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Nov 02
2008
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Halloween at the BluebirdPosted by: Lyndsay M. Johnson on Nov 2, 2008   |
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Mapquest can never be trusted. After driving past the intersection of Olive and Jefferson in Midtown about, oh, let's say fifty billion times, to be conservative, the cell phone had to be busted out and an aggravated call had to be placed to the friend who was patiently waiting outside the club. As soon as we figured out that the Bluebird is at the corner of Olive and Beaumont (and that it has no visible sign), we parked and entered through a back door. After getting the “in costume” discount cover at the door, we sauntered in to what appeared to be a rather large basement. Yes, the Bluebird has a sizable stage and a bar area (your main options are beer or shots), but other than that, it's a dead ringer for your friend's parents basement den hangout a la 1986; the thrift shop couches, the pool table, the weird mural painting, the haze of smoke. Aside from the couches, your seating options are some high top tables and a few diner style booths. None of these things are necessarily bad, it's just that for a new place with so much local buzz, this isn't what you'd expect.
The Halloween flyer advertised several local bands, as well as some recognizable DJs, so the odds that you would enjoy at least part of your night were pretty good. Arriving too late for the (allegedly) scheduled performance by Tory Z. Starbuck (I'm told that I should be thankful for that, though we aren't sure if this performance even happened), we grabbed a few beers and grabbed a booth to see the theatrical stylings of Polarized Mind. Dressed as some type of space robots, the two person band had an interactive video to go along with their performance. Apparently the robot versions of the Polarized Mind had taken over the human versions of Polarized Mind and there was some kind of robot chef involved, or something to that effect. Anyhow, it was all gloriously dorky, especially the fact that there were two robots dancing in the audience, as well as two “cougars in training” acting drunk and shouting “we want Polarized Mind back, robots are inferior!”.
The biggest fans of the next band, Lions of Hazelwood, seemed to be the group of young kids dressed as Limp Bizkit fans circa 1999, although I doubt they were in costume, the vintage JNCOs, TOOL shirts with attached glow sticks and badly shaved haircuts were truly impressive in their horrifying authenticity. The band, however, was pretty good, so it was a shame that most of the crowd left after the Polarized Mind set. Once the crowd thinned, it was easy to see that most of the people were regulars of the club nights Requiem, Rapture and Hex. Because this crowd is known for its eccentric dressing in everyday life, it was pretty hard to tell who was in costume, but there were a surprising number of nuns in the house, as well as an archbishop who took confessions and doled out Hail Marys, in addition to more unsavory methods of penance.
Then, like a breath of fetid air, Murder Happens took to the stage in all of their drag glory and injected the party with the metal energy it was so sorely lacking. The lead vocalist opened his mouth to unleash a torrent of growls reminiscent of the Jonathan Davis vocal performance as Lestat in The Queen of the Damned. Despite the usual inebriated requests from the crowd for “Freebird” or “Sweet Home Alabama” the band stuck to their guns and delivered an energetic and fun performance.
Before the last band could go on, the costume contest was held. A few brave souls went up there and a very uninspired Little Red Riding Hood took home a gift certificate from Cheap Trix. At this point it was pretty obvious that the remaining crowd was drunk, dehydrated from the smoke in the air and desperately hungry for something cheap and greasy. So we headed back out into the night, unsure about whether we would ever return to the Bluebird again, but happy that we found it and had a great time.
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Comments (2)
written by Dr. Whom, November 02, 2008
The Bluebird is so elite and underground that no one can find it.
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written by Tory Z Starbuck, January 08, 2009
I am sorry that you missed our show. We DID in fact play there that night. That is so funny and typical of somebody saying "...you should be thankful..." that you missed us. I never know what american crowds are going to think of my muzik. If these people that were in the Bluebird audience that particular Halloween night were coming to my shows in 1985-1988, they would have loved us. We looked and sounded like a cross between Bauhaus, Gary Numan, Duran Duran and Throbbing Gristle. I loved playing in Saturnalia Glossolalia and Futurist Manifesto back then but I have so many different styles of muzik that I want to create and experiment with. I guess that my sound is all based around good timing. Sometimes I just happen to be playing what a group of people are really into. For the last 3 years we were playing Arabic and Indian influenced art rock and now we are doing a new wave/jazz/funk fusion that does NOT rest well with the local monolingual goth crowd. Well it is definitely not the FIRST time I was at odds with the conservative majority.
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