[show_avatar email=julie@iwenttoashow.com align=left avatar_size=50] Sunday, July 24th, 2011.

St. Louis seemed pretty sure of their expectations from The Blow, but The Blow was pretty unsure what to make of us. Early in the day, The Blow (Khaela Maricich) retweeted mega-star Rhianna’s appreciation for last night’s Bill Maher, and cracked wise about how much the two of them, Rhianna and Khaela, had in common. In addition to their mutual affection for Bill Maher, their tours were also ending on the same night. Her explanation for ending the tour here in St. Louis:

After the first song, and a few times throughout, a sincerely surprised performer mused, “St. Louis… Who knew??” and we cheered like mad.

After a brief a capella intro, Khaela walked us through the story that would shape the performance for the evening. A simple conceit: A popular starlet (unnamed for legal reasons, but totally Lindsay Lohan)  falls madly and publicly in love with a girl and hires The Blow to write an album of love songs to launch her new pop music career. Khaela has to mute her own simple, practical persona to become the unnamed pouty, misunderstood actress in order to write songs convincingly in her new employer’s voice, not really trying to quell the urge to make political statements and value judgments along the way. Her one-woman electro-pop show is a humorous tour through the transformation of this Brooklynite granola girl who grew her hair out only to feel what it might be like to achieve a feminine ideal. No makeup, wearing a flimsy, too-big t-shirt and a black leotard, girl had a lot of work to do.

You might remember in 2003, when legendary van-dwelling folk singer Jewel decided to revamp her dirty, barefoot image with a video for her single “Intuition.” In it, Jewel walks through boring city scenes shot with a hand held digital camera, interspersed with high glamor footage of her life transformed into a that of a sexy Hollywood pop icon.

Jewel fooled exactly no one with her, “Look at me criticizing the objectification of women by allowing myself to be objectified! Don’t notice that I gain new fans with my new boobs and revealing clothing, just admire how clever and principled I am!” routine.

Last night, an audience mostly full of the with-it enjoyed just as much of The Blow as she served up, and no more. One of the few things she got from her brush with fame was a pair of ridiculous shoes, and she dropped to the floor and rolled on her back in order to put them on. After an intensely funny attempt to dance sexy-like while wearing them, Khaela panted into the microphone, “I get the feeling that certain people are looking at me like they think they can have me. Can they have me?” We ignored the five perfunctory catcalls and waited happily for her next vignette, having none of us ever seen anyone so joyfully embrace their utter lack of conventional sex appeal.

Her moves were perfectly awkward and her beats and her voice were spot on.  No equipment was incinerated, nobody peed on anything. She apologized for taking so long to get to us, and assured us she’d be  back soon. I do believe she speaks the truth.

 

Notes:

As Khaela pointed out, it’s been a really long time since The Blow released a new album (2006’s Paper Television). She assured us later, she really is working on releasing something soon. When she comes back, you should go. Here’s my crummy camera video of her moment with the fog machine, fan and spotlight. And the monologue about how she would have handled the breakup/meltdown process differently.

Bravo to glam folk opener He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister for carrying on, though the crowd was less than impressed with their stage banter. Comparing St. Louis to L.A. started out condescending and quickly nose-dived into downright uncomfortable. Loved the tap-dancing percussionist, though.