Which Superstar Looks Like You?

Which Superstar Looks Like You?

Lisa Robinson

by

Do today’s musicians create fashion or merely reflect it? Someone once said to me that people go to the concerts of the artists they think they resemble the most. In terms of clothing, three separate evenings in New York recently drove this point shatteringly home. Labelle at Carnegie Hall, Yoko Ono at Town Hall and Wayne County at Max’s Kansas City proved that you are what you eat... or something like that...

Labelle has become known for their wild outfits onstage almost as much as for their high powered vocal delivery. At their Carnegie Hall debut, they outdid themselves not only once, but in three costume changes; wearing clothes especially designed for them by Larry LaGaspi and Richard Erker. They left the stage briefly while a film clip of them as Pattie Labelle and The Blue Belles on a “Murray the K Show” in the mid-1960’s was shown. You know, bouffant wigs, sequin sheath dresses ... the whole bitde rigeur for “black chick trios” then. What was clever was that the three immediately came back onstage wearing skintight sequin floorlength gowns, bouffant wigs ... and spoofed themselves brilliantly singing “I,Sold My Heart To The Junkman”. The audience went, needless to say, beserk. The final part of the evening was performed in flamboyant, highly individualized outfits — Patti wearing a yellow fringed strapless gown that made her look like some kind of African warrior princess (she was eight months pregnant but you’ll never see this dress at Lady Madonna) Nona was covered from head to toe in a skintight white leather spacesuit which did her magnificent body no harm, and Sarah’s green lame dress was backless and sexily slit all the way up...

The audience was a show in itself. Lots of extremely well-dressed blacks in plaid suits and African robes mingled with some ravingly garbed young white men (fans picked up when Labelle did the Continental Baths, perhaps) in silk kimonos, funky glitter tops, makeup. The audience, who was up and down the aisles all evening shouting encouragement (“Sing the song girl!”, and “Tell me ‘bout it!”), shaking tambourines, handclapping and footstomping along, dressed for and got, an Event.

The very next night at Town Hall there was a benefit concert for radio station WBAI starring Yoko Ono, Elephants’ Memory and Weather Report, and the fashion scene was just about the ppposite extreme of Labelle’s evening. I didn’t see Weather Report, but Yoko was dressed casually in white jeans and jacket, qnd a white t-shirt with her “Approximately Infinite Universe” insignia. The Elephants all seemed to be wearing black jeans and the black version of Yoko’s t-shirt. And so was the audience ... dressed in jeans and tshirts, that is. Some however, not content to just relax into that sort of street uniform, dressed up their t-shirts a bit. The Nazi/Nixon one was in eyidence,so were several emblazoned with “Rock & Roll” in glitter. One boy was heavy into the layered look with a t-shirt, covered by a cotton long sleeved shirt, topped by a v-neck sweater, cut-off dungaree overalls, and under all of. that were cotton pantaloons that looked as if they had been made up out of an old sheet.

In fact, during the performance ... Yoko auctioned off a sheet that she said was the very one she and John slept in when they got married. Later in the lobby it appeared that" the same sheet was being worn by a girl as a dress, but on closer look, it was actually a thriftshop type muslim gown with a matching stole ... under the muslim little cuban-heeled gold shoes pe'eked out.

Suprisingly enough, when Yoko offered to auction off her t-shirt to help raise money for WBAI, there were some shouts of “Take it off honey!” What??? After she had just sung “What A Bastard The World Is” to the cheers of some of the women in tikis' semi-politically oriented audience?? (As well as to the cringing embarrassment of morft than a few of the men when she screamed “You pig! You bastard! You scum of the earth!”)

Nearly everyone who habituates the backroom of Max’s Kansas City is a performer of some kind, but the night that Wayne County sang thbre with his band, Queen Elizabeth, all the regulars were really dressed to kill.

