On introducing PattyBoy (and his friend Zakk d’Larté)

PattyBoy and Zakk d'Larté

Lots of people said we were taking a risk when we booked young Auckland pop-artists PattyBoy and Zakk d’Larté for their first gig, but I think they were wrong.

By ANDY BOREHAM

I’ve been watching PattyBoy, aka Patrick Cavill, online for some time now. He has had an internet presence since I can remember and has always been openly gay and proud, despite what the haters say.

A few years ago he started singing and making music videos. His rendition of Britney Spears’ Piece of Me — chronicling the homophobic hate mail he receives following his popularity online — was equal parts camp, equal parts cringe. It received nearly a million hits.

PattyBoy still had a long way to go in the journey of making his songs palatable, including learning a thing or two about audio levels.

He came back with a bang when he started releasing some pretty decent music. Wear Your Colours is a catchy pro-gay anthem, shot partly around Auckland’s Big Gay Out and featuring people like Mayor Len Brown and Tyra Banks-wannabe Colin Mathura-Jeffree. Then there was Buzzy, a pretty catchy tune which featured a music video that I thought for the first time showed real professionalism.

This is when PattyBoy was labelled New Zealand’s answer to Rebecca Black, and “the worst pop star of all time”. One reviewer said: “…I actually think there’s a nice song hiding somewhere inside this heinous trainwreck. It has a sweet message and is a radical improvement on Disco Erection but Pattyboy’s non-existent vocal ability and criminal dress sense ensure this will be another entry on the worst songs of all time countdown.” Ouch? Not really. He has started to really get people’s attention and has kept going despite what anyone else says. Should he stop doing what he loves just because some people think he isn’t good enough?

Unicorn is PattyBoy’s latest offering, and it is from the success of this song — it climbed the iTunes charts quite impressively — that he now calls his fans ‘Unicorns’ (ala Lady Gaga and her ‘Monsters’).

Then we met PattyBoy’s 17-year-old friend Zakk d’Larté when he released his first song, Show You How (produced by PattyBoy). We featured the video on our website and it received a bit of debate, ranging from praise to downright savagery. One reader said: “This is not music, it is shallow, uninspired rubbish designed to appeal to the plastic, ‘me me’ generation”.

This is when I realised it was going to be a hard sell featuring PattyBoy and Zakk at Out in the Square, but I was adament it had to happen. It would be their first public gig (!) and it would be in front of a few thousand GLBT people on a hot Wellington summers’ day.

The Out in the Square performance

The communications I had with the two prior to their gig were extremely professional and courteous, and PattyBoy really knows what he’s doing. I had to make the obligatory obvious suggestions, just in case he hadn’t thought of them. He had.

One thing I really love about these two, PattyBoy especially, is that they really play the part of pop stars. They have an aura which, to me, is just so fun and poppy and gay and open. When I saw the boys on stage for their first performance I was so happy for them that I almost couldn’t contain myself, waving my rainbow flag to the beat like some obsessed fan.

In case you didn’t go, their performances at Out in the Square went down a treat — they even made some new fans — and I look forward to having them back at next year’s gig.

They might not sing like Christina Aguilera and they might not dance like Jennifer Lopez, but these two have a lot of talent and potential, even if this is just the start of their journey. They are gay and open and proud, and they sing about those things with colour and with happiness.

PattyBoy and Zakk truly show that being gay can be what you make of it, even if you don’t want to wear peacock feathers on your face and run around wearing pink, fluffy unicorn boots. Why would anyone want to make them stop what they’re doing?

Related articles:

• People: Zakk d’Larté
• PattyBoy climbs the charts!
• PattyBoy’s diva demands
• People: Onicks
• Is pop music not cool enough?