Friday September 3 - bands in order of appearance:
Six Gun Republic
The Memphis Morticians
The Rabies
Speed Crazy
Deadbolt
Ausgang
Cult Of The Psychic Fetus

In a pot-holed side street somewhere in downtown Manhattan, people with weird hairstyles are gathering. Not that there’s anything particularly astonishing about the hairstyles in this context: this is, after all, New York City, where sporting a hairstyle with attitude is almost the law. Nor, for an exactly similar reason, is there anything astonishing about the condition of the road surface, come to that. But this crowd is here with a purpose. It’s getting on for opening time at the Knitting Factory, and that means the Drop Dead festival is about to kick off.

What is the Drop Dead festival? An event dedicated to all that is horrorshow in post-punk music, that’s what. The official programme of events - a mini-fanzine assembled in time-honoured cut ‘n’ paste style - makes a point of casting the genre-net as widely as possible. Psychobilly, deathrock, gothabilly and batcave are all namechecked on the cover, alongside a bunch of other genres that I’ve never heard of - and which I can’t help suspecting were made up on the spot. Monster surf, anyone?  Funeral jive? Devilish garage? Gothic boogie? Curiously, the umbrella term under which all this stuff shelters - the expression ‘post-punk’ itself - is not mentioned. Ah, what the hell. In matters such as these, Billy Joel is my guru. It’s all rock ‘n’ roll to me.

The Knitting Factory is not the Enormodome. But, as a two-stage, three-level venue it’s substantially larger than the venue for Drop Dead 2003, which took place in CBGB - a legendary club with all the right punkish credentials, but definitely somewhat on the small side. This year’s festival has also been expanded in time as well as space. It’s now a three-day extravaganza, rather than 2003’s one-day event. That means, of course, that there are many more bands lined up to play this year than last. Over 40 of ‘em, if you’re counting, and while the bill seems a little vague at times - several bands which were announced in advance mysteriously fail to show, while several other bands which were not announced do play - you certainly can’t quibble with the quantity. On close inspection, a good chunk of that impressive 40-plus band line-up comprises psychobilly outfits from NYC and beyond, and these, of course, attract their own audience. It’s the influx of the psychobilly crowd that has made this year’s move into a larger venue possible, and while the marriage between the deathrockers and the psychobillies may be a bit of a shotgun wedding in some respects, at least it’s a better match than, say, the EBM scene would be.

We’re in. The festival starts without ceremony. A band suddenly appears on the main stage. They announce themselves as Six Gun Republic, which momentarily confuses me since they aren’t listed on the official bill. It seems they’re one of the added-at-the-last-minute acts. It’s early, and there isn’t a particularly huge crowd in the venue yet, but this doesn’t seem to dampen the band’s enthusiasm. They’re an amiable rockabilly outfit, clattering through some fairly straightforward rockin’ tunes, and if they adhere a little too closely to the rules of their genre to display much individuality, as a soundtrack to the early-evening rituals of meeting friends and getting the beers in, they’ll do.

They’re followed by...another rockabilly outfit. A collection of gentlemen in black suits arrives on stage. These are the Memphis Morticians, who in spite of their name come from right here in New York. By now, the venue is filling up, although it’s noticeable that the overall crowd splits into  two distinct audiences: the deathrockers and the ‘billy fans, without much crossover between them. At any rate, most of the deathrock-ish punters take one look at the Memphis Morticians and head downstairs to the second stage where horror-punks Kastle Grey Skull are about to start up, leaving the Morticians to play to what I suspect is essentially their regular crowd of home-town fans. The band cook up another regular-flavoured rockabilly stew, albeit a little heavier on the spooky seasoning; there’s a load of reverb on the vocals for that down in the morgue at midnight feel, and even a sudden microphone breakdown doesn’t stop the band’s flow. The bass, I note, is metal. Not metal in the Judas Priest manner (although that would be...interesting): it’s a conventional double bass in all respects except it’s made of metal, not wood. It seems to produce the usual plunk-plunk-plunk sound, however, which is a slight let down. I’d hoped that the band would use their unusual instrumentation to do something off-message with that ol’ rockabilly racket, but like so many bands in this musical area they stick closely to the blueprint. So, we’ll file ‘em under fun, but no surprises. Nice suits, mind.

Much as I’m partial to the odd bit of rockabilly, I’m ready for something else now. Fortunately, I get it. Third act on stage is The Rabies, a band about whom I know nothing - but there’s something about that name which hints that here’s an outfit that isn’t going to play a set of AOR power ballads. And so it proves. The Rabies are a bunch of lo-fi, low-life glam-punks, fronted by a stomping, snarling mistress-of-strop who, I discover to my delight, calls herself Lexi Lawsuit. Now, I ask you: how can you fail to like a band with a singer called Lexi Lawsuit? She grimaces and frets and hollers through a set of fuzzed-out ramalama punk songs, fixing the audience with a baleful stare throughout, while pacing the stage in her don’t-mess-with-me boots. A guitarist hidden in a blank white mask (he’s probably a bank manager in real life) slashes out the essential ragged but assertive riffs, while over on the opposite side of the stage a riot grrl in red PVC thunks out a low-slung rumble from a low-slung bass. Every number is a gleeful blare of noise, but in amongst The Rabies’ ramshackle rattle lurk real songs, and arrangements which have more detail in them than the band’s full-on punka blast might lead you to believe at first.  Note, if you will, those nifty little horror movie soundtrack keyboard lines, which inject a bit of cartoon spookiness at strategic intervals - a neat touch, and not something yer average bunch of horror-punks would necessarily think of. Yes, this is more like it: the spirit of Drop Dead boiled up and distilled into a slug of sonic firewater. It’s official.  Round here, we like The Rabies. Memo to those nice people at Pagan Love Songs and Pity For Monsters: check this lot out. It’s early days - The Rabies seem to be a relatively new band who haven’t gigged much beyond their home area of NYC yet - but if you’re wondering which US band will be the next to give the European scene a good blasting, I think I might just have found them.

