I’m not entirely certain where Jill Sobule attended seventh grade, but payback is a stitch. She’s certainly getting the last laugh now.
Move over, “Mean Girls.” The fourth-generation Denver indie rocker, who DID attend St. Mary’s Academy for high school and rocketed to fame with the 1995 radio hit “I Kissed a Girl,” just starred in a completely sold-out off-Broadway musical run about her life called “F*ck7thGrade,” which recounts in stories and songs her outsider adolescent angst in Denver. She even wears a Denver Broncos Orange Crush T-Shirt in the show.
The show was widely praised as “delightful, poignant and utterly charming” by This Week In New York and as “unsentimental, humorous and gently weird” by TimeOut. The New York Times made it a critics’ pick, calling it “a show for the many nerds who grew up to be the cool people.”
Sobule’s musical path began when she got her first guitar in sixth grade, which she then played as part of her junior high school stage band. She wrote her first song during that fateful seventh-grade school year that has since inspired her autobiographical musical that essentially asserts we never really get out of middle school.
Sobule is now 64 and will be forever linked to “I Kissed a Girl,” a song about two women who discover an attraction for one another while commiserating about boyfriends – it is also said to have inspired the film “Kissing Jessica Stein.”
In her stage show, Sobule talks about surviving the cruelties of middle school in the early ’70s as a tomboy and a nerd; tiptoeing her way out of the closet; and her journey from MTV sensation to getting dropped by the record label that had insisted on sanitizing “I Kissed a Girl” of any lesbian implications. Nearly 50 years later, she appeared as herself on “The Simpsons.” Take that, bullies.
“F*ck7thGrade” closed on Sunday at New York’s The Wild Project in the East Village. It was something of an encore run after its world premiere earlier in the year, which earned the show a nomination for Best Musical by the 2023 Drama Desk Awards. That’s in some ways even more significant than a Tony Award nomination because the Drama Desk considers the best of both Broadway and Off-Broadway combined.
A blogger named Sari Botton who saw the 90-minute musical called it “a tortured balm for my awkward, tortured inner 13-year-old.”
Chances are, it will have another life. Maybe one in Denver.
(And, PS: I’ve since learned where Sobule attended seventh grade. I’m looking at you, Hill Middle School!)
Rachel Dratch got tripped up by a “Celebrity Jeopardy” question steeped in history, but she won her match anyway.
That’s Double Jeopardy, ‘Jeopardy’!
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science had its moment in the national spotlight on the Nov. 15 episode of “Jeopardy,” which is still in the quarterfinal round of its ongoing “Celebrity Jeopardy” tournament. Actor and comedian Rachel Dratch (Debbie Downer on “Saturday Night Live”) drew the following Daily Double answer:
“Behind thick glass in the Gems & Minerals Hall of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Tom’s Baby is an 8-lb nugget of this …”
This 13-pound gold rock known as “Tom’s Baby” housed at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science was the subject of interest on a recent episode of “Celebrity Jeopardy.”
While most everyone in Denver was yelling “Gold, fool!” into our TV screens, Dratch guessed, “What is Diamond?” It cost her $2,000, but Dratch is no fool. She won the match with $33,601 and advanced to the semifinals past actor Macaulay Culkin and WWE superstar Becky Lynch.
Later on Instagram, the museum thanked the show for featuring it on national television while also clarifying that Tom’s Baby is actually much larger than advertised – more like 13½ pounds of leaf gold. “Tom’s Baby is Colorado’s most famous gold nugget,” the post said. “Found in Breckenridge, Colorado, in 1887 by Tom Groves and Harry Lytton, it was originally wrapped in a blanket and paraded around the town by Tom, earning its moniker Tom’s Baby. Museum co-founder John Campion acquired the piece to donate to the museum as one of its founding collections.”
In an earlier quarterfinal episode, University of Colorado alum Christopher Meloni (“Law & Order”) lost to commentator Katie Nolan in an all-or-nothing tiebreaker.
The tournament is taking forever because “Jeopardy” only airs one celebrity episode every other Wednesday.
Christy Oberndorf, who grew up in Aurora, sang the national anthem at the Broncos game on Nov. 26. She will appear in “Hairspray” at the Buell Theatre this March.
My name’s Tammy!
Sunday was a dream homecoming for Christy Oberndorf, but only the first of two. The graduate of Grandview High School in Aurora and the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley sang the national anthem before the Denver Broncos’ win over the Cleveland Browns at Empower Field on Sunday. She was home to promote her (longer) upcoming visit performing in the national touring production of “Hairspray” from March 5-10 at the Buell Theatre.
