LotSix

LotSix is not a parking space. She’s an electro-rock multimedia performance artist living here in Philadelphia. A community activist, she’s a founding member of S.P.Q.A., (South Philly Queer Alliance) and PQAC (Philly Queer Arts Collective). She’s also a practitioner of what she calls “Self-Karaoke,” singing along to music she’s written and recorded herself, spiced up with a slide show of visual lyrics that convey the many sides of her humor. A bachelor’s of science degree in computer science helps with her visual presentation and also helps her earn a living.

Aside from her solo performances, LotSix also performs with the Philly-based post-punk-power-pop band Shooting Ropes. She also does drag performance and has competed in the Mr. Drag King Delaware competition. Look for her to perform at “Q-Licious,” a benefit for the Spiral Q Puppet Theater at the Ice Box Projects Space on Feb. 10. For more information, visit www.lotsix.info.

PGN: Where did the name LotSix come from?
LS: It came from my birth certificate. But not in the legal name field; it came from the address field. When I first saw my birth certificate back in 1996, I read my first address: 135 E. Spruce Rd., Lot 6, Junction City, Kansas. The “Lot 6” really grabbed me and I began using the name in role-playing games, especially my Earth Elf character on an online Multi User Domain/Dungeon (MUD) called Arythia. When I first began to develop my solo performance, I knew I wanted an artist name or a band-like name. So I decided upon LotSix. My mom gave me a picture of our trailer on Lot 6. I hope to one day make a trip out to Kansas to see where I lived for the first year of my life.

PGN: What was your favorite book as a kid?
LS: “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

PGN: Do you speak any languages?
LS: Four years of German. Unfortunately the only time I was in Germany was for a two-hour layover, so I didn’t get to use my language skills.

PGN: Non-human companions?
LS: Six companions. Two pit bulls, a mini dachshund and three turtles. I got the first turtle when I was 16 and I’ve had her for 16 years. I named her Woman because she was a very large female, bigger than all the others, so I said she was “The Woman” and the name stuck.

PGN: What did you want to be when you grew up?
LS: I wanted to be Indiana Jones and have adventures.

PGN: What instruments do you play?
LS: My primary instrument is bass guitar, but I also play guitar, keyboards and I program electronic drums.

PGN: Do you collect anything?
LS: In my head, I keep a collection of all of the places I’ve played. I visualize them as the little deed cards you get in Monopoly and add them to my mental collection as I play new places. Every once in a while I like to go through them.

PGN: Brush with death?
LS: Last September I was in a motorcycle accident. It had been raining and a car cut me off from the right. I hit my brakes and they locked up. I skidded and crashed into the car in front of me and went flying through the air. I hit the ground and basically went luging on my back down I-95 for about 100 yards. I came to a gentle stop and scrambled to the side of the road. I thought for sure I’d lost a limb and just couldn’t feel it because of the shock, but all I had was a tiny brush burn on my arm. The police and my fellow motorcycle enthusiasts couldn’t believe I walked away from it. It was a miracle.

PGN: Something funny that’s happened to you while performing?
LS: I had someone throw their underwear at me. I didn’t see it coming and really got nailed in the face! It was the third day of a three-day outdoor festival so I can’t vouch for how fresh they might have been. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time trying to determine their condition.

PGN: Ginger or Maryanne?
LS: Oh my God, that’s difficult. At first sight I’d be attracted to Ginger, but it would have to be Maryanne; she’d be more fun to deflower. She’d probably be secretly frisky.

PGN: Noble ancestors?
LS: Doesn’t everyone claim an Indian princess in their history? Actually I think my great-great-grandmother on my mother’s side was the daughter of a duke who lived on the Polish/German border. The duke had money and sent all the children one by one to America.

