Electric Salon IV promotional video

The present and future of the Electric Salon

Comments on ES #3:

• “The most surreal night of my life” – Tim Batt
• “…the whole night was so perfect!!! Stand Up comic an all… so many people missed such a cool show…. what other gig is as sexy and insane?? None I have seen…” – Jarad Bryant of New Hang Ups

The next gigs:

• AUCKLAND, October 14: The Lucha Lounge, York Street, Newmarket. With Horatio Crane, Scarlett Lashes, Vostok Lake, comedy, burlesque and inexplicable dance moves.
• WELLINGTON, November 5: Bar Medusa, Vivian Street, CBD. With both imported and local content. That’s right, we’re taking the show on the road.

Propaganda and news

Our posters keep getting better.

Auckland’s #1 underground camp electronic variety night! An unscripted musical theatre total immersion experience, like the Muppet Show meets the Mighty Boosh IN A STEEL CAGE and the referee is the ghost of Bill Hicks.

Music from:

X-Ray Fiends
Scarlett Lashes (prepared to get whipped, rubbed and lashed by the queen of trash)
Vostok Lake (androgynous cyber power-prog-pop)
New Hang Ups (Macintosh computers and TRAMPOLINES)

Comedy from Tim Batt, the terror of the Classic Comedy Theatre!

Burlesque from the sextacular Dolly Destory and the spanklicious Miss Phloss.

Performances from:

Erika Strata (Lady Gaga does opera! Truly remarkable)
Sarah Houboult and Edward (sensual Kama Sutra adagio acrobatics)

MC the Divine Mizz Kita Mean (Princess to Queen winner 2010, the Hostess with the Mostest, larger than life and twice as natural)

$10 on the door. It just gets better all the time. You know you want it.

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Not much else to report. Hoping to debut one new song at the above gig; working on a composition in “dots”, doing a kind of Frank Zappa electronic-classical thing. We’ll see how it works.

HELP WANTED

Melodramatic electroclash progressive-darkwave act is looking for backing singers/dancers and film-makers/animators to produce live projections for our shows. Can’t promise any money, but if the chance to be part of the Vostok Lake experience appeals to you… you know where to find us.

Out of traction, back in action

Our really bad-ass poster

Electric Salon II is scheduled for Bastille Day, ladies, gentlemen and others present. I am sorely tempted to give all my stage announcements in French, just to be annoying. (There’s kind of an “arms race” of flamboyant stage antics going on between the Salonnieres and one has to work hard with the weirdness to stay ahead. That said, I’m not completely crazy, I perform this way.)

A new song will be debuted, but probably what you’re most interested is #2 in our (not even close to being regular) series of Demoblogs. Next up the list will probably be “Cut and Run”, a song I wrote as a curse. I think it worked.

Electric Salon #1 – Reviews

The Electric Salon was a success past our wildest dreams. Here’s what a couple of reviewers had to say:

• “Unpredictable, entertaining and funny night! Well done. In a word, it was saucy.”
• “That was a seriously trippy experience.”

We’ll update this post as more come in. Also stay tune for news of Salon 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Things are moving.

New music! New gig! But first a few words…

Rodney Dangerfield described Bill Hicks as “so far ahead of his time, his parents haven’t met yet”. I would be so flattered if that were ever applied to Vostok Lake. Now, you see, the thing about Bill’s act is that he was angry and intolerant of bullshit, but he was also fundamentally kind-hearted. I believe that that’s precisely the right posture for any revolutionary. (Although perhaps we’re all scared that if we are as strong and loving and intolerant of bullshit as we want to be, they might fix onto us with their Cancer Death Ray, like they did to Bill and possibly Frank, or just shoot us in the head or crucify us or give us strokes or all of those other things that our culture tells us happen to true revolutionaries.)

Bill Hicks as drawn by Steve Dillon in "Preacher"

Anyway. We promised ages ago that we’d try to blog a demo of a new Vostok Lake song every month, and we finally got around to doing the first one:

“Office Work is Fucking Boring” (subtle title there, folks) was first written in 2007/8, thereabouts, when I was working a really soul-destroying hideous job, as opposed to the relatively nice job I have for the time being. I was reading Pluto Press’ Big Red Songbook – in case you missed the memo, Vostok Lake is a left-wing institution, and we are also interested in folk music, in the sense of “the songs of our people”, “creativity from below”, “sisters and brothers doin’ it for themselves”, etc, rather than the specific style of acoustic guitar music. So I was reading this book full of the songs of the loves and lives and struggles of agricultural workers, coal miners, car workers, even chemical plant workers, and I thought… where are the songs of my people, the white-collar office workers?

The answer, of course, was that I had to write it. The first time I performed it, a prominent local leftist journalist jumped to his feet, applauded and yelled “Screw Joe Hill!” (“Office Work…” is at least more upbeat.) But it has quickly become one of the most popular songs at all of my gigs – even the ones in the South Island where I don’t think they’ve even heard of offices. Because it’s true, although fictional. We are looking to recording this properly and putting it out as a single. This is folk music for the next century, people.

And in other news… The Electric Salon is finally happening. We got sick of waiting for people in Auckland to provide suitable venues for “cyborg folk music” and other weird art, so we’re starting our own. If you, the audience make it a success, there will be more, perhaps at the same venue, perhaps sometime better. Perhaps even on a weekend.

Where: Thirsty Dog, 469 Karangahape Road, Auckland.
When: Doors open 8:30, Thursday April 28, 2011.
Who: Swampy Tonk, Vostok Lake, Scarlett Lashes and the Pseudo Dancers, Benny Profane, et al.
What: Music, drag, burlesque, poetry, gender blur, visual effects, radical cultural politics, lotsa larfs & sex.
How much: $10