IM WEARING A black suit, and Im wrapped in a ...
Fortunately, there turns out to be another advantage to my basic black stupidity. As I get within a block of The Octagon on 33rd, I'm able to make a quick detour into the Copacabana to crash the Archbishop Molloy High School senior prom. They're a fine-looking group of kids, too, although some would like to go on record as saying that the salads were chintzy and they deserved steak.
I even offer to pay one young couple's way into the Octagon-they're Catholic-school kids, so I certainly believe the birthdates on their IDs-but they pass on the offer once they see the crowd going into the club. To be fair, there's no way that the SMack! Reloaded party could look as dopey as the ones held in the city of Zion. Still, I'm already tired of stage shows where sexy gals or sexier transvestites ooze their way out of shabby cocoons or shells or broken homes or whatever it is that they keep oozing from.
The reliable thing about any SMack! party is fun from the SMack! Video Lab, here represented by some wonderfully retarded homemade videos. The kids of Molloy High outgrew this stuff by the eighth grade, but it's fun to see the SMack! repertory company dolled up in latex and kicking one another with the precise choreography often seen in fetish wrestling videos. It's the closest that this marathon will ever get to the notion of adult play.
Overdue on both a latex and Matrix moratorium, I take refuge in a screening of the They Might Be Giants documentary Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns. The film's an innovative tribute to two swell guys, with commentary from many big fans who can't name a single TMBG song written after 1989. While those underground artists will pack the Bowery Ballroom to celebrate the film's premiere the next night, the Eighth Annual Vision Festival-dedicated to avant jazz and arts-has its own debut at the St. Patrick Youth Center on Mulberry St.
The place is dramatically referred to as "The Center," but that's just another magical prom-season revamping of a smelly gym. Thankfully, hammering in the event's big concept of a vision for peace is left to a nice, addled elderly lady who's provided a mic to ramble on helpfully between acts about how "we all live in this world." Oh, and "whenever you see someone draw the line, you have to erase it." Death to that kid with the purple crayon!
Yet the opening turns out to be a very important event, as the night concludes with Patty Waters' first NYC concert since spending the 60s as the original Diamanda Galas-that is, with a flower girl presence and none of the range. Waters has always had to struggle to reach half an octave, but this only means that her voice is fine as ever. Same goes for her haunting delivery on what turns out to be a mere handful of songs.
It's easily one of the most important NYC concerts of the past seven years, and certainly the best to take place beneath a basketball net. There's maybe an impressive 60 people in attendance, but what can you expect from our cold society? As the Vision Festival's manifesto states, "Every creative act is a stand against that which would desensitize or dehumanize us." Man, these Matrix parties are hard to avoid.