Nemesis To Go - Live: Drop Dead Festival, Day 4

Drop Dead Festival
Day 4: Avalon, New York City
Monday October 31 2005

Bands in order of appearance:

Bohemien
Rezurex
Frank The Baptist
Cinema Strange
World Inferno Friendship Society
Nina Hagen

'Tis the night of Halloween. New York, which has been in the grip of pumpkin-obsessed insanity for several days already, finally loses its last remaining shreds of sense, and turns into one big spooky costume party.

The inhabitants of the city, determination etched grimly into their faces, frenziedly rush to get their fancy dress outfits ready for tonight's big shindig. In the streets, small children are marshalled with military precision into crack trick-or-treat strike forces. Lines form outside novelty party gear stores - and this, more than any of the other goings-on, strikes me as utterly surreal.

I feel like I should approach these single-minded Halloween hounds as they wait with a quiet desperation reminiscent of war zone soup queues for the last comedy convict costume in the shop, and gently remind them that none of this is obligatory. The Department Of Homeland Security won't drag you off to Gitmo if you just, you know, don't do it.

But you can't tell New Yorkers to ease up on Halloween. This annual fright-fest is just as much a part of the city's life as yellow cabs, subway turnstiles, coffee and blintzes. And it all has the splendidly Avalon ironic effect of making the Drop Dead crowd, gathering on 20th Street outside the Avalon club for the final night of the festival, seem positively normal. It's up to the goths and the punks and the deathrockers to represent reality tonight.

The Avalon looms impassively over the swirl of the street. It's a former church building, with a legendary club-culture past as the Limelight, and these old stone walls have seen it all before.

Inside, it's all high-tech hardware and even higher bar prices. I innocently order a drink, and I'm almost knocked flat to be charged a hefty seven dollars for a small bottle of indifferent corporate-fizz beer (not a pint, you understand: a small bottle) decanted with a shameless smile into a plastic glass by bar staff who then require a further dollar tip for their services.

By summoning all my resources of self-control, I just manage to stop myself from blurting out in rage and anguish: 'Youmustbefuckingkiddingmate!' and stagger, somewhat shellshocked, away. I sip my beer slowly. Very slowly. Even so, I calculate that each sip is costing me a buck and a half. I think it might be a good idea to head for the stage at this point. At least I can catch the bands without being fleeced by the bandits behind the bar.

Bohemien come from Italy, and that's the real Italy, the one in Old Europe, not the one between Spring Street and Canal Street. They're a somewhat unusual band for Drop Dead in that they're very much a straight-up goth outfit, without any particular leanings in any post-punk or deathrock directions.

But while they may be ploughing a pretty straight stylistic furrow, they do it well. The vocalist, expressive of face and gesture, like Lionel Blair performing charades at a country house party, holds the attention of the audience as the band sets out their stall of meticulous yet flamboyant darkly-shadowed rock.

The crowd isn't large; it's still early in the evening. In a way that's a shame, for Bohemien strike me as one of those bands which really requires a substantial audience to act as a foil for their dramatics. As things are, the show never quite heats up to melting point, but there's enough to convince me that good ideas are at work here.

Rezurex And then, a re-run of Rezurex, playing their second set, and as far as I can tell giving us a no-frills reprise of their previous Knitting Factory performance. They're still as accessible and - dare I say it - as poppy as before, leavening their rough 'n' ready psychobilly-isms with the easy grace of natural born pop-punks.

There's a bit of clowning with a toy ray gun, plenty of full-tilt whumpalong basslines, and the guitar riffs gallop off into the sunset.

Rezurex aren't a band with a particularly incisive cutting edge, it must be said - they're simply too easy-going and bouncy for that. But if you fancy a bit of a punkabilly jolly-up, they do the business every time.

Curiously, Frank The Baptist doesn't appear to be very jolly this evening. The good humour which underpinned his set at the Knitting Factory last night seems to have evaporated somewhat. It's not that he's exactly come over all dour or grim this time round, but he's certainly in a more downbeat, taciturn mood.