Now we’re four bands in. Who’s next? I see yet another double bass being hauled on stage. Hmmm. Looks like we’re in the rockabilly zone again. That means Drop Dead is currently running at a rate of 75% rockabilly, which I’d say is perhaps a little too high for comfort. If we get just another collection of cheery quiff-merchants merrily trotting out all the regular sounds, I’m going to the bar. Fortunately, my misgivings are unfounded, because the band which appears before us is Speed Crazy. They may sport the regular three-piece ‘billy line-up, but they do something decidedly different with it. From the kick-off of the very first song, it’s clear that Speed Crazy certainly don’t believe in treating that hoary ol’ 50s aesthetic with any surplus respect. They conjure up a mad blast of noise that’s as fast and loud as a dragster, a great rush of a Ramones-ish rampage that seems utterly incongruous coming from a three-piece band. I find myself looking around for the extra guitarist, convinced that just one guitar can’t create *that* massive, overdriven sound. Nope, what you see is what you get. Three people, three instruments, and a big, big, sound. Speed Crazy’s secret weapon is their stand-up bass player, who spends much of the set whupping and pummelling and hauling her bass about the stage like she’s breaking in a bronco. She jumps on it, picks it up like it was a guitar, and even plays it behind her head. It’s as if she’s learned how to play a double bass by watching Jimi Hendrix videos. In all of this craziness, her pounding rhythm never stops, and she even takes time out to provide an occasional lead vocal. Good stuff, and surprising stuff, too: proof that individuality and a no-shit contemporary attitude can co-exist with a musical style in which roots and rules are sometimes treated with too much reverence.

A trio of good ol’ boys mill about on stage, setting stuff up, strapping on guitars. This is Deadbolt. It’s as if ZZ Top’s roadies decided to form a band. They look like they’ve just barrelled in from the local bikers’ clubhouse. I bet if I glanced outside I’d see their chopped hogs, in ratbike black, lined up in the street. Their sound matches their look - a dirty ol’ blues grind, guitars riffing like a V8 ticking over. But there’s more to Deadbolt than you might at first discern; they’re more than just an oily bunch of rockers in leather and shades. They play it all very straight, never letting on by so much as the twitch of an eyebrow that there’s anything remotely humourous about their show, and yet at intervals throughout the set they inject little vignettes of silliness, odd flashes of knowingly parodic tomfoolery. The guitarist, maintaining an utterly deadpan expression all the while, produces a can of hairspray and touches up his quiff. He casts a critical eye over his band-mates’ hairstyles, and kindly offers them a swift bit of hair-maintenance too. At times, the band simply stop playing to allow a burst of a pre-recorded 50s crooner to erupt like a ghost in the wires, whereupon the drummer stands up, grabs a light, and sings into it like a manic Elvis impersonator. Then, after a few bars of this, the band simply swing back into their low-rider blues as if nothing unusual has happened. It’s all a bone-dry parody that also works if you take it at face value - and, looking around at the audience, I’m not at all sure how many people get the joke, and how many are just rockin’ along for the ride. Not that it really matters. Deadbolt, masters of poker-faced rock ‘n’ roll pastiche that they are, work both ways.

I suspect that there are only two people in the entire Knitting Factory tonight who recall Ausgang from their previous life as contenders on the mid-eighties UK post-punk scene. One is DJ Cavey Nick; the other is Uncle Nemesis. I’m sure neither of us expected to see Ausgang again - certainly not in New York, 17 years after the band split up. It just goes to show - old bands never die, they just pop up again in unexpected places. Filling in those missing 17 years is not an easy task: only Max, Ausgang’s vocalist, seems to have kept up any involvement in music. Mick Mercer’s Gothic Rock book of 1991 relates Max’s post-Ausgang excursions into funk-metal, and his Hex Files book of 1996 briefly namechecks Seventh Wave, a Levellers-style crusty-hippy band which featured Max on vocals and acoustic guitar. I remember Seventh Wave very well, partly because of their rip-roaring cover of The Mob’s ‘Witch Hunt’, but also from a few gigs they played with Inkubus Sukkubus in the mid-90s. A side effect of the rise of the Inkies was that any band which seemed at least vaguely sympathetic to the Pagan cause was more or less co-opted into the UK goth scene at that time, and Seventh Wave were one of these. I often wondered if Max found it ironic that he’d come back into goth by another entrance, several years after he’d left it. It must be said that you’d never know, to look at him in those days, that he’d ever been a spiky young post-punker. I remember him bouncing cheerily around the stage at the Marquee in his blue denim dungarees, looking like a new age traveller version of Uncle Jesse from the Dukes of Hazzard.

Fast forward to 2004, and Ausgang are back. They look better than any 80s vintage band has any right to look, sporting as they do a stripped-down, contemporary, rock ‘n’ roll gangster image. The mohawks and big hair of the 80s are gone - and so, I’m relieved to note, have the blue denim dungarees.  This is a band that’s clearly more about the here and now than any retro schtick. But before we proceed, let me clank the caution bell. I don’t want to piss on anyone’s party here, but the way in which the US deathrock scene seems to have instantly hailed the reformed Ausgang as conquering heroes before they’d actually conquered anything strikes me as a little odd.  Awarding the band top star status before the 2004 version has even proved itself to be any good is surely just a little previous. Maybe it’s because I was there that I’m not quite so starry-eyed about 80s stuff as those who weren’t. I sometimes feel the way the US scene fetishises the British post-punk era rather misses the point. It wasn’t all good, you know. Some of it, in fact, was rather crap. And call me a cynical old bastard if you will, but no band is going to get any back-slaps from me just because they have a bit of old-skool history behind them. All of which means that as Ausgang launch into their set to roars of approval from the crowd, I’m standing there, arms folded, wearing my most implacable ‘OK, then - impress me!’ expression.

And bugger me but they do. Ausgang tear into a set of songs that sound as crisp and fresh as new laundry. It’s all in the rhythm: a huge great pounding rumble of bass and drums, like the cavalry coming over the hill.  The guitar stabs and thrusts, and, over the top of everything there’s that crazy vocal, half way between a yelp and a yell. It’s like a tribal war dance breaking out before our very ears and eyes, and I don’t mean in any contrived Adam Ant novelty-gimmick kind of way. Nope, Ausgang slam into their mad rhythmic tarantella like they’re psyching themselves up for a head hunting expedition, pushing and pulsing as if intent on inducing other states of consciousness. The band’s visual identity is weirdly at odds with the thump and pound of the music, in that aside from vocalist Max himself, an energetic master of ceremonies throughout, nobody moves much on stage.  There’s certainly no gratuitous leaping around, as you might expect from the insistent urge of the music. Instead, the assembled musicians remain as impassive as an army band, generating a stirring sound while contriving to remain unstirred themselves. There’s an ‘experimental’ moment of bowed guitar - not, perhaps, an idea that can be taken too seriously in these post-Spinal Tap times - but for the most part it’s a good old bash through Ausgang’s greatest hits, and that’s just what this audience requires. Yes, I think this is a comeback - if indeed it *is* a comeback, not just a temporary regrouping for a few gigs - that’s going to work. Consider my cynicism well and truly trampled underfoot.