PGN: Favorite piece of clothing?
LS: When I was young I had a fishing vest that my grandmother gave me. It had tons of pockets and I would wear it on my Indiana Jones adventures in the woods. At the time I was also obsessed with my Atari video game. If you got a really high score and took a picture of your television showing the high score, Activision, the game company, would send you a patch and a membership certificate showing that you were a member of the high scoring club for each game, like Pitfall Harry or the Kaboom Bombers club. I got a whole bunch and wore them proudly on my vest.

PGN: Favorite body part?
LS: My tits/pecks. My breasts are very dense and round and kind of look like the Tom of Finland illustrations you see, - Philadelphia Gay News

"You Are!" Screamed multimedia rock star LotSix when she read a spicy story about TV sitcom star Sara Gilbert's backstage lesbian kiss in the gossip pages of Lesbian Deneuve magazine.

Her intrigue was so intense that she wrote a song about it, "You Are." Performing against some delicious low-tech 80's sounds she croons about Gilbert's love affairs up against a rich multimedia background of tabloid images of Sara Gilbert, Nancy McKeon and Drew Barrymore.

Nowadays LotSix travels across the good U.S. of A. on her motorcycle spreading her own brand of lovely lesbian gospel one music venue at a time.

Listen to the Feast of Fools podcast as LotSix sings LIVE in the house her songs and we talk in depth about Lesbian gangs from New Jersey, transexual pirates, lying about losing your virginity and how lesbian culture is changing.

Feast of Fools PodCast, interview & live performance 08.22.06
with Fausto Fernos & Marc Felion
www.feastoffools.net - Feast of Fools PodCast #372

Like any royal family, Philly has its kings. Only the headliners at this super-dirty drag series sport faux facial hair, men's wear and mighty big packages.

Dragadelphia assembles the region's best-known dandy dykes, including Mr. Drag King Philadelphia 2006, Richard B. Grand, also known as Nicola Visaggio, from the Liberty City Kings. The series features performances by the new drag troupe, as well as the Royal Renegades and LotSix.

"This will also be an exciting opportunity for local amateurs to get up onstage and show us what they've got during the drag king open-mic segments," says Visaggio, 30, from South Philly.

LotSix, a one-woman multimedia performance art rock outfit, jokingly refers to her art as "self-karaoke rock," which features live singing to original music with projected images and lyrics. "I am the whole band," she says. "I write and record songs. I play all the instruments: guitar, bass, keyboard and electronic drums. I also create the slide shows."

Produced by the Liberty Kings to benefit Transgender Health Action Coalition (THAC) and Philadelphia Dyke March, Dragadelphia debuts "Vacuuming Naked," a song LotSix says is about "the goofy things we do to get cleaned up for a date." She and members of Liberty City Kings will perform as someone is vacuuming naked, or "at least scantily clad," she promises.

by Natalie Hope McDonald
Published: Dec 13, 2006 - Philadelphia City Paper

What do you get when you cross three lesbian storytellers with a one-woman karaoke machine?

A joke cracking, tale-telling, song-singing medley of a night featuring out performers Lynn Breedlove, Kelly Beardsley, Kelli Dunham and LotSix.

The women have agreed to collaborate for the show, presented by Plain Parade, which takes place at 9 p.m. April 8 at Tritone, 1508 South St.

For her bit, Beardsley plans to incorporate her on-the-job experiences as a bike messenger, locksmith and driver of multi-ton vehicles into her monologue.

Breedlove, formerly of the lesbian band Tribe 8, and nun-turned–comedian Dunham will also perform.

To throw a mix into the night’s laugh track, Philadelphia-based musician and performance artist, LotSix plans to present her version of a karaoke night: Her on stage, joined by a laptop and projector, “singing love to pre-recorded music.”

The karaoke crooner describes her act as “just me with a microphone. A slide show goes along with the lyrics and I like to dress up to add a theatrical element.”

The performer’s curious stage name refers to the address of her birth: The sixth lot of a Kansas trailer park.

At her performances, “People really tend to laugh their asses off,” said LotSix.

“The content of my songs usually has to do with relationships — very direct and emotional. I’m making fun of myself and [the tone is] very light in the song. Then, I use the visuals to make further fun of it… To make surreal connections.”