The quips and amusing tales which he sprinkled through the first set do not feature tonight - in fact, aside from announcing the song titles in a businesslike, let's-get-on-with-it fashion, and wishing us a happy Halloween (twice, as if he can't think of anything else to say) we hardly get a word out of him.

Now, that's not to say that this is a big problem, or anything - in fact, when you've got a repertoire as strong as Frank The Baptist has, you could say that between-song banter is surplus to requirements anyway.

Certainly, songs like 'Come Home' and 'Letters To Earth' cut through as insistently as ever. But there's no 'Harlot Of Nations' this time, and a distinct feeling that on this occasion the band have elected to play things very straight. Do the hits, and do 'em good. But no frills. When it's all done, it's a brief thanks and goodnight, and the band are gone.

Earlier, in the bar, between fulminations at the drinks prices, I'd encountered Lucas Lanthier wearing a beekeeper's hat and veil. He seemed a little worried. 'Look,' he said, 'I'm wearing my veil with a short sleeved shirt. That means I'm not fully protected.'

I was bemused. Protected against what? Were Cinema Strange intending to unleash a swarm of killer bees during their performance tonight? I wouldn't put it past them.

As it turns out, the band content themselves with unleasing a killer set of punk rock rampage, everything turned up to eleven, the songs roaring past like speeded-up thunderstorms. The arch theatricality which is usually a central part of the Cinema Strange experience is tonight unceremoniously bounced down to a supporting role. This time it's all about velocity and noise. We get a show that acts as a salutary reminder that, when the inclination strikes, Cinema Strange can rock with the loudest of them.

And yes, Lucas plays the entire set in his beekeeper's veil. Michael is an off-duty mime, while Daniel still looks like he's been dragged through a field hospital backwards (and this time, he's got the blood splatters to prove it).

But this set is all about bashing out a racket. It's Cinema Strange reminding us that for all their tangents and concepts and excursions into the artfully surreal, when it comes down to it they're a guitar-bass-drums-vocals rock band, and they know how to make those ingredients come at us with a kick.

At this point, something strange happens. All of a sudden, the audience - which up to now has been the usual motley assortment of deathrockers, post-punkers, goths and 'billies of one stripe or another - changes to a more straightforward party crowd.

Through the doors they come, as if they've been waiting for this moment. There are people in sports shirts and blue jeans, fancy-dress Halloween revellers in novelty-shop zombie costumes, even a few people in suits. It would seem that our next band, World Inferno Friendship Society, has brought in their own fans - and they're a distinctly mainstream bunch.

I'm a little taken aback by this, for Drop Dead's advance publicity had given me the impression that this band was some sort of art-folk troubadour outfit, all high concepts and low comedy, full of mischief and mayhem, like a cross between the Tiger Lillies and the Pogues.

I'd anticipated that World Inferno Friendship Society might draw in their own following, for they certainly don't seem to have any particular connection with, or presence in, the deathrock-and-related zone. But this crowd looks like they've come straight from the office party. And if these are the fans, what, I wonder with a certain trepidation, is the band going to be like?

Well, I'm here to tell you that World Inferno Friendship Society are an excruciatingly 'zany' good-time jazz-rock band, all parping horns and bounding rhythms, every musician on stage hurling themselves around as if they're under contract to act the goat.

I stand, I watch, I can't believe my eyes. I certainly can't decide which of the band's umpteen members is most annoying. Perhaps it's the percussionist, in her (please God let it be) ironic 80s dress, making such a meal out of hitting two drums you'd think she was doing something really, really difficult.

Or maybe it's the frontman, blandly attired in a suit, hollering away with all the hyped-up psuedo-enthusiasm of a used car dealer who's only two SUVs away from his sales target. The relentlessly wacky-happy style of the band grates on my nerves; the way every song just has to have a big, brassy horn break wears me down. There's no edge, not even a unique selling point. It's just good-time big-band rockin' jazz for the office party crowd.