Ausgang’s exhibition-standard thrash through their big beats would surely be a fine way to top off the first day of Drop Dead. But they’re not the headliners. That honour goes to Cult Of The Psychic Fetus. I’ve heard a lot about this band: they’ve been represented as an impressively gung-ho bunch of psycho-rockers, but I’ve never seen them in the flesh nor heard a note of their music. All I know is the reputation. So, I station myself at the front and await blast off. Here they come - a collection of purposeful rock blokes toting guitars, and, on vocals, a man who looks like he’s taking time off from his job as the butler at Castle Dracula. The band eases into a downtempo spooky croon of a song - aha, I think to myself, they’re lulling us into a false sense of security; any minute they’ll hit the gas and really start rockin’. But the second song is also a downtempo spooky croon, the vocals an indecipherable mumble in the mix. I’m confused.  Where’s the bunch of madcap rockers I’d been led to believe I’d encounter?  The set continues, and it seems every song is a kind of lounge lizard-ish rock ‘n’ roll ballad, the vocals smoothly oozing out like spilled treacle while the guitarists stand back in the semi-darkness of the underlit stage, strumming their instruments with all the indifference of the rehearsal room. It’s...just a bit underwhelming, I’m afraid. There doesn’t seem to be any real energy on stage - just a detatched, indifferent desire to trundle through the set with as little effort as possible. If you’ve never seen Dave Vanian’s Phantom Chords I suppose you might reckon Cult Of The Psychic Fetus to be fairly good, but they really don’t catch fire for me. It’s a bit of a Zombina And The Skeletones experience, in a way: a band which seems to have a big publicity effort behind it - or, at least, plenty of fans and friends who push the line that here’s a band that really rocks - and then you see ‘em for yourself, and realise that, in fact, they don’t.  Nope, sorry, Cult Of The Psychic Fetus can’t hold my attention. It’s now the early hours of the morning, and there’s a whole other day of bands to catch in a few hours, as the second day of Drop Dead commences. Time to get some sleep, I think. I leave while the band are still on stage. Maybe they cut loose and caught fire at the end of their set: maybe they injected some speed and passion as soon as I was out of the door, and brought down the house with a vintage performance of rock ‘n’ roll madness. But you know what? I doubt it.

Out into Leonard Street, then, and uptown through the eerily silent night to the hotel. New York may be the city that never sleeps, but the area around the Knitting Factory certainly seems to take a nap in the small hours. We’ll be back to do it all again tomorrow...

Drop Dead Festival - Part 2
Knitting Factory, New York City
Friday September 3 to Sunday September 5 2004
~review and photos by Uncle Nemesis

Saturday September 4 - bands in order of appearance:
Funeral Crashers
Ghouls Night Out
Malice In Leatherland
The Brides
The Empire Hideous
Bella Morte
Cinema Strange
Skeletal Family
 

Day two of Drop Dead, and a crowd of dishevelled deathrockers drifts in to the Knitting Factory to check out the early bands. Everyone’s looking a little bleary of eye and green about the gills, and it’s not just deathrock war paint. Yesterday’s exertions have, it seems, taken their toll. But, ready or not, here comes the first of those bands: New York’s very own Funeral Crashers.

Now, here is a confession. Sitting here in London, writing up the festival some time after the event, I find to my alarm that I have no memory of the Funeral Crashers’ sound. My photos show a singer who seems to be doing a Robert Smith-ish thing, but whether this influence is reflected in the music I cannot say at this distance. My hastily-scribbled notes, beer-stained and half-illegible, contain no clues; in fact, they contain no mention at all of the band. Somehow, the Funeral Crashers managed to pass straight through my head without touching the sides. Sorry, Funeral Crashers. But better to admit my lapse than to bluff my way along with some bland generalisations. We shall move swiftly on to the first band of the day that I actually *can* remember.

We also move downstairs at this point, to the Knitting Factory’s second, smaller, stage. As a matter of fact, you have to half-close your eyes and suspend your disbelief somewhat to accept the small triangle of raised floor in one corner of the downstairs bar as a stage, but this minimal platform plays host to a full range of bands throughout Drop Dead’s three days. Today’s opening act is a collection of rock ‘n’ roll girls called Ghouls Night Out, and if you don’t know that’s a Misfits song title you should hand back your deathrock card forthwith. The band’s choice of name hints at where they’re coming from. The band also tell us where they’re coming from - Boston, to be exact, and the traffic was bad. They’re a combination of vintage influences topped off with a punk rock seasoning, and they sound like they’ve stepped out of a production of Grease as arranged by Joe Strummer. It’s that 50s rockette thing with a bit of punky verve, and it’s done well. But I’d guess that Ghouls Night Out are a very new band - I’d even hazard that this is one of their first gigs - because they seem diffident and restrained in front of an audience, concentrating on getting the music right rather than putting on a show. They’re cool but they don’t quite catch fire, if you’ll allow me to mix my metaphors in public. I’d like to see the band again after they’ve got, say, another year’s worth of gigs under their guitar straps, because then I think by then they’ll have loosened up and be ready to rock out with a bit more flamboyance. As it is, we’ll file them under ‘potential’.

Now, let’s take some 90s alt-rock influences (Soundgarden, Reef, and other suchlike post-grunge heoes). Mix with some virtuoso-muso 70s prog  (King Crimson, Rush). Dress in fishnet, apply spiky/mohawk hairstyles. And hey presto! You’ve got our next band on stage: hot deathrock contenders Malice In Leatherland. Or, at least, that seems to be the theory. Malice In Leatherland (a name which, I must remark in passing, sounds to me like an Agatha Christie murder mystery set in a gay club) certainly have the image nailed down, but musically they’re a world away from the post-punk aesthetic which informs the Drop Dead festival as a whole. Check out those vocals: a Chris Cornell-ish stentorian croon that threatens to turn every song into a lighters-in-the-air power ballad. Check out those basslines, darting about the rhythm like playful kittens. And check out that guitar, giving it the freaky solo thing like it’s 1973 all over again. Oh, and the time changes. Yep, on occasions Malice In Leatherland indulge in those classic proggy time-changes. I wouldn’t be surprised if they refer to these bursts of differing tempos as ‘movements’, as if their songs are mini-symphonies. If all this makes the band sound like an odd choice for a festival like this - well, yes, they are. Their natural audience, surely, would be a combination of chin-stroking prog-heads and headbangin’ metal kidz. Here, playing essentially pre-punk music to a post-punk audience, they come across as the mother of all non-sequiturs. But, weirdly, Malice In Leatherland don’t seem to notice the disconnection. Maybe they think it’s an image thing: if you’ve got the right hairstyles, then you’re automatically in. It’s as if they haven’t realised that the post-punk aesthetic is supposed to extend to the music as well. Oh, they’re good, no doubt about that. They’re fast and slick and confident, and, I’m sure, could effortlessly hold their own at a big metal show. If Iron Maiden are looking for an opening act for their next tour of the world’s Enormodomes, here’s a band who could step right up and handle it. But to encounter music like this at the Drop Dead festival is quite bizarrely incongruous. It’s a bit like turning up to your favourite vegetarian restaurant and finding they’ve put steak pie on the menu.

