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Oh Doris Dear, “MORE” is never enough for us!

“Doris Dear’s MORE Gurl Talk”

On the heels of her Telly Award-winning streaming series “Doris Dear’s Gurl Talk”, the show filled with stories, interviews with some of Broadways brightest, and totally fab cocktail recipes, Doris brings us a new theatrical concert-show filmed at The Triad Theater in NYC, “Doris Dear’s MORE Gurl Talk”

We’ve followed Doris Dear and her musical journey for several years now. From solo shows to holiday variety shows, Doris always brings us to a place of retro nostalgia with a twist. We’ve said it many times, we always leave a Doris Dear show with a smile on our face.

Doris’s Tender Stories

Doris has taken some of the best bits from her other shows and combined them with new material and music to create a unique theatrical experience. This show is fully scripted and has more stories of her parents Taffy and Duke. It has also added in some tender mentions of her sister Nancy who passed away suddenly just a few years ago. Doris has a way of catching us off guard in her shows. She has a habit of juxtaposing light-hearted readings from books and magazines with deep-seated family stories and this show is “chock a block” full of that (as Doris would say!).

The musical numbers in the show always come directly out of her stories, which is never an easy task. The stories are generally of another time in NYC combined with life with her family. From the touching version of “Somewhere That’s Green” to the oddly funny “Schrafft’s”, (Did anyone know there was a song about Schrafft’s?!) I always look forward to her singing. Doris has a voice that fills the room at full belt. However, it also caresses us when needed with a lighter tone such as with her heartfelt “You’re My World” or the touching “I’m Becoming My Mother”. Her final rendition of “I’ll Plant My Own Tree” must be heard. That last note is a killer and Doris doesn’t shy away from it and belts it for all its worth. I even found myself cheering by the end!

Life Lessons Served with a Cocktail

Doris’s shows are all about family and how growing up in a positive environment really sets us on a strong path in life. The show is about 75 minutes in length and has an intermission about three-quarters of the way through, which gave me time to refresh my cocktail, which by the way is a Doris Dear favorite, a Whiskey Sour (recipe taken from her own website!)

There comes a truly unexpected moment when she tells what is clearly an emotional story of her father Duke having an affair. It’s mixed beautifully and artfully within the song “I Can’t Be New”, written by the acclaimed singer-songwriter, Susan Werner. Doris promised us some deeper delving into her life, and here it is, served as only Doris can. This can’t be an easy story to tell I would suspect, but it’s respectful and sincere. The moment caught me off guard, but it ends up in a lesson of love. One of the great strengths of Doris is how she combines her retro-campy drag style with touching meaningful stories. She really brings us an entertaining musical journey of a show.

Doris’s Musical Counterparts

This is a solo show, but there’s a special appearance by the great all gal group “Those Girls”. They bring a special moment to Doris by saluting her sister Nancy in a fun way that could only happen during this Covid world… they actually call in! “Those Girls” have appeared before in a Doris Dear show and it was a nice surprise to hear them sing a fun version of “Chattanooga Choo Choo”. Their modern twist to older material is joyful and playful and is brought to the show through this new Covid virtual reality!

Doris has a new musical director, Blake Allen, who makes Doris shine even more brightly than in the past. The band is made up of Magda Kress on Bass, Rob Guilford on drums, and Michael Raposo on reeds. The sound is pitch-perfect, and Mr. Allen’s compositions enrich the show with a slightly nostalgic feel while still keeping it modern. The pairing seems fresh and new. I am hoping they stick together for more shows. Mr. Allen wrote the theme song to Doris’s series and apparently it’s a streaming hit album! Furthermore, direction by Lina Koutrakos is on point. Lina has been directing Doris for years now, and it obviously works well.

“America’s Perfect Housewife”

This is definitely a more theatrical show than what Doris Dear usually gives us. I hope she continues to create these new experiences and broadens what the idea of “cabaret” is. It’s a well-crafted “theatrical concert” that filled my heart with joy from start to finish. Doris Dear, you truly are “America’s Perfect Housewife”. We thank you for sweeping clean the dust and dirt from the past year and giving us a fresh start! I look forward to seeing Doris Dear in person at her Holiday show which is always a sold-out success in December at The Triad Theater. Please Doris Dear, keep giving us “MORE”!

“Doris Dear’s Gurl Talk” is streaming 2 seasons now on Broadway on Demand, and “Doris Dear’s More Gurl Talk” is a pay-per-view available through June 30^th. The streaming service is available on Apple TV and Roku. Follow Doris Dear at dorisdear.com and IG @DorisDearNY.

For more on Doris Dear from Downtown, click here.

2019 has been all so overwhelming, hasn’t it? Being trapped in this infinity loop of crisis and pundits, all at our fingertips? We mindlessly scroll through the drone of Facebook, greedily lapping up salacious headlines and fretting over our future. Is anything changing for the better? Has the ennui always existed? Humanity loves believing in a simpler past. The deluge of programming and movies rebooting old material and old scripts is played out so heavily now one wonders if innovation is allowed anymore, or if we’re just going to keep pacifying ourselves with cozy familiarity. The 1980s seem as much of a utopia now as the 1960s did when The Wonder Years premiered in 1988.