By Jenn Urganus
Published April 7, 2006 - Philadelphia Gay News

LotSix is a Philadelphia singer-songwriter, musician and self-professed "computer nrrd" whose work lies somewhere in the gray space between popular-culture karaoke performance and the ironic arch imagery of surrealist films such as Buñuel and Dali's Un Chien Andalou. Consisting of video presentation in conjunction with riot-grrl derived lyrics, the songs are insightful commentary on the downfall of the promises of that bright early 1990s West Coast scene.

While the sound is reminiscent of such Kill Rock Stars-label groups such as Bratmobile, with their sweet verses and anger-filled choruses, the images presented in accompaniment to the words hold double entendre for the audience; for example, LotSix's sultry voice on such lines as "I love you...you love me...you love him" in Contextuality is referenced by popular imagery of Barney, that lovable purple children's dinosaur so ingrained into current American cultural iconography. "I opened up the mag and read the page" on You Are is a twist on celebrity outing - in this case the actress Sara Gilbert is not only a popular figure caught in lesbian acts, but is used in her various photo-ops flashed on the screen as symbolic crush.

These works are cultural critique through personal embodied experience: as such, LotSix brings a fresh reflexive eye to the American cultural landscape where irony and sarcasm have failed in their reach for introspection. Perhaps it is this fresh look emerging out of America's most historically important city that enables LotSix's lyrics and imagery to engage this viewer.

Shea Michael Anderson
Visual Anthropologist, Temple University
Department of Anthropology
Anthropology of Visual Communication Program - Personal Review 2004

Local artists share their moves.

Yeah, you're an artist, and good for you. But you're also an entertainer. You can have the chops from here till Tuesday, but that doesn't mean much if you want to hold the crowd's attention. If music lovers wanted a purely auditory experience, they'd stay home with the stereo.

Put on a damn show.

This is how some of your neighbors do it.

What: Multimedia self-karaoke rock

Who: LotSix

"Anyone can sit at home and listen to a CD, watch TV or surf the Net. I wanted to make people come to watch and listen to me and my show. Otherwise, I may as well stay at home myself, singing into a brush in my bathroom mirror. ...I design the visuals to complement, accent, clarify, expand or even juxtapose the content of my songs. The visuals allow the songs to resonate on many levels. ...I can add visual humor to soften intense subjects such as an abusive relationship. ...Some songwriters like to leave mystery to their words so listeners can interpret it for themselves. I don't want to touch anyone that deeply. I want to control the interpretation, so I include my lyrics in the visuals. ...This also realizes the parallel to videodisc-driven karaoke where you read the lyrics over a cheesy video. I currently use slide-show software with still images or animated GIFs."

by M.J. Fine
Published 16 Oct 2003 - Philadelphia City Paper

Who's who on the Ladyfest music stages.

LotSix: This Philly-based artist/computer nrrrd has a different thang goin’ on: self-karaoke rock featuring live singing and playing to pre-recorded drum sequences, complete with synchronized projected digital visuals. Odd? Perhaps. Fun? Most certainly. A bass player with various bands over the past decade, LotSix eventually built her own computer, re-creating her songs for solo live/digital performance. These tongue-in-cheek ditties have monikers as charmingly quirky as their author: "Nauseous" and "Vacuuming Naked," for example. Enjoy.

Published 20 March 2003 - Philadelphia City Paper

LotSix is inward/outward critical eye to sharp tongue-in-cheek self-karaoke performance rock: live singing to prerecorded drum sequences & sounds with synchronized projected digital visuals.

Astrological Signs: triple Leo

6 Questions

What was your inspiration for starting a band/starting to perform?
I decided in 6th grade that I wanted to be Led Zeppelin when I grew up. Yes, the whole band.

