TRUE COLORS TOUR

fidgetcub and me (and flyrail, standing in for the unfortunately absent annoyinghandle) went to the final night of the TRUE COLORS tour last night here in LA at the Greek Theater.

We got there a bit late, so we missed the Dresden Dolls and the Clits. Deborah Harry was sounding and looking great and put on a good set, but only did her solo material and nothing from Blondie, which was a wee bit disappointing. Both Rosie O'Donnell and Margaret Cho were pretty funny. Erasure was supergay topped with a dollop of even more supergay, whipping the crowd into an übergay frenzy -- the best part was watching Andy Bell dance with giddy, unconscious abandon like a six-year-old girl in her bedroom, which is adorable and rad. Fellow Erasure fans lady_miss_leigh and her mom were there too, and regaled us with previous Andy-Bell-wardrobe-malfunction stories.

But the highlight of the evening for me was Cyndi Lauper. I remember moroccomole posting a few months back about every gay man having their own personal diva (his is the super-awesome Sandra Bernhard). For myself, it has most certainly always been Cyndi. I have every one of her albums and have constantly adored and admired her, and her sensibilities and personality mirror those of the kinds of gals I have always seemed to surround myself with in my life, especially as I was growing up and coming out -- she was the goofy girl I asked out to a movie in junior high, the sensitive alterna-girrrrrl I dated and took to the prom in high school, and the hip college-theater gal I ultimately came out to.

Her closing set made me deliriously happy -- from her kooky imperfect voice and spasmodic dancing to her earnest, blubbery introduction of her (gay) sister to perform Sisters of Avalon together, I simply couldn't love her more. When she strapped on a guitar to perform a raved-up version of her cover of Prince's When You Were Mine, I thought I was going to lose my mind. I wish she'd done Who Let In The Rain, but alas, you can't have everything.

And, even though True Colors is one of those over-played songs that's been over-used in way too many commercials and therefore seems to have been completely drained of any previous resonance, Cyndi's dulcimer-and-guitar rendition of the song as the tour's finale -- with the entire tour company standing in solidarity behind her and a sold-out audience of fellow queers singing along under a perfect moonlit sky -- made a flurry of tears well up in me, quite unexpectedly.