Up to the main stage again. Here come The Brides. On a bill liberally splattered with New York bands, The Brides are probably the most New York-ish, in that they’ve got that new-wave-filtered-through-sixties-pop sound - which I always associate with the late 70s onwards New York scene - neatly skewered. It’s as if someone locked them in CBGB overnight with just the first two Blondie albums (you know, the ones recorded before Mike Chapman turned Blondie into slick superstars) for company. They’re speedy and punchy and they rattle through their songs like subway trains. They have those endearingly cheesy keyboard lines squawking through everything, and that classic class of ‘79 guitar sound. The frontman even sports a vintage Jimmy Destri hairstyle. The only incongruous visual note is struck by the drummer, who looks like he’s taking time off from a doom metal band - but, fortunately, doesn’t play like that. All this doesn’t mean that The Brides come across as some kind of retro outfit, mind. They have a quirky but no-shit brio about them that’s entirely here and now. In fact, if I had to predict which out of all the bands on the Drop Dead bill might go on to fame and greatness beyond the confines of ‘the scene’, then The Brides would be that band. In these post-Franz Ferdinand times, their look is very contemporary (well, give or take the odd doom metal drummer) and their sound grabs the post-post-punk zeitgeist and takes it for a gleeful pogo around the floor. I’m sure it wouldn’t take much convincing to make the pop kids of today fall in love with ‘em. This being a home-town gig, the band have plenty of fans down the front to dance and yell and laugh at the between-song quips, but I dare say The Brides could whip up that kind of enthusiastic reaction from any audience. They have that essential spark.

OK, who’s this talking? “It’s got to be captivating enough to crack people in the face like a sledgehammer. And once you’ve got their attention by breaking their faces with that sledgehammer, you continue to bash their skulls in with every ounce of attention you can bash them with.” That’s Myke Hideous, frontman and main man with our next band, The Empire Hideous, giving us his take on live performance. Those words are, as you may well have noticed, quoted on the StarVox concert reviews index page. I’ve never felt particularly comfortable with that quote: in the first place, there’s something rather unpleasant about all that violent imagery, metaphorical though it might be. And in the second place, to regard a performance as nothing more than an opportunity to bludgeon the audience with a virtual blunt instrument is surely a limited and one-dimensional view. For my money, the best performers employ subtlety and seduction as much as sheer force. They can take us on a shamanistic journey to somewhere else, to the point where being dropped back into reality at the end of the show comes as something of a shock. It’s not just about some sort of bash-the-bastards attitude. But hey. Let’s give Myke Hideous a chance to give his sledgehammer a twirl. I stand in anticipation as the band takes the stage, skull all ready to be bashed in.

My first impression is that The Empire Hideous are one of those bands that’s all about the frontman. The musicians are the traditional bunch of heads-down-keep-it-real musos, dressed in scruffy black, keeping back from the limelight. The entire focus of the band is Myke Hideous himself, looming over the audience in what looks like his Dad’s old gardening hat.  Curiously, he seems to employ the hat as a prop to shield himself from the audience - keeping the brim pulled down, while for much of the set adopting a head-tilted-up stance at the mic, directing most of his attention to the lighting rig. Only relatively infrequently does he abandon these ploys and actually make eye contact with the crowd: by relentlessly stalking him with the camera I manage to capture one or two of these moments on film. It’s all a bit odd, because the occasions on which he does eyeball the audience with a cold and baleful stare are small moments of drama, allowing us little glimpses of the real charisma of the man, which, bizarrely, he seems to keep strictly rationed. The music is a darkly dramatic rock blast over which the vocals roar and soar like Bono in a bad mood. Now there’s a comparison that might seem surprising, but Myke Hideous does indeed have a vocal style which approaches the blessed Bono in melodrama, if not necessarily in timbre. He even uses that Bono-esque stadium rock scat style in many of the songs, never wasting an opportunity to give us a full-on ‘Wooo-oah-oooh!’ at any convenient opportunity. ‘Two Minutes to Midnight’ captures the essence of the band: a big production number that’s all wide-screen rock dramatics and spiralling guitars. I’m not entirely convinced, mind. I can’t help wishing the band as a whole would cut the crap and launch themselves, gung-ho and seething, at the audience. As it is, the let’s-keep-out-of-this attitude of the musicians, and Myke’s own strange reticence to connect gives the performance a bit of a five out of ten-ish feel. I can’t help feeling that something’s missing here. The final verdict? Close, but no sledgehammer.

Fortunately, my dented faith in the power of live performance is about to get panel-beaten back into shape. Because, ladies and gents, next on stage we have the mighty Bella Morte, a collection of ballistic missiles in human form, a band renowned in moshpits throughout the known world for not exactly being backward in coming forward. Their set tonight proves that they’re in no danger of losing their touch. They hurl themselves into every song in a blur of flailing limbs and rampant hairstyles, all gurns and grins and set-piece punkish vogueing - look at the way vocalist Andy Deane will strike a goofy pose, hanging himself out over the monitors, holding his move just so long and no longer, then swinging back into the song without missing a beat. You can tell this band has honed its stage show over umpteen gigs. It might look like seven kinds of crazy chaos up there, but Bella Morte instinctively know just how much of the goofing and spoofing they can throw in before it’s time to hit that ol’ riff bang on its nose again. There’s a special mention for the song ‘Another Way’, for which, apparently, the band has made a video. The general idea is that we’ve all got to write to the likes of MTV and get Bella Morte on the world’s TV screens by sheer pester power. That might be a bit of a long shot, but there’s certainly potential for crossover success in the song itself, nailed as it is to an insistent guitar riff backed up by a throbbing synth pulse. Yep, I can envisage everyone from the Blink 182 fans to the NIN kidz getting into this one. Let’s hope MTV do the right thing.  But even if the meeeja remains unmoved, I’m sure Bella Morte will continue to build success by doing what they do best: getting on stage and catching fire. Look at them go, a loony swirl of humans and instruments, and everyone in the audience is grinning and dancing like they’ve just had an energy transfusion. It’s also worth noting that Bella Morte’s set is the first time today that the main stage area of the Knitting Factory has become appreciably crowded. Many of the previous bands pulled respectable crowds, to be sure, but Bella Morte haul punters from every corner of the venue and really pack ‘em in. It’s obvious that they’re one of the star attractions at Drop Dead, and with that legendary stage show it’s not hard to see why.

But after Bella Morte have finished, and the dust has settled, the crowd doesn’t disperse. Everybody’s keen to stick around and see the following band, who are also quite clearly regarded as something special. Who are they? Cinema Strange, of course - and while you’d be hard pressed to find two more dissimilar bands, it’s obvious that the audience regards both Bella Morte and Cinema Strange as the stars of Drop Dead. Anticipation crackles in the air, and then Cinema Strange are on. They’re dressed for the occasion in oriental costumes and masks, like they’re about to embark on a demonstration of Noh theatre, or give us a bizarrely cast production of The King And I. All, that is, except for Michael Ribiat, on guitar, who appears to have come as Tony Blair. Centre stage, Lucas Lanthier is robed and remote, surveying the crowd as if we’re apprentices who’ve come to study at his feet. I half expect him to address us as ‘Grasshopper’.

As ever, Cinema Strange’s costumes and the concepts which presumably lurk behind them are a delicious mystery, but the band’s adoption of such shifting styles makes one thing clear for anyone who cares to note it.  Cinema Strange have moved on quite drastically from their earlier incarnation as a fairly standard fishnets ‘n’ mohawks deathrock band. That might seem like a no-brainer observation, but it seems to me that many people haven’t quite twigged it yet. Consider this: many of the photos of the band you see around are relatively old shots, which depict the ‘old’ Cinema Strange, doing the regular deathrock-image thing. Even Cinema Strange’s own Yahoo group is illustrated with a photo of the band costumed as mildly eccentric punkers, while the Drop Dead programme features a shot of Cinema Strange in all their former mohawked madness to advertise Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. That’s a rather surreal thing in itself: Papst Blue Ribbon is the tipple of choice for people who drive pick-ups with gun racks on the back, and use words like ‘Varmint’ in everyday conversation. I could envisage Deadbolt advertising Pabst Blue Ribbon, but Cinema Strange? Surely they’re more of a dry white wine band! But there’s the photo, and there’s my point: Cinema Strange have moved so far out on their own limb these days that the deathrock scene which spawned them is having trouble keeping up.

So, the performance. It is, of course, a gleefully theatrical flounce through some of the band’s greatest hits, with the audience hanging on every word and gesture as if they contain pearls of ancient wisdom. And perhaps they do, although Cinema Strange are not in the business of giving too much away. Everything they do is gift-wrapped in mystery, as if the band’s show is a live-action set of cryptic crossword clues. Either that or they’re just ‘avin’ a larf, of course. Either way, they swoop and pirouette in a random rock ‘n’ roll ballet, as if every chord and chorus has its own particular move, while the sound - that peculiar, tense, wound-up-like-clockwork racket - churns around them. Don’t let all this talk of theatrics fool you: Cinema Strange are a very powerful live band, with a sound that is several times more gutsy than the frankly rather weedy production on their albums would have you believe. Much of that beefing-up of the sound is down to the band’s drummer, who hurls himself into the rhythms with such power and precision that every beat hits the target like a smart bomb. Naturally, Cinema Strange receive ovation after ovation from the assembled, eager, audience of catacomb kittens, but typically maintain their reserve, never milking the applause as lesser bands might do. They bring the show to a controlled climax, and are gone. That’s Cinema Strange for you. Every night something different; every night an experience.

It’s now getting on for three o’clock in the morning. Drop Dead has been running late, and with the end of Cinema Strange’s set, many people decide to call it a night. The crowd thins out, but the show ain’t over yet.  Skeletal Family are due on stage. I dare say that this slot - last band of the night, in what would normally be considered the headline position - looked good on paper, but now, in the early hours, facing a reduced crowd, it probably doesn’t seem quite such a plum. Still, the band assemble and launch into a suitably assertive set of their classic tunes. The inevitable ripple of ‘Who’s that on vocals?’ runs around the assembled company, as old-skool fans get their heads round the fact that  Skeletal Family have a new singer, but there’s less of this bemusement than I expected. Most people here are too young to have any first-hand memory of Skeletal Family’s classic Anne-Marie incarnation, and anyway I don’t believe the band ever played in the USA in the old days. Therefore any line-up would be a new line-up to this New York audience. But wait - there’s a problem.  Suddenly, everything stops, and the band leave the stage. There’s no announcement, but I gather that the snare drum has fallen apart. There’s a lengthy - and entirely unexplained - delay, during which yet more of the crowd, baffled, disappointed, unaware of the problem and under the impression that it’s all finished for the night, decide to leave. But someone eventually finds another snare, the band come back, and away we go again. It’s difficult to pick up the momentum after that interlude of kaput-ness, but the remaining audience comprises the real diehard fans - Michael Ribiat of Cinema Strange among them, I notice, enthusiastically singing along - so although the numbers are down the enthusiasm levels remain high. The band leaves the stage to a warm gust of applause, and if Skeletal Family’s New York debut wasn’t quite the blockbuster they’d probably anticipated, at least they can congratulate themselves on making the best of adverse circumstances.

And that’s it for the night. Time to stumble off to bed - only a few hours to go and we’ll be back for day three.

Drop Dead Festival - Part 3
Knitting Factory, New York City
Friday September 3 to Sunday September 5 2004
~review and photos by Uncle Nemesis

Sunday September 5 - bands in order of appearance:
Sixteens
Entertainment
Radio Scarlet
Undying Legacy
Cinema Strange
Tombstone Brawlers
Holy Cow
Skeletal Family
David E. Williams
Cinema Strange
 

Three days in, and I’m starting to feel like a commuter. Back downtown on the nine train to Franklin Street station, then two blocks over to the Knitting Factory on Leonard Street. Here we go again. Day three of Drop Dead.

People trickle in. There’s a Sunday-ish feeling of lassitude in the air.  Looking around, it seems that the crowd for this last day of the festival is somewhat smaller than on the previous two days. Why might this be? My promoter’s brain (which I’ve brought with me in a small pickle jar) tries to tease out reasons. All three of the event’s top bands - Ausgang, Cinema Strange, and Skeletal Family - are scheduled to play additional sets today, but I suspect that having already been given the opportunity to catch the bands’ debut sets yesterday, anyone who’s not a particular fan doesn’t have any special incentive to come back for a second bite. Add to this the fact that Siouxsie is in town, playing the first of her three New York shows tonight, and there you have another reason for a fair chunk of the Drop Dead crowd to be elsewhere. Then again, maybe people have simply fallen victim to festival fatigue. Assuming you get in somewhere near opening time, and stay till final curfew, each day of Drop Dead lasts a brain-straining nine hours or so - and that’s excluding the daytime events such as the horror movie matinee. Two days of that is enough to make anyone flake out and decide to skip day three. Perhaps extending Drop Dead to three days wasn’t such a wise idea. Two days would’ve provided ample time to include all the essential stuff without repeating any performances or turning the event into an endurance test, Siouxsie wouldn’t have been any competition, and the numbers would, I think, have been likely to remain high throughout. Sometimes, less is more.

But although there’s a certain low-key feel about the day, there’s still an encouraging crowd of curious souls gathered about the small downstairs stage for the Sixteens. This is the great thing about events such as this - the opportunity to see new bands which I might never have known existed otherwise. The Sixteens come from somewhere in California, and they’re an anomaly - but a very welcome one - at Drop Dead in that they’re an electronic band. Two boffin-ish blokes and a lab-coated girl; lots of boxes, lots of wires. Clearly, we are in the old-skool zone here. Before electronic music became dominated by that doofin’ dancefloor beat and shouty-crackers vocals, before everyone started doing the same-old, same-old, there was a whole other world of electronic bands. Experimental weirdos who took the anything-goes attitude of punk and hard-wired it to the mains. The Sixteens are clearly in that bag. I can tell this as soon as I clock their gear on stage. Not only are they using vintage synths in those endearingly tacky wood veneer cabinets - ah, remember the days when everything electronic came wrapped in highly unconvincing wood veneer? - but they’ve eschewed the usual keyboard stands in favour of zimmer frames, upon which all their equipment is precariously balanced. I’ve seen bands use ironing boards for ironic effect (or perhaps just to save money - have you seen the price of keyboard stands these days? - but zimmer frames are a new one on me. The band haven’t played a note, and I like them already.

And then they play a note. Several notes, in fact, most of which go ‘Tzzang!’ and ‘Fzzt!’ and ‘Sponk!’ in a splendidly class of ‘79 manner.  They have a song about ventilation fans - but then, they would, wouldn’t they? One of the boffinish blokes says, ‘Can we have some more drumulator in the monitors?’. Drumulator! Now there’s a word I haven’t heard for 20 years! The other boffinish bloke kneels behind his zimmer frame as if taking shelter in case his equipment explodes. They share out the vocals, but most of the songs are fronted by the lab-coated girl, who lets rip in an assertive caterwaul while making strange semaphore-like gestures. It’s a bit like watching Nina Hagen fronting Kraftwerk. Most of the Sixteens’ songs thump merrily along on clonking electro-beats; the songs on which they keep the rhythms simple work the best. On occasions, when they get busy with the beats and throw in assorted fills and sort-of syncopation, the rhythms teeter dangerously on the brink of incoherence. It’s a relief when they haul everything back to basics, because they do those basics so well. Somewhere in the weirdness they have pop songs, more or less, and it’s this sensibility that keeps the music from simply turning into experimental tomfoolery just for the sake of it. A bass guitar makes an appearance, and the band thunks and rattles and wails to a conclusion - and a well-deserved round of applause from an audience which seems far more interested in the electronic side of things than you might at first expect from a bunch of deathrockers. I wish the festival had featured more bands of this ilk. More weirdo electronica and possibly a few less psychobilly outfits wouldn’t have been a bad idea at all!

Much of Drop Dead’s organisation seems to be based on the ‘make it up as we go along’ principle, and all manner of tweaks and re-arrangements have been made to the running order as the event has progressed. After three days of these chops and changes not a huge amount remains of the original schedule.  My programme tells me that Entertainment will follow the Sixteens onto the downstairs stage. In fact, Entertainment have been shifted upstairs, to the main stage, so let’s get up there and check ‘em out. Moving up to the bigger stage might be seen as a bonus from the band’s point of view, and they certainly get the benefits of a more beefy PA and a proper lighting rig - but there’s also a down side. The thin crowd looks much more noticeable, spread out over a larger floor area. Maybe that’s why Entertainment seem tetchy and out of sorts, the singer frowning his way through the songs while the rest of the band glumly stand back and keep out of the way. Then again, maybe they’re always like this. They make a fine noise - they’re doing that first Bauhaus album thing coupled with some Chameleons-style big guitars - but I don’t think I’m watching a vintage performance. The singer jumps off the stage and wanders around the empty bit of floor at the front, where the mosh isn’t, but he doesn’t try to galvanise the audience into action. Quite the reverse: he turns away, and sings at the monitors, wearing an ‘I’m not impressed!’ expression all the while. It’s a shame, because this band clearly has merit, but they just don’t seem to be in a mood to win friends today.

(Incidentally, I have seen Entertainment’s name rendered in all sorts of bizarrely ‘punctuated’ styles - Entertainme.nt, eNTERTAINME.nt, and Entertainme-nt, to name but three variations. In the absence of any definitive guide as to which is right, I have given the name here in un-messed-about form. Maybe that’s why the band were in a bad mood - the poor dears are going through an identity crisis...)

I’m heading downstairs again to catch Radio Scarlet, when I suddenly come upon assorted members of Undying Legacy milling about in the corridor.  They’ve also been shunted up to the main stage after originally being booked to play down below. That’s not a problem, but what *is* a bit of a boo-boo is that their stage time has been changed, too - so that they’ll be playing upstairs at the exact same time as Radio Scarlet are playing downstairs. As both bands are full-on fishnet-clad deathrock outfits, who obviously appeal to the same crowd, splitting the audience like this surely isn’t wise - especially as Radio Scarlet, being the better-known band in the USA, would certainly grab most of the attention. Undying Legacy are on a mission to change the schedule yet again, to give themselves a later, and therefore more favourable, slot. After coming all the way from London, I think that’s fair enough, although frankly it shouldn’t be up to the bands to fix this sort of admin glitch. I wish them luck and proceed down to the second stage. Let’s see what Radio Scarlet do.

What Radio Scarlet do is instant deathrock - just add mohawks. It’s as if they built a deathrock band from a kit of parts, as you would a model aircraft. All the essential components are present and correct - the goofy punker bassist, the art-whacko guitarist dressed in carefully arranged rags, the heart-throb Johnny Slut lookalike frontman. Oh, they’re very good at it, that’s for sure: the singer has even taken care to adopt the traditionally reedy ‘deathrock wail’ voice, as if he’s a Dickensian street urchin from somewhere grim but trendy in east London. They lurch and prance and fall over each other and generally put on a show, skittering through a set of jittery, manic songs, and the fans love every goofball move. But, looking at Radio Scarlet going through their schtick, I can understand why Cinema Strange have found it necessary to move on. A few years ago, this was Cinema Strange’s own territory - the Batcave look, the early-eighties influences, the instantly accepted deathrock identity - and they were virtually alone in doing it. Now, everyone’s doing the deathrock thing. And when the field gets crowded, the leaders of the field have to make a move.  Cinema Strange, of course, had the wit and imagination and sheer creative nerve to stake out a new area of their own. I wonder if Radio Scarlet will be able to make similar progress - or even if they would ever want to?  They’re fun, sure enough. But I’m not sure how much substance they’ve got beyond the fun factor. Only time will tell.

Upstairs to the main stage, where Undying Legacy, having successfully renegotiated the running order, are getting under way. They’re doing the Batcave thing, too, but in a very British Goth Scene Way. Where Radio Scarlet are manic and goofy, Undying Legacy are measured and sensible.  Where Radio Scarlet have scratchy, nervy, punky songs, Undying Legacy have a bass-heavy, deep, full sound. For all the deathrock-isms, you can tell that this is a band who’ve come up through the British trad-goth route. I’m willing to bet that if I ransacked their record collections I’d find more Mission and Rosetta Stone than Specimen and UK Decay. They fit neatly into the Brit-goth continuum; they just do it with more fishnet and bigger hair.  Their best asset is without doubt their gutsy sound - maybe this is a function of the big PA, but they have a solid, pit-of-the-stomach rumble to their music, a commanding low-end throb which captures the attention and makes you pay heed to what’s happening on stage. Not that there is all that much happening on stage, mind. The band are fairly static, never really cutting loose and throwing shapes. In particular, the guitarist - who stubbornly retains his traditional British Goth Hairstyle - barely moves anything except his hands throughout the entire set. I’m half convinced his colleagues nailed his boots to the stage for a laugh. This has got to be the area where the band need to sharpen up. It’s not like I want them to stage pratfalls all over the place, like a collection of deathrock Norman Wisdoms, but swinging in to the music like they’re really into the stuff they’re playing would help to push the show along in a very useful manner.  Still, Undying Legacy are a very new band - this is something like their seventh gig; not bad going to get a transatlantic booking at this early stage - so maybe this stuff will follow later. For now, we’ll file them under ‘contenders’.

We now descend to the lower floor yet again, because Cinema Strange are back for their second set. Persuading three of Drop Dead’s top bands - Ausgang and Skeletal Family being the other two -  to perform twice on different days of the festival is, I suppose, one way of squeezing value for money out of your star acts, although it also has the slightly less-good effect of diluting the impact of the individual performances.  Cinema Strange, however, rise to the occasion with a whole new costume concept. Gone are the Shinto priests and Noh players: this time, they’re leprechauns. Yes, I kid you not. Pointy ears and all. They look like they should be seated around a garden pond with fishing rods. They rattle into their songs with their trademark taut, wound-up energy, the small stage and closely-packed audience giving the performance an intense, if somewhat ramshackle, air. There’s no room for dramatic grandstanding in these compact surroundings (and, anyway, how dramatic is it possible for a bunch of pixies to be?), so it’s all stripped-down, freaked-out energy tonight; but nevertheless the band still manage to conjure up the impression that we’re watching a piece of lively art rather than a set of plain ol’ rock ‘n’ roll. Lucas plunges into the crowd, brandishing one of his pointy ears, trying to fit it on to unsuspecting fans, like the pixie prince in search of his Cinderella. The set itself seems to comprise songs from both extremities of Cinema Strange's career so far: new songs and old songs, and songs that, thanks to the band's recent re-recordings, are both new and old: Agent X-Ray, Mr Quilt, Golden Hand, Anti Good. There's a distinct absence of the band's usual crowd-pleasers and floor-fillers. That’s a brave move, but typical of the Cinema Strange approach. Give the audience something different every time, whether they want it or not. Not, it must be said, that there’s the slightest doubt on that point. The crowd slurps up every note and move as if they’re dining at a gourmet buffet. If Cinema Strange operated an all-you-can-eat policy, they’d never be allowed off the stage.

Momentarily at a loss after Cinema Strange finish, I wander back upstairs to see who’s on the main stage now. And I walk right in to a classic Drop Dead juxtaposition, for I find the Tombstone Brawlers doing their thing, in full belligerent effect. They’re another of Drop Dead’s many psychobilly bands, and without question the most psycho of the lot. A bunch of blokes, all built like brick shithouses, all wearing blue jeans, work shirts, and stick-on Halloween tat, roar aggressively through some beaten-up jalopies of songs, while their fans - who seem to comprise a platoon of boisterous gentlemen exactly as brick shithouse-like as the band - stage mock-fights in the moshpit. At least, I hope they’re mock fights. At any rate, you can almost smell the testosterone in the air. This band, clearly, is all about boys being boys, and doing it as loudly and as pugnaciously as possible. As I cautiously approach the stage to take a few photos - apologising in my best Limey pantywaist style as I gingerly ease myself into the fight club zone - the Tombstone Brawlers launch into a song entitled ‘Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight’. The vocalist leers hideously into the crowd. ‘I wanna see some BLOOD!’ he yells, and it seems there’s no shortage of mosh-heads ready to take him at his word. Coming straight after Cinema Strange’s pixie performance art show, this is just a bit too much for me to take. I make my excuses and retire graciously to the bar.

Holy Cow, on stage directly after the Brawlers have been packed off to their tomb, are a very different proposition. Like The Empire Hideous, they’re very much a lead-singer-plus-backing-band set-up: the musicians stay in the background, maintaining a low profile. The guitarists keep their heads down, while the impressively moustachioed keyboard player simply stands, stock-still and impassive, behind his instrument like a shopkeeper awaiting the first customer of the day. The band’s entire identity is invested in their frontman, a splendidly tattooed modern primitive who looks like he’s just blown in from Burning Man. Summoning the faithful by honking tremendously at a horn, he launches into a wigged-out display of shamanistic intensity that’s half Jim Morrison and half Henry Rollins. Eyes screwed shut, a transcendental expression on his face, he alternately roars and croons through the songs as if the meaning of all things is hidden in his lyrics. Between songs, the shaman seems to emerge from his trance, slightly surprised to find himself on a stage in front of an audience. Someone throws an inflatable sex doll on stage, and, as if suddenly realising he’s there to entertain, he stages a series of full body-drops onto the inoffensive doll until, at last, it bursts. Cheers erupt; he takes a bow. And then it’s back into the music, the band whipping up a smooth rock-noir brew, the trance-like state descending once again as the singer regains his strange inner world. It’s almost as if he’s a rock ‘n’ roll savant, tapping in to knowledge that’s just beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. I note with amusement that some of those ordinary mortals are much impressed by his physical form: throughout the set there’s a coterie of women clustered around the lead vocal position, anxious to express their admiration. One in particular seems intent on making contact.  She reaches out, tries to give the shaman a drink, and engages him in conversation between songs. He responds in a slightly offhand manner, as if too polite to brush her away, but I can’t help feeling that inside he’s muttering to himself, ‘Not now, dear, I’m busy!’ At the very end of the set the patience of the female fans is rewarded, as the shaman drops his trousers to reveal a neatly inserted Prince Albert. The girls send up a gleeful cheer, but wasn’t Rudi Giuliani supposed to have put a stop to all this naughtiness? Holy Cow are fine, if rather surreal, entertainment, and many people seem to regard the band’s set as the climax of the night. The crowd drifts away from the stage, and a significant portion drifts all the way out of the door. It’s getting late, and Drop Dead is winding down.

