Alice Longyu Gao at the 29th St Ballroom (05/10/2025)
I went to a show. I drove, at night, by myself to campus during graduation weekend and parked at the abandoned Trudy’s. The last time I was there, Trudy’s was maybe not abandoned and Spider House Cafe might still have been called that. The one time I ate at that Trudy’s, they had profiled my friend and refused to serve him alcohol with his paper ID. That had to been over ten years ago.
Because you know, I am old.
I think I hit my post baby stride. It only took four years. Judging by this excursion, and the three other tickets I bought in less then a month for two upcoming concerts and a music festival, I want to get back to my youth. Be a cool hot mom who did not lose herself. Skanking it up in a monogamous way and through my love of music.
That is why I thought my first solo show out should be Alice Longyu Gao at the 29th St Ballroom. I had fun, it was a success, and I am not here with any regrets. But like all my experiences I live in my head, so any distasteful or cunty tone to be found in this recollection is because the stress killed my fun and it is easier to judge then to be vulnerable, or some other justification an old cynic would say.
I claimed to my husband I had been to a show there before, but now that I think about it maybe I was morphing the unfinished space with any number of venues that benefit from their location within the live music capital of the world. Got an unfinished and sloping cement floor, an exposed ceiling that you can throw a grid up with random lights and speakers you gutted from another business? Then all you need is a rudimentary bar with the IPAs and hard seltzers that are popular with 20 years olds that is your target audience, two stall bathrooms if you are classy (single style shit-holes for the gents and gals if you are not), and a DJ booth that was pulled from a defunct strip club (that may have gone out of business because their set up was so outdated).
What makes 29th St Ballroom unique is that the women’s restroom has a wallpaper theme on the upper half of the walls. It is plastered with the pages from the book that is the plot device for the movie The Ninth Gate. It seemed random, but maybe I needed to wander around some more in order to see the other signs or references to the movie throughout the space.
Or shit, maybe me entering the venue was me entering the ninth gate?
If we go back to initial impressions, I was not into the opening act. So, a maybe on the hell thing.
The Dallas Cowboys is a duo of tall young masked batmen, who the headliner would later confirm is not actually from Dallas.
I did not get nor like the opener. Like a short grumpy thumb in fishnet, I stood out towards the back, scowling at their earnest rendition of their hits. I came in late, so I did not have to hear the whole thing, but from what I could tell they were energetic crowd pleasers. Those up front to the “stage" bopped and thrashed about as the two jumped into a song from the album they wrote about the Bob’s Burgers movie. I think they were disappointed and channeled their frustration into an art concept album they named Louise. They explained themselves, but since I was being a curmudgeon this paragraph is half correct and something I should fact check.
I was stoked when they announced they were playing their last song, but then I stifled a groan when I heard the non-hoodie batman mention that it would be a throwback to their ska days. I am not a ska fan, and when I mentioned being a skank early I was describing my base sleazy nature, one that does not involve horns. Anyway, their crowd went wild and I kept my distance.
Once it was over, I shuffled my way closer to the stage. I felt more comfortable stretching and dancing to the mix of dance and rap that played between their sets and before Alice Longyu Gao performed, but as the crowd closed in that panic of being surrounded stiffened my movement. Now that a couple of days have passed, I can reflect on how nothing bad happened, the music was great, and being more free to jump around would still result in having fun, but I also mentioned in the beginning that I had no regrets and that is more true.
This was an intimate show, but not like that time the Ataris played at the White Rabbit in San Antonio (I was one of five in the audience and that my have been generous/me counting some staff). I was never good at guesstimating though, so around fifty? Her crowd seemed to double in size, a chemical reaction caused by the energy she brought, it helped the group grow as they pulsated to her beats.
Alice Longyu Gao came onto stage with a half size harp, her laptop, and controller and was ready to perform after a brief sound check. Her energy from the start to finish matches the genre she is known for, hyper pop, with quick songs that are fun, inappropriate, and relatable to the party kids of today. She is a weirdo in the coolest way, she uses her random thoughts as irreverent subject material worthy of a song that is as eclectic as the elements she incorporates into the music. All of which fits into the theme of the tour, and the feeling that she is branding herself successfully to a queer subculture that could appreciate her genius.
This tour is about a debut trilogy (and her claiming that she is so badass that she gets three debuts at once). Not knowing the music industry, or what factors into how music is released, I feel that a lot of this is on the artist to market and set up.
She selected different, but popular songs, from the three EPs she has released, with a visual artwork and screener playing in the background containing the song title and symbols important to the piece. Her EPs are a mix of metal and pop, and her lyrics and ability to hit the line begs for her audience to jump (except for me - my knees are wrecked from years of living and dropping it low). Before each song she would tell a story or give context, at one point apologizing for her voice giving out since The Dallas Cowboys were smokers who encourage the habit. She did not need to, it did not seem as bad as she may have thought and any rawness on her vocals works with her style of pop.
While she mentioned an achievement (that her song “Gnarly” was number one on Spotify under a pop artist group), she did not play the song other than to give some context to why she think things are gnarly. That is a fine song, but not the only one to show off her perception of American and California culture. A man singing about loving Korean girls, hearting lesbians, or being big in Brazil - questionable and not at all surprising when they are exposed for being a dirt bag, but when coming from Alice Longyu Gao…let me dance to it (and I would be shocked and asking where were the signs if she was ever canceled)!
The show was well paced and quick. I believe the only song that I missed hearing or was not played was “.Sex”. It makes sense if it wasn’t played, since it is an intimate track (that word again).
She prefaced the last song by warning us there would be no encore (and with no mention of ska). She kept to her word and ended the night by saying once again “no encore,” but also emphasized being safe when getting home. And I was, even when driving past someone rolling around campus with no lights, I was home by midnight.
If it was hell, I got to breathe in the youthful and pungent air and to leave unscathed. I was able to walk back out to my reality. So yeah, definitely worth it.