The children of the night (and Orgy) were gathered en masse for the 20-something year old New Orleans ritual Endless Night Vampire Ball and the sweet music that accompanied it. For many years, the event, as Rolling Stone’s subculture pages would describe it was something “like” out of hometown heroine’s Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. However, this year it was literally home base of the newly relaunched AMC series that filmed throughout the Quarter and Chalmette last winter. Starring Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones) and Sam Reid (The Astronaut Wives Club), the series is a fresh take on the vampire lore established by Rice in 1976.
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Revelers traveled internationally to don their best vampiric attire. Looks ranged from the Guillermo-esque of What We Do In the Shadows to cake faced Gary Oldman’s turn as Dracula and the Victorian Bloomfer lady look honed by Sadie Frost in the Coppola flick. And the night would not be complete without the high cheekboned guests trying their hands at Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis de Ponte du Lac.
While nightlife necromancer Father Sebastiaan has conjured this event in Los Angeles, New York (where it officially kicked off in 1996), and Salem throughout the years, it seems somehow most fitting to hold the succubus soirée in our fair city of romanticized decay. With a code of conduct that includes respecting safe spaces and avoiding political talk and an upscale baroque dress code enforcement policy, it seems that Sebastiaan’s event has adapted to the needs of its patrons over time. Ladies and ghouls, this is not the vampire realm of the Clinton Administration.
Speaking of elements that date back from the Clinton Administration, no one was more shocked to see the industrial metal outfit Orgy taking the stage in the same room where I witnessed The Garden and Flipper just two weeks before. Orgy Endless Night edition played the hits off of their 1998 album Candyass which included “Stitches” and closed the set with their chart topping cover of New Order’s “Blue Monday.” The set was mostly solid save for lead singer Jay Gordon allowing the audience to do almost the complete vocals for “Blue Monday” which just didn’t quite work over the loud, reverberating instruments. Afterwards, some lovely local ladies took the stage to dance to an unofficial local Halloween anthem, “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song”) by Concrete Blonde.
If the new AMC series is any indication of vampire lore gone modern, this year’s Endless Night Vampire Ball followed suit. Endless Night not only prides itself on being a “Venetian Masquerad[e] meets a Vampire Court,” but also “serving like-minded individuals sharing a love for costuming around the archetype of the Vampire in the power words of Civility, Safety, Consent, Collaboration, Aesthetics, Ritual, Immercial, Show, Sacred Space, Courtiers, Privacy, Neutral Ground, and Philanthropy.” In keeping with Father Sebastiaan’s mission, Saturday night’s Halloween gala was completely in the same vein as the new AMC series, fresh blood for a new time.
To learn more about Endless Night, visit here. Interview with the Vampire is streaming now on AMC.
