BetterMost, Wyoming & Brokeback Mountain Forum
Our BetterMost Community => Chez Tremblay => Topic started by: Meryl on June 04, 2007, 01:14:13 pm
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Thanks to our own John Gallagher, here's a link to the latest article about Rufus. And also thanks to John, newyearsday and I are going to accompany him to see Rufus in Central Park this August! :-*
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/arts/music/04wain.html?_r=1&ref=music&oref=slogin (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/arts/music/04wain.html?_r=1&ref=music&oref=slogin)
(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h269/merylmarie/Rufus.jpg)
The Superfabulous World of Rufus Wainwright
By MELENA RYZIK
Published: June 4, 2007
A few weeks ago, on his way to an appearance at the Union Square Barnes & Noble to promote his new album, “Release the Stars,” Rufus Wainwright decided his all-black outfit was a little dour for a meet-and-greet. “Fashion emergency!” he said. So he dashed down to the antique-jewelry shop below his apartment and picked up a 1920s Czech glass necklace, which sparkled atop his black T-shirt.
Good thing too: Mr. Wainwright’s fans expect a little flash. Around 800 of them came, some lining up as early as noon for a 7 p.m. appearance, to see him perform and autograph their CDs. Afterward they lingered, snapping photos of him and discussing their devotion.
“I’ve learned a lot about myself listening to his music,” one man gushed.
Does Rufus Wainwright know he’s fabulous?
“I do feel like I live a fabulous life,” he said over afternoon dumplings at a Japanese teahouse near the Gramercy Park home he shares with his new boyfriend, Jörn Weisbrodt, an arts administrator. “And I know that’s why a lot of the critics get so mad at me sometimes, because they’re just really jealous.”
He must be expecting an onslaught, because Mr. Wainwright, 33, the singer-songwriter-rhinestone-lover, has been superfabulous lately. His re-creation of Judy Garland’s 1961 Carnegie Hall concert garnered praise and awe, and he received a commission from the Metropolitan Opera. “Release the Stars” immediately became a best seller in Britain when it arrived last month and has been a critical hit in the United States. He did five sold-shows at the Old Vic in London, and tomorrow he will begin a run of four sold-out nights at the Blender Theater at Gramercy in Manhattan.
In New York he was in the midst of a publicity — and fashion — blitz: The night after Barnes & Noble he appeared on “Late Show With David Letterman” wearing lederhosen he had custom-made in Austria by a 25th-generation artisan who also fitted the Porsche family.
But the glam life is not without pitfalls. Watching that show with a few friends from a private dining room at the boutique Hotel on Rivington, Mr. Wainwright had an epiphany: “It’s all commercials. It’s horrifying how many commercials there are and how it just ruins the experience.”
But, he was quick to add, “I’d still love to be on ‘Oprah’ and, you know, have them visit my crib or whatever.”
Scale has always been a tricky issue for Mr. Wainwright. Though he casually refers to himself as a superstar — in a tone that’s a few notes short of irony — his last few albums were more like cult hits. In the United States “Release the Stars,” which had its debut at No. 23 on the Billboard charts with just over 24,000 copies sold, was his highest ranking; by contrast the new album from another indie favorite, Wilco, came in at No. 4 that week. And it was only recently that he became too well known to have a profile posted on a gay cruising site. (The administrators took it down, thinking it was fake.)
In the United States and Britain his most loyal audience tends to be gay men, teenagers and mother-daughter fans. (Several sets turned up at Barnes & Noble.) “There’s a tinge of sadness to their devotion,” he said. “It relates with the alienation that I bring up. So I still feel somewhat subversive, which is nice.”
To promote that approach “Release the Stars” was meant to have an underground feel, recorded in Brooklyn with a Berlin detour to “go totally electroclash, get a weird haircut and maybe take up drug addiction again or something,” Mr. Wainwright said. Instead, when he got to Germany, “this kind of wave of, like, romanticism and grandiosity and sort of high culture really took hold of me,” he said.
His critics — the jealous ones — might suggest he has always been in thrall to ostentation, so Mr. Wainwright enlisted Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys to rein him in. It worked, sort of. “Remarkably, Mr. Wainwright infuses ‘Release the Stars’ with enough honest emotion to overcome the grandiosity, or at least undercut it a bit,” the critic Nate Chinen wrote in The New York Times.
