Back to fun after 9-11

>> Brooklyn and Electroclash: a radical recalibration of nightlife in New York City

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Close your eyes and your retinas buzz with residual stars and stripes. That's the result of a long weekend in the Big Apple, post 9-11. Cartoon patriotism in overdrive, flags in every window, on every aerial.

Among the ubiquitous flags, however, one sees designer Milton Glaser's update of his own '70s kitsch klassic--"ISNY," now with "More Than Ever" tacked on, a burn mark on the heart's lower west side. New York, one is reminded, is not America. Suburban jingoism can't drown out the genuine tone of mobilized awareness and discussion here. These are tough people, with more heart, mind and backbone than we might have previously given them credit for.

On the other hand, downtown nightclubbing, that NYC staple, has largely flatlined. Of course, bin Laden's boombastics were only a loud, last nail in a coffin Guiliani built several years ago, while Disneyfying the town for the same suburban soccer moms and drive-thru dads now howling for war.

The era of the megaclubs, mega DJs, Pradas tapping at the velvet rope, VIPs on E and 'Me, me, me'--coughing blood, dissipating. The punchline? Could be the best thing the town has seen in a decade and a half.

Life after the megaclubs

But don't take my word for it. Ask Larry Tee, an elder statesman of the club culture, disillusioned gay house DJ, now rather suddenly label head, band manager and founder of the new Electroclash festival, which ran from Oct. 10-14.

"I've found New York really lacking in the last 10 years," Tee tells me. "And you know what? I used to run this town, baby. I came up with RuPaul--I did write 'Supermodel' for RuPaul, and got a tranny on the Top 40--at the end of the '80s, which was a really sad, black period for New York. There'd been such a heavy loss in the gay and arts communities. We came up with the worst looks possible and the right kind of who-cares attitude, and it transformed the New York nightclub scene for a while. I mean, I did start Disco 2000, which was the first rave party in a nightclub in America, and stuff like that.

"But after a while, I got sick of what the '90s represented in New York. The clubs were just horrible. Everybody went back to their own corner. Gays hung out strictly with gays, lesbians with lesbians, straights with straights. It turned into the culture of the Sound Factory, a bunch of strippers and bouncers all crammed into the same place to buy ecstasy. And that just didn't speak to me.

"You know, when Wall Street booms, the art scene suffers--every time. Art just didn't exist in the '90s. Luckily, I remembered what it was like in the Pyramid days, when you'd have the Del Rubio Triplets next to some rotten performance-art dance crew next to the Butthole Surfers next to their weekly tranny show. I remembered so well what that was like, so I've been trying to piece together that kind of thing, just using my own ears for what seems new and interesting. I'd take it on the chin on occasion, because people weren't quite used to that kind of mish-mosh. Now, they're willing to accept it again. And I'm not taking full credit. There's something in the air."

Blood, smoke and circuit boards

I'll tell you what's in the air. Dry ice, fake blood, gold-foil confetti, the smell of cheeb, sweat and melting Radio Shack circuits. It's Thursday night and we're at the massive midtown Exit club. It's two a.m. and the soon-to-be-legendary Fischerspooner have hit the stage.

This band, this phenomenon, is simply genius. Paula Abdul meets Andy Kaufman. Vegas floorshow meets Milan catwalk meets Mumenschanz. A straightfaced new wave revisionist soundtrack carries a barrage of absurd dance moves, confetti cannon blasts, deadpan socialites, pyro, video and (maybe) pre-choreographed fuck-ups. Un-fucking-believable--I'd be weeping if I wasn't laughing/dancing so hard.

Tee speaks of Fischerspooner with pride. "They talk the whole way through the show, then they explode into blood, freaking you out with their over-the-topness, Casey Spooner peeking at you 40 feet high on that video screen that bleeds and droops and explodes. It's Clockwork Orange on the Titanic with exploding bodies, with Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode's soundtrack sent through filters.

"It will redefine music. When people finally get this, it will redefine music."

But while Fischerspooner are the main attraction, they're not alone. Debatable cause célèbre Peaches was up there, titillating some, annoying if not disgusting others. Morplay delivered the queer-core electro-rap, Khabarta the southern-boogie electro. The previous soirée had seen the Motor City LCD funk of Detroit Grand Pubahs and DJ Assault, the next would see Peaches join Adult and Chicks on Speed. Then there's Soviet, Centuries, A.R.E. Weapons--Le Tigre, a Tee fave, were almost on board too.

