LOS ANGELES — With all the chunky hollowbody guitars,gay eroticism horns, keyboards and other drool-worthy vintage gear onstage, you'd think Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band were about to do a set at the Satellite on Thursday night.
But the night belonged to Joanne — more globally known as Lady Gaga — and this new direction for the Lady is actually a return to very familiar territory.
SEE ALSO: Lady Gaga makes a stripped down U-turn with 'Joanne'Just 10 years ago, before she transformed into an outrageous pop provocateur, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was a prep-school student doing killer classic rock covers at Village clubs like The Cutting Room and The Bitter End.
On Thursday night at the trendy Silver Lake neighborhood's ramshackle music venue, before a crowd that couldn't have been more than 300 people, please-call-me-Joanne blew the roof off with a brief powerhouse set, the last stop of her three-date "Dive Bar Tour" (previous stops were New York and Nashville).
And of course, she looked right at home up there.
Sponsor Bud Light streamed the whole thing, which you can watch here (her entrance and the music start around the 30-minute mark):
Nothing stripped-down about this — in fact, in a way, it's quite the opposite: This was a good, old-fashioned roadhouse band, blowing up a small room as much from the stage as the house speakers. And it was pretty electric stuff.
Joanne herself picked up a gorgeous gold-top Gretch guitar at one point, proving that she can still play with the boys. Her voice sliced right through the raging ensemble, she and her backup dancers bounded all around the stage and the lucky dozens who got inside sang along with every word of this hot-off-the-presses batch of new songs.
The set included live debuts of "Come to Mama" and "John Wayne," and of course she played the radio hit "A-YO," for which Mark Ronson joined on guitar.
#DiveBarTour pic.twitter.com/iipFbTRIUy
— Josh L. Spoockey (@JLDlite) October 28, 2016
Credit to Joanne, who is in the process of showing us that underneath the meat dresses, the thigh-high boots and the millions of glitter sparkles is a killer musician with sorcerer-level raw talent honed in clubs and open mics.
And credit to Stefani Germanotta, whose aggressively inclusive message knows no bounds — not even political ones.
"I wrote this song about people loving each other and taking care of each other," she said, bringing up the election while introducing her new song "Angel Down." "I really hope that is a peaceful day, as much as it can be. Not everybody is gonna vote for the same person ... Everybody has different ideas and thoughts and that's OK. We don't have to hate each other for that."
Given the assuredly left-leaning crowd on hand, that's about as radical and bold as political speech gets these days.
But Joanne is a take-all-comers kind of artist, who right now is focusing squarely on the music. Question is, can a rollicking roadhouse band do in an arena what it can in a dive bar?
It's harder than it sounds, but we've learned long ago not to underestimate Joanne.
Topics Music
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