Mr. Wainwright would like to make a solo piano record, and several albums with his musical family. (His parents are the folkies Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III; his sisters, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche, often join his tours.) But he talks most excitedly — and most often — about his opera, a tale of a (fabulous) day in the life of a diva.
“I really believe that opera’s a language,” he said. “I think it’s a whole parallel, separate world where all those characters exist. And once a composer of opera realizes that or discovers who those people are, as I have with this character who I’m writing about, it’s your mission to breathe life into this other being.”
So Mr. Wainwright is in no danger of deflating. What would make his life more fabulous? “I’d love to play Madison Square Garden,” he said, “and get hounded and lose all sense of dignity.”
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Nice piece! But the writer forgot to mention one important bit of fabulousness -- his participation on the BBM soundtrack.
:)
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This is the second article I've read here on BetterMost on the fabulous Rufus Wainwright and neither of em has made any mention of that part of his fabulous past. Guess what 'they' say is right ... you're only as good as your last recording ... :-\
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Thanks Meryl (and John Gallagher)! LOL, I think I'll need to start to find was of working the word "superfabulous" into my everyday language. Most excellent.
:-*
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Hey Meryl! Thanks for posting this and thank John Gallagher for me too! I'm going to send a link to Brother Patrick because he's Rufus's biggest fan that I know of...and isn't it interesting that there's no mention whatsoever of Brokeback Mountain?!??!!
I admit I don't know much of his new work, but nothing I've heard in his older work even remotely compares with The Maker Makes, IMO.
-Lynne
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My first real exposure to Rufus Wainwright was in, of all things, the Shrek soundtrack ::). (That's what happens when you've got little kids -- you lose so much track of current culture you have to hope it comes through them.) Anyway, it's actually a good soundtrack, and my very favorite song was Rufus singing "Halleluah." It's a beautiful song, written by Leonard Cohen.
Rufus' version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U68vS9Xl14M&mode=related&search= (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U68vS9Xl14M&mode=related&search=)
Strangely arranged Leonard Cohen version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf36v0epfmI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf36v0epfmI)
John Cale doing another nice version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckbdLVX736U (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckbdLVX736U)
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Maybe I can add a bit of information here. To those of you who dont know already. He is doing a tour at this time to promote his album, and will play at venues all over the world...I found all the sites listed on his web site,...He is playing in Portland on July 31, and purchased tickets for myself and my grandaughter...As relayed
in the article..his music crosses generations... I cant wait..It will be my first ever live concert.........The date
was set but the tickets were still unavailabe before i left for Colorado, and when I returned, I found they had finally been offered for sale.
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Wowie, that is remarkable, David! No wonder they went nuts! ;D
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All interesting and great.
My first introduction to the existence of Rufus Wainwright was on his father, Loudon Wainwright III's 1975 album "Unrequited." On it there's a song called, "Rufus is a Tit Man," about tiny baby Rufus's focus on his mother's breasts and breastmilk. It's a cute song. But now, knowing that he is gay, I think of "Boys ought to watch football" and the like. Was the song an effort to convince an infant he was something he wasn't?
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I first heard of Rufus Wainwright on the soundtrack of BBM. Oh, my, what a song, The Maker Makes! My ears perk up now whenever I hear his name. And now to read about my beloved Jake and Rufus together. How good does it get?
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I would have fell out dead to the world and missed it and been tranpled by the concert go-ers
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On it there's a song called, "Rufus is a Tit Man," about tiny baby Rufus's focus on his mother's breasts and breastmilk. It's a cute song. But now, knowing that he is gay, I think of "Boys ought to watch football" and the like. Was the song an effort to convince an infant he was something he wasn't?
Well, if attitudes toward breastfeeding have anything to do with sexual orientation, then both of my sons are gay. Today the subject of nursing came up somehow, and when they realized they had actually done that, they were like, "Eeewwwwww."
I told them that's just the price they pay for being mammals.
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I first heard of Rufus Wainwright on the soundtrack of BBM. Oh, my, what a song, The Maker Makes! My ears perk up now whenever I hear his name. And now to read about my beloved Jake and Rufus together. How good does it get?
Happy birthday for yesterday Iristarr!
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I first heard of Rufus via BBM too. Previously I wasn't into that kind of sound but thru BBM radio I have been converted! I will get to see Rufus at the UK Glastonbury Festival in a couple of weeks. Open air in the countryside - it will be a perfect setting.
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Does anyone know, is there a clip of the Rufus/Jake collaboration on U-tube or anywhere else?