quislibet | cabaret

Last night my old roomie G. and I went to the Dresden Dolls show at the Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge. They were rather good, as I had heard. (Alas for my hipness factor: only now after their major local and regional publicity blitz has it worked out that I could get to one of their shows.)

Unfortunately, they were on last, far too late for me to get home to Salem, despite the advertised set time, so I had to crash at G.'s, but I actually had decent transportation karma this morning and caught an express train back to Salem a minute after arriving at North Station, despite not having bothered to look at the schedule at all. I even got home in time to put the trash and recycling out before the collectors came by; often when I am home I can't even get out of bed early enough for that.

The first band last night was just some punk band or other which failed to leave much of an impression. The pleasant surprise of the evening was the World/Inferno Friendship Society, which played second; I can only describe them as existing in that place where The Clash and the Stray Cats get together to play klezmer and circus music, fronted by a man who looks kinda like Gary Numan and occasionally sounds kinda like Jello Biafra.

Or something.

I ended up buying one of their CDs.

The third band was Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, which I found, alas, inaccessible in that noise/prog-rock/jam- band/cookie-monster-vocals/taking-themselves-seriously-while-wearing-spooky-animal-masks sort of way. But the triple mohawk on that one guy was all right.

After the Dolls' set,

vicissitude kindly drove G. and me to the Jamaica-Planar region, obviating the need for a taxi. I slept fitfully on the couch, having strange dreams about Weimar-era cabarets. People who were supposed to be

cinemama and

burkean were, for some reason, featured in one of them as surreal puppeteers, something which, if I judge aright, might well please them to know.