Oberndorf plays Tammy, a teen council member on “The Corny Collins Show.” She’s been performing on area stages since she was just a tiny kid in the DCPA Theatre Company’s 2008 seasonal staging of “A Christmas Carol.” She won a 2019 True West Award for her breakout performance as Sophie in BDT Stage’s “Mamma Mia,” and she starred as Dorothy in Candlelight Dinner Playhouse’s “The Wizard of Oz.” She played a different role – Penny – in Parker Arts’ take on “Hairspray” back in 2017.
HQ is back open for concerts
HQ, the Baker neighborhood concert club that closed Aug. 15 after a catastrophic water-line break caused by street construction along South Broadway, partially reopened on Nov. 17. The flood fully filled the club’s 3,200-square-foot basement. We’re talking 12 feet of water.
Water form the basement of HQ filled all the way up to the main floor.
“The water main underneath South Broadway and directly in front of HQ broke and shot high-pressure water directly at our basement brick wall,” HQ said in a fundraising statement. “The pressure built up caused our basement wall to bow and eventually break open, pushing a ton of dirt, mud and water into the basement.”
The club reopened with a DJ spinning ’80s alt and new wave. “We have emerged from the swamps of our flood,” the club announced on social media. But while “our upstairs is back and kicking, we need a bit more help to revive the HQ Underground.”
The owners of Mutiny Information Cafe at 2. S. Broadway can’t wait to show people what it looks like in front of their shop without construction tape making it hard to get into.
Shows coming up at 60 S. Broadway:
Thursday: The Emo Night Tour. Friday: Suitable Miss. Saturday: Synthwave Saturday Night. And, on Dec. 5: Dark Tuesdays (“Bringing the Underground to Light.”
And speaking of that cursed Broadway street construction, the similarly beleaguered Mutiny Information Cafe located a half-block north of HQ has been liberated from its own most recent hellscape.
“I did a dance in the middle of the street,” owner Jim Norris wrote on Instagram of the completed construction that he was at one time told would be done this past July. “They’re pulling the tape down and sweeping the gutters. They’re making it easy for everybody to get into and out of Mutiny.”
Live Nation wages going up in Colorado
Live Nation is raising the minimum wage for its club employees to at least $20, a move the company says will benefit more than 5,000 workers nationwide. In Colorado, that includes the Marquis Theater, Summit and the Fillmore Auditorium. The raise applies to box-office attendants, production crew, artist hospitality, guest services, ushers, parking attendants, cleaning crews and more. Supervisor roles will now start at $25 per hour.
“Shows wouldn’t happen without the unsung heroes who work in the background to help support artists and fans,” said Live Nation Entertainment CEO and President Michael Rapino. “By increasing minimum wages we’re helping staff get an even stronger start as they begin their journey in live entertainment.”
Briefly …
Now, here’s a big, sad problem to have: There is not a single ticket left to be had for BDT Stage’s farewell production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” which ends the dinner theater’s 46-year run in Boulder on Jan. 13 …
The legendary Canadian post-hardcore band Silverstein has named a Denver date for its 10-year anniversary tour: It’s Dec. 13 at the Ogden Theatre. The first set will be the band’s entire new album from start to finish (“This is How the Wind Shifts”). The second will be greatest hits. Tickets at axs.com …
The RiNo Art District and the city of Denver want to know if you support (or don’t) the 2900 block of Larimer Street remaining closed to vehicles in 2024. Take this online questionnaire by the end of Thursday to provide your feedback …
On Friday, Alicia Keys will celebrate the 20th anniversary of “The Diary of Alicia Keys” by performing the entire album at New York’s Webster Hall. The 7 p.m. MST concert is available for live streaming for $14.99 at veeps.com…
Aurora’s Vintage Theatre has postponed this weekend’s planned opening of “Black Nativity” to Dec. 8 and canceled the scheduled Dec. 7 performance of “Who’s Holiday” for various (non-COVID) safety reasons, company officials said …
And finally: The mere mention of the Canadian “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” band Crash Test Dummies takes me back to a very chill time in my music life that seems much more recent than it even remotely is. Brad Roberts and company are coming to the Oriental Theater on Dec. 3 in support of their never-before-toured 2002 holiday release “Jingle All the Way.” Yes, they are touring in support of a 21-year-old holiday record that includes Roberts’ super slow-mo delivery of “White Christmas” and, they say, “a ‘Jingle Bells’ that is delivered like a medieval chant or rugby cry.” Don’t you just have to see it for yourself?