Wision of Love

Tuesday evening, the inimitable Wing made her first and only North American appearance at Café du Nord in San Francisco, presented by Medium Rare Records. I first became aware of her special gifts completely separate from South Park, but she eventually reached a much larger audience thanks to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who reportedly would listen to her whenever they were frustrated or stuck on an idea, and subsequently created a whole episode around her.

She was tiny as can be, wearing a lovely cheongsam with a slit on the side.  With hands clasped, she sang 12 of her Greatest Hits, including Dancing Queen, Back in Black, Over the Rainbow, In the Ghetto, and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

She sang to what were essentially karaoke tapes, standing alone on a bare stage in a room packed full with fans pointing their cameras, phones, and video cameras at her.

Going in, I was a little worried that it would be an uncomfortable, mocking, even hostile environment. But once the show began, I suddenly had the strong sense that this is what it must have been like to be at Carnegie Hall when Florence Foster Jenkins gave her legendary 1944 performance. Wing loved singing for us and was trying really hard, we loved the fact that she loved singing for us and was trying really hard. The audience seemed to be genuinely rooting for her. We sang with her in the choruses. We clapped to help keep rhythm and reestablish tempi. We applauded for her high(ish) notes, which she was clearly expending a lot of effort to reach. There was laughter, but somehow it honestly felt like we were laughing with her.

It would be easy to snark away at the performance, but what would be the point, really? It was frankly refreshing to see someone so earnestly enjoying singing. As far as I'm concerned, it's a tremendous loss that nowadays most people solely consume music, rather than try to make music themselves. Whether the end result is good or bad is irrelevant. The simple act of creating music, whether it's with one's body or through an instrument, satisfies something completely different than sitting down to hear a great performance. And in her own curious way Wing made that joy evident to us.

Many longed to be close to Wing, and after the show stayed to get one of her 13 albums signed or to be photographed with the legend. Wing seemed pleased.

Comments

[felix]

I'm so glad you got to see her live!

Wing is awesome - I would have given anything to be there when she karaoke'd out on Back in Black.