Lance Diamond at the Elmwood Lounge
November, 1996
by Craig Reynolds
from Basta! v1n1
It was our first time at The Lance Diamond Show, which knocked our socks off and by the time Lance took a break we were dripping sweat (although we hadn’t been dancing, just beating our clenched fists against the wobbling table top, our mouths open and our ears ringing, wondering aloud, “how does he do it?”)––
Soon enough, the band was back, the lights were dimmed and there he was: in white sailor suit and captain’s hat, a gray silhouette against the majestic blast of light mustered in the kitchen . . . or the bathroom . . . or his dressing room . . . or wherever it was in the doorway of which he had––to much Diamond band fanfare––suddenly appeared. The bartender jumped wildly from one end of the bar to the other, a flashlight in each hand, tossing cheap blasts of color at every corner of the room.
Lance did his usual entrance routine––kissing girls’ hands and slapping guys’ palms, making sure everyone in the house knew they had stepped through the looking glass and were about to be reborn Lance–style (and the place was packed too, perhaps due to rumors that the Goo Goo Dolls would be stopping by). Those women who, during the first set, had turned to one another in shock and fear when they realized they were about to become the show they had paid to see, now threw their arms out to Lance like he was Dionysus in the trees, basking in the absurd freedom to be sexually ridiculous the Lance Diamond experience allows.
It was the most extraordinary entrance I had ever seen. People were stomping their feet, banging their beer glasses against the bar, yelling, “go, Lance, go!” yelling, “that’s right, man!” yelling, “how does he do it?!” After he had worked his way around the entire room, Lance approached the microphone stand, did some mashed potatoes ala James Brown, tipped the microphone stand forward and turned away like he was out of his mind . . . but inevitably lurched it back just in time to save it from destruction but also to deliver the first lyric in whatever goofy R&B, rock or show tune he was using to begin his set (perhaps The Love Boat Theme, for which his outfit set the perfect context)––
Lance was absolutely brilliant that night. To be sure, it was the same Lance (or Lances) I’ve seen several times since––Lance with arms crossed, stiffly observing the crowd; Lance, forefinger pointed straight at us; Lance wiggling his tongue in a lewd gesture of appreciation for his female fans; more hand slaps, more kisses; a strut here, a slick pose there; a little dance to keep things moving––but on this day, the weird energy of one group of spectators would ignite the others, ensuring a constant buzz of excitement that never faded. As always, the crowd was just as eclectic, bizarre and outlandish as Lance is: skinny secretary types out on the town, cat–calling, “take me!” between glasses of red wine; a real live John Travolta of a man’s man with shirt unbuttoned so far down his chest you could see his toes sticking out (beside him, a beautiful almond–haired Peurto–Rican babe with wild red lips and fleshy thighs). There was a weird, all–American ‘50s couple, about 55 or 60: he was thin and scrawny, wearing a soft green cardigan sweater; she was round and barrel–like, with one of those boxy haircuts hair–salons shell out to middle–aged women like bottles of beer on an assembly line . . . she had wide, bulging eyes that stared straight ahead, making her seem both deadly serious and like she was from outer–space all at once; they danced sweetly and straightforwardly like Lance was Tony Bennett and the year was 1943, which it was . . . and everybody at our table took silent, individual note and after Lance left the stage we leaned together and, all at once, said, “that one couple look like from a David Lynch movie, eh?”––and there was that one sinewy old lady, drunk, alone, who, when Lance motioned for dancers, sauntered out to him like it was an invitation to love . . . and kept dancing . . . and kept dancing . . . swinging her shoulders seductively from side to side, rubbing her wrinkled hands over her wrinkled breasts and between her trembling thighs, eyes fixed on Lance’s ass . . . until he could take it no longer and seized her by the shoulders and led her back to her barstool––and once again, everybody at our table took note and when Lance left the stage (after the second set) we leaned together and in chorus said, “how ‘bout with the Lynch movie, eh?”
THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING
Pete Townshend, guitarist and songwriter for The Who, once said: “when you listen to the Sex Pistols, to ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’ and ‘Bodies’ and tracks like that, what immediately strikes you is that this is actually happening. This is a bloke, with a brain on his shoulders, who is actually saying something he sincerely believes is happening in the world, saying it with real venom, and real passion. It touches you, and it scares you––it makes you feel uncomfortable. It’s like somebody saying, “The Germans are coming! And there’s no way we’re gonna stop ‘em!”