And yes, the crowd (or, at least, that part of the crowd that has come in specially to see the band) is having a wonderful time, and I suspect this is the reason World Inferno Friendship Society ended up on the Drop Dead bill. It's their bespoke fanbase that got them the gig.

Those extra people the band pulled in - who would almost certainly never have shown up for any other act - are probably the factor that's enabled Drop Dead to pay for the Avalon club tonight. Well, I suppose there's good business sense at work there, even if the avowed aesthetic of the festival has suddenly taken a nosedive as a result. World Inferno Friendship Society are nothing more than an incongruous endurance test - but they are also the sound of Drop Dead paying the rent.

Now, here's a tale. When I was a teenage punk in about 1981, I had a poster of Nina Hagen on the wall by my bed. I think I'd cut it out of Punk's Not Dead, or some similar trashy magazine of the time.

In my personal pin-up stakes, it was always between Nina Hagen and Debbie Harry, and Nina - who always looked slightly, delightfully, dangerous, like she'd set fire to your carpet if you brought her home for tea - won every time.

I was equally captivated by the way her music sounded so gloriously eccentric, as if it had beamed down from outer space straight into her head.

Bewitched and infatuated, I hatched a cunning plan to move to Berlin, where I'd join the Nina Hagen band as a virtuoso guitarist (the fact that I couldn't play a note was a detail I brushed aside with a cavalier disregard for pesky reality).

I'd embark on a wild and passionate fling with Nina herself. We'd set up home in a supercool apartment, overlooking the Berlin wall. We'd hold court in the art-punk scene. David Bowie would come round for tea...and Nina could set fire to the carpet.

Well, time passes. Water under the bridge, all that stuff. Both Nina and myself are respectable middle-aged people these days. For my part, I've abandoned foolish teenage fantasies, and I no longer have pin-up posters of kewl punk chyks beside my bed. I have a kewl punk chyk in my bed, because I married one...but that's another story.

Nevertheless, I'm still a great fan of Nina Hagen. And all real life circumstances aside, in the pithy phrase of Ali G - I still definitely would.

All of this is by way of introducing the unchallenged headliner of the Drop Dead festival - none other than the divine Ms Hagen. This is, of course, not the first time we've seen her at this event, but on this occasion she's not reciting mantras with a view to inducing other states of consciousness.

Tonight, she's in all-stops-pulled-out punk rock diva mode, fronting a band of dressed-down but impressively effective musos who clearly know the songs inside out and are happy to kick 'em around a little. But, of course, no matter how great the band might be, when Nina Hagen is on stage you're only going to be looking in one direction, right?

Bolstered by the presence of the world's largest lyric sheets (it would appear that Nina writes her songs on lengths of old wallpaper) and a foot switch with which, at strategic points, she soaks her voice with reverb and just as quickly dries it out again, Nina Hagen dominates the proceedings with equal quantities of take-no-shit strop and kooky playfulness.

The band is tight, the sound is a dense mass of avant-rock grinding and swirling, the set list jumps all over Nina's greatest hits like an excitable flea, and the audience jumps all over the moshpit.

'New York' - originally a full-on disco number, but tonight sounding rather good in its rock band guise, wins over anyone who has so far remained unconvinced. I'm sure Nina is enjoying the irony of singing those cheesy disco lyrics to an audience of deathrockers: 'We are going to another disco/Disco after disco/Shaking our hair to the disco rap/AMPM, Pyramid, Roxy, Mudd Club, Danceteria/The newest club is opening up'. I wonder if there are a few New Yorkers here tonight who recall that list of long-gone clubs with fond nostalgia?

'TV Glotzer' is, perhaps, a more appropriate tune in that it's Nina's own reworking of the Tubes' 'White Punks On Dope', and I'm sure there's a gleam in her eye as she surveys her audience with cool appraisal while the song blatters along.

The crowd responds by upping the boisterousness levels, to the point where someone leaps on stage and makes off with Nina's lyric sheets. Unfazed, she shakes her head in mild amusement, and remarks, half to herself and not entirely accurately, 'But there's fifty years of work there!'

