Indescision was solved by a quick call to Michael last night, Project Elektra or House der Decadenz? Lets face it, I can go to an 80s night anytime, JGoth cabaret is less common back home.
The venue was strange, being in the middle of the Shinjuku red light district, I arrived before it opened but had arranged to meet Mike outside….there was some entertainment going on outside with a girl-guy screaming match of some kind happening in the car park over the road. Nice to see that girls here can as screamy and catty as back home. The poor car-park owner got dragged into it, and three rotund policemen from the Koban box over the road dashed over to stand and look efficient without actually getting involved.
Downstairs into the theatre, there were two floors with the entrance taking you to the higher level with a bar and a balcony looking down on stage, further down there was an area laid out with tables, djbooth and a bit of space for the floorshow infront of the stage.
Musically it wasn’t intended to be a dancing event, but there were plenty of shows to keep you occupied instead – first up was a guy with huge horns made of his forelocks, who kept getting the rest of his hair caught in them.
Next up was Candy Spooky Theatre, a kind of twisted interpretation of 1920s cartoon music with a beautiful electric double bass and no respect for musical convention. They would take a musical phrase from many years ago and play with it, turning it around, seeing it in different ways, interpretations, until it was hardly recognisable, then mix it with the next one. I like these guys.
Then there was a sword dancer but I retired to the bar because I couldn’t really see, by the time she’d left she’d shed all of her clothes, maybe I should have been paying attention.
And then we descended back into the normal wall-of-noise of Despair and Mushi, time to leave, while theres still time. When I got outside I understood what Gibson meant when he said ‘the sky was the colour of televisions tuned to a dead channel’, not sunrise yet but light enough, and with the neon still projecting enough light pollution to give the clouds a coloured tinge.
“Its not like I’m using”…but it never came, or maybe it did and I didn’t understand.