Bunny Parties Like It’s 1999, Falls In Love with Dark Wave
This past weekend was a maelstrom of scary noises, gyrating hips, and out-of-tune basses. Oh bejesus. So Friday night, we all go down to hear my esteemed boss, Old McSullivan, perform with an experimental ambient/noise group over in Central Square. The show is in the basement of an Elks Lodge, and the band consists of two theremins, a cello, a hammer dulcimer, a synthesizer controlled by a MIDI wind controller, and Sully playing guitar through his cornucopia of effects pedals that cost more than his ‘05 Mustang GT.
We get to the joint, and walk in to the faintly creepy Lodge basement to the sound of chattering and chiming Underwoods and IBM Selectrics. The Boston Typewriter Orchestra is performing. The idea of typewriters used as musical instruments is a novel and interesting concept…for about ten minutes, then it’s like, okay, check please. Sully and his troupe take the stage, and between the roar and squeal of his guitar, the baleful howl of the theremins, the clang of the dulcimer, the bleat of the synthesizer, the moan of the cello, and the onslaught of the acid-flashback visuals being projected on the ceiling above the band all the while, I felt like I knew what 1969 was like for L.B. Then we went and got pizza.
Saturday night, Timmy Boit and I decide to head on over to Heroes at TT the Bear’s Place. For those unaware, Heroes is TT’s semi-regular ’80s dance night. Normally, this would not be my bag. But so begins a new era. After a hearty dinner of Redbones’ delicious Memphis-style ribs, we set out for the club. I somewhat knew what to expect, as T. Boit had elaborately described to us what Heroes is like many a time previous. We enter around 11, and things are just starting to pick up. Just about every man in the room is either gay, or at the very least has sucked a penis just to know what it was like. There are 300-pound goth chicks, men wearing high-heeled boots jacked up higher than Grave Digger, and me, wearing blue jeans and a Heil Sound t-shirt. They probably thought I was the cops.
The music is bumping fiercely, and the stage is already sprinkled with a few queens getting their proverbial groove on. I myself begin to feel the jam. The music is a heady mixture of mostly ’80s New/Dark Wave classics and some modern dance favorites to keep the fags randy. Lots of Depeche Mode. As time goes on, I find myself enthralled by the music; I begin to realize what Timmy Boit was on about all this time regarding Wave. It’s the shit. Synthesizers like you read about. Straight-on rhythms. Epic melodies. Rock-solid hooks but with a certain mysterious edge, as if to suggest that Martin Gore knows something you don’t, and maybe you don’t want to know. I’m a total convert.
Then, he takes the stage. No, not Timmy Boit. He. Adonis. A beautiful young man with moves like a god damn panther. He bends and weaves his clearly-cocaine-influenced physique (I’m a sucker for the skinny boys) around the stage with more poise and confidence than anyone else. Definitely of the persuasion. I’m transfixed. He dances flirtatiously with the other boys, and I contemplate taking the stage. I think better of it, as doing that would surely see me eaten alive. Then he takes his shirt off, and I realize, I have to have sex with this man. I need him to have my phone number. So I dig out an old T pass from my wallet and scrawl “MAX: 508 xxx-xxxx” on it. The next step is the hard one. Unfortunately, for the rest of the night he’s either too far back on the stage, or when he passes by, I’m too much of a pussy, and I don’t give it to him. But according to Tim Boit, he’s there every Heroes night. So I will be back. With plenty of cocaine on my wiener for the taking.
Sunday night, Chunk E. Dog plays with his other band over at the All Asia. The group on before them is a rather depressing hip-hop act, the kind where the main dude said something like, “I wanna thank my parents for coming up from Connecticut, this one goes out to them. It’s called ‘Sit Dat Ass On Mah Junk.’” Chunk’s band takes the stage, and from the first song, his bass is woefully out of tune. They get about 30 seconds into the song before it sputters and dies like a lawnmower running too rich, and C. Dog retunes. And retunes. And retunes. It’s a nightmare. This continues for half the set, Chunky Dog clearly cursing the patron saint of electric basses. Poor kid. It’s obvious the tuning machines on his Epiphone Ibañez Peavey Squier are shot to shit. But they get through it quite admirably, and they even pulled off a cover of Britney Spears’ “Womanizer.” Unreal.
