GAY PEOPLE'S

Chronicle

Section C Pride Guide 2001

First Lollapalooza, then Lilith..

What if there was a festival of out gay performers?

by Anthony Glassman

Cleveland

Summer has, over the last decade or so, become the season of the concert festival tour. It started with Perry Farrell's Lollapalooza, which brought together artists from various "alternative" genres ranging from punk to goth to rap; from there, it went to OzzFest, Ozzy Osbourne's pet project, focusing on heavy metal, and the Lilith Fair, Sarah MacLachlan's festival highlighting female performers.

Almond

This year, however, a new star dawns on the horizon of the music gala: Wotapalava. You are wondering, what the heck does that mean? Lollapalooza was a weird enough name, but Wotapalava is just a little beyond the pale.

It's a phonetic spelling of the phrase "What a palaver," which is British slang for "What a lot of fuss about nothing."

Wotapalava is the first major touring festival dedicated to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender patrons and artists, the brainchild of Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys. "Wouldn't it be great to put together a bill of out gay performers?" Tennant asked Elton John a few years ago. "Who would agree to do it? Would the performers have anything in common apart from their sexuality in this sort of Lollapalooza-with-a-difference?"

Well, the performers have many things in common, not necessarily their sexual orientation.

"More important than the sexuality of the performers is their individuality, the way

each of them has followed their own instincts to achieve their artistic goals," Tennant said in a May 31 statement. "In this respect, Wotapalava is a celebration of the freedom to be what you want to be and about having the power to live as you want without fear or discrimination."

"I think one really important thing about Wotapalava is the way the diversity of the artists contradicts any stereotyping: we are not defined solely by our sexuality," he con-

tinued. Being homosexual is an important part of life but not the whole point."

Much like its concert festival forebears, a number of stages will offer a variety of fare for the concertgoer. The main stage will feature the larger acts, like the Pet Shop Boys, Rufus Wainwright, Soft Cell and the Magnetic Fields. There will also be a stage given over to dance, with a rotating DJ line-up in.cluding Junior Vasquez, Danny Tenaglia and Paul Oakenfold.

Special guests will also appear at various stops on the tour, including the Village People and Gloria Gaynor.

The tour will hit Ohio at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls between

Pet Shop Boys

Akron and Cleveland on July 23, ten days after the start of the tour. In the festival area, DJs Lydia Primm and Susan Morabito will spin non-stop dance music throughout the day.

According to Jennifer Black, marketing director of Blossom Music Center, additional acts may be announced, and festival organizers are looking for a replacement for Sinead O'Connor, originally slated to play the main stage throughout the tour.

"They decided that she didn't really fit in with the rest of the acts," Black said, relaying organizers' concerns that O'Connor's introspective, mellow sound wasn't in keeping

with the party-like atmosphere of the event. Unfortunately, advertising for the event had already been submitted before O'Connor was dropped, so the ads do not reflect that change, or any possible late additions to the line-up.

The cabaret stage is expected to feature such acts as the Weather Girls and Bjorn Again, an Abba tribute band. Rumors abound of an additional stage dedicated to drag performances rounding out the entertainment.

In addition to multiple stages, there will also be a vendor area, open to businesses with Ohio retail permits. Vendor space can be reserved by calling Blossom's sales department. While the festival itself is

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being sponsored by Gay.com, PlanetOut.com and the Human Rights Campaign, who will also benefit from it, the Gay People's Chronicle is the media sponsor of the Blossom stop. In addition, Blossom will have a booth at the Cleveland Pride Festival to promote the festival, where there will be a signup to win a pair of front-row tickets to the event. Tickets will also be given away at the Grid nightclub in Cleveland during the Pride weekend festivities.

The AIDS Taskforce of Cleveland and the Cleveland Lesbian-Gay Center will both benefit from the tour's local stop, with booths in the festival. The center will be signing people up for membership, and both booths will be giving out information to partiers.

Tickets will be available starting at noon on June 8, and are expected to sell quickly. The two next-nearest stops to Ohio for the festival are in Pittsburgh and Detroit, so don't miss a chance to find out what the palaver over Wotapalava is about.