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NEW YORK TIMES
Review/Pop;
Deee-lite's Ode to
Glamour In the Pop-Culture Idiom
By PETER WATROUS
Published: May 20,
1991
About halfway through Deee-lite's packed show at
Roseland on Thursday night, the group's lead singer, Lady Miss Kier, said,
"The world is ugly," then launched into a short environmental
plea. It was the only conventionally articulated verbal moment of the night.
It wasn't the only articulated moment, though, as the
concert was brimming with obvious meaning. The band's cleverness comes in
its sensitivity to pop culture; its show arrives loaded with visual and
musical paragraphs of explanation. Lady Miss Kier, seemingly obsessed with
the way glamour is produced, wore 1960's outfits that looked as if they had
been bought from a Las Vegas thrift shop specializing in leftover show
outfits.
She sucked in her cheeks like a model and posed like a
mannequin. One of the group's D.J.'s, Jungle D.J. Towa Towa, walked around
the stage with a video camera, filming the band and the audience. Dance
routines and expressions -- Lady Miss Kier would stare straight ahead as if
addressing an imaginary camera -- were lifted from the huge reservoir of
pop entertainment, including Las Vegas routines, 60's pop-idol imagery and
television dance-party shows.
The music, supplied by tape and by a band that included
a trio from the Parliament-Funkadelic constellation -- Bootsy Collins on
bass, Roger Parker on drums and Michael Hampton on guitar -- did not keep
up with the stage show. At times the sound turned murky, and the musicians,
who are used to tearing up a live performance, seemed inhibited by the pop
necessity of reproducing the music on a recording.
Still, music wasn't so much the point. Lady Miss Kier is
one of the more giving performers on the pop circuit, someone who has
managed to make a carefully constructed, stylish persona and yet not
emphasize the gap between performer and audience. Her outfits, representing
the new, retro style of glamour, argue for the ready-made: style hasn't yet
turned into fashion. Although the audience seemed more restrained than the
band's usual audience, people were there to enjoy themselves and to dance,
and they did.
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