Frieda Bettany sold out. Yes, she did her analytical disco revue at D’ollaire’s Saturday night. But all irony was lost. Her lyrics which mock dance-music stereotyping were either lost in the buffeting beats or had been whittled down from daggers into splinters. Her stage manner was just plain exhibitionistic, not campy or purposefully contrived or “contextual” as it was when she presented it as her Feminist Studies thesis projects mere weeks ago at the college on the hill. She just did a bunch a dance tunes. Whether they were good or not no longer matters in the same way.

As one who’d been actively pushing for this show to be seen by real people off-campus, we’re disco-distressed and apologetic. Hard to explain how different this was from what we saw up on the hill on a rainy afternoon last month.

In any case, a star is born. Bettany’s been booked, on the merits of the D’ollaire’s gig alone, by a big-city promoter to do a statewide tour of dance clubs—those “surprise” one-song showlets they insert in the middle of dance nights at the bigger clubs in order to create the sort of live human bonding that Bettany seemed to satirizing in her original class project. The idea is to try out a few different songs on those unsuspecting dancers and figure out what to release as her first single.

Oh, and her name’s changed. Frieda Bettany now goes by “FreeBet.”

If you ask us, all bets are off.

A Martian’s mistake, Objects for Common Telescopes and Picking on Charlie Chaplin at the Bullfinch… Other Famous Americans, Science in Rhyme and One Love Vain at Hamilton’s, one of the higher-end original music nights they’ve held lately… Grand on-the-way-down return to D’ollaire’s for Life’s Birthday Party and The Last Dandys. It’s an early show, so get there late…