Awesome Gigs

After my year in review, I have to obliterate my memory banks and start all over again! Especially since I’m trying to be healthier and more athletic, New Year’s Eve is the last debauch (ha!) for a gal who is trying to mend her decadent ways, or at least compensate for them.

I heard that Eartha Kitt was playing – yes – the greatest Catwoman in Batman history! This is an actress and performer who survived the Black List of the 1950s, ruled 60’s TV, sang her way through the 70s and even had a hit in the 80s. She had played consistently at the Café Carlisle, and though I fantasized about going to the old haunt of Bobby Short, I get a nosebleed if I travel above 59th Street. She was playing at Joe’s Pub – my new favorite venue for Cabaret-style acts (see an upcoming column on Rene Risqué). Tickets were a paltry $125 each, and you could reserve a bottle of Champagne, so I did! I mean, what price can you put on a once-in-a-lifetime memory and fun with friends. I would regret NOT having done it.

I put on the gold chain mail halter and mini-skirt and I’m ready to have some f*cking fun if it kills me. I go through about 4 pairs of pantyhose, not figuring out that the chain mail is shredding them, so I switch to fishnets. They look good ripped anyway. I drag the feather boas out of storage – my white one is a dingy grey, so it goes in the trash. I have a hot pink one, but it looks like it’s been dragged from the bumper of a car. I don’t care. I have to have some kind of cover because my outfit looks like something Paris Hilton would barely wear – except I have an appetite (the only thing on me that weighs less than something of hers is my wallet). The mangy boa shed so many feathers in my apartment, that it looks like I’ve butchered a flamingo. There was a trail of pink feathers out my apartment onto the street.

I went to the show with my best friends friend CJ (www.beholm.com), April (Coolgrrrls Moviegrrrl of late) and Chuck, who was the drummer in my very first punk rock band ever, The Vatican Commandos. We get to our table and the champagne is chilling for us already! Cool! We sit down and order dinner – I am starving. After about 30 minutes, no food. We ask about it, and the waitress has this look on her face like, “Oh, shit, I forgot to put in the order”. We learn she is temporary help because everyone wants New Year’s Eve off so they can party themselves! No big deal, I am just ready to eat my sorry excuse for a boa.

Eartha Kitt comes on and she is amazing – vibrant, sexy, charismatic and her voice was so strong! She tells us she is 77 years old! She sings in Japanese and in French, purrs like a kitten, dances on air and commands the stage. She has more sex appeal at 77 than four 19 years olds combined. She even gets a poor guy in stage and makes him blush! She is an inspiration! Maybe there is life for THIS kitty at 77! Who knows! Afterward, she is greeted by her fans and signed autographs, so I figured I should get up there, too. When am I going to have this opportunity again? . I was going to tell her I was Kitty, too, like she would care, and I realized she wouldn’t. Later, my mother asked me, “So, did you tell her you were Kitty?” Now you see where I get it.

After Joe’s Pub, it’s off to Brooklyn to Rosemary’s Greenpoint Tavern for The What IV, a band that Mike Kowalski from my band also plays in. Great garage rock and 50s covers. Fun party band. So I get there, and for a Polish working man’s bar full of guys who like to get drunk and get into fights, I realize I am dressed like Showgirls at the boat show. Nice. I figure I have friends there, so I’ll probably be OK. Chuck comes along, too, and it’s quite the opposite of Joe’s Pub – a band playing on the linoleum floor with only a vocal PA in a pub with $4 beer. At Midnight, I have no one to smooch but Rosemary and Mike. The coat comes off and everyone’s too drunk to notice. Rosemary takes my photo, so I take hers! We stay through two whole sets and part of a third – I think these guys know every song every written. It’s now off to Niagara for the return of GREEN DOOR! That was the party that started it all – the rock and roll rave in Giorgio Gemelski’s loft where people could spazz all night to punk rock. It was the inspiration for me getting involved in Coney Island High, and original DJ Howie Pyro was spinning! He’s the best! I get there and he’s with my OTHER favorite DJ, Jayne County. Jessica is go-go dancing, too, and she looks like the Baby-doll New Year in her gold bikini. We are dancing and sweatin’ to the oldies – The Rezillos, James Brown, MC5, Bad Brains, The Undertones, The Weirdos, The Misfits, Sonny & Cher, Tommy James & the Shondells, The Sonics, The Dickies, just to name a few. I dance so much, I declare “Howie’s trying to KILL us!” The drink prices are even better – FREE – but they start kicking us out after about 2 hours because it’s 4 am, so I decide to go yet one more place…

DJ Josh is at Motor City, so I head over there. That’s always a cool place, and even when it’s busy, it’ s never too much of a scene. Somehow, that place has escaped the frat boys who have taken over the Lower East Side on weekends and holidays. Josh is a cute young boy that I think is hot. When he’s finished with his set, all we do is make out, so my friend Chuck gets bored. He wants to go to Motherfucker party (www.motherfuckernyc.com) so when boy has to spin again, we leave to go to that party. I am totally wrecked at this point, but start dancing around that party to Blur (woohoo!) and all kinds of other fun music, and meet another cute boy who will dance. Chuck gets bored and announces to me that he just took some X and it sucks. I should have told him that NYC X is all BS…too late. I’m waving my boa around, and feathers are coming off it like clumps of nylon from a bad toupee. Chuck sneers, “When are you going to get rid of that thing?” “After tonight! I’ll throw it out when I get home”, I say defiantly. “This thing needs to be put out of its misery”, says Chuck, as he snatches the anemic string with some feathers still trapped in it, and whisks it away to the men’s room. Now I am all metal halter top, with no little wrap to keep me warm, and it’s about ZERO degrees outside. AS he emerges, I holler, “What did you do with my boa!?” He snags my camera, marches back into the men’s room, comes out, and hands it back to me, with all the film finished off. I didn’t know what happened to it until I developed the film. Imagine my surprise when I saw my poor boa, put down in a watery grave in the most unglamourous of toilets.

What I didn’t realize was that is was already 7:30 am when they call last call, and they were about to kick us out. Blinded by daylight, Chuck and I get a cab, and I let Chuck off on his corner. Now that I have no boa to keep me warm, I go for the next best thing – a boY, and head back to Motor City where most of the patrons are gone, but people re still drinking and “keeping themselves awake” by other means. I am offered, but decline. Cute boy is still there and gets me a drink. Blissfully, he asks me to get out of there when the other conversations become dueling monologues. I’m not sure when we went to sleep, but I woke up the next day at about 5:00 pm, and was NOT hung over! I am left to be a slob and try three times to watch the original “Breathless”. No fuss, no mess, no hangover! It may be the best New Year’s EVER! Yay!

Next up, the party doesn’t stop with BYO Records’ Punk Rock Bowling Tournament in Las Vegas!