World Café Live, Philadelphia, PA: 25 February 2005
Despite the fake jazz cafeteria setting, paranoid blind-date ambience, and blasé verisimilitude creeping over Philadelphia’s latest totem honoring bourgeois taste, Antony & The Johnsons graced the narrow stage with characteristic humility and self-deprecating humor, hardly expecting the audience to so much as consider their performance anything but muzak to elevate the mood, ease the awkward moments and make the overpriced entrees seem worth the flattening cost of admission. To his surprise, and mine as well, the dinner theatergoers seemed well acquainted with his work, else this being a fine introduction as Antony concentrated on material from I Am A Bird Now.
As Antony took the stage, Television’s Marquee Moon arpeggiated the squalid, square air, reeking of overcooked fish, in a wondrous attempt to locate the performance in New York’s rapidly gentrifying LES legacy, primarily as a dolorous paean to Candy Darling, a Warhol superstar who’s death at twenty-five is immortalized in the photograph adorning the album cover. Antony opened with “My Lady Story,” seemingly by way of explanation, equal parts introduction to a strange city and homily on Darling’s tragic fragility. The arrangements were sparse, departing from the lush, theatrical studio presentation, accompanied on melody by a classical guitar’s muted nylon strings, and the cellist’s infrequent intrusions. Following with “For Today I Am A Boy,” which took on a more somber character without the strident drumming that braces the song. “The Cripple and the Starfish” resonated in the candlelit quiet, the narrative of regeneration and hope engaging an audience almost uniformly at middle age, as waitstaff hustled and glasses and utensil clinked in unwitting atonality.
Once the initial nervousness subsided, Antony broke the funereal mood, joking with the audience about the venue’s strange character, intuiting it’s free market vibe, poking fun at the overwhelming self-consciousness inherent in its design by asking if anyone was on a date. Replacing Rufus Wainwright’s sultry tenor with his lilting vibrato changed the tone from one of frustration and tempered resentment to one of anguish and loss. A Nico cover later, Antony plays “Hope There’s Someone,” which bursts with existential angst at the thought of dying alone, and confronting the void beyond death. But it wouldn’t have been complete without covering “Candy Says,” imparting Candy’s self-loathing, ascetic aestheticism and dark contemplative moments that pollute her carefree demeanor, exuding warm vulnerability and hopeful charm while being who one isn’t.