I woke up the morning after Calamity Chang’s second installment of “Beatles Burlesque” at Pubic Ass, I had glitter on my face and “Don’t Let Me Down” ringing in my head. If you want to hear letter-perfect Beatles music played by mop tops, you should stay home and watch “A Hard Day’s Night” on Netflix. But if you want to hear the Beatles’ catalog artfully interpreted by a brass balls banshee righteously rocking your soul, get your beatnik butt to the next installment of Beatles Burlesque. Oh, and you also get to see hot chicks take their clothes off.

My first real memory of the Beatles was a Saturday morning when they interrupted the cartoons to tell us that some guy had gotten shot in New York. I didn’t know what any of it had to do with my cartoons. Ah, children are so self-serving. But it’s probably fair to say that in the “what’s on the radio” kind of way, I was more aware of “Wings” than the Beatles—“Man on the Run” was featured in my childhood soundtrack, and “Live and Let Die”—which was also one of the more kick-ass of the Roger Moore-era Bond films. I didn’t get into the Beatles until I—wait for it—started smoking dope. I know, shocking. But I clearly recall the first time I was in somebody’s dorm room as he tweaked the balance on the speakers to bring out the athletic beat at the end of “Strawberry Fields,” and pointed out the “everybody smoke pot” at the end of “I Am the Walrus.” IF that’s what they’re saying. All I know for sure is that when you’re young and you’ve just started to get high, you get the highest you’re ever going to get, and EVERYTHING gets really good, especially stuff that was pretty good already, like pizza and Coca Cola and kissing young girls and listening to complex, feel-good layered music.

Little did I know that not everyone likes the Beatles. When I was spinning records in Brooklyn, a fellow DJ put it to me this way: “You either like the Beatles, or you like the Rolling Stones.” But I like the Rolling Stones. “No. You have to choose.” It’s divisive, but it’s a point of view. Turns out while some of us were getting high and grooving to the Beatles, others were getting high and rocking out to the Stones. And those people HATE the Beatles.

But the point I want to make is this one: by the time you hit your 30s, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard every Beatles song ever recorded, probably fifty times. Well, maybe the iPoo and Pando-do-ra are fixing that for younger generations, but the fact holds—the Beatles are impossible to ignore, even now, and even if you like them you can get sick and tired of those songs in the same way that I don’t ever, ever, EVER want to hear “Sleigh Ride” again, not even if it’s Christmas in Vermont and I’m on a fucking sleigh ride.

Calamity Chang

The night I saw “Ticket to Ride,” the band Calamity put together for this show, the regular guitarist had been replaced by a stand-in, which only made it more impressive that he was capably picking his way through the catalog. The drummer Matthew Egan is rock solid, reminding us all that Ringo replaced Best quite simply because he was a better drummer, and the bass player Ken Zwerin (who also performs with Gigi and Pop) is straight-up stand up. But what makes this band truly worth seeing is the vocals. I’ve written several times about the soaring, penetrating witchcraft that is the voice of Broadway Brassy, and nowhere else can you hear her signature style rip new assholes in the works of one of the world’s favorite songwriting duos.

But let’s talk a little about the nudity. First of all, if Lil Miss Lixx is cocktailing in the front room, does it NOT make sense that she should be dressed to the nines—or at least the sevens—and slinging drinks in something slinky? Anyone? Is it just me? Am I THAT much of a perv, or would her tips skyrocket if she were, uh, a little part of the show. Coz lawd knows I ain’t seen enough of her yet, and some of these BQ virgins ain’t seen her at all.

The band warms us up with a couple of tunes, and Calamity breaks out as Yoko Chang, in silver spakly spank-me pants and a massive fro wig, giant shades, and fur boots. Yum. She offers us what she calls her “sacrificial lamb”—apparently Yoko is into new meat, and likes to break in new performers; in this case, Divina Gransparkle, a (gulp) big brunette girl in a 60s orange sack dress toting a big bag of psychotropic substances to the tune of “Ticket to Ride.” Broadway slips surprisingly delicately into the “Oh” leading into “ticket to ride,” and Divina is light on her feat and an accomplished tassel-twirler. Welcome to the stage, darling, you can’t take it back.

And hence we have the rhythm of a strong show. Beatles music, live band, live girls, the conversation and dichotomy that ensues. And it works because it works, and it works because we NEED it to work—as the Legends tell us, the loss of live music is the biggest thing that’s missing from Burlesque today, and the more we can bring it back, the wider the audience. Or that’s the hope. Check out Clams Casino taking off a leopard-print coat to “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” and why that seems fitting I can’t quite articulate but it does feel that Clams was made for it, and as we get into the “mother superior” section the band is slamming and Clams is—well, slammin’.

The band plays a couple more tunes… I have to ding Ken Zwerin on one point here—if you’re playing “Tax Man,” you have to play the rollicking bass beat that makes the song sing. Save the fills for a guitar-driven track. Just saying.

But I forgot all about it when Gigi La Femme took the stage doing a 60s gogo step in Chuck Taylors with 20-eyelets in a mini-mini-skirt to “I Saw Her Standing There.” “She was just 17… you know what I mean..” I mean, if that doesn’t get your fantasy factory going haywire, you’re dead from the waist down. Remember, 17 is legal in the state of New York.

But what really got the crowd whipped into a frenzy was Madame Rosebud FREAKING OUT to “Helter Skelter.” Legend has it that the Who recorded what was called the hardest rock song ever, and Paul got pissed and wrote Helter Skelter. It may be apocryphal, but I always thought that it was funny that the biggest pussy in the band would write the most slammin’, Melvins-worthy tune they ever recorded. And Rosebud brought it to life in a psycho-billy freakout. I’d love to tell you more about it, but my notes are virtually indecipherable. Something about fishnets, landing on her knees, trying to scale Broadway, and that fab blue Mohawk. And what looks like lipstick marks, a bourbon stain, and a lot of glitter. Telling you, this is a tough job.

And as I was lubricating preshow, I did saw a little Snow White with platinum hair hanging by the bar, and all I could think was, who IS that girl? And then she got on stage to gogo and I realized a) it’s Scooter Pie b) she’s white hot c) she really has to be southern, and it’s not just the name, which makes b) all the more relevant. White stockings, pink lashes, baiting the crowd. Skull and crossbones tat, what looks like a wishbone tat, busting moves from the swim—I mean the dance, the swimming arm gestures—and that ass was made for rimming. Whew.

I gotta go, really. Look, you know the drill—second act, the performers come back and do something better. And, if you behave, Yoko Chang will finish it out. Enough of me—just get your ass out to Brooklyn and dig the next groovy installment of Beatles Burlesque. And tell Broadway Brassy to call me.

Kiss kiss,
JDX

All photos ©2010 Melody Mudd. Performers who would like high-res shots please contact her at melodymudd@gmail.com. She is also on facebook, flickr and twitter.