'UFO' is a fine slice of rock 'n' roll mysticism, 'African Reggae' is as gloriously crazed as only a jaunty, danceable number about female circumcision can be, but it's 'Born To Die In Berlin' that nearly reduces me to a gibbering fanboy.

Staking out her territory half way between pathos and vainglorious, Nina delivers the song with a cracked passion that can't fail to collide head-on with any passing human heart. And, of course, there's a whole other level of meaning in there for New York, too. The song was co-written by Nina and Dee Dee Ramone, and the Ramones recorded it on their final album, Adios Amigos. I'm sure the song's presence in Nina's set tonight is no accident. It's a deliberate cap-doff to New York punk, for anyone who wants to pick up on the connection.

Whipping up the theatrics now as she heads for the home straight, Nina favours us with a towering, magesterial version of 'Ave Maria', which serves as a reminder that for all her punk rock caterwauling, growls and shrieks, she actually has a genuinely great voice, and in another life could have been a star of the opera. (Nina herself would probably assert with absolute certainty that in another life, she is.)

The audience, naturally, will not let the evening end without encores, so the band cranks up again and Nina returns to give us her own rendition of Frank Sinatra's 'New York, New York', and if that sounds like a rather hammy parting gesture, believe me you ain't heard nuthin' till you've experienced that hoary old anthem given the flamethrower treatment by Nina Hagan at her most impassioned.

Afterwards, there's an almost palpable feeling of a journey completed, an experience shared, a real show brought to a conclusion. Nina Hagen was worth the trip to Drop Dead by herself. Beautifully mad mother of punk, mistress of showmanship, a rock 'n' roll opera queen with an endless repertoire of goofy expressions and weird voices, the inside of Nina Hagen's head must be a strange and colourful place indeed. Much like the interior of the Avalon when Nina Hagen is on stage...

Once Nina Hagen is off stage, we go abruptly from the sublime to the ridiculous. The DJ takes over, and from the tunes he selects it's clear that for the last few hours of the night the Drop Dead Festival is being unceremoniously repositioned as a mainstream New York Halloween party. Retro-chart cheese is on the playlist, and when 'I Eat Cannibals' by Toto Coelo comes up, I decide it's time to say my farewells and head on out for the last time.

So, was Drop Dead 2005 a good experience? Yes, indeed it was. Sure, the four-day stretch of the festival felt like a bit of a marathon at times, and the way the fourth day at the Avalon was deliberately skewed towards a more mainstream crowd perhaps demonstrates that there just aren't enough deathrockers, goths, punks and psychobillies to allow the festival to grow naturally. It can only get bigger by becoming different; by moving away from the original ethos - and that, of course, opens up the potential for some interesting customer relations issues when the deathrockers discover that 'their' festival isn't entirely for them any more.

Occasional techie glitches bugged me: the obvious lack of a lighting technician at both venues (or at least someone to push the faders on the lighting desks up beyond the 'feeble glimmer' level) was frustrating and annoying, especially as it's one of those not-rocket-science jobs that anyone can do. But for all that, the entire event hung together admirably well, and it all had the feel of a festival that's starting to get into a genuine annual stride.

Best day? In some ways, I reckon Day One on the Knitting Factory main stage did it for me - the array of acts who were more akin to performance artists rather than straightforward bands was brave and intriguing, and demonstrated that you don't have to churn out standard rock 'n' roll in order to have a good time. Best bands? Sixteens, Cinema Strange, Frank The Baptist (first set!) and Scarlet's Remains all get glittery stars, while Nina Hagen gets the Golden Microphone Award for being streets ahead (no, make that several blocks ahead) of the rest.

The verdict? Simple. Drop Dead 2005 - good stuff. Drop Dead 2006? Bring it on!

Drop Dead 2006

This way for...

Drop Dead links

For more photos from the Drop Dead Festival, find the bands by name here.


