This is the newsprint version of the report on Halloween in New Orleans 2014

by Doktor John

There are tons of Halloween related events here in the New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia area, but this year something possessed me into traveling with my crew south, to the Big Easy — to the capital of VooDoo in America — New Orleans, Louisiana. Staying at a hotel right on Canal Street provided easy access to the fabulous attractions of French Quarter, where everything that anybody ever yearns for is available in abundance…including Halloween celebrations.

The Ghost and Vampire Tour

First up for us was the notorious Ghost and Vampire Tour hosted by Lord Chaz (www.lordchaz.com) that begins after dark and leads you around the scariest haunts on the periphery of the French Quarter.

Lord Chaz narrates the Ghost and Vampire Tour

Astonishingly informative, highly educated and surprisingly courteous, Lord Chaz is a huge (in every sense), hideously eccentric NOLA icon, top-hatted and shod in 6″ platform shoes that deliver his 6′ barrel-shaped body to a towering and intimidating 6’6” height. His tour has been a NOLA fixture for more than 26 years, and commences at a dive bar, Johnny White’s “Hole in the Wall” on Bourbon St., where tour goers are encouraged to grab a tall drink to carry on the tour.

Lord Chaz leaves a lasting impression

Anywhere up to 40 tourists are led on an hour-and-a-half trek through mostly dimly lit sections of the French Quarter while Chaz regales them with well-rehearsed stories of mass murders and hauntings from the history of the Quarter. Unsolved killings, second hand reports of apparitions and reference to a convent, where the remains of buried infants were found, comprise the meat of Lord Chaz’s dissertation.

He spices things up with ambiguous, autobiographical, semi-confession of his own other-worldliness, gesturing with inch-and-a-half, pointed fingernails. He starts the event by a very convincing display of uncanny ability to stop his own heart, which numerous physicians & nurses in the group confirm by directly checking his pulse. It stops and dramatically restarts on his command!

He makes much of his assertion that his cold, clammy skin and lack of need to blink are indications that he may actually be a vampire. And indeed, he feels as cold as a cadaver to touch, despite wearing robes and a hat in addition to his Goth attire over his 2 foot-long tresses. About halfway through the tour, Lord Chaz brings the group to another bar for more drinks and a restroom stop. You bet that these bars appreciate Chaz’s patronage.

At the end of the tour he mounts an incredible display of piercing his own forearm with one of those menacing fingernails and drinking the unmistakable trickle of blood that flows from the wound. But not to worry! Before dismissing his spectators, he reveals an intact forearm, claiming that it had healed itself in the few minutes following the stunt. Hokey or real, Lord Chaz’s reportage, his claims and his performance are unanimously deemed powerful entertainment and super-fascinating by all who attend.

The Lestat Coronation Ball at Undead Con 2014

Halloween night started at the Lestat Coronation Ball, in a music venue called Republic New Orleans. It is apparently the main social and entertainment event in the middle of the Anne Rice Vampire Lestat Fan Club gathering at Undead Con, a convention held annually. We were somewhat out of place here, where the main population consists of devoted and die-hard Anne Rice readership.

Once a crowd had filled the venue, the entertainment began. A female drum ensemble, Skins and Bones started the evening, charging up the crowd with a tribal, chanting, percussion-driven set.

The percussion ensemble “Skins & Bones”

Then the supremely talented Mary Fahl, former lead vocalist of the sorely missed band October Project, came on stage. Her act only consisted of three songs, but she sang superbly under the less-than-ideal acoustic circumstances.

Mary Fahl on stage at the Lestat Coronation Ball

One of the songs, “Exiles” is specifically written for the audiobook version of Anne Rice’s book, The Wolves of Midwinter, and was delivered in Fahl’s moving and inimitable vocal style. After her set, we visited with her at a booth alongside of the stage, grabbing a hug, a compilation CD and an autograph.

Shmoozing with Mary Fahl

Anne Rice addressed the crowd from a loft overlooking the main floor, not unlike a pope — even a goddess to these fans —acknowledging the crowd and complimenting them on their grotesque, vampire-themed costumes. The mere sight of the author and the thrill of hearing her address literally brought tears to the eyes of many of her devotees.

Anne Rice addressing her people from on high

But the crowd was so dense and the dance floor so jammed, that we bailed out soon afterwards, choosing instead to wander the VooDoo shops and crowded streets of the French Quarter in order to observe the Halloween celebrants before calling it a night.

