kd lang

As we worked our way to our seats, I noticed an interesting mix in the crowd. The confusion that her genre hopping had induced at Aron’s was in evidence in the crowd who had come to see her sing. Half the audience was dyed-in-the-wool country fans from Orange County, kd’s first fans. There was big hair and bad clothes and lots of people in their '50s, people who remembered Patsy and wanted to see and hear her sing again. Then there was another strong faction.

Rumors had been running rampant that kd lang was a lesbian, which the lesbian community took to heart. They quickly claimed her as one of their own and came out in strong numbers to support her. In fact, with her beautiful voice and boyish looks, she quickly became the equivalent of a lesbian teen-idol, and nervous tattooed and pierced lesbians could be seen wringing their hands and hyperventilating in anticipation. It made for very strange bedfellows, this ultra-conservative older crowd from Orange County and this radical lesbian crowd from West Hollywood, and I can’t imagine any other single performer able to bridge that chasm. Enjoying the pre-show show, we settled into our seats and eagerly awaited kd’s arrival.

When kd hit the stage, the crowd went berserk. Grown women were screaming and crying. G had warned me that the one person she might leave me for was kd lang, and I could see her watching kd’s smooth movements and powerful presence with hungry eyes. At one point, early in the show, some nervous young fan approached the edge of the stage with a large bouquet of flowers and, trembling, held them up to her idol. kd came to the edge of the stage and kneeled down, graciously accepting the flowers. Then she looked into her star-struck fan’s eyes and said, “for the rest of the night, I’m singing all of my songs to you and only you”. The audience roared with approval and the young woman flushed and ran in tears back to her seat.

The concert was phenomenal. kd’s voice was frighteningly good – solid and strong and smooth and stunningly beautiful. I have never heard a voice like that anywhere in my life and it made the hair on my arms stand up.

She sang most of the songs from Ingénue and a sprinkling of material from her older albums, including a song from her extremely rare first album, issued only in Canada, from whence she came. For the most part, she stayed faithful to the arrangements on her albums, with one notable exception. The song Big-Boned Gal from Absolute Torch and Twang was a pretty straightforward country song on the album – a high-energy square-dancey sort of tune. But for the performance, she and her band rearranged the track into a fantastic Indian dance fantasy – like the soundtrack for some frenzied film from Bollywood. It was an astonishingly unexpected musical transformation, and was the musical highlight of the show for me.

kd certainly had heard the rumors about her sexual orientation, and she played it up that night, to the obvious delight of her fans – or half of them, anyway. At one point, she came down to the edge of the stage and addressed the audience. “You know, there’s been a lot of talk about me and my personal life and what I like. And I want to set the record straight. I’m here at home in LA and I feel comfortable and so it’s time to drop pretenses and come out with the truth.” You could hear an excited murmur spreading throughout the audience. “And the truth of the matter is that I am a…” and here she started drawing out a long “L” sound, while the crowd simmered, “L-L-L-Lawrence Welk fan!” The band kicked into a wunnerful wunnerful arrangement of Miss Chatelaine as the stage exploded in bubbles and the crowd went berserk.

But her crowning achievement came during the final encore. Her perfect voice and magnetic charm had completely captivated the audience and we all jumped up and yelled and screamed for her to keep singing. After a couple of encores, she quieted everybody down, and then the band started playing the stately opening chords of Roy Orbison’s classic barn burner, Crying. We obediently shut up and sat down. Her glorious voice, which had mesmerized us all evening, took on a new depth and power as she worked her way through the well-known chestnut. Roy Orbison was famous for his melodramatic musical histrionics, and Crying is one of his most outlandish tunes, building up to an unbelievable emotional crescendo (I think part of the reason he is popular among teenagers is because his musical excesses match an adolescent’s emotional ones). Knowing the song as well as I do – as well as most of the people in the audience did – I sat and waited for her to climb the crescendos at the end. Her voice was literally unbelievable, it seemed impossible that such a sound could come out of a mortal, and I understood the oft-repeated notion that all instruments aspire to the quality of the human voice.

kd started her approach to the end of the song – started climbing the staircase to heaven – and I could feel shivers crackling up and down my spine. I turned to G and saw her completely lost in rapture, her whole body shaking. Next to her, a classic “diesel dyke” in a flannel work shirt and the kind of boots my friend Mel used to call shit kickers was sobbing uncontrollably, tears pouring down her face. kd hit those last stratospheric notes and it felt like the top of my head had blown off. The lights went out and the audience roared. Before we were cheering because we hoped she’d sing some more, but this time we knew that was it, there could be no more. What else was there to say? So after paying our tribute, we all walked out of the auditorium in a daze, speechless at having our souls opened and filled with light and love and the beautiful voice of kd lang.

After Ingénue, there was really nowhere to go but down. kd lang officially came out of the closet and became a pin-up for lesbians – in some of the same ways that Morrisey had been for gay men. She continued following the path of classic popular music on her subsequent albums and was tapped to provide the soundtrack to Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. She and her long-time musical partner Ben Mink broke up, which harmed her music as far as I’m concerned, and, like Annie Lennox and countless other divas before them, she recorded an album of her versions of pop standards, although, again, she chose her pop standards with her own generation in mind, reinterpreting the likes of Steve Miller and T-Bone Burnett. The power and polish of her voice is as strong as it ever was, but there’s something missing for me, something in the material, something in the production, something lost in the transition from relatively unknown, genre-busting maverick coming into her own to certified, official pop icon. She’s still a phenomenal artist, but the blush of discovery is off, the innocence has been lost, and kd is an ingénue no more.

The other day, G finished a huge chunk of work and was rewarded by reaching her vacation. We decided to celebrate by going to her favorite restaurant, LA’s best Indian kitchen, Bombay Café. Years before, we had had our best celebrity sighting there when we were seated next to Harrison Ford while taking my folks out to dinner (they were quite impressed). On the way to G’s celebratory dinner, we started talking about kd lang and I mentioned that she had a new live CD out and should I buy it for her? She shook her head reluctantly, expressing regrets at the different paths she and kd had taken on recent albums. We got to the restaurant and G and Owen, our son, and I took our seats, ordered, and nibbled on appetizers. I glanced up while G was talking and was stunned to see kd lang sit down at the next table, directly behind G. As nonchalantly as possible, I encouraged G to turn around. She casually turned around and then whipped her head back, meeting my gaze with giant saucer eyes. She begged me to trade seats with her and then nervously fretted the whole meal away, wondering what she should do. Towards the end of our meal, I took Owen outside because he was fussing and I encouraged G to carpe diem. She gathered her nerve and quietly interrupted kd’s dinner. Her idol turned warily towards her. G quickly and nervously told her how much her music had meant to her over the years. kd burst into a huge grin and thanked her, and G quickly ran out of the restaurant before she embarrassed herself, annoyed kd, or passed out from sheer bliss. I asked her if she wanted me to pick up her new album now. “No,” she smiled, “I’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted from her already.”