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Singles with cheese

The taste of Bleu Velveta

BY GREGORY NICOLL

There's a burger patty sizzling on the griddle at the Crazy Horse. It's saddled with a little orange blanket of processed cheese which slowly oozes into its browning surface. The warm Sunday evening air is redolent with the smells of cooking meat and melting cheese. I'm sitting at wobbly table with some folks from Viva la Diva, all of us drinking cold pale American pilsner out of tiny plastic cups as we discuss the manifold mysteries of the instrumental guitar band Dew, who just wrapped up another of their magically ethereal shows.

The sun is setting, and the room's getting very dark. There's no light on the Crazy Horse's stage except what spills from neon beer signs arrayed along the walls, and these just barely illuminate the huge mural of white horses and Indian chiefs which betokens the club's name. When the live music begins again, the next band on the bill opens their set with a conventional pop/country sound befitting these workin' class surroundings. And then, all hell breaks loose.

In David Lynch's 1986 film Blue Velvet, there's a powerful moment in which the camera lunges from an overview of a suburban lawn down into macro closeups of the monstrous, alarming insect life which thrives beneath the surface of the greenery. This is precisely the effect which the sound of Bleu Velveta creates tonight in this bluesy Memorial Drive billiard parlor. The song is called "Thought Cops." Guitarist Mark Baker, drummer Jamie Shepard and bassist Rob Rushin lay down a funky groove, while George Trotter flings stinging leads from his white Stratocaster. But all eyes are on the entrancing Wanda B., a tempest of dancin' and singin' fury. Her sheer crimson shirt sweeping as she moves, Wanda declaims the song's lyrics through an electric megaphone.

A deep bass melody propels her into "L'etat C'est Moi," which she describes as "a trilingual piece." The text mixes English with French -- and what sounds like German at break -- for a combination as tasty and exotically cheesy as a European dairy sampler. Still speaking in tongues, the diva whips out a Hohner melodica and inserts its long plastic tube in her mouth. Pumping the little instrument's keyboard as she blows, she adds haunting faux piano notes to a bizarre gender-bender tune which poses the cross-dressed question, "Oh, Husband Betty, are you ready?" This wicked little Wanda is a foreign film character transplanted to a world without subtitles, a creature from the oeuvre of Herzog spirited off on angel wings toward the Goethe-Institut but misplaced on Memorial. Although her penchant for song-poems invites comparison to Lynch's beloved Julee Cruise, her mighty voice suggests the pre-goth Euro chanteuses Nina Hagen and Lene Lovich -- especially when she (unintentionally?) references a Lovich hit single by dubbing the megaphone her "new toy."

The eerie blues of Velveta cast a trancelike state through the room, which seems to affect everyone except the already dronelike billiard players in the back. Wanda's eerie quavering highs evoke grand opera, although her red hair is pulled back so tightly -- and the gold ring in her brow gleams so brightly -- that she might be expressing as much pain, as joy-of-song. Then the snap of Shepard's drums carries the band into next tune, and Wanda does a mock Mata Hari dance, peeling her blouse to reveal black leather beneath.

"This song will always be for Jerry now," says Wanda, ever Grateful for undying fashion while prancing on high heels as she sings, "I love my Dead Man's tie..." When the number ends, the band discovers that they're competing against the club's juke box, which rumbles a Pink Floyd track from the speakers behind them. "I guess the house is gonna play one," says Wanda with a wink, and the band rips into their own "Money Like Dirt," immediately burying the Floyd cash registers. Their set concluded, Wanda clowns with the little melodica, blowing out snatches of "From the Halls of Montezuma" and "Where the Buffalo Roam."

Perhaps it's just all the beer I drank, but up on the wall that big Indian chief looks like he's starting to grin, and those crazy horses have begun to kick. Over behind the bar, a steel spatula scrapes across a griddle lubed with hissing hot grease, flipping a customer's sandwich. It's grilled cheese.

And it sure smells good.


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