Frank Tovey saw right through the excess, saccharine and glamour of the Reagan/Thatcher era, and, much like the soothsayer of Julius Caesar, went ignored by the masses. There was no room for nostalgia here.

Frank Tovey’s proto-industrial band Fad Gadget, the first signed to Mute Records, boldly steered electronic music into the realm of industrial sound. Eschewing the stationary, robotic playing of his early synthwave contemporaries, Tovey shocked audiences with intense art performances: ripping out body hair, crowd surfing, being tarred and feathered, climbing rafters with a microphone stuffed in his mouth, often seriously harming himself with head gashes, black eyes and snapped tendons.

Fad Gadget albums were an eclectic mix of electric drills, drumming, Orff-inspired vocal arrangements, musique concrete, and shrieks. Tovey’s message and notorious reputation clearly threatened the suits; his lyric material found more sympathetic bedfellows with The Pogues, the Kinks, and Billy Bragg, by way of Einstürzende Neubauten and Iggy Pop. Tovey’s message was highly confrontational, bitterly anti-commercial, and deeply vulnerable. As most pop stars crooned about romantic love spats, Tovey operated on a different plane: warning humanity of the dangers of late capitalism.

Despite never making Top of the Pops, Frank Tovey still wielded tremendous influence in the UK and West Germany. A fledgling Depeche Mode were entranced by his early performances, and signed to Mute soon after. The entire industrial genre owes him a tip of the hat, with artists like Skinny Puppy, NIN, and Marilyn Manson snatching the relay baton.

By the late 80s, however, Tovey pulled an about-face with his sound. He tucked the chaotic Fad Gadget in bed for a long nap, picked up an acoustic guitar, and penned brand new protest folk as Frank Tovey. After 1986’s Snakes and Ladders, which retained many sonic elements of Fad Gadget, and a side project called MKultra, he released the extraordinary Civilian in 1988.

The sonic switch confused his fans, the press and even his own label, but his fundamental message remained. The irony was, Tovey had always been a folk musician, albeit one with a synthesizer. His lyrics delved into humanity, the human experience, and the Everyman existing in a technologically-fueled fascism. Much like Bowie, Tovey found inspiration from various collaborators.

“It was never about transitioning from electro to folk with Frank,” says John Cutliffe of The Pyros, with whom Tovey would collaborate on his final albums. “It was about songs and sound and the musicians he surrounded himself with. His influences had always been eclectic, and his love of manipulating sounds electronically inspired so many, but that is also what we were doing with the more traditional folk and rock instruments. We would push the limits of what they could do and play…Frank didn’t care if it was a banjo or a synth. The song mattered, and the layers of sound we could use to draw out the emotion of the song was the only thing that was relevant.”

Over thirty years later, Civilian remains as prescient as ever as it slips into 42-minute slow motion tumble of Western civilization’s house of cards. This was not a world Tovey wanted for his beloved children.

Civilian is a hypnotic channeling of rage at corporate greed and corruption. The album opens with New Jerusalem, a screeching cacophony of crowd chants and a droning, nightmarish recounting of a fascist police state and street violence. It is a bleak, paranoid scene of innocents falling victim to the militaristic whims of “big enterprise.”

Ultramarine bitterly attacks the Hollywood glorification of the American military complex:

Liberation comes

In jeans and Coca-Cola

Liberty this bullet’s

Got your name on it

You make the films

And you’re making history

Napalm burger bars

Popcorn victory

Tovey darkly closes Ultramarine with his own Wonder Years-style monologue, recounting a childhood memory of watching a Buddhist monk die by self-immolation on live television. So much for the veil of nostalgia.

From The City To The Isle of Dogs examines the gentrification of London neighborhoods already present by 1988, the continuing erasure of local culture, and the demise of the middle class. The jaunty banjo number Bridge Street Shuffle wryly predicts the horrific spectacle of human suffering via reality television.

I’ve got two tickets, front row seats
For the riverside
We can take a picnic
And watch the suicides

The Brotherhood lambasts the corrupt patriarchal power of fraternal societies. Diana echoes the wrenching pleas of infidelity forgiveness. Unknown Civilian explores the post-war home front, and the silent suffering of shell-shocked veterans.

Civilian as a whole is a horrifying, clairvoyant glimpse at Western society on the precipice of complete breakdown.

In 2002, Frank Tovey’s earnest heart suddenly gave out, and he shuffled off this mortal coil. By then, however, he had already tilled the parched earth for the greedy saplings of a post-9/11 dystopia. Too bad no one heeded his warnings when Civilian was first released, but it deserves a fresh listen. You won’t find a more perfect soundtrack to close out these chaotic 2010s.

Mute Records would be wise to re-release this treasure. It’s time. Fad loves you.

Bridge Street Shuffle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRD6ba1JPZo

Ultramarine: