Going gaga...

Every age has its pop phenoms. Who can forget Tiny Tim singing "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" in his first guest appearance on the "Laugh-In" television show in the late 1960s. He accompanied his high-pitched shrill voice with equally irritating ukulele strumming that first gained him attention on the streets around Harvard University's campus in Cambridge, Mass. His physical appearance, with long, curly red hair, a big hook nose and bulging eyes, was as strange as his music for that generation.

Still Tiny Tim was able to parley his street performing into a brief career as a novelty act that brought chuckles to the TV audiences of stars like Johnny Caron, Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason and others, as well as propelling him into a couple of movie roles and a stint as a Vegas night club performer. Entertaining people was less complicated in the 1960s and 70s than it is today. Good or bad, entertainers got on stage and did their thing in black and white or in living color. There was less hype, little techno-glitz and no ear-piercing electronics.

But the curiosities grab our attention in similar fashion today and the media is quick to sell them to us as being unique. Hence, the advent of Lady Gaga. A bizarre bundle of shapely high-strung glitter without the gold. Similar to Tiny Tim, there is very little of substance behind the Gaga performance artist and,if the lyrics of her tunes are understood, she is far from a lady.

Those limitations have not kept Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (the real name of this New York-born and trained musician)from turning a less-than-spectacular start in rock music into the latest pop style and sound super-nova in outlandish costumes and makeup. Dubbed electronic dance music, the cacophony of her performances apparently appeal to a tone-deaf generation brought up by punk and glam rockers. She understandably packs them in and is expected to do so next at the UCF Arena of the University of Central Florida in Orlando on January 3, 2010. What is less fathomable is the broad media attention that won this "lady" an audience with the real Queen of England and placed her on the front page of the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times on December 27, 2009.

Admittedly, 2009 was a slow year for enduring trend-setting statements in style, as the paper points out, but it calls Lady Gaga more than an ordinary pop star or fashion muse. She is the whole package, according to the Times, which sums up that "the voice without the package would equal a novelty act in a Singapore hotel lounge." That's pretty much the way Tiny Tim ended up. Meanwhile, Lady Gaga is laughing at us, laughing at her, all the way to the bank.

And, That's That...