But it ain’t over until it’s over. We still have a few bands to go before we say goodnight. Skeletal Family make their second appearance of the festival on the smaller downstairs stage now. Although the schedule has lumbered them with another late slot, and, as a result, another crowd that isn’t what you’d call huge, they plough on regardless and win everyone over with a no-frills rattle through their classics - ‘So Sure’, ‘Hands Of The Clock’, and the one everyone seems to be waiting for, ‘Promised Land’.  Compressed into the confines of the smaller downstairs bar, the Skeletal Family sound takes on extra intensity, and although the band doesn’t actually do anything different - the set is exactly the same as yesterday’s slot - at least there are no unplanned drum-disintegrations this time, and it all works well. The grand finale, as ever, is ‘Black Ju Ju’, with its sudden explosion of a chorus, and the verdict of the assembled old-skoolers seems to be that the band done good.

Then comes David E. Williams, who is that uncommon thing: a gothic singer-songwriter. Or, at least, if he isn’t strictly gothic, he certainly has a mordant wit in his lyrics, and a downbeat, dryly resigned, me-against-the-world delivery which fits rather neatly. He’s joined, on some songs, by a guitarist/vocalist, but most of his set is just a solo keyboard and voice thing. It’s as if we’re in a late-night cocktail bar watching Randy Newman’s stroppy brother, as he sings his odd, off-kilter story-songs and gives us his uniquely jaundiced view of the world to a mellow piano backing. It must be said that the subtleties of David E.  Williams’ lyrics go mostly unnoticed by the small crowd of bleary-eyed and inebriated deathrockers - the murky mix, which tends to squash everything except the mid-range out of the sound doesn’t help much, either  - so the performance is received politely, rather than with any great surge of enthusiasm. But under other circumstances, there’s stuff here which would repay investigation. I can’t help thinking that perhaps the best gig for David E. Williams would be as support to Voltaire, where I’m sure he’d find a crowd sympathetic to the art of erudite lyric writing and pithy, pointed wit.

It’s now past 3.00am, and curfew time is rapidly approaching. Most of the Drop Dead crowd has long since vanished into the New York night, but a few stragglers are still hanging around the venue, intent on one last drink, and - maybe - catching one last band. There’s a rumour going around that Cinema Strange will play a third set, but nobody - least of all the band themselves, who are milling about in a state of indecision - seems to know which stage will host this impromptu performance. At last, someone selects the downstairs stage, a decision which I suspect comes as a slight surprise to the sound engineer, who’s already striking the gear. But he keeps enough of the essentials set up for Cinema Strange to plug in. The small-hours stragglers gather from every part of the Knitting Factory, and, quite spontaneously, without anyone suggesting it, everyone grabs a bar stool and sits in a ragged semicircle around the stage. Lucas Lanthier - who’s contrived a new image for this performance, with a hastily drawn-on moustache - asks: ‘Well - what shall we play?’ The audience shouts out requests, out of which the band conjure the briefest of sets. It’s as intimate and special as if the band was playing at a private party. They end on ‘En Hiver’, the last song of the last night of Drop Dead, and when the song draws to a close it really is all over.

So, that was the second Drop Dead festival. Was it good? Yes, indeed it was. Sure, at times, it was disorganised and haphazard, with both bands and audience occasionally at a loss to know what was supposed to happen next.  And, sometimes, it seemed that for every cool and creative band there was an identikit bunch of psychobillies cluttering up the bill; a demonstration, maybe, that there are not enough bands operating in the post-punk zone (and maybe not enough potential punters, either) to fill up a three-day event without a little help from elsewhere. But for all that, it was a very positive experience. It was worth the price of admission to witness The Rabies shrieking and battering their way through their ramshackle horror-punk songs, and Speed Crazy catching fire with that huge, express train sound. It was worth it for Deadbolt’s deadpan good ol’ boy humour, and Ausgang’s huge rhythmic assault. Worth it for The Brides being spiky and cool, for Bella Morte letting off their energy bomb, for the Sixteens’ surreal electronica, and - of course - for Cinema Strange taking their unique creativity for a stroll around the stage. In pixie outfits.  For that, alone, I’d gladly cross an ocean. Here’s to next year.

Drop Dead Festival Links
Knitting Factory, New York City
Friday September 3 to Sunday September 5 2004
~review and photos by Uncle Nemesis
 
 

Your handy one-stop links shop...

NY Decay, promoters of the Drop Dead festival: http://www.nydecay.com
Drop Dead Festival home page:  http://www.dropdeadfestival.com
Jump directly to the page for Drop Dead II:  http://www.dropdeadfestival.com/dd2.htm
 

Band links in order of appearance:
Friday:
Six Gun Republic:  http://www.sixgunrepublic.com
Memphis Morticians: http://www.memphismorticians.net
The Rabies: http://www.geocities.com/therabiesny/index.html
Speed Crazy: http://speedcrazynj.com
Deadbolt:  http://www.downinthelab.com
Ausgang:  http://www.deathrock.com/ausgang
Cult Of The Psychic Fetus:  http://www.ravenworldwide.com/cultofthepsychicfetus.htm

Saturday:
Funeral Crashers:  http://www.funeralcrashers.com
Ghouls Night Out:  http://necro-tonerecords.com/bands_ghoulsnightout.html
Malice In Leatherland:  http://mil.sinsanctuary.com
The Brides:  http://www.thebrides.net
The Empire Hideous:  http://www.empirehideous.com
Bella Morte: http://www.bellamorte.com
Cinema Strange:  http://www.nightmarezone.de/cinemastrange
Skeletal Family:  http://www.skeletalfamily.com

Sunday:
Sixteens:  http://www.realgone.org/sixteens
Entertainment:  http://www.entertainme-nt.com
Radio Scarlet:  http://radioscarlet.necrophiliacs.net
Undying Legacy:  http://www.undyinglegacy.co.uk
Cinema Strange:  http://www.nightmarezone.de/cinemastrange
Tombstone Brawlers:  http://www.thetombstonebrawlers.com
Holy Cow:  http://www.geocities.com/holycowweb/index.htm
Skeletal Family: http://www.skeletalfamily.com
David E. Williams:  http://www.davidewilliams.com
Cinema Strange:  http://www.nightmarezone.de/cinemastrange
 

A photo gallery from Drop Dead II: http://www.deathrock.net

The Dead Atlanta photo selection (click on the appropriate galleries):
http://deadatlanta.net/gallery.php

The Glamgoth photo selection: http://www.glamgoth.com/photography/dd2

All you ever wanted to know about Drop Dead - en français:
http://www.obskure.com/part/ddf/ddf.htm

A newspaper interview with Drop Dead's promoter:
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/times/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-1/1094198728115700.xml

Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis: http://www.nemesis.to