Velvet Acid Christ at Santo’s Party House
Cybertron at Santo’s Party House
Jan 31, 2015
By Doktor John
New York NY
Cybertron at Santo’s Party House
Jan 31, 2015
By Doktor John
New York NY
I’ve been to countless Goth-industrial music and social events in the past 25 years or so, and many hosted by Vampire Freaks, the online community and seller of Goth clothing and paraphernalia. I have hit all the events in the NY, NJ and Philadelphia area along these lines. I travel regularly to Germany and Poland for world-wide, like-themed events. I’ve also long admired the sound of Colorado-based electro-industrialists VAC. Nothing in my prior experience all these many and varied events could have prepared me or my similarly-experienced friends for the rude, crude and inexcusably inane experience this miserable Saturday in this incredibly uncomfortable lower Manhattan venue.
It was the coldest night on the coldest date in 2015. Vampire Freaks, the supposed hosts, as they are of many such club nights, announced that the starting time was — on short notice —postponed to 11 pm. All well and good. Pity those who came when doors officially opened at that time. The line of soon-to-be maltreated event-goers stood in freezing wind for up to an hour, while unsympathetic bouncers served as gate-keepers, letting in the slowest trickle of ticket-holders at an agonizingly glacial, and inexplicably slow rate. I was frozen, and I was wearing a full-length leather coat over a series of layers that even included a leather vest and heavy-duty cargo pants. Woe for the scantily-clad goth-chicks, whose fishnet tights and bikini bottoms offered considerably less in the way of protection. They stood in that line, most of them, for over an hour, adjacent to frigid buildings and on icy sidewalks while the 19ºF and 30 mph wind whipped us all until well past midnight.
Wait! That’s not the worst of it. Our bouncer, whom we all know wasn’t responsible for the incompetence of the management or the decree about to be announced —while stopping to check the I.D.s of everyone on line (including gray-bearded oldsters)— informed each of the outrageous and purely gratuitous policy of “Mandatory Coat Check!” What in the world was that about? Just to squeeze another $4 out of each patron?! The effect it had was to then create another tedious and obnoxious line inside the venue where we were commanded to remove our outerwear (for many, this was part of their Vampire Freaks-acquired fashion-statement) for no good reason, made to pay $4 per item, under signs that warned that gloves, hats and scarves would not be allowed in pockets or sleeves, but had to be checked, each a separate item, by a single, overwhelmed and overworked coat check girl!
Wait! That’s still not the worst of it! This night we were forced not into the club, but into the downstairs basement, the low-ceiling, painfully cramped and overcrowded cellar where there was neither room to move, to reach the bar nor to get a decent view of the performers, who after all, had started playing long before the throngs of spectators had even gotten into the building and certainly before they had cleared the coat-check regimen. It’s well that the bar was hard to reach. Straight drinks went for upwards of $12 and $13.
Openers Mindless Faith played their version of industrial. DJ Sean Templar spun some dance tracks, but there was no room at all to dance. VAC, who sounded a lot better on disc and at better venues, blasted their set, some of which was with the accompaniment of a gorgeous, platinum blond female vocalist. Fans knew her as Donna from Ego Likeness.
If I hadn’t paid for the tickets in advance, I would have left the outdoor line after an hour in the cold. As it was, cramped into a dark hovel, unable to see each other or converse with fellow-victims, we pulled out in the middle of VAC’s second or third set, and after frontman Erickson’s angry, if stereotypical tirade which included, laughably, a denunciation of “Bush.” It came across as smug, politically-correct and way out of date.
Santo’s Party House basically screwed all three victims: VAC, Vampire Freaks and the audience!