If you've never seen k.d. lang in concert, not much will prepare you for it.
Saturday night at Kingsbury Hall she leaped out of the shadows like a Boy Wonder. She wore the spangled jacket from a matador's suit of lights, baggy trousers, a black T-shirt and was strumming a pint-sized white guitar about the size of Steve Allen's breadbox.With her close-cropped hair she looks like Charlie Sheen, but the jazzy rhythms are all Charlie Parker.
Lang claims to be the reincarnation of country singer Patsy Cline, but careful observers can see several souls inside there: Janis Joplin, a bit of James Dean and enough of Elvis' style and soul to make the best impersonator jealous.
Backed by the "reclines" (a six-man, one-woman outfit that may be tighter than George Strait's Ace in the Hole Band), lang struts, clowns, lectures, dances and drinks a lot of water.
She also sings.
And sings about as well as singing can be done.
Her rendition of "Johnny Get Angry" was a tongue-in-cheek send-up of the '60s hit, but lang's big voice pumped it full of more guts than the tune could really hold. "Big Boned Gal" was full of Lyle Lovett's serious fun, and her encore numbers - "Last Cigarette" and "Walking After Midnight" - were bluesy versions of two Cline hits.
Highlight of the evening - and perhaps of the pop concert season - was a haymaker cover version of Roy Orbison's "Crying," a performance that earned lang and her band a three-minute standing ovation.
If nothing else, k.d. lang has put entertainment back in the blues.
Many people went in not knowing what to expect, and got the unexpected. Many left wondering what's keeping lang off the pop charts and off the talk shows.
The answer is "the same thing that keeps Nanci Griffith in the shadows and kept Joni Mitchell there as well:" genius that doesn't go down as easy as Dr Pepper.
Opening for lang was a Louisiana band called the Subdudes.
They, too, seem to have found the Holy Grail of music: a unique sound.
The drummer plays a digital tambourine that sounds like Phil Collins on double-drums. It's a beatnik-looking band - complete with beards and a beret. But the sound is all hybrid. There's some Cajun in it, of course. But the impression is we're hearing Motown piped through Nashville - a kind of Smokey Mountain Robinson beat that's busy, borders on monotonous, but captivating.
Whether all this music will eventually sell is still up in the air.
But it played well in Salt Lake City.
Watch for another k.d. lang concert to show up locally within six months.