The Yard Dogs Road Show, Thomas Truax, and the Nervous Cabaret @Rubulad, 4/9/05

Rubulad is an amazing party which usually takes place at an amazing space out on Flushing Ave. in Brooklyn. I've been there before and thus knew to expect many rooms of artsy, strangetastic, partyriffic fun. When I got there, the Yard Dogs Road Show were already playing. Their live show consists of a creepy, sexy, old-fashioned vaudevillian cabaret act, complete with hot burlesque girls and a sinister mustachioed drummer/singer/charlatan. At one point he tried to sell us his miracle elixir by demonstrating its "special powers" on a hypnotized member of the Black and Blue Burlesque...I was instantly hoodwinked. In the next room, there was cheap beer so I bought some. The following room featured Thomas Truax and his amazing homemade instruments. He had this spiky wheel thing called the Cadillac Beatspinner Wheel that (you guessed it) played beats as it turned. This provided a dissonant backup for his hallucinatory-looking Hornicator, which appeared to be an old gramophone horn sprouting strings and many other noisy additions. It was like one of those Edward Gorey illustration that I used to delight in running my eyes over and around for prolonged periods of time (actually, I still do). His dreamlike lyrics were about clones and car crashes and stuff. I found myself getting kind of hot for Thomas...he was clearly a man of great genius to have created such beautifully mangled, marvelously vociferous things! (Later on in the night, old movies were screened in that room, movies like "beyond the valley of the dolls," which features lesbian superheros, a man with tits, and everything else that's good in this world. "Ere this night doth wane, you shall drink the black sperm of my vengeance!!" So so good.) I should also tell you that he's opening for the Dresden Dolls. That should tell you something, considering their uber-weird, melodramatic, yet insanely successful status! It seems to me they are the harbingers of interesting taste in music, and for that I tip my tophat to them.
Then down the stairs and onto the dance floor, where I encountered my friend Ted. I was very happy to see Ted, as he recently moved to New Haven for a job and I had not seen him in awhile. We drank some absinthe. We danced like dirty hippies to world music. We went outside and saw some kickass sculptures. Then we went in the OTHER dancing room, where there was intense ravey techno music playing and also the #1 attraction of the night: the igloo! This was a 3-story, interactive sculpture that you could crawl around inside. It was basically like chilling in a big, bright, white womb. It was apparently a smaller version of a larger one that had been built at burningman. It was comfy inside and we didn't want to leave. It was an excellent igloo.
There were many different substances at this particular party, ranging from slightly to highly illegal, but (and maybe this is just the repressed sXe kid in me talking)the most intoxicating thing was definitely the music. Especially when I heard the first groans of Nervous Cabaret, the last band of the night, who were definitely smokin', and not in a controlled drug kind of way. They played a strange, gloomy, spooky, punky, ska-y, blues-y, sort of old/new time music and Ted and I danced like maniacs to it. They started their set off with the most punk rock puppet show about bunnies that I have ever seen, then proceeded to rock our socks off with their slow grinding pseudo-standards and skanktastic uptempo songs. How could I not love them???
In conclusion: Rubulad is far. Rubulad is pricey ($10). Rubulad is hard for Manhattanites (and almost everyone else) to get to. However, Rubulad is worth it. Anyone who tells you differently is a lame little pussy with no balls and deserves to be banished to Irving Plaza forever. You heard it from me, the (fair and balanced) source.

*to be added to the Rubulad mailing list, email chris@spill.net.*
**to learn more about Rubulad, read this interview.**