SWU

[Rob Maerz]

found this posted in the SOft White Underbelly folder on AOL...part 2 hasn't
been posted yet...

ROBO




Subj:  SWU at the Electric Circus- 1
Date:  95-11-16 19:54:49 EST
From:  LsVegas

Part I - the Club

okay

New York City is everything you've ever heard about it and lots more.
 Dirty...dangerous...exciting...powerfull...beyond control.   Some cities may
be bigger but when you're in New York you know there's something different
here.  Its like space aliens have taken over the place.  Or maybe its
actually the ultimate expression of Earth Culture.  Earthlings gone mad.
 Yeah,  New York will make extraterrestrials think WE are the dangerous
aliens.  But then it would just be a matter of time before we would be
schmoozing them, and doing deals with them,  and the restaurants....mmmm.

Down on the Lower East Side is St. Marks Place.  One live honky tonk block
with clubs and record shops and clothes shops and hair salons and ACTION all
over.  Bleeker street was good, but maybe a little too conscious of itself.
 St. Marks was just cookin.

In 69, down the middle of the block, were a couple of clubs called the
Balloon Farm and the Dom.  The Dom was down a level from the street.  Dark.
 Nico played there.  Nico was a Warhol model.  So white.  Like marble.
 Incredibly beautiful.  Incandescent.  Pouty.  One time I found myself in a
limo with her and a couple of friends.  This guy she was crashing with, a
nice gay Jewish boy, was complaining about her house keeping.  "I opened the
kitchen drawer and there was BACON FAT!  A PAN FULL OF BACON FAT!  IN THE
DRAWER!!!

"Well," she pouted," I was saving it."

Above the Dom, and coming down on both sides of it like Jabba the Hutt, was
the Balloon Farm.  A big space.  For big shows.  No real decor, but plenty of
room.  I remember seeing Jeremy Steig there.  Flute.

And then it was gone.  And in its place was the Electric Circus.   You walked
in and the music was pumping louder than you had ever heard music.  And not
breaking up.  Real clear.  Rock and roll as a visceral experience, is always
great in a cavernous space.  And the lights swung and blinked and burst
against the mirrored balls.  And the best was the strobes.  Most of you have
probably seen strobes, but you have not 'experienced' strobes till you have
seen strobes with ALL the other lights out.  That's when strobe magic
happens.  Most people have never actually seen that.  I see clubs all the
time where they flash a little strobe into the mix.  Pretty...but frankly...
  Because when the strobes come on in the complete blackness, something's
there...and then its not...  I remember at a Group Image show we played, they
were tossing some of those giant blow up balls from the balcony to the crowd
below.  Under strobelights.  Nobody seemed able to catch them.   I can do
this - I thought.  And I stood under the balcony and watched some guy drop a
ball directly down towards me.   I've got this - I thought.  I could see the
ball about three feet above me.   Piece of cake.  And then nothing was
anywhere and the ball was hitting me in the face.   Strobes.

But the best part of strobes was how they make all movement seem like ballet.
 Everything is gracefull and beautiful under the strobes.  Every dancer is
great.

Suddenly the lights would go out at the Electric Circus, and a strobe
spotlight would pick out a juggling unicyclist in white face appearing and
disappearing in stuttering bursts as he swept around the floor...or a LIVE
STROBE TIGER would be led flowing across the room...or the strobes would
illuminate something high up by the 40 foot ceiling - a trapeze acrobat who
would risk fate by twirling like a sparkler in light that came and went.

I loved the Electric Circus because it understood the power of spectacle.
 How a multiplicity of stimulae can take you out of yourself...so that you
can not be a voyeur.  You are the show.

We payed there, the Soft White Underbelly.  They loved us there, the people
who ran the club, and the people who came.  And they were our favorite club.

                             (continued in Part 2 - the Gig)