My sense, first off about the Lez Zeppelin concert at the Cubby Bear on Saturday, is that the Lezzies are not lezzies. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But if they were, I think they would have exhibited more lezzie behavior. For instance, there was not a single stage kiss.
As musicians, they were fair enough, their guitar player pulling off many of Jimmy Page’s riffs with a perpetual smile on her face (and boffing some others with the same smile). By the way, she looked a lot like a young version of the 1980s comedienne Carol Leifer from where I was standing.
The bass player, a dead ringer for the love child of Rhea Perlman from Cheers, and Slash from Guns’n’Roses, was also decent.
The singer reminded me of exactly how feminine Robert Plant was. Hips forward, shoulders back and wrist flopping loosely in front of her, if not for darker hair and a different nose, she could have been him. She even wore a silky top that didn’t reach down to the waistline of her jeans.
The drummer, who most of the night kept a steady beat but struggled on some of John Bonham’s fills, gets the award for Most Resembling the Original Band Member–even more than the Plant plant.
The crowd was guy-heavy but I kept looking around all night wondering, “Is she?….is she?……is she?
I found it strange that the singer repeatedly and dramatically announced, “We are Lez Zeppelin.” She also referred to the crowd unironically as “Chicago.” I thought maybe “Wrigleyville” or maybe stretching it, “Lakeview” would have been more appropriate considering we were in a sports bar with The Big Lebowski playing on several TVs during the concert. To be able to refer to the crowd as Chicago I think you need to be playing in a venue that cuts the tube during the music, or better yet, doesn’t have a tube at all.
One time, when she wanted to take a picture of the crowd, the singer yelled, “Hello, Chicago!” or “Give it up, Chicago!” or something like that. And the place went wild. When the noise subsided, she said, “We’re from New York” and got no response. She then said, “Nobdoy likes New York” and shared a laugh with her bandmates.
I found that strange because nodoby responded either way, the same way no one would have responded had she said, “We’re from Atlanta,” or “Utah” or “Chile.” It reconfirmed to me that even foreigners can be snobbish about New York (she later admitted to being from Australia), and it reminded me of an old joke–an oldie, but sure enough, a goodie if you’ve spent any time on the South Side of Chicago.
Q: “How do you know when someone is from Beverly?”
A: “They tell you.”
And just today, as I was standing out in front of my building listening to a neighbor complain about city services in Chicago, I said to her, “It’s your city.”
She said, “This is not my city — I’m from New York.”
I wanted to tell her about a band of women I had seen recently, but I didn’t think she was into heavy metal. Then I wanted to say, “You know, it’s nicer down in Beverly–you should consider moving down there.” But I just let her have her moment. I understand now that people just need to hear themselves say certain things. Over and over and over.
Zeppelin knew. They wrote, “The Song Remains the Same.”