The Cemetery Tour

The following day we once again tapped the venerable Lord Chaz who took us on his famous tour of the St. Louis Cemetery No.1, New Orleans’ oldest graveyard yet still in current use. En route to the walking tour Chaz discussed various social, architectural and economic issues of the neighborhoods through which we passed.

High points in Lord Chaz’s Cemetery Tour

Once we arrived, he explained the necessity for above ground burial in this below-sea-level town. Instead of a grave, each deceased is interred in a brick and stone, reusable mausoleum. Grotesquely, each mausoleum becomes a sealed solar oven in the hot Louisiana/Gulf of Mexico sun, reducing the remains to an insignificant pile of dust that is subsequently swept onto the floor of the tomb a year later, making room for the next eligible family deceased. He pointed out that our visit on All Saints Day was the ideal time to tour, being the day when visitors come to honor their dead according to Roman Catholic tradition.

Indeed, upon entering the cemetery we were witness to a disciple kneeling devoutly at the tomb of VooDoo queen, Marie Laveau (1801? – 1881?) and carrying out a ritual with candles, icons, tobacco smoke and an alcoholic beverage.

Anonymous VooDoo devotee conducting a ritual honoring Creole VooDoo Queen Marie Laveau on All Saints Day

There was more to the tour, but nothing else could top that auspicious and serendipitous experience.

Endless Night Vampire Ball

The Endless Night Vampire Ball, a recurring and world-wide event since 1998, and brainchild of producer and fang-maker Fr. Sebastiaan — this year themed “Victoriental” — took place at New Orleans’ House of Blues on All Saints Day, the day after Halloween. It turned out to be one of the most over the top entertaining and social events ever to come out of this eccentric and eclectic subculture. Goths, vampires, full time dwellers of the demimonde as well as poseur wannabes were treated to a true spectacular of music and performance art by impresario Fr. Sebastiaan and his talented crew of functionaries, artists, performers, DJs and technicians.

Famous producer, impresario and Fang-Master, Fr. Sebastiaan

The NOLA House of Blues, one of a chain of eponymous venues, is uniquely themed for the event by virtue of its being in the Big Easy, America’s home to Voodoo, which religion provides a perfect backdrop for all things dark and preternatural.

The crowd was gorgeously attired and costumed in Victorian, Edwardian, and glamorous as well as horrific presentation.
NY DJs and two attendees

Young and not-so-young mingled affably in am atmosphere of supreme camaraderie, seemingly overjoyed to participate in the festivities. Famous NYC DJs filled the air and filled the dance floor with heavy EBM, and Gothrock, both classic and modern re-mixes.

Costumed attendees at the Endless Night Vampire Ball

Wandering the House of Blues we found an upstairs lounge where a bar and a side stage were located and where performances and rituals were taking place. Back downstairs on the main floor, just when it seemed that the night would only consist of fabulous DJ-ing by the likes of DJ Angel, Matt V. Christ and Xris Smack, a French-accented, flamboyantly and Baroque-attired moderator came on stage and announced, in a hysterically dramatic manner, the first live entertainment of the night, the gifted and multi-talented soprano Ariel De Ment. Fanged and highly made up, known in the New York area for her mind-blowing renditions of cinematic and operatic singing, Ariel stunned the audience with coloratura versions of, first, an opera aria, then the heart-rending “Point of No Return” from Phantom.

Following this thrilling act was a belly dancer accompanied by a kilt-clad violinist who led her with Middle Eastern and Celtic melodies. DJs filled the intervals between them, a burlesque dancer and then a staged, metaphysical vampire ritual involving sword play, bull-whip cracking, a priestess and several gorgeous, scantily-clad acolytes.
The headline band, Metropolis Records artists Bella Morte, performed an hour-long, well-received set of their melodious-metal Gothrock with touches of Linkin Park-style funk.

Metropolis Records band, Bella Morte

Best dressed contest

Eventually Fr. Sebastiaan came on stage to oversee selection of the most beautifully costumed female and male attendees, chosen by popular acclaim. He praised the crowd, and graciously thanked his staff, one by one, and by name.

Best dressed attendees

The theme for next year’s Endless Night, “Penny Dreadful,” was announced with much flourish and ritual.
The Endless Night 2014 continued joyfully and with more celebrating on the dance floor well into the wee hours of the next morning, while thoughts of next year were already on the minds of many.

