Paul Bowles, who was paraphrased by the late Brandon Lee, wrote in his novel The Sheltering Sky, “Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”
When I was an eighth grader in Philadelphia, watching DIY punk shows at “The Church” on Chestnut Street, hanging with my best friend Jen and her chain wallet, I never really realized that these kind of shows would a) shape me as a human being forever and b) that they were so unique to the paracosm that is the, for lack of better word, “music industry.” It all did seem so limitless.
Pete in your math class might be the fill-in bassist for A Life Once Lost one day and that’s just the way life was, rockstars sat in desks just like you and had all the pomp and circumstance, if not more, than the people you saw on MTV or whatever.
I moved to New Orleans only seven months before Covid hit so I never had the opportunity to see much live music here, let alone the kind that I’ve always associated with home. Home to me has oftentimes been more defined by the moments of when and where I was and what I witnessed or participated in, especially when it came to music.
And last Saturday, I went to see the indomitable Delores Galore (birth name: Gabrielle Washington, also known for her Sexy Dex & The Fresh fame) but the night turned out to be so much more.
My friend and I left our 13 city block square designated comfort zone of the Quarter and headed out to Central City. As soon as I got to the outdoor party space, lit up by LEDs and heart lights, the smell of patchouli perfume and marijuana smoke brought me back to a place I can’t exactly pinpoint for you on a map. I thought of the nostalgia I feel for moments I never even experienced, like the explosion of Donovan Wolfington way back when, before Neil Berthier went to the other L.A. (Los Angeles). I was feeling for a moment I never felt.
A laser light puppet show worthy of Harmony Korine (specifically in his participation in the 2009 documentary Until the Light Takes Us) exploded before my eyes with wobbling low bass thrum and high pitched, nearly demonic cadence. Part performance art and part existential crisis, Poose the Puppet demanded through Ecco the Dolphin-like sonic waves and Avenue Q like puppetry to ask ourselves, What is my purPOOSE? A few half naked men dressed as flailing butterflies (maripo[o]sas) later, Delores Galore took the stage in all her sexy, self-confident, glory. Through lavender locks of hair and luscious lashes, wrapped in a sleek red blazer and chained bodice, she attacked her soundboard and delivered dance moves worthy of a tour around the world.
She cooed, “Just one touch” into the mic and the crowd, begged for more and she held dropped jaws in her hands. In my purple Doc Martens and ever-so-slashed tights, I couldn’t help but jump along and mouth the words that I knew all too well. I stared over heads of pristine punks and tapped a cute boy with longish, mintish-in-the-dark colored hair on the shoulder to tell him, like I would have in eighth grade, that he looked just like Neil Berthier, (better known as PHONY these days), who was now touring with Joyce Manor out of California, which makes total sense if you ever heard him sing “Rhonda” with D. Wolf or via Kurt Cobain-esque acoustic. (Don’t worry, I realize how obnoxious this all sounds).
Following Delores’s set, I might have jumped a fence or two to fetch some pinot grigio and returned to see Big Clown. The night was three out of four female fronted and/or solo acts and I felt the magic of the moment intensely. Never in my Philadelphia-teen-at-First-Unitarian-Church-basement-show-dreams would I have imagined a night quite like this, palm trees dotting the laser light show horizon and punks dressed in their eccentric Saturday night best in the beginning of November. Tuffy took the stage with a sick bassline that was Fugazi meets Bikini Kill meets the film score of the Al Pacino film Cruisin from the 70s. Alterna-show staple William Archambeault of Antigravity fame was throwing horns in the front row and swaying in some red pants and I finally felt like a part of something here in my new hometown.
I felt immediately myself again and yet foreign from the world of adult rules and Covid restrictions I’ve been playing by for so long. I laughed thinking about what I would tell my students (or not tell them) on Tuesday morning. I remembered a song lyric, inspired by some song and dance my dad gave me in middle school for almost being expelled: “It’s ok to lose yourself, as long as you can find your way back.”
Saturday night, at this super secret spot (that I hope the Mayor-elect…ahem…) does not fine, I found my way back and over a week later, the magic is still in my hair and I don’t necessarily ever want to wash it out.
Check out Poose on YouTube and follow the puppetry arts here.
Stream and purchase Delores Galore’s latest drop via Bandcamp here.
Just don’t tell Cantrell…