Even though everybody there looked either like The Dolls, (whose Johnny Thunder was stalking about dressed in matching red leather pants and jacket bought, perhaps, with the money that the group’s finally received from signing with Mercury), or The Harlots (who performed the opening set in lots of lame; Jean Harlot taking Lou Reed one further by actually miming shooting up onstage. Far out Jean.), or Ruby Lynn Reyner, Wayne County outdid them all. Performing in his huge afro wig, red ruffled mini dress, striped tights and red garters, Wayne sang lots of original material as well as “California Sun” and “I’m Stuck on You”. When he stripped down to his undies he didn’t even really shock anybody in that blase audience ... although granted, he has cleaned up his act a bit for club dates. (Gone is the toilet... the dildos ... other, errr ... sexual aids...)

“I'have two versions of my act,” Wayne told CREEM later, “the party version and the club version. The party version is alot more outrageous, because the atmosphere there is always looser.

“I only feel happy and fabulous when I dress this way,” Wayne continued. “People call it drag but I’ve been dressing this way all my life, ever since I was a little kid. Even through high school I used to do shows in Atlanta, Georgia, wear my mother’s clothes and stuff. People can just accept it more now, then you couldn’t even mention it.

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“Drag means a completely different thing now. It really used to mean dressing like a woman, but nowadays it just means a flashier way of dressing. Alot of the kids who come into Max’s today dress in a way that would have been considered drag, or woman’s clothing a few years ago — but the way clothes are now — either males or females can wear them. The most important thing when people dress in this manner is that it’s not trying to imitate a woman, clothes have no gender. When a man wears them, it’s just his clothes. .. these are my clothes.”

Standing out in the sea of androgynous, clothes at Max’s that night were Lee Black Childers in his “Our Man In Havana” cre&m colored linen suit, bought at London’s Village Gate, Geri Miller in a Scarlett O’Hara straw picture hat adorned with flowers and a long, peasant-style dress, writer Henry Edwards in a sulky, basic black 1950’s beatnik turtleneck sweater, Karin Berg in colorfully patchworked denims, Dave Marsh in a conservative brown velvet jacket, and artist/singer Hal Fredericks in his silver wheelchair and selfembroidered cowboy shirt.

WHA T YOU SEE IS WHA T YOU GET: One of the best things in the film “Let The Good Times Roll” is the Hicksville, Long Island Jr. High School dress code — with a list of “do’s” and “don’ts”. The “do’s” are a scream, and the “don’ts” are all very fabulous . . . skintight toreador pants, luscious, sleeveless tight sweaters, black motorcycle jackets, rolled up jeans. Another magic moment in the movie is when .a girl calls up her male friend on the phone ... “I’m so depressed,” she wails. . . “Well,” he offers, “why not go out and do The Twist???” “THE TWIST??!!??!!,” she shrieks, and off they go. In the next scene she’s smiling and twisting with wild abandon in thb most sensational strapless sheath featuring rows of fringe all up and down the skirt.But don’t look for any of these clothes to inspire a fashion revival; the 1950’s were just too painfully mediocre for any of that stuff to come back into style again. (Although former-Warhol star and international model Donna Jordan was recently photographed by Women’s Wear Daily in a beaded cardigan!, and a plaid pleated skirt. I suppose you can adapt some of that look into your own style. . . . .)

Jimmy Page went to the party that Ahmet Ertegun gave Zeppelin in New Orleans dressed like a real British popstar, in a white satin suit. He was outdone only by Ernie K. Doe who wore a white shirt and tie, white trousers, and pink sportjacket when he sang “Mother In Law” and “Wonderful World”. (Ernie didn’t sing “A Certain Girl” however. . . ). You know, Robert Plant has be6n wearing that same little open blouse in concerts on this tour that he has worn time and time again. And he’s so divine it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. (Plus, it’s great to see a band get onstage and not have to wear platform shoes ’/,..). Bowie startled some of the Japanese on his recent tour there with his pink, rhinestone studded, jock strap. Others went wild for the morethan-you-ever-saw-of-him before look .Some of the only good moments in “Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid” are when James Coburn and Bob Dylan are pulling on those sexy little tight, wrist* length, leather gloves.And in case you were wondering about it — forget Great Gatsby clothes, it’s a major Seventh Avenue hype. ^