I think this was more fun than you are suppose to have on a Tuesday night. HotMess pulled off another “gem” of a show at Neumos. DJ LA Kendall and Colby B kept the crowd alert from the very beginning of the night. Then at 10:15, local fav’s Team Gina heated up the crowd as they performed some of their new songs from their upcoming album release. But the anxious crowd continued to build in anticipation of mother gem, Leslie Hall, making her appearance at 11:30 pm. While I must admit I personally don’t follow the phenomenon that is Leslie Hall and the Ly’s, the energy in the room alone was explanation enough.
Leslie was led out on stage encased in a black curtain suspended from a hoop. A video clip of Cher started to speak and so began the Leslie and the Ly’s show, hysterically awkward, displaying the silly confidence that so many of her fans have grown to love.
Upon realizing her headset microphone had gone dead she grabbed the mic from another band member and continued to belt out her campy rhymes without missing much of a beat. However, she grumbles that the cumbersome mic restricts her overly exaggerated stylized movements onstage. Leslie was ready to cut loose.
For those that don’t know Leslie she became famous in 2005 thanks to her fascinating gem studded sweaters and the amazing power of the Internet. She was featured on VH1 as one of the biggest online sensations and the next thing you know she’s taking her satirical rap show on a massive worldwide tour and the rest is history.
Adrienne Lake at AZ NightBuzz has the best description of Leslie:
You’ve seen that girl – the one with the hopelessly outdated hairdo, the blue eye shadow, the gold stretch pants (which her ample body strains against) and the glasses that were even ugly when they were popular in the early ‘80s. And surely you’ve noticed the sweater. It’s covered with sparkly appliqués and is the type of garment you would find on a grandmother cruising the aisles at your local K-Mart or swap meet.
She looks like the sour faced 4-H drone who gets pelted with spitballs in high school. She looks like the macraméing Dairy Queen employee who draws unicorns on her school notebooks. She’s awkward. She’s strange. She’s tacky.
Leslie’s performance was certainly a crowd pleaser with her quirky one-liners and campy onstage antics. Every cellphone camera in the house was in use, desperate to snap a precious photo to prove that one had personally witnessed the iconic Internet star.
Lake continues by trying her best to sum up Leslie:
Why do people foam at the mouth for this artist, who to an uninformed observer would appear to be creating outsider art? Probably because performers like Hall encourage people not only to reckon with their inner/former dork, but also to get out there and flaunt it. To make all things nerdy and tacky into an exhilarating and freeing art form. Hall isn’t out there trying to fit into some unattainable image of a pop star with perfect hair and 115-pound body. Instead, in Hall there is proof that one can go to the opposite extreme, that they can ugly up and geekify themselves to an extreme and still be worshipped. Now that is power.
You go, girl.