Webster Hall
Feb 14, 2014

by Doktor John

This was a very special Valentine’s Day for lovers of industrial music. The object of their love, Skinny Puppy made this a most fulfilling holiday to a sell-out crowd of their fanatical metropolitan area followers.

The audience was surprised with a somewhat earlier-than-expected, 8:50 PM start. The eerie and somewhat hard-to-recognize strains of the rhythm-less “Chloralone” accompanied the advent of light on the stage and the entrance of frontman Nivek Ogre in the first of several horrific costumes he would don for the show. The music transitioned seamlessly into “illisit” in which SP accuses this of being “the criminal age.”

The backdrop and the performers were flooded with a crazy-quilt of broken, animated lighting that was disorienting and hallucinatory. A model of a slender canine appeared in silhouette on the stage and would later serve briefly as stage prop.
“Village” from the “Handover” album and the classic “The Choke” from the 1985 “Bites” album followed, then back to “Weapon” for “plasicage” and “wornin’.” A screen on stage ran LED figures displaying the rapidly-growing national debt at $55 trillion and mounting while images of electronic circuit boards, disasters, chaos and op-art flashed behind the stage performers.

“Deep Down Trauma Hounds” from the 1987 “Cleanse Fold and Manipulate” album provided a welcomed return to the classics as did their all-time favorite, “Warlock,” the uniquely cadenced, compelling and mesmerizing hit from the “Rabies” album.

The show continued in the same vein, alternating cuts from the current “Weapon” with such classics as “Hexonxonx,” “Pasturn” from “Mythmaker” and “First Aid.”
The stage performance included Ogre’s simulated cutting himself with a large dagger. An audience member invaded the stage and was quickly subdued and ejected. Ogre donned a hideous, expressionless mask and hood, vaguely resembling a nightmarish version of Death from Ingemar Bergman’s movie, “The Seventh Seal.” After performing “Solvent,” he bid “Thanks to New York!” and disappeared briefly. Upon return the encores included classics “Far Too Frail,” “Glass Houses” and the wonderful “Smothered Hope” before concluding with “Overdose” from “Weapon.”
Webster Hall

Throughout the concert, no effort was spared as Ogre donned, now a furry costume, then a hazmat suit, another terrifying headdress or two and poured himself and drank a tall glass of some repulsive, phosphorescent blue-green liquid.

As always, Skinny Puppy was magnanimous in the generous and unbounded efforts to please, entertain and shock their zealous and loving fans, for whom this will always be a Valentine’s Day to remember.

Suicide Girls/ Blackheart Burlesque

Gramercy Theater
New York, NY

Nov. 19, 2013

By Doktor John
New York, NY

The appearance of this performance troupe, fielded by the organization Suicide Girls, was the 30th stop on a 2-month tour covering most sizable cities in the USA. For those unfamiliar, SG is a website-based and online community of exhibitionistic young women, almost all of whom are stunningly beautiful, extensively tattooed and pierced. The organization likes to think of itself as “beauty redefined.” SG are so far out and beyond women’s lib, that they are blissfully uninterested in —and blatantly disrespectful of— the conventions of both feminism and of society’s traditional rules for women. Female sexuality is the core theme of SG, and there is an admitted undercurrent of bisexuality that runs through the group’s culture.

