Gossip girl

Last night, I got last-minute tickets to Gossip at Terminal 5. Who haven't I seen there in recent times—I've enjoyed Lady Gaga, Scissor Sisters, Erasure, Yaz...the list goes on. Grabbed my friend Craig and we had a great time, even though my hate affair with G.A. continues.

Longer snippets in the middle of the vid

It actually wasn't grotesquely crowded, but we wound up behind a pair of attention magnets (round guy in gold lamé, among other things; tall guy with Adam Lamberty hair) who happened to take up a lot of space standing still, let alone doing what they were doing, which was shaking their raised fists through every song (at least at first). It's a rock concert, so what are you gonna do, complain? Ask people to enjoy themselves less? Might as well wear a button-up shirt with "OLD MAN" on the back. But it sucks to stand behind a girl who has to hold her hand in the air and wave it in large circles all around her head, barely missing yours and everyone else's. It was all very, "We GET this! We LOVE this!" more so than just pure personal enjoyment. To the boys: No disrespect intended and I admire your self-expression...I just don't ever want to stand behind it again. xoxo

Welcome to Gossip's "Perfect World"—read on for details

Then a couple of tiny girls moved ahead and past us and considering my history of serious issues with shorties pushing their way in front of me at concerts, I couldn't resist joking to Craig, "And here come the short girls." Unfortunately, one heard me and called me on it. I felt bad! I'm usually really good about talking trash inches from a person's face without them hearing, and in this case it wasn't really trash since as she pointed out she wasn't stopping in front of me or bugging me in any way. Sorry, woman.

But the good news is we soon shifted and wound up in front of the human trees and I had no more distractions.

Anyway, we had shown up in time to catch opening act The Ssion (say "SHUN" as in "passion") even though we'd missed Creep (who had the only good T-shirt for sale of all three acts). I actually loved The Ssion—very dancey and with a total genderfuck vibe on stage. Their sound is very catchy and very Book of Love. I'm now humming "My Love Grows in the Dark" every 10 minutes.

I was tickled to recognize that their dancing boys recreated Madonna's 1982 track-date choreography during the stand-out song "Clown" (which is already a dead ear-ringer for "Holiday"). The band also wound up incorporating some lines from "Keep It Together". (The strawberry blond dancing boy was fucking hot, BTW, in his Castro clone cut-offs.)

Gossip themselves (even minus the "The" they used to have) were amazing. I had seen Beth solo on a previous True Colors Tour, but seeing her in her natural habitat—surrounded by the rest of the band—was a whole different thing. She has a great, gritty voice that reminds me of Dolly Parton's and that comes across as gospel-infused; she appeared to be demolishing everything around her at the molecular level with very little effort and no artifice. Just a big girl with a big voice singing her songs.

Not being enough of a dedicated fan, I'm worthless for telling you about which songs were sung, but I was on board with the old, recognizable hits (the audience went ape for "Listen Up" and "Standing in the Way of Control") as well as the new A Joyful Noise tracks. I was especially taken with "Get a Job", a sort of white-girl "Ain't Nothin' Goin' on But the Rent", even though "Move in the Right Direction" and "Perfect World" are obviously enormously entertaining, too.

Beth's charisma lies in her honesty, which shines through not only in her belting but in her stage banter, whether she was quoting Madonna ("Music makes the people come together...that's like poetry. That's fucking genius is what that is.") or inciting the crowd to get involved in politics ("I assume you're all leftists..."). The lightning-rod moment was probably when she announced, "Jesus is a faggot." I just think Beth does the whole outsider thing even better than Gaga because it's done more as a statement of fact than as performance art.

She is tremendously physically appealing to me—you want to grab her and hold on (even though it looks to me like there's less of her to love these days?). She'll make someone a good little wife someday—actually, someday real soon, y'all!

Gossip ended with Beth leading the audience in a touching rendition of Whitney Houston's most teeth-grating song, "The Greatest Love of All". Have never liked it, but she was able to wring genuine emotion out of it, appearing to tear up as she bid farewell. (Most of this is at the end of my video.)

Fantastic show. Check out A Joyful Noise if you haven't yet.

P.S. Camera issues—mine constantly adjusts focus on its own, so even if I've got a subject locked in, once they move or someone bumps me, it goes blurry. Oh, and my brand-new camera has a tiny white dot in every video file. I can't figure out if it's a flaw on the lens or something? Apologies, I tried.