Watching Lance Diamond perform, a similar sense overcomes you––although what scares you is not a vision of the end, but of the beginning. The Lance Diamond Show is not about nostalgia, nor the ex post facto reordering of an exhausted reality, but the honest embrace of the now cliched materials of extravaganza. No other performer tries so hard, reaches so deep inside his big bag of tricks (the human soul). He works the room like an Action Painter beating the universe out of an empty canvas, creating bursts of real life where otherwise there would be only bored stares. At a Lance Diamond show, it’s all or nothing (although I think half the audience feels compelled to draw a veil of irony over a reality so uncompromising); the fact that Lance isn’t kidding is what intrigues me most. That this is actually happening is what fuels my undying appreciation.
Unlike a rock musician––for whom style provides substance and style derives from pop psychology––Lance doesn’t bother meaning, nor does he juxtapose his performance in such a way as to generate content through positioning. Beginning with the ritual elimination of the stage (antiquated and unnecessary barrier between spectator and spectacle, especially in a club setting, which thrives on interaction and atmosphere, not the cold recognition of finished masterpieces) the Lance Diamond stage show proffers a language of pure spectacle, a gestural vocabulary that transcends fashion, esthetics, ideology, meaning; a pure language in which sign and signified become one. The dreams, desires, and flashes of insight that find release and gestural exposition in the course of an evening with Lance should be taken not for what they represent but what they are––he is the genuine article, and the truths exposed during his performances are true the way a broken heart is both obvious and inexplicable at the same time. I liken a Lance Diamond performance to the whirling of dervishes or the ecstatic dancing of Balinese mystics. Through spectacle, combined with the conscious embrace of its most commonplace machinery, Lance Diamond evokes a pure moment of being–in–time. The random flashing of overhead lamps by a euphoric bartender tripping from customer to customer (as well as the ridiculous flashlight blasts that thrill me to the point of tears) mocks the manipulative dramatics of well–timed light shows, as well as the psychological artifice they intend to sustain. The feeble blaze shot from a warbling flashlight clutched by an over–excited bartender jumping up and down is pure light, itself a gesture, and can’t be subsumed by a larger philosophy or contrived system of human nature. To be sure, the bartender’s lightshow is absolutely hilarious to witness, one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, but the humor I enjoy so greatly is inherent in the act, not applied (by me) afterward. You realize that this is actually happening and there’s no way to stop it, and that’s funny . . . the way a disembodied arm is funny . . . or a city without people is funny––a natural surrealist monument to pure being. The Lance Diamond experience provides a glimpse beneath the veils of everyday reality, renewing your faith in the higher power that is human life.
A METAPHYSICS OF GESTURE AND VOICE
To describe Lance, I like to evoke Antonin Artaud, whose Theater of Cruelty intended to restore a renewed sense “not of life, but of a certain truth that inhabits the deepest strata of the mind” in order to regain, for the theater, “its level of pure and autonomous creation, under the sign of hallucination and of fear.” Conceptualized in part on the ritual dance and music Artaud witnessed on a vacation to Bali, the Theater of Cruelty intended to confront the audience with the fact that this is actually happening, and to renew life by making this realization as natural, necessary and cruel as a heartbeat, or the rushing of blood through veins. Like Lance, Balinese actors (according to Artaud) use “a precise number of unfailing gestures, tested bits of mimicry occurring on schedule, but above all in the spiritual ambience, in the profound and subtle study that has governed the elaboration of these dramatic expressions, these powerful signs which give the impression that after many ages their power has not been exhausted.” “Let no one say that this mathematics makes for sterility or monotony,” he writes. “The amazing thing is that a sense of richness, fantasy, and lavish abundance is created by this performance, which is governed by an attention to detail and a conscious control that are overwhelming”––“The situations are vague, abstract, extremely general. What brings them to life is the complex profusion of all the artifices of the stage, which impose on our minds, as it were, the idea of a metaphysics derived from a new utilization of gesture and voice.” It is in his manipulation of gesture, voice and artifice that Lance Diamond retains a significance that will outlast the campy nostalgia often associated with his performances. He has an incalculable ability to shock us with the expected, to loose a pure laugh caused by nothing. Lance Diamond will not necessarily save your life, but he may reveal to you the higher realities of human existence––and for this you should be grateful.