Katherine Suicide, official voice of Suicide Girls, came on stage sporting fire engine red tresses (on the website she appears with very different and various hair colors) to welcome the audience in her slight British accent. Have you noticed? Nothing is more suggestive of wanton decadence and sexual libertinism than a British accent. Besides addressing the audience and charging them up, Katherine made a frank appeal for photographers in the audience (who isn’t one now?) to provide free promotional advertising for the show and the website by inundating the various social networks with pics of the goings-on, and she offered a few free subscriptions (which entails unlimited, members-only viewing) to the website for those selected by the backstage judges.
Choreographed dances involving the same 3 or 4 girls resembled nothing so much as a cross between traditional 20th century burlesque and the kind of antics you’d see in any go-go bar today. There was a lot of rolling the head around with hair twirling that highlighted the wildly unnatural coloration of the extra-long tresses which all the dancers seemed to sport.
DJ Mel Clarke played rock tunes with a heavy drum-and-bass style, few of which were recognizable hits with the exception of Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People” and the 1966 Sonny & Cher antique, “Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down.” The eerie sci-fi wail of a Theremin served as accompaniment to mistress-of-ceremonies Katherine’s striptease act.
Performers started each routine in skimpy outfits but sooner or later stripped down to g-strings, tattoos and an X in black-tape on each breast. They were often barefoot or shod in socks or flats or sneakers, never high heels.
Some skits had them wearing gorilla masks, helmets, facemasks, barbarian style bikinis and a Batgirl cowl, making loose and incomprehensible reference to Planet of the Apes, Star Wars and Game of Thrones. One lanky, lime-haired beauty named Razzi lugged around a bottle of Jack Daniels on stage throughout the night, taking swigs now and again, and sometimes spray-spitting the whiskey out over the front row spectators. The performances in general were more athletic than esthetic, loosely choreographed, pointless and surprisingly tame. The girls were certainly gorgeous to gaze upon, but the look was hippie-natural rather than glamorous. These were not the Rockettes.
As is often the case, things come full circle. Thus, in their attempts to shock and titillate or simply for lack of imagination, the SG/Blackheart Burlesque skin-show finds itself treading trodden trails. Some of the music and much of the show itself drew heavily from—not your father’s—but your grandfather’s burlesque—peek-a-boo fan dance and all.

Two bands could not have less in common and yet at the same time sound as near to each other as blood relatives. Disorder, a Joy Division tribute band, is comprised of members way too young to have first-hand familiarity with the music they resurrect. The group which they are covering has a repertoire built mainly from two studio albums with about a dozen songs on each, its full development having been cut short by the untimely suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis in 1980, a mere two years after having gotten started. At least ten of their songs are widely recognized and popular.

By contrast, the headliner band, Modern English, is comprised of mainly original band members, but for the drummer, who is new and, by appearances, young enough to be the son or grandson of the originals. Harkening from the same era as Joy Division and the same Brit-punk/New Wave scene, Modern English has reformed several times, put out six or seven studio albums and wound up credited and renowned for one of the most recognized and beloved songs of a generation, “I Melt With You.”

The Saint, a classic, Jersey shore dive bar provides a gritty, highly conducive environment for live, punk music. Besides the garish Xmas lighted walls and spacious, elevated stage, it boasts a superb sound system and sound engineer who delivered feedback-free audio which was clear and loud, but bearable.

Disorder opened with fast-paced “Shadowplay,” one of the darker entries of Joy Division’s notably dark body of work, then proceeded into “Disorder,” the emotionally charged, repetitious piece after which the band takes it name. It was increasingly apparent that these boys had succeeded in capturing every musical nuance of the originals as they proceeded with such perfectly executed songs as “She’s Lost Control,” the morose “Atmosphere,” and “Isolation,” from which a riff was taken as the basis for sequel band, New Order’s famous “Blue Monday.”

A particularly superb job was done with the unmistakable and widely covered “Dead Souls,” a mesmerizing and demented anthem that, perhaps more than any other piece, represents the mystique of the parent band. Lead vocalist Michael not only captures the vocal qualities of the late Ian Curtis, but his agitated and sometimes spastic gestures as well. Better than any grainy, antique film footage from 1979-1980, Disorder delivers the most credible, if vicarious experience of Joy Division that can be imagined.

Cynics who had assessed Modern English as a one-hit wonder had a real awakening coming. Despite their mature, unkempt appearance, these senior citizens of rock put on a brilliant, tremendously entertaining performance, drawing from their relatively vast repertoire of seven studio albums spanning 1981 to 2010! White-haired, unshaven vocalist Robbie Grey was charismatic and interactive with both the crowd and the band as he led them through a wide spectrum of new and old classics. Included of course was a moving, sing-along version of “I Melt With You.”

Here’s a comparison I can’t prove, but I believe to be true: Joy Division, an iconic band of great notoriety and with a cult following, existed for about 2 years, has two albums and not more than ten songs that can be recognized as hits. Modern English, still immensely entertaining and prolific after thirty-plus years has one hit that is probably essential to more record collections, iTunes libraries, on more iPods, iPads, and mp3 players than everything by Joy Division combined.

In any event, Disorder’s revival of the Joy Division’s body of work and Modern English’s ongoing greatness combined to provide a uniquely entertaining and satisfying treat for rock music fans who have a love for the genre as well as a historical perspective.