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The Goddess Perlman Is Coming

by Susanna Perlman
SF Weekly Preview January 24, 2001 by Lisa Hom

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Bad Girls Finish First
The Goddess Perlman and O.
By Lisa Hom

You, too, can be a goddess.
No, really. Just ask the
Goddess Perlman,
frontwoman of the jazzy
comic band O. Once upon a
time the Goddess was a
mere mortal, known as
Susannah Perlman -- "a
perfectly nice, normal girl
from a nice, kind of normal,
middle-class
Jewish-American family"
from Pittsburgh, swears her
mother on the Goddess'
Web site. So how does one
explain Perlman's
metamorphosis from a
run-of-the mill kid, singing
and dancing at bar mitzvahs,
to the badass Goddess
Perlman, a spirited, sultry
diva who makes Sandra
Bernhard look tame? Such a
transformation would begin
with a move to a major city
like New York. Next up,
explains the Goddess
conspiratorially, is "saying
what's on your mind, no matter how racy it gets." Complete the
conversion by traipsing around fully naked, legs akimbo, wearing
an enormous, unruly, untamed, uh, bush over your private parts.
(The image is also the cover of her debut album, aptly called
Beating Around the Bush.)

A former stand-up comedian, the Goddess is not above exploiting
the shock value of such unkosher methods to get her message
across -- the message being, "You can be a goddess if you want
to be." She continues, "It doesn't matter what you look like. It's
how you feel about yourself." Tame and crunchy as that objective
sounds -- after all, she did tour with the innocuous teenage troupe
Up With People -- it doesn't do justice to her outrageous live
performances. Some have included comedy sketches of two
tampons interviewing a vagina; others feature interactive elements,
as when she passes out photos of Britney Spears and Gwyneth
Paltrow for audience members to deface.

The self-described love child of Liza Minnelli and Mick Jagger
peppers her droll, off-the-cuff tunes with acerbic social
commentary, astute observations, and a feminist agenda. "I like to
poke fun at the juxtaposition of the ideal and the reality, to bring
hyperawareness [by] singing about things people don't usually sing
about: the ugly girl, feeling awkward." For example, O.'s college
radio hit "Ode to Ally McBeal" casts a critical eye at the
unrealistic body images presented by Hollywood ("Eat Ally eat,
get yo'self a Snickers bar/ Eat Ally eat, have yo'self a Big Mac").
Another single, "Perky Nipples," warns the girls of Friends that
once "them ta-tas go south, say bye-bye."

With her longtime friend and collaborator, percussionist Brian
Merriman, and the big-band sound of O. (a name that refers both
to "orgasm" and to the sad, defeated "Oh" her mother releases
when the Goddess explains yet another of her absurd antics), the
Goddess puts on quite a production. Her unbridled love of the
spotlight shows in everything she does, from her dirty monologues
to her readings from her high school diary. All would-be
goddesses should be thankful that Perlman's mother's lifelong
desire to "marry [her off to] a doctor and move to Teaneck" has
not yet come to pass.

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