Night of the laughing dead
TIM KINSELLA, A MEMBERS OF THE BANDS Joan of Arc, and Owls, and Everybody, has spawned a fresh mutation called Make Believe. A tour poster and EP cover were called for, and he asked if I had a dark suit, and what was I doing at 10pm the next night?
Inside a Bucktown industrial space, a grave has been "dug" in the middle of the space, a burial to be reenacted, mimicking an Inquisition-era Goya, "The Death of Truth." Instead of Goya's clergy killing truth in the form of a sleeping young female form in pronounced dishabille, the tableau is of thirty-three local musicians and cohorts in twenty-first century corporate uniform--suit, tie, an impasto of ghoul makeup, hair pomaded to the skulls. (The number is a reference to a ritual of the Freemasons.) Risers have been set up to compensate for differences in height.
The milling mass of faces smell of vitamin E cream, powder and brutal hair product. Newly minted zombies pass Polaroids around. A note of marijuana mingles with cigarette clouds. The longneck Old Styles go quickly. Blurry photocopies of the Goya etching flurry around the bare ankles of one makeup artist. Photographic lights pick up rising tobacco trails before the smoke machine fires up. A scowling white cat dabs against the black mound of potting soil meant to be the grave's turned dirt, sniffing at the fistful of textile calla lilies poked into the pile.
You might know some of the names: Tim Rutili from Califone, a stray 90 Day Man, a couple of ex-Boas members, the cartoon auteurs of Hamster Man and Gorilla Suit, a coffee-shop manager, a record-store clerk, a record-label owner, a booking agent, me. "The Rainbo must be empty tonight," someone mutters, sotto voce, to general laughter from the gathered habitués of that Ukrainian Village music bar.
Thax Douglas, who christens local performances with poems of praise, stands in the center, ill at ease in a large, dark nightshirt. Someone asks if Thax feels like he's on the cover of "Sgt. Pepper." Kinsella waves his hands, in his dark suit and skinny tie looking like a 1960s Italian director, his cigarette leaving curls behind him in the backlight. "Look Enron, people! Give me your best Enron," he says, waving his MGD. Everyone shifts, zombieish in place. It's not the most Cassavetes-like direction, but the general jokey, beery, smoky conspiracy does have an improvisational delight. "Eyes wide, look at the camera, just be dead for four more. Three more, c'mon."
[Newcity, 13 January 2004]
Inside a Bucktown industrial space, a grave has been "dug" in the middle of the space, a burial to be reenacted, mimicking an Inquisition-era Goya, "The Death of Truth." Instead of Goya's clergy killing truth in the form of a sleeping young female form in pronounced dishabille, the tableau is of thirty-three local musicians and cohorts in twenty-first century corporate uniform--suit, tie, an impasto of ghoul makeup, hair pomaded to the skulls. (The number is a reference to a ritual of the Freemasons.) Risers have been set up to compensate for differences in height.
The milling mass of faces smell of vitamin E cream, powder and brutal hair product. Newly minted zombies pass Polaroids around. A note of marijuana mingles with cigarette clouds. The longneck Old Styles go quickly. Blurry photocopies of the Goya etching flurry around the bare ankles of one makeup artist. Photographic lights pick up rising tobacco trails before the smoke machine fires up. A scowling white cat dabs against the black mound of potting soil meant to be the grave's turned dirt, sniffing at the fistful of textile calla lilies poked into the pile.
You might know some of the names: Tim Rutili from Califone, a stray 90 Day Man, a couple of ex-Boas members, the cartoon auteurs of Hamster Man and Gorilla Suit, a coffee-shop manager, a record-store clerk, a record-label owner, a booking agent, me. "The Rainbo must be empty tonight," someone mutters, sotto voce, to general laughter from the gathered habitués of that Ukrainian Village music bar.
Thax Douglas, who christens local performances with poems of praise, stands in the center, ill at ease in a large, dark nightshirt. Someone asks if Thax feels like he's on the cover of "Sgt. Pepper." Kinsella waves his hands, in his dark suit and skinny tie looking like a 1960s Italian director, his cigarette leaving curls behind him in the backlight. "Look Enron, people! Give me your best Enron," he says, waving his MGD. Everyone shifts, zombieish in place. It's not the most Cassavetes-like direction, but the general jokey, beery, smoky conspiracy does have an improvisational delight. "Eyes wide, look at the camera, just be dead for four more. Three more, c'mon."
[Newcity, 13 January 2004]
