Robyn Shows Me Love

I don't enjoy the Highline Ballroom. I am firmly of the mindset that beer should cost no more than 5 dollars a pint/bottle. Okay maybe 6. If I am in restaurant I will usually accept 6, or maybe 7. 8 is pushing it. I don't think I have bothered ordering beer at any of the superior restaurants I have been to, so I don't know if Jean Georges charges 12 dollars a glass for a nice Pilsner, but I suspect I would be okay with that.

What I don't enjoy is paying 7 dollars for a Heineken at a bar or club, when I know that I can get a sixpack of Heineken from the corner bodega for a couple dollars more, and I know I will enjoy whatever company I drink that sixpack with, though the same can not be said for my company at the Highline Ballroom on February 5.

I was gathered with several hundred of Swedish chanteuse Robyn's biggest fans, people who have been listening to and loving her new album despite the fact that it has not technically been released in the US...I was originally skeptical of the entire Robyn endeavor. Her one big hit I knew, "Show me Love," came out during a period of pop music history I think of as a gross step backward, a period that eventually gave birth to hydra-like boy bands (chop off one head, four more grow back in its place) and Britney Spears (whose music I feel hipsters decided to like somewhat ironically because in her own way Britney is kind of punk rock). Yet I was reintroduced to Robyn through her catchy song "Konichiwa Bitches" and its ridiculous video. It was love at first sight. Clearly she was never meant to be a one-hit wonder. Clearly she had fun and interesting things to say. Clearly her being Swedish meant that she could do whatever she wanted and I would still love it.

Robyn's fans were a motley assortment of gay boys who defied specific gay-ifications - these were not little twinks or sassy dandies or, prissy PR bitches (that would b the women they were with) - and straight men and women who had clearly rushed to the Highline straight from their jobs, which required them to weat a lot of black. Not attractive enough to be Euro-trash. Copy editors? Possibly.

I was stuck behind a particularly tall gay gentleman, who danced a bit like the muppet Animal, but did manage to see enough of Robyn and her companions onstage to realize this was probably the first show I have ever seen that consisted of two drum sets, a couple drum pads (for Robyn to spastically hit during several percussion-heavy bridges) and a set of keyboards, played by "Karl."

Robyn herself was as cute as could be and sang one short song after another in a seamless, energetic flow of songs about...well what is "Konichiwa Bitches" about, anyway?...and love. Robyn sang two versions of her tender ballad "Be Mine," one upbeat and the other slow and plaintive, and while the song was about how "you never were, and you never will be mine" all the gay couples held each other, as if "Be Mine" was their song. Even Gay-Animal stopped dancing to huddle with his bleach-blonded boyfriend.

Robyn even received a Valentine's Day card as big as she is.

(Pictures of "Karl" and the Valentine's Day card ripped mercilously from Stereo Gum...)