Name the 5 things you are listening to right now...
Peaches ~ the Teaches of Peaches
Sleater Kinney ~ One Beat
Wanda Jackson ~ Greatest Hits
Bangles ~ Everything
Pixies ~ at the BBC

What was your favorite show/or the show with the most impact (could be one that you played or one you saw)?
Bikini Kill at Bryn Mawr University, Fall 1993 ~ reference the song "Full Name" for further clarification at http://www.lotsix.info/lyrix.htm

What band do you have a crush on? the Brothers Suggarillo

What is in your fridge? beets & beer, salad components, various cheeses [I was inclined to provide an alphabetized inventory but refrained]

What is the most "un-true" rumor ever told about you?
I learned there was a rumor about me in high school: that I had a 12 inch ruler tattoo on my inner thigh! This is ridiculous, false, & fairly useless...

Published Feb 2003 - Ladyfest Philly

Sticky Fingers featured a medley of performances ranging from spoken word poetry to electro-rock by queer artists from across the eastern seaboard. Held at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, NY, the show was stimulating in its polymorphous perversity, the performances audacious in their satirical elements and guttural verve. Manhattan-based artist Chavisa Woods opened the night with her spoken word piece “No One is Ever Going to Touch You Like This.” Woods’ piece was a powerful inquiry the reality of passion and fantasy. The force of her language was materially rendered onto her body as a space of confrontation and mutilation: the inquisitive nature of her question “Do you lack passion?” asked while being whipped became an imperative to the audience to rethink their emotions.

Woods’ piece was just one of the many highlights of the show. Philly-based, electro-rock, multimedia performance artist LotSix, also the show’s producer, electrified the audience with her danceable beats, incisive lyrics, and poignant visuals. Her performance was refreshing in its approach to salient political and cultural issues. What distinguishes LotSix from other queer artists is her ability to refrain from the pervasive dogmatism that has dominated the queer performance scene. This is what makes a LotSix performance unique: her music is not comprised of trite didactic commentary but satirical ruminations on life. Songs like “You Are” mock the necessity to “out” and place labels on people—here, the “you are” is a mocking interpellation of Sarah Gilbert as she was outed by Curve Magazine (then Deneuve Magazine) in the early 90s—while songs such as “Contextuality” play upon the seriousness of relationship issues through a retelling of a personal experience.

Katz, the solo member of the Athens Boys Choir, blends spoken word poetry with hip-hop beats to create dynamic music that, like LotSix’s music, is wonderfully creative and avoids the bland aftertaste of the standard politically-driven queer performance. His songs “WaHo”—a dedication to his love of Waffle House—and “Tranny Got Pack”—a parody of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”—were priceless in their hilarity. “Sticky Fingers” also featured short films by Phoebe Morris and Jen Heck, the latter whose film “Airplanes” was recently awarded first-runner up of the 2007 PlanetOut Short Movie Award. Closing the show was Brooklyn-based, post-riot grrl band Marla Hooch, who rocked the space with their hard-hitting, but less gritty and angry than their riot grrl predecessors, music.

written by Marcie Bianco
for www.feministreview.org
published 28 March 2007 - Feminist Review

"Though she was playing to a small crowd, [LotSix] owned the stage like it was Rockefeller Center. She sang songs about math nerds, “XY Plane,” which left the audience laughing and wanting more. Hilarious and smart, LotSix treats the crowd like they are intelligent." ~ Jessica L. Smith, Philly Gay Calendar

"LotSix gets it! Darlene, all the ex's you love to hate, the undercover sexual innuendo, what's not to like? Lot is witty and her music is unique and memorable. LotSix, you want to be her, fuck her, fucking be her." ~ Katz, Athens Boys Choir

"LotSix is the rockingest sexy nerd you're likely to meet in this lifetime. She's got a hunger for pleasuring her geeky fans nationwide and an ear for catchy tunes. In fact, I've had a LotSix song in my head for 66 hours and counting. "You and me baby we lie on the XY plane" ...and I couldn't be happier about it." ~ Val Obstruction, House of the Future, West Philly, PA - Various