All Hail the Perimenopausal Pop Star
It was June, and I was about to experience the rebirth of Radiohead’s album, “In Rainbows” perfectly timed for Pride.
In late June, I found myself at Le Poisson Rouge, a subterranean concert venue in New York City’s West Village. More than a decade had passed since I’d last been there, when I showed up for an event called “Macaulay Culkin’s iPod,” at which the “Home Alone” actor parked himself at the bar and played his favorite songs. My friend Elizabeth and I sat and watched with curiosity. It was 2014.
Much has changed since that 2014 night, not least of which is this: I am now a mother to an 8-month-old who is still sleeping terribly, making the possibility of underground venue hopping nearly impossible. And yet, when my sister texted me with an offer of two tickets to a sold-out show there, for an all-female Radiohead cover band, I knew I had to go. With Elizabeth, of course.
Given that cover bands can be pretty hit or miss, not to mention my extremely limited, dwindling-by-the-minute, mother-of-a-new-baby energy levels, it felt like a gamble. After all, who among us hasn’t suffered through a cover rendition of Radiohead’s “No Surprises” in a dingy basement bar with a bunch of moshing dudes courtesy of the latest local cover group?
Of course, the name of the band alone, Labiahead — yes, Labiahead! — felt magnetic. Fronted by the actor Lena Hall (who won a Tony for the cult-favorite “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” on Broadway) and the musician-comedian Charlene Kaye, this was no typical cover band.
Hall, positively radiant with rockstar heat, in a red, bondage-inspired teddy and wide-legged jeans, began the show by introducing herself as the first-ever perimenopausal pop star. And though she learned to play guitar just for this role as Labiahead front woman, between the self-referential comedy and multi-layered musicianship, you’d never know it.
We were nearing the end of Pride, and the band was performing Radiohead’s album “In Rainbows,” because of course — delivering the music with more smiles than seen in a lifetime of watching Radiohead’s famously gloomy Thom Yorke. There were the hyper-sexual, Pride-centric puns a-plenty. Did the crowd chant “Hail to the Queef?” They did. And did Hall answer to “Dom Yorke” more than once? She did. The (mostly female) crowd ate it up.
The spirit of the show was inclusive and lighthearted, with the band dedicating its performance to the gay folks in attendance and the straight dudes who love them. While getting shoved by men a foot taller than me tends to be par for the course at these kinds of events, the only man who pushed past me was the bassist’s dad, sporting a Hawaiian shirt, and honestly, he was pretty apologetic about it.
When Radiohead released “In Rainbows” in 2007, it was unabashedly, overtly political — a largely meditative recap of the George W. Bush era. Nearly two decades on, in Trump’s America, the angst on those tracks feels almost quaint.
All of which made the joy in the room even more remarkable: The performance felt akin to a gospel performance in a church, with the audience — yours truly included — enrapt, and chanting, More! More! More!
A few hours after I got home, my baby woke up screaming, for no obvious reason. But instead of feeling the usual crushing wave of postpartum frustration, I delighted in thinking about all the fun my little girl has ahead of her in the years to come.
One day, perhaps she, too, will go to a Pride concert like this. Perhaps she will chant, More! More! More! Perhaps she, too, will smile as I did, on a hot, joyful night in June. 🌈
More! More! More! Music.
Josie Cox
Josie Cox
The Persistent