It's clear that what began, in Tee's fevered imagination, as a comp CD of NYC's numerous neo-electro acts has blossomed into not just an excellent and original fest but a focal point for a new movement. The dreaded, incipient '80s revival is here, only refangled, ironicized or politicized or just plain weirded out into some beautiful, ridiculous, inspiring paradigm of narcissistic, budgetronic anti-cool.

"It's do-it-yourself," says Tee. "You put up a beatbox and get some skanky girls to shout obscenities and wear dildoes. Or you get some art-school chicks to give you a battery of collage and verbal images that kinda make you go 'huh!' There's Fischerspooner's over-the-topness, which is totally new. Them alone, that's a whole new genre. When it comes right down to it, when I first saw them, I was filled with hope yet again that there's something new in music after 10 whole years of trip hop, drum & bass or international club pop. All these genres, they weren't electric. They didn't have the personalities I needed. I mean, I love Portishead as much as anyone. Belle & Sebastian? Beautiful. But I needed something that spoke to this generation, something that wasn't soft, weird, introverted and manic-depressive."

"Noisy, talentless bitches"

But this is not the rock-vs.-disco tension played out again for the umpteenth time. This is something else entirely. "I don't think all the Electroclash artists are particularly danceable. Chicks on Speed--they give you some beats, but in between, they're some noisy bitches. Noisy, talentless bitches with good ideas."

Here's where gender politics blindside club culture's socio-economic axis at a right angle, with positive, not polarizing, results.

"I noticed that outside of Fischerspooner--and Fischerspooner is predominantly female, in all shapes and sizes--most of my favourites in the genre were women. Adult, Chicks on Speed, Peaches. They're all really strong and driven by woman power. And that speaks to me right now, because I need something different. I'm really sick of alternative rock, country punk, whatever genre--I'm sick of it. We really needed these bitches to come in and break things down to simple beats and fuck production. This overproduced stuff we'd been eating for a decade was too rich. It doesn't speak to me. I needed to see some revolutionaries come in and say, 'you know, this really sucks.'

"Mark my words, I want to kill off the idea of the square-headed European DJ as a rock star. I don't want to see any more square-headed blokes twiddling knobs. I'd rather have some skinny, awkward girls with some good ideas and some fresh, simple beats who can eschew the overblown production of electronica and drum & bass and all this crap. You know, here's my pick for 2002--Detroit and lesbians. That what's happening in 2002. You can mark my words. I dare say, we've never been able to peg lesbians as trendsetters, but move out of the way. The girls have arrived."

Take it to the Bridge

Perfect timing, too. The tectonic shift is not only financial and philosophical, but geographical as well. Guiliani's scorched-earth policy never crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. In fact, it drove the students, artists, bums, bohos and bon-vivants out to the boroughs, and with them the future of fun in NYC.

It's Saturday night and we're squeezing into Luxx, a smallish space in the booming Williamsburg neighbourhood, where the sidewalks crawl with hipsters at all hours. Tee is spinning electro, natch--this is his regular Saturday night, with the deliberately tacky tag Berliniamsburg--prepping the joint for a DJ set from two members of Liverpudlian neo-new-wavers Ladytron. The place is crammed past max cap with a kaleidoscope of characters, freaks and geeks, fags and hags, dimestore vampyros and regular joes--plus the world's nicest doorlady, Dee Finley. If NYC is supposed to be too scared or depressed to party, nobody told these cats.

"The reason we did Berliniamsburg--that has to be the worst title for a club night, which is why we chose it--is because I'd done a party out there and, without any promotion, it was packed. It doesn't take a genius to know that this is where the kids live now. It's just the timing. People are so ready for something new, and the crowd is more fun, good and mixed. Gay or straight or whatever, that's not the point of my nights. I'm sick of any crowd that's too homogenous.

"Getting new spaces now seems like a fundamentally important concept to me. People from Manhattan going out to Brooklyn is total irony, but I can see why. There's more fun in a small club like mine than in any of the others in Manhattan going right now. It reminds me of the East Village in the '80s. It's still got a frontier quality to it, with that wild, racially mixed energy. I can't wait to start something else out there, because it's where it's at."

Packed rooms in the new hot zone, a parade of likeminded artists, rumblings on the media scanners, what more confirmation could Tee want that his Electroclash pipedream is coalescing into something real? How about a backlash? "There's stickers that people put on the Electroclash posters around town. I saved them, they're so cool. They go: 'Electroclash could be the next grunge. Don't let buzzwords and marketing exploit and destroy the music you love. Support the artists, not greedy promoters.' Of course, I have these all over my apartment. That for me was a sure sign that, if that's going on in the underground, we're in for a new genre, at the very least."