lauper's finishing set, when she did a hilarious rap duo called "My Puss", a paean to the alleged superiority of her female genitalia done in a boast-rap style.

The first musical act (and main attraction for myself and my crew) were Boston-based Brechtian punk duo The Dresden Dolls. As the only one of the evening's musical acts without a string of #1 pop/dance singles to their credit, the Dolls played to and ultimately won over a tough crowd: between singer/keyboardist Amanda Palmer's breathless, red-faced banshee wail and drummer Brian Viglione's whirling-dervish-on-crack hyperactive drumming, the Dresden Dolls easily provided the most high-energy performance of the night (not too surprising, considering they were also the youngest performers by about two decades).

The Dresden Dolls did a number of their top-rated songs, including "Coin Operated Boy" and an acoustic, Celtic folksy version of "Port of Amsterdam" before closing with the "old English folk protest song", Black Sabbath's "War Pigs". As they did in their last show in Texas at the 2006 SXSW, the duo threw everything they had and more into "War Pigs", with Palmer mercilessly pounding the keyboard and Viglione's sweat flying across the stage.

Unfortunately, I missed most of Deborah Harry's set standing in a hogdepodge of disorganized lines to meet the Dresden Dolls, who were extremely friendly (if a little out of it), posing for pictures with each of their crying, overwhelmed fans (easily the highlight of my doey-eyed fiance's day). From what little I was able to experience, Deborah Harry stuck primarily to her new material, eschewing her crowd-pleasing hits from Blondie in favor of more slowed-down, slick new songs off the new album she's releasing next month. Harry doesn't look bad for a 62-year old. In fact, now that I think about it, she looks phenomenal. I did get the impression that the crowd was non-plussed about her choice of songs, however.

Following Deborah Harry was a special appearance by Rosie O'Donnell, who delivered a seething, allegedly funny diatribe on Donald Trump and her departure from The View. Unfortunately, while Trump is undoubtedly a tabloid-created fraud, that fact alone doesn't intrinsically make Rosie funny, and the cattiness from The View fiasco is probably too fresh on her emotional memory for her to realistically step back, take a breath and use her comic ability to full effect. I should mention that my disappointment with her act was not in any way shared by the 20,000 Rosie fans in the audience, however.

Following Rosie was 80s pop/synth superband Erasure, who probably got the loudest response of any of the musical acts of the evening. Openly-gay singer Andy Bell swooned the audience with his fearless vocals and hilarious dance moves, while keyboardist Vincent Clarke, dressed like Andy Warhol, looked as disengaged as a statue in a coma. Erasure did their biggest hits "Chains of Love" and "Respect", along with some new stuff, which lacked the pop of their greatest hits but was nevertheless played to the unholy spectacle of tens of thousands of grown gay men dancing like teenage girls.

The evening was closed by tour organizer and 80s pop rebel Cyndi Lauper, who exploded onto the stage in a visually-gripping huge rainbow-colored oriental hat, which she then discarded for a fire engine red wig, which she also discarded for her real purple-hued short blonde hair, all during the course of the song "Hole in My Heart (All the Way to China)". Despite being in her mid-50s, Lauper can still move around on a stage pretty well, riling up the crowd with her stage antics, repeatedly roaming into the frenzied audience and only able to sit still when she was playing guitar. Never having heard her voice before (at least since I was a kid), I was impressed by her cute New Yawk squawk, as well as her accompanying four-octave vocal range.

During her set she also mixed old with new, including some new versions of her old hits: for example, the surprisingly slowed-down, acoustic, almost country-fied version of "She Bop". In general Lauper was a bundle of energy bursting over the stage, but unfortunately her backup band appeared sleepy and disinterested. The end of the set picked up a bit with "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", with a guest appearance by backup drummer Rosie O'Donnell, before the sprawling, celeb-heavy encore of Abba's "Take a Chance on Me" and Lauper's "True Colors" -- in which all of the evening's performers sang and strutted on the stage simultaneously. Of all the performers, Lauper was the one that really threw out props to the serious issues that spawned the tour, most noticeably the hate crime amendment about to pass the U.S. Senate -- not too surprising, considering she's one of the few pop princess performers ever to sing about issues like spousal abuse and abortion. In all, the evening was a good one, if a little pricier than I was expecting -- $30 t-shirts? -- at least the purple commemorative "Erase Hate" wristbands were free.