The R Bar
March 9, 2014
New York, NY
By Doktor John

Female-fronted Brooklyn-based, dark electro band The Sedona Effect put on two screenings of their newly-released (January 2014) music video “Cross the Line” at the R Bar on Manhattan’s Bowery on a recent Thursday night to a large crowd of black-attired, dark wave fans. This band is the solo project of German-born, classically-trained soprano and dramatist Kai Irina Hahn who has recently come to NYC from London where, it can assumed, some of her conversion from lyric opera to EBM and industrial developed.

The video features a mesmerizing, layered electro-industrial track that builds through several crescendos. On screen are Kai, in the form of a femme fatale — alternately bathed in eerie, blue and red light — and in the background phantom-like, masked and fetish-clad characters.

Kai hisses her call to “cross the line.” During a black-&-white segment she holds the blade of a knife to the throat of a lethargic young male and succeeds in seducing him into final action. A large and slithering, spotted snake weaves its way throughout the video, bridging between several scenes, reminiscent of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. So —come to think of it — is Kai herself! Just the kind of thing to awaken the amoral side of the poetic persona. Parts of the video were actually shot at the RBar.

Besides the video, there were live stage performances featuring duets of performers, the first a “Celtic Kabuki” with Duchess Wendi and Sean Monistat who wore a deer-antler helmet. The second featured Ess Moonking and Kai herself performing parts of the choreography of “Gloomy Sunday,” a cabaret piece that she staged last year at Bizarre Bushwick in Brooklyn where Kai now resides.

A pair of very interesting photo exhibits was held as backdrop to the video release party. Anka Jurena’s work was largely b & w and quite creepy, and it included some available prints of Kai intertwined with her snake. Jesse Kleitman’s photography display featured traditional subjects, colors, filters and Photoshop enhancements.

The turnout was excellent and the video was well received, which portends an even more successful launch of The Sedona Effect’s upcoming album “Vortices,” due out in the fall of 2014.

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.

October 21, 2013

This coming February will mark 30 years of fervid fan status for me and my circle of musically-worldly friends and family. First appearing at the 1984 San Remo Festival held in the Riviera resort town of the same name, this incredibly talented and charismatic punk Roman kid in a motorcycle jacket has been catapulted to the top of the pop music world. At this time, with no less than ten hugely successful albums, he is a household name everywhere from Germany and his native Italy to the farthest reaches of Latin America and Canada. Even in the USA, where Italian pop singers are a neglected genre, he easily sells out such venues as Radio City and the gargantuan Barclay Center, as he did just recently, coming off a previous night’s sell-out crowd in Atlantic City, NJ. For his legion of fans, virtually every one of his hundred or so songs (the majority of which he co-writes) is a stand-alone single hit.

The vast body of Ramazzotti’s ouvre is sung in Italian which he enunciates with impeccable, music-friendly diction, delivered with a level of emotional sincerity as well as compositional genius that is a special pleasure to listeners of any linguistic stripe. Most of his albums are reproduced in Spanish versions. His worldwide stature has such stars as Cher, Santana and Wyclef Jean eager to sing duets with him.

As on every previous appearance, Ramazzotti’s stage show included a fabulous light show and mammoth orchestral presentation, accompanied by virtuoso performers on percussion, bass, guitars, keyboards and sax along with deliciously talented female and male back-up vocalists. Ramazzotti himself proved to be by now a dedicated and surprisingly accomplished guitarist.

Despite all these positives that Eros Ramazzotti had going for him, the overall experience of the concert was mostly disappointing. After opening with a handful of well-arranged singles from the 2012 hit album, including the title track, “Noi” (“Us”), he went to his standard repertoire. That’s where the concert went wrong. Instead of warm, respectful renditions of these beloved songs, they were delivered in a bombastic style, the band playing melodies and rhythms that actually competed with and contradicted that of the song being sung. Instead of full versions, Ramazzotti strung together inadequate, amputated versions into quick-fix medleys that short-changed the originals. Most egregious of all was the casual and off-handed inclusion of a mere fragment of “Terra Promessa,” his uber hit about coming to America, that would have been perfect for special presentation to this American audience, most of whom trace their fandom to this, his debut hit. For his part, Ramazzotti inappropriately revealed an objectionable fatigue and distaste for his own repertoire by talking, rather than singing the lyrics, without respect to the cadence of the music and by unpleasant lapses into falsetto. One of the few songs he treated at least respectfully was the magnificent “Musica E,” which was performed in its classic mode, although he could have devoted more to this monumental work.

Newcomers to the music must surely have wondered why there existed such devotion to this chaotic mish-mosh of excessively and inappropriately overstated blues and jazz that completely swamped and obliterated the character of the music. The old, die-hard fans were so ecstatic to just see their musical idol live that most seemed oblivious to his failure to deliver on their expectations.

Baggy jeans and tee-shirt seems to be Ramazzotti’s signature look, but in this instance it came a little too close to revealing his boredom and lack of respect for the magnificent body of his work that placed him at the top of the music world. Eros seems to have forgotten the “bella” in the Italian mandate to always present a “bella figura.”

Click on the link below for a .pdf that you can zoom on for legibility:
10-16 Live – Modern English

10-02 Live – Jane’s Addiction (1)

If you need to zoom on this image in order to read it, click on the link to a pdf just below this:

10-02 Live – Jane’s Addiction (1)

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.