Home \| About \| Live \| CDs & Vinyl \| Interviews \| Photos \| Archive \| Links Email \| Livejournal \| Myspace \| Last FM
Drop Dead Festival Day 4: Avalon, New York City Monday October 31 2005 Bands in order of appearance: Bohemien Rezurex Frank The Baptist Cinema Strange World Inferno Friendship Society Nina Hagen 'Tis the night of Halloween. New York, which has been in the grip of pumpkin-obsessed insanity for several days already, finally loses its last remaining shreds of sense, and turns into one big spooky costume party. The inhabitants of the city, determination etched grimly into their faces, frenziedly rush to get their fancy dress outfits ready for tonight's big shindig. In the streets, small children are marshalled with military precision into crack trick-or-treat strike forces. Lines form outside novelty party gear stores - and this, more than any of the other goings-on, strikes me as utterly surreal. I feel like I should approach these single-minded Halloween hounds as they wait with a quiet desperation reminiscent of war zone soup queues for the last comedy convict costume in the shop, and gently remind them that none of this is obligatory. The Department Of Homeland Security won't drag you off to Gitmo if you just, you know, don't do it. But you can't tell New Yorkers to ease up on Halloween. This annual fright-fest is just as much a part of the city's life as yellow cabs, subway turnstiles, coffee and blintzes. And it all has the splendidly ironic effect of making the Drop Dead crowd, gathering on 20th Street outside the Avalon club for the final night of the festival, seem positively normal. It's up to the goths and the punks and the deathrockers to represent reality tonight. The Avalon looms impassively over the swirl of the street. It's a former church building, with a legendary club-culture past as the Limelight, and these old stone walls have seen it all before. Inside, it's all high-tech hardware and even higher bar prices. I innocently order a drink, and I'm almost knocked flat to be charged a hefty seven dollars for a small bottle of indifferent corporate-fizz beer (not a pint, you understand: a small bottle) decanted with a shameless smile into a plastic glass by bar staff who then require a further dollar tip for their services. By summoning all my resources of self-control, I just manage to stop myself from blurting out in rage and anguish: 'Youmustbefuckingkiddingmate!' and stagger, somewhat shellshocked, away. I sip my beer slowly. Very slowly. Even so, I calculate that each sip is costing me a buck and a half. I think it might be a good idea to head for the stage at this point. At least I can catch the bands without being fleeced by the bandits behind the bar. Bohemien come from Italy, and that's the real Italy, the one in Old Europe, not the one between Spring Street and Canal Street. They're a somewhat unusual band for Drop Dead in that they're very much a straight-up goth outfit, without any particular leanings in any post-punk or deathrock directions. But while they may be ploughing a pretty straight stylistic furrow, they do it well. The vocalist, expressive of face and gesture, like Lionel Blair performing charades at a country house party, holds the attention of the audience as the band sets out their stall of meticulous yet flamboyant darkly-shadowed rock. The crowd isn't large; it's still early in the evening. In a way that's a shame, for Bohemien strike me as one of those bands which really requires a substantial audience to act as a foil for their dramatics. As things are, the show never quite heats up to melting point, but there's enough to convince me that good ideas are at work here. And then, a re-run of Rezurex, playing their second set, and as far as I can tell giving us a no-frills reprise of their previous Knitting Factory performance. They're still as accessible and - dare I say it - as poppy as before, leavening their rough 'n' ready psychobilly-isms with the easy grace of natural born pop-punks. There's a bit of clowning with a toy ray gun, plenty of full-tilt whumpalong basslines, and the guitar riffs gallop off into the sunset. Rezurex aren't a band with a particularly incisive cutting edge, it must be said - they're simply too easy-going and bouncy for that. But if you fancy a bit of a punkabilly jolly-up, they do the business every time. Curiously, Frank The Baptist doesn't appear to be very jolly this evening. The good humour which underpinned his set at the Knitting Factory last night seems to have evaporated somewhat. It's not that he's exactly come over all dour or grim this time round, but he's certainly in a more downbeat, taciturn mood. The quips and amusing tales which he sprinkled through the first set do not feature tonight - in fact, aside from announcing the song titles in a businesslike, let's-get-on-with-it fashion, and wishing us a happy Halloween (twice, as if he can't think of anything else to say) we hardly get a word out of him. Now, that's not to say that this is a big problem, or anything - in fact, when you've got a repertoire as strong as Frank The Baptist has, you could say that between-song banter is surplus to requirements anyway. Certainly, songs like 'Come Home' and 'Letters To Earth' cut through as insistently as ever. But there's no 'Harlot Of Nations' this time, and a distinct feeling that on this occasion the band have elected to play things very straight. Do the hits, and do 'em good. But no frills. When it's all done, it's a brief thanks and goodnight, and the band are gone. Earlier, in the bar, between fulminations at the drinks prices, I'd encountered Lucas Lanthier wearing a beekeeper's hat and veil. He seemed a little worried. 'Look,' he said, 'I'm wearing my veil with a short sleeved shirt. That means I'm not fully protected.' I was bemused. Protected against what? Were Cinema Strange intending to unleash a swarm of killer bees during their performance tonight? I wouldn't put it past them. As it turns out, the band content themselves with unleasing a killer set of punk rock rampage, everything turned up to eleven, the songs roaring past like speeded-up thunderstorms. The arch theatricality which is usually a central part of the Cinema Strange experience is tonight unceremoniously bounced down to a supporting role. This time it's all about velocity and noise. We get a show that acts as a salutary reminder that, when the inclination strikes, Cinema Strange can rock with the loudest of them. And yes, Lucas plays the entire set in his beekeeper's veil. Michael is an off-duty mime, while Daniel still looks like he's been dragged through a field hospital backwards (and this time, he's got the blood splatters to prove it). But this set is all about bashing out a racket. It's Cinema Strange reminding us that for all their tangents and concepts and excursions into the artfully surreal, when it comes down to it they're a guitar-bass-drums-vocals rock band, and they know how to make those ingredients come at us with a kick. At this point, something strange happens. All of a sudden, the audience - which up to now has been the usual motley assortment of deathrockers, post-punkers, goths and 'billies of one stripe or another - changes to a more straightforward party crowd. Through the doors they come, as if they've been waiting for this moment. There are people in sports shirts and blue jeans, fancy-dress Halloween revellers in novelty-shop zombie costumes, even a few people in suits. It would seem that our next band, World Inferno Friendship Society, has brought in their own fans - and they're a distinctly mainstream bunch. I'm a little taken aback by this, for Drop Dead's advance publicity had given me the impression that this band was some sort of art-folk troubadour outfit, all high concepts and low comedy, full of mischief and mayhem, like a cross between the Tiger Lillies and the Pogues. I'd anticipated that World Inferno Friendship Society might draw in their own following, for they certainly don't seem to have any particular connection with, or presence in, the deathrock-and-related zone. But this crowd looks like they've come straight from the office party. And if these are the fans, what, I wonder with a certain trepidation, is the band going to be like? Well, I'm here to tell you that World Inferno Friendship Society are an excruciatingly 'zany' good-time jazz-rock band, all parping horns and bounding rhythms, every musician on stage hurling themselves around as if they're under contract to act the goat. I stand, I watch, I can't believe my eyes. I certainly can't decide which of the band's umpteen members is most annoying. Perhaps it's the percussionist, in her (please God let it be) ironic 80s dress, making such a meal out of hitting two drums you'd think she was doing something really, really difficult. Or maybe it's the frontman, blandly attired in a suit, hollering away with all the hyped-up psuedo-enthusiasm of a used car dealer who's only two SUVs away from his sales target. The relentlessly wacky-happy style of the band grates on my nerves; the way every song just has to have a big, brassy horn break wears me down. There's no edge, not even a unique selling point. It's just good-time big-band rockin' jazz for the office party crowd. And yes, the crowd (or, at least, that part of the crowd that has come in specially to see the band) is having a wonderful time, and I suspect this is the reason World Inferno Friendship Society ended up on the Drop Dead bill. It's their bespoke fanbase that got them the gig. Those extra people the band pulled in - who would almost certainly never have shown up for any other act - are probably the factor that's enabled Drop Dead to pay for the Avalon club tonight. Well, I suppose there's good business sense at work there, even if the avowed aesthetic of the festival has suddenly taken a nosedive as a result. World Inferno Friendship Society are nothing more than an incongruous endurance test - but they are also the sound of Drop Dead paying the rent. Now, here's a tale. When I was a teenage punk in about 1981, I had a poster of Nina Hagen on the wall by my bed. I think I'd cut it out of Punk's Not Dead, or some similar trashy magazine of the time. In my personal pin-up stakes, it was always between Nina Hagen and Debbie Harry, and Nina - who always looked slightly, delightfully, dangerous, like she'd set fire to your carpet if you brought her home for tea - won every time. I was equally captivated by the way her music sounded so gloriously eccentric, as if it had beamed down from outer space straight into her head. Bewitched and infatuated, I hatched a cunning plan to move to Berlin, where I'd join the Nina Hagen band as a virtuoso guitarist (the fact that I couldn't play a note was a detail I brushed aside with a cavalier disregard for pesky reality). I'd embark on a wild and passionate fling with Nina herself. We'd set up home in a supercool apartment, overlooking the Berlin wall. We'd hold court in the art-punk scene. David Bowie would come round for tea...and Nina could set fire to the carpet. Well, time passes. Water under the bridge, all that stuff. Both Nina and myself are respectable middle-aged people these days. For my part, I've abandoned foolish teenage fantasies, and I no longer have pin-up posters of kewl punk chyks beside my bed. I have a kewl punk chyk in my bed, because I married one...but that's another story. Nevertheless, I'm still a great fan of Nina Hagen. And all real life circumstances aside, in the pithy phrase of Ali G - I still definitely would. All of this is by way of introducing the unchallenged headliner of the Drop Dead festival - none other than the divine Ms Hagen. This is, of course, not the first time we've seen her at this event, but on this occasion she's not reciting mantras with a view to inducing other states of consciousness. Tonight, she's in all-stops-pulled-out punk rock diva mode, fronting a band of dressed-down but impressively effective musos who clearly know the songs inside out and are happy to kick 'em around a little. But, of course, no matter how great the band might be, when Nina Hagen is on stage you're only going to be looking in one direction, right? Bolstered by the presence of the world's largest lyric sheets (it would appear that Nina writes her songs on lengths of old wallpaper) and a foot switch with which, at strategic points, she soaks her voice with reverb and just as quickly dries it out again, Nina Hagen dominates the proceedings with equal quantities of take-no-shit strop and kooky playfulness. The band is tight, the sound is a dense mass of avant-rock grinding and swirling, the set list jumps all over Nina's greatest hits like an excitable flea, and the audience jumps all over the moshpit. 'New York' - originally a full-on disco number, but tonight sounding rather good in its rock band guise, wins over anyone who has so far remained unconvinced. I'm sure Nina is enjoying the irony of singing those cheesy disco lyrics to an audience of deathrockers: 'We are going to another disco/Disco after disco/Shaking our hair to the disco rap/AMPM, Pyramid, Roxy, Mudd Club, Danceteria/The newest club is opening up'. I wonder if there are a few New Yorkers here tonight who recall that list of long-gone clubs with fond nostalgia? 'TV Glotzer' is, perhaps, a more appropriate tune in that it's Nina's own reworking of the Tubes' 'White Punks On Dope', and I'm sure there's a gleam in her eye as she surveys her audience with cool appraisal while the song blatters along. The crowd responds by upping the boisterousness levels, to the point where someone leaps on stage and makes off with Nina's lyric sheets. Unfazed, she shakes her head in mild amusement, and remarks, half to herself and not entirely accurately, 'But there's fifty years of work there!' 'UFO' is a fine slice of rock 'n' roll mysticism, 'African Reggae' is as gloriously crazed as only a jaunty, danceable number about female circumcision can be, but it's 'Born To Die In Berlin' that nearly reduces me to a gibbering fanboy. Staking out her territory half way between pathos and vainglorious, Nina delivers the song with a cracked passion that can't fail to collide head-on with any passing human heart. And, of course, there's a whole other level of meaning in there for New York, too. The song was co-written by Nina and Dee Dee Ramone, and the Ramones recorded it on their final album, Adios Amigos. I'm sure the song's presence in Nina's set tonight is no accident. It's a deliberate cap-doff to New York punk, for anyone who wants to pick up on the connection. Whipping up the theatrics now as she heads for the home straight, Nina favours us with a towering, magesterial version of 'Ave Maria', which serves as a reminder that for all her punk rock caterwauling, growls and shrieks, she actually has a genuinely great voice, and in another life could have been a star of the opera. (Nina herself would probably assert with absolute certainty that in another life, she is.) The audience, naturally, will not let the evening end without encores, so the band cranks up again and Nina returns to give us her own rendition of Frank Sinatra's 'New York, New York', and if that sounds like a rather hammy parting gesture, believe me you ain't heard nuthin' till you've experienced that hoary old anthem given the flamethrower treatment by Nina Hagan at her most impassioned. Afterwards, there's an almost palpable feeling of a journey completed, an experience shared, a real show brought to a conclusion. Nina Hagen was worth the trip to Drop Dead by herself. Beautifully mad mother of punk, mistress of showmanship, a rock 'n' roll opera queen with an endless repertoire of goofy expressions and weird voices, the inside of Nina Hagen's head must be a strange and colourful place indeed. Much like the interior of the Avalon when Nina Hagen is on stage... Once Nina Hagen is off stage, we go abruptly from the sublime to the ridiculous. The DJ takes over, and from the tunes he selects it's clear that for the last few hours of the night the Drop Dead Festival is being unceremoniously repositioned as a mainstream New York Halloween party. Retro-chart cheese is on the playlist, and when 'I Eat Cannibals' by Toto Coelo comes up, I decide it's time to say my farewells and head on out for the last time. So, was Drop Dead 2005 a good experience? Yes, indeed it was. Sure, the four-day stretch of the festival felt like a bit of a marathon at times, and the way the fourth day at the Avalon was deliberately skewed towards a more mainstream crowd perhaps demonstrates that there just aren't enough deathrockers, goths, punks and psychobillies to allow the festival to grow naturally. It can only get bigger by becoming different; by moving away from the original ethos - and that, of course, opens up the potential for some interesting customer relations issues when the deathrockers discover that 'their' festival isn't entirely for them any more. Occasional techie glitches bugged me: the obvious lack of a lighting technician at both venues (or at least someone to push the faders on the lighting desks up beyond the 'feeble glimmer' level) was frustrating and annoying, especially as it's one of those not-rocket-science jobs that anyone can do. But for all that, the entire event hung together admirably well, and it all had the feel of a festival that's starting to get into a genuine annual stride. Best day? In some ways, I reckon Day One on the Knitting Factory main stage did it for me - the array of acts who were more akin to performance artists rather than straightforward bands was brave and intriguing, and demonstrated that you don't have to churn out standard rock 'n' roll in order to have a good time. Best bands? Sixteens, Cinema Strange, Frank The Baptist (first set!) and Scarlet's Remains all get glittery stars, while Nina Hagen gets the Golden Microphone Award for being streets ahead (no, make that several blocks ahead) of the rest. The verdict? Simple. Drop Dead 2005 - good stuff. Drop Dead 2006? Bring it on! This way for... Drop Dead links For more photos from the Drop Dead Festival, find the bands by name here.
Home \| About \| Live \| CDs & Vinyl \| Interviews \| Photos \| Archive \| Links \| Email \| Livejournal \| Myspace \| Last FM
Back to top	Page credits: Review, photos and construction by Michael Johnson. Nemesis logo by Antony Johnston, Red N version by Mark Rimmell.