The Gossip in Chicago, April 12, 2007

News of the trio's new record label doesn't stop the show

By Sheba White
Published: April 16th, 2007 | 4:24pm

Midway through the Gossip’s set at the Abbey Pub in Chicago, lead singer Beth Ditto breathily cut through the usual audience harangue of "we-love-you’s" and "play-my-favorite-songs" to announce that the trio had signed to a major label. Ditto paused just long enough to get a cheer. With one hand on her hip, she said, “And there is no shame in my game!”

After several years on Kill Rock Stars, the Gossip has switched to Music With a Twist, a subsidiary of Columbia that focuses on gay and lesbian artists.

Contrary to the reaction most bands would receive at this news, the audience went wild, some jumping up and down, beers in hand, possibly reacting to the diva’s Arkansan drawl, circa Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 denouement. “And I just want you to know,” Ditto cheekily added, punctuating each word that followed, “this fat, queer, pierced, feminist bitch will be the same forever. We’ll only do it with a little more money.”

It was a fittingly hopeful segue into the bluesy punk trio’s “Yr Mangled Heart,” the lyrics of which contain the refrain “I don’t want the world, I only want what I deserve,” and had the Abbey’s audience aroused more than they already were. Trucker-sporty, faux-hawked lesbians, old-school, sweater-vested gays — even a seemingly out-of-place pinstriped Ken and Barbie couple — all collided with the usual suspects of pigtailed, punk-cute fashionistas and asymmetrically cut, shaggy-haired boys bumping and grinding and singing along in tandem to Brace Paine’s curvy bass, Hannah Billie’s drum-major beat, and Ditto’s soulful lead.

Call it gospel hoedown or feverish camp singalong, throughout the set, it was hard to tell the crowd’s voice from Ditto’s, so much were they following every word as Ditto bounced around the stage in a black Blondie-inspired shirt dress, mascara running down her face, and black bangs pressed firmly to her head. At one point, she grabbed the hand of a young fan on the balcony, and for a split second hovered above the crowd at right stage in a move that would have other divas thinking of a long drop through the sweaty fans to the hard floor. But then, Ditto is no ordinary diva, belting Gossip classics like “Jealous Girl,” and “Listen Up,” while referencing Aretha Franklin next to the Need. It’s probably why there’s such a symbiotic relationship between the crowd and the band at their shows, and possibly why they inspire such feverish reactions in their audiences.

As naïve as it sounds, everything about the band comes across as so organic and real that it’s hard to fathom how their move to a Columbia Records’ subsidiary could possibly corrupt them. It certainly can’t make their audience love them less, because shortly after the Gossip anthem, “Standing in the Way of Control,” and just prior to the Gossip’s two-song encore, someone threw their man drawers up on stage. Ditto, scrunch-faced, picked them up with pointer finger and thumb, and brought the pair to her nose as if to sniff, but blew snot into them instead, and tossed them back into the audience in the direction they came from. Not so surprisingly, a gaggle of hands went up, all hoping to catch the sweaty undies and take a piece of the unfiltered power and imperfect hope that the trio seems to represent home with them, the packaging be damned.