“I think, honestly, very few people are truly bigots. I think most people are just really ignorant. There are some true bigots, and fuck them. They have no Christmas, Santa’s watching them, and they’re fucked. But in general, most people, I think, who have their bigoted ideas that they stay contracted around, especially older generations, it’s because it makes them feel safe.”
Getting into the holiday spirit is easy for some. For others, it’s something more of an ordeal. When it comes to the season, many can attest to messy family dynamics, racist uncles and homophobic jokes at the dinner table. But instead of encouraging fans to ignore these seasonal downsides in search of fabricated joy, Storm Large, lead singer of internationally loved loungers Pink Martini, is throwing it all on the table. Back for yet another year is Large’s solo show “Holiday Ordeal,” where punk meets Christmas, at Judson’s Live on Tuesday and Wednesday, Dec. 16-17.
Large says she selfishly started her holiday set after realizing how dark today’s world has become. And in our current culture, with so much pressure placed on everyone to be perfect and “morally pure,” she says it’s not about being politically correct, it’s about “not being a dick.” As we’re all fallible and inevitably “careening down this timeline together,” she figures, why not lighten up and have some fun?
“I take my job very seriously, but I don’t take myself very seriously, and that’s probably why I’ve managed to do this job for so long. But I’m just kind of a cut-up. I’ve been a cut-up forever, and I love Christmas. I love the holidays. I wasn’t raised religious or anything, but there’s just a sense of magic in the whole … Solstice and Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah. There’s just sort of like the end of the year, the beginning of the year, the darkest night ever, you know. So I just kind of liked to celebrate with humans in real life, which nowadays seems like a radical act of optimism, but in a live music setting. Make people laugh, make people feel good, sing Christmassy songs, but also sing songs that are evocative of just sort of the holiday spirit, of giving, of rebelliousness, of silliness, of love, of togetherness, hope, all that corny shit.”
Helping the crowd find ways to be jolly often involves a broad gesture to everything that’s transpired throughout the year, with Large first greeting the audience, “Holy shit, you guys.”
Growing up as the black sheep of her family, Large is all too familiar with complex family dynamics. She says she gets plenty of eye-rolls when she wonders, “Can’t humans just human?” But she’s firm in her belief that you can’t change the way someone sees something, in the same way that they can’t change the way you see it.
Although she doesn’t get explicitly political during her shows, Large says that she doesn’t have to. Describing herself as one of a different tribe, she believes her fans understand that she has love for all people. It’s because of this that her show also doubles as a safe space for all the other outcasts and weirdos during the holiday season.
“I think as a performer, people trust me. They know that I am a loving person and that we all feel differently, we all pray differently, we all love differently. We come from very different places. And there are people who are trying to make all of that difference into a negative column. But you can’t fight the positive column of our melange of difference. It is our superpower,” she says. “And in a Christmas Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, rock & roll, punk rock, silly, dorky show sung by a giant, slutty-looking rock & roll person, you know it’s a safe place to be. People want to feel seen. They want to belong somewhere. And I was so lonely as a child that I’m like, ‘I’ll never let anyone feel like that.’ And you can feel that in the show, and everybody can feel that in the show.”
Throughout an incredibly diverse career, which has taken her from culinary school to America’s Got Talent, Large says that music has become a way to help people in a larger sense. She says that she nearly quit music in the wake of 9/11, feeling that she needed to “do something a little more important than just make noise with my face and tell my silly jokes.”
But when Large eventually started playing music again, she realized that she was able to make more of an impact socially and emotionally with her singing.
“As a musician and as a personality, I’m given the opportunity to travel so much and meet so many people, I can make an actual hands-on impact to more people,” Large says, “because music is sneaky. Music gets into you, and it really can fuck with the controls and change your polarity. It can really alter things in a positive way.”
So if you’re in dire need of some cheeky holiday cheer, with notes of nostalgia and a perhaps little mischief, Storm Large’s two-night Holiday Ordeal at Judson’s Live on Tuesday and Wednesday, Dec. 16-17, promises the perfect mix of heart and holiday magic.
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