The Jeepers Peepers Club

Well that was fun.  Lola and myself decided to go out on Friday to see an exciting little burlesque troupe we’ve been hearing an awful lot about called The Jeepers Peepers Club.  They’re based in Newcastle, but have been starting to run nights in York recently, at The Junction.

After getting there a little bit on the early side, we had a couple of drinks while listening to the cheesecake rock n roll being played, and admired the transformation of The Junction into somewhat of a boudoir: table cloths, decorations, even a curtain around the stage.

At 9, the curtain opened as Sweetie Amour, dressed as a french maid, opened the proceedings.  After hyping the crowd for a bit, a job which she did brilliantly all evening, not once breaking from the french accent, she introduced Penny Whipworth, who performed an amusing skeleton themed striptease.  Penny’s act was pretty good, with regular “bone cracks” throughout, but I wasn’t entirely convinced by the routine.

The next act, however, completely blew me away.  Ava Loveless, who was apparently the new girl to the troupe, performed her Barbarella-esque “Saturn Rings” act, which consisted of her doing a striptease whilst hula hooping.  The climax was Ava managing to continue hula hooping whilst taking off her bra.  My own view is that this was the best thing I had ever seen, and it sounded like the audience agreed with me.

After a half hour break of more music, we were treated to Anna Fur Laxis‘ fish-based first act of the evening.  Managing to get off a sequined red dress, an Arabian princess outfit, and underwear in only a few minutes with the aid of some strategically placed hooks, Anna looks like she stepped directly out of a US pin-up poster.  That, combined with the suffocation based dance routine (to “Breathless”), she could easily be on stage with any of the top modern burlesque performers, so it’s a real pleasure to see her somewhere as small as The Junction.

Thankfully there’s more to come.  As soon as Anna’s finished, Chelsea Bangs comes on for her one performance of the evening, a Geisha-themed routine involving various oriental costumes, a parasol filled with rose petals, papers fans and throwing fortune cookies into the crowd.  Unfortunately, she couldn’t quite get the crowd behind her, as dazed as they were after Anna Fur Laxis’ performance, and as she only had the one performance of the evening it felt like she was a little bit wasted.

Certainly not wasted was Ava Loveless, who came on next with a brilliant “Hit The Road, Jack” routine based around her taking her clothes off to pack them in her suitcase.  A very simple routine, with the delicate twist at the end of her being covered in blood, having clearly murdered a man “what done her wrong”.  It probably requires a little bit of polish to get it as good as the Saturn Rings routine, but she’s hot enough to make up for it.

After the next break, we had another routine from Penny Whipworth.  Although she’s good, I was a little surprised that Penny had been chosen to be the second-to-last act on, given the comparative strength of Chelsea Bangs and Ava Loveless.  Her sweet-based routine, starting with an ice-cream inspired parasol and ending with pasties shaped like liquorice allsorts, was good, but I can’t see it as a second-to-last routine of the night.

Which certainly can’t be said for Anna Fur Laxis’ closing routine of the night.  She came on stage dressed as a member of the US Air Force, trapped behind enemy lines, and proceeded to strip down to her nipple tassles, at which point she commenced some tassle twirling that brought the house down: twirling both left, then both right, then both circling out, then both circling in.  The crowd was obviously aware of how difficult this is, as they were screaming at the top of their lungs.

After the obligatory final bow from all concerned, we had a little bit of a dance and headed off home.  It was a bit of a shame that the crowd was nowhere near as big as it should have been, but, even so, the Jeepers Peepers girls put on an excellent show, and a good night certainly appeared to be had by all.  So I hope to see you all there at the next one.

If, like me, you like porn, and if, like me, you like creating stuff, then you’ll love Belladonna’s guide to how to make your own porn.  And if you decide to make your own porn, let me know, and I’ll put it up on the site.

If you like M.I.A., if you like Tom Waits, or if you like the Wire, then you should check out M.I.A and Blaqstarr’s cover / mashup / whatever of Way Down In The Hole called Save Ur Soul.  The tune’s very much back on M.I.A.’s old-skool form, and the video cost less then $10 to make.

From M.I.A.’s myspace via PSFK

If you’re looking for a “thriller” this Halloween (cue: uprorious laughter), then you should check out this article by Violet Blue.  Don’t let your urge to wear a normal sexy costume like Supergirl take hold; be inspired to go beyond the traditional and be sexy zombie: the more decayed the better.  But remember, don’t bite off more than you can chew.

At least it’s better than this

For those of you who love Coco de Mer, pornography, and amusing pictures of yourself and others as much as I do, check out Coco’s new Private Poses feature.  If you go to the Coco de Mer shop in London, you can have a snap taken whilst trying on your sexiest new gear, send it to a friend, and upload it to the CdM website.  And we all get to watch.  Enjoy flicking through: the whole world really is here.

