LOIRAS SEM CALÇAS: Stop Play Moon @ Studio M—3 de agosto; Viva La Fête @ Comitê Club—5 de agosto, 2010

We’re not sure if you can blame Lady Gaga for all female blonde singers hitting the stage sans pants. Maybe it started sometime around Madonna’s video for “Hung Up,” when she did that dance practice with the boom box, wearing the body suit.  Many other women began to follow (swim) suit, and take the no-pants angle further than it had been in recent memory.  Okay, a body suit covers you somewhat, but it’s definitely not like wearing pants, or even short-shorts for that matter. What’s the downside—not being taken seriously?  On one hand, the stage is not real life, because you wouldn’t go to the office wearing a gold lame bikini and a chain link belt any more than you would donning Gene Simmons’ melted metal and dinosaur boots costume circa 1979.  On the other hand, the music surrounding these ass-out ladies is not what critics would call serious.  This is party music or at least dance music.  In case you ever need to figure it out, you can tell you’re watching a band playing party music when there’s a blonde girl holding a microphone and dancing as her butt glistens whitely under the spotlight.*

            In an odd coincidence (or an unreliably small-sample proof of a trend), both Geanine Marques of Stop Play Moon and Els Pynoo of Viva La Fête both appeared this week intentionally forgetting to wear anything below their waists besides body suit bottoms.  Unsurprisingly, neither opted for a skirt, either.  

 Foto (left): Biju Caldeira

SPM performed a concise show of about forty minutes, featuring a mustachioed multi-instrumentalist figuring out which instrument to play with a talented drummer and over cued up playback tracks unleashed from Studio M’s floating sound booth.  In all fairness, Marques sang well enough that she could have worn pants.  And although SPM’s song selection verged on the dour, the early-New Order catchiness of generally integrating about two chords a song worked for them (ooh-ooh backup vocals never hurt either). Marques ended SPM’s last song not with an outfit change, but by picking up a guitar to play one high F# chord for the last two minutes.   Cute, not great. 

          

Conversely, the heavy electronic programming of Viva La Fête makes no pretense for true musicianship on record, but a full backup band offsets the live version of the band (a duo on their releases). As you might guess, when more human bodies are put on a stage the temperature tends to go up.  Fittingly, Pynoo started with just nude-colored stirrup leggings and a shirt. By show’s end, she broke down to a topless bustier and shiny pasties.  Asexual celibates might interpret her look as hiding a lack of talent, but singing prowess is not part of her shtick.  She’s more about whispery titillation à la Brigitte Bardot in Serge Gainsbourg’s “Bonnie and Clyde” than riding the blues scales at full volume like Beyoncé.  

Ultimately, the downside to the band’s late-starting show was Pynoo’s early exit, as the remaining Belgians were a lot less exciting (guitarist Danny Mommens’ eye makeup aside).  Meanwhile, Comitê’s stern security guards’ unforgiving stares reminded us that we weren’t allowed to put our drinks down on the large and nearly empty raised platform housing the sound board.  So, drinks in hand, we sat through an uneventful instrumental jam session culminating in a half-decent cover of “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”  Overall, fun but not FUN.

The remaining question then is the question itself.  Is it, “How was the ass?” or, “Which ass was better looking?”  To be fair, it’s a moot point.  SPM’s Marques was wearing a blazer covering most of hers, so she didn’t provide much for a point of comparison.  In theory, both women have no problem supporting the Look, Dude, I Can’t Be Bothered Wearing Bottoms movement because they don’t have much happening back there: it’s the same reason parents let four year-old girls go in the pool without a top to their bathing suits.  Nothing to see here. 

*Double-check that you aren’t at a burlesque night in New York or a strip club in Oslo.