Fuck Subtlety

The mustaches are finely waxed and twirled, pointing out from the cupid's bow lips of the boys in fancy hats. This is one of those shows where you never know quite who'd going to be there, and what they're gonna do.

The opening band, punk rock they say, but western shirts and confederate hats so a bit of a drawl in the rapid fire inflection. The second band was trying too hard at achieving a cheap sensuality, pants riding low beneath the curve of hips, and a belt curled up and around the singers tattoed neck. He slung the microphone around and stuffed it into his mouth, letting out gutteral sounds as the black cord wrapped around the solid sweat covered ripple of his body, but the words didn't do anything at all. By the end he was trying to force the crowd into a rampant form of affection. Stripping off his pants and contorting wildly in a sort of rock star faun way across the low-ceilinged stage. I could've cared less, but I guess I didn't.

The main act was what all the freaks had turned out for, the beautiful pirate anachronists with buckled shoes and wicked stripes, faces inked or sparkled, spangles resting around lean torsos and hair teased crimped curled or flailed into submission or exhibition. The band had dancing girls with big bass drums and golden cymbals that crashed over the crowd, and they had an accordian, and they had a frenetic little man who jibbered out rapped lyrics that again, I couldn't understand but man, they sort of blew my mind. After three whiskeys and some coke, the night was flowing melodic and fluid through damp city streets, and the club was packed tight and full with all the bodies, and once the steady stomp of gypsy punk started up everyone cavorted madly. Really. Cavorting. There were attempts at slam dancing, scrawny scrawny boys, oh, how we love the way they try and wreck their fragile bodies across the pit, in the heat of things, magic marker scrawl across their thin white t-shirts. There were girls spinning in some sort of Old Country style, flaring skirts whipping tightly, floral prints blurring into stripes at the speed. Boots and shoes and high heels all trampling the drink slick floor. Gogol Bordello plays the kind of music that rises and falls and then rises higher and madder than ever, and the crowd pushes forward, and the band slows into a steady descant, but then they rise again and the crowd is pushing, pushing, clothes clinging damp and hair stringing with sweat, but the band is increasing the pace and the accordions are pumping wildly the air within, and the crowd is just going nuts. Rinse. Repeat. The small sea of people carrying one of the dancing girls, riding high on her drum, head ducked to avoid the lighting, beating still on the drumskin as the hands reach up to carry and crest. All night.

And then some. Second to last song, and there's a flutter of fliers tossed over the grinning bobbing heads, and so after a few quick stops for water and an exchange of friends and clothing (peeling off the old and letting it fall sticky to the floor, picking up the new and trying hard to fit the theme), it's off to the afterparty, billed as the Ultimate Balkan Dance Party. Alas! Just when I needed you most, man, where are you? The only one I know who'd practiced this sort of thing, who would be at home on a rainbow strobelit floor of Ukranians. It doesn't matter. Sitting quiet and industrial on a North Portland street, the bar was thin and dark, a long stretch of stools and mirrors that reflected back to us how much fun everybody must have been having. Looking into the mirror, it seemed like a television show, with the shadow of figures moving in and out of the beams of disco shining down. I talked the bartender out of a glass of orange juice and we listened to the garish dance music the band brought along with them, hunkering down and making small talk as the man next to us tried unsuccessfully to wave down a drink or two under the loudly stated pretense that "he was the one who made this all happen". Later, we'd see him drunk and limber on the floor, fancy dancing with a big blonde in a tight denim skirt and cowboy boots, after the floor had cleared out. A few minutes later we were int the night air, a few minutes before four, boots through puddles, exhausted, on the way to the car.