Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Ah Zut!

Once again Blogger the Booger has struck, and an entire long winded post was erased.
So here I am again, making up the difference.
Again (even though you're not aware of it,) I shall apologize for not having my picts ready. I have no idea how to get them from flickr, nor do I care, you'll just have to wait to see the silliness that was The Edwardian World's Faire.
But I can tell you all about it.
It stormed Friday night, I narrowly missed plowing into a car parked sideways on the freeway in the city, and had lovely fun hydroplaning in my truck.
We arrived safe and sound.
My partner in crime dressed in a dapper second hand find of a tux and a bowler (borrowed from the husbeast). Donned eye makeup to suite, and glasses for $1.50. Myself in my long gored skirt, and longer underskirt, cute little jacket that is such a timely cut, and the commissioned mini top hat for the painter boy with the mohawk (yeah still waiting to trade).
We stood in line for some time, made great acquaintance with the ladies behind us, and all the while My skirts were hiked up around my knees. We managed to stay relatively dry, and when the que reached the box office I came to the realization that I had taken my ID out and left it on my coffee table. Yeah that was real bad, but thankfully the manager let us in, I was just not allowed to drink. I had planned on not drinking anyway, so I really didn't mind that I couldn't besides, the bartender on the top floor at the Great American Music Hall made the best Shirley Temples.
The people in line were fascinating, the costumes meticulous and so creative. Inside it was certainly a World's Faire. There were a few vendors, Dark garden Corsets, a milliner, a women's designer, some period piece sellers (antiques and knockoffs), and the mask maker from Dicken's. Not to mention the wonderful workings of Kinetic Steam Works.
Certainly the best of the Edwardian World's Faire was the lineup of bands and acts. Kitsch songstresses with silly songs began the event off right. Then came another band or so, then some more acts, Edward Gorey did a few stop motion (actors) pieces with poems of the gorest endeavoring. There was the City Circus with a bunch of children that just baffled the crowd with their agility and accomplishments. A real cruddy Goth band, the Unextrodinary Gentlemen. But the evening finished off with a wonderful local band, Rube Waddell. They were worth the wait, and exactly what I was hoping for in a band. See I have out of the ordinary taste in music. My favorite instrument is the accordian, and well the more raucous and the more wild the musicians the better. Imagine Tom Waits on crack (wait he already is...) with a toxic waltz vibe, all the while paying tribute to American folk using saw blades, and any number of brass instruments. They were great.
If you will just imagine with me real quick, ok, clear your minds...
better?
Ok so imagine a quartet on stage, a large gathering of wonderfully clad persons gaggeling and giggeling. The music begins, with a good quick real, feet start thumping the old wooden floors of the Music Hall move your being into the beat of the music. Your partner, a well clad man in a tux looks at you, grabs your hand and does the best impersonation of a toxic waltz in a square two foot area. Spinning around and around, laughing giddy, not even feeling the least bit embarrassed as this is just how it should be, two old chums cutting a rug and letting their cares fly in the face of the wind. The dancing was great, and our dancing begot other dancing by other carefree spirits. Reeling and jigging, pounding and thumping with the beat of a misbegotten ill behaved raucous group. That is the purpose of the Edwardian Ball, of "the genre that doesn't exist"
Sepiachord is the "genre that doesn't exist".
It is to music what "steampunk" is to literature and cinema: something that looks back to the past to comment on the present while looking sideways at the future. A cubist aural experience.
As goth & glam are the bastards of David Bowie, Sepiachord is the made from the genetic material sown by Tom Waits.
Sepiachord is assembled like a clockwork orchestra, from such elements of musicSinister Circus, Cabaret Macabre, Chamber Pop, Organic Goth, Celtic/Gypsy Punk, Mutant Americana, Ghost Town Country
It is the music our grandparents or great-grandparents would have listened to, if they were as off-set as we are.
Taken from the Sepiachord.com site. It explains the sentiment a bit well for my liking.
Tomorrow I'll give you all the lovely low down tidbits from the millinery class.

1 comment:

Seamstrix said...

Fun! Yeah, I really want to go next year. I think this could inspire a new costume...