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[Live & On Record]

THE GOSSIP:
GET YOUR YA-YAS OUT

The band who took the stage in the 11:30 p.m. headlining slot upstairs at the Middle East a week ago Tuesday certainly looked the part of young, idealistic, bohemian love punks from the indier-than-thou mecca of Olympia-ya-ya-ya, as Courtney Love derisively christened the Washington capital and cool college town on the Hole album Live Through This. The tall, lanky, mop-topped guitarist had his face hidden behind a pair of blocky black Jerry Lewis geek glasses and a white paper dust mask that brought to mind some sort of Devo experiment gone wonderfully awry. The overactive, overweight singer had packed herself into a tight and gauzy piece of black lingerie that showed off her Roseanne physique in a playful manner that was obviously intended to politicize her pride in being a big woman. And the drummer, the only other person on stage playing an instrument, wore an unwavering deadpan expression that complemented her matching basic black skirt and ensemble as she brashly bashed her way from song to song around a modest-sized kit.

But the blooze-soaked, reverb-drenched, Link-frayed tone of Nathan Howdeshell’s garageland guitar, coupled with singer Beth Ditto’s natural knack for taking the same unhinged Polly Styrene intensity that riot grrrls have been borrowing from X-Ray Specs since the early ’90s and grounding it in the gutsy, growling R&B stylings of a Big Mama Thornton, belied the Gossip’s formative ties to another regional variety of roots-based punk. In fact, two years ago the Gossip picked up and moved from Searcy, Alabama, to Olympia, where, to borrow one of Lux Interior’s better boasts about the Cramps, they’ve slowly but surely established themselves as the hottest thing from the Northwest to come out of the Southeast. Sleater-Kinney took the Gossip on tour last year, and earlier this year the trio brought their dancer along to open for the much hyped indie duo the White Stripes downstairs at the Middle East.

The Gossip nearly stole that show, thanks to the hot-wired immediacy of the playing by Howdeshell and drummer Kathy Mendonca and the revolutionary zeal and self-depreciating sense of humor Ditto brought to her sassy brand of grrrl-power proselytizing. This time around she kept the heavyweight jokes to a minimum and instead focused on breaking down the old barrier between band and audience by bringing one girl up on stage to dance and taking a trip or two into the pit with the microphone to encourage a little crowd participation. This had the intended effect — it was hard not to feel as if you’d been let in on one of those precious little rock-and-roll secrets that are as fleeting as they are rare.

BY MATT ASHARE

Issue Date: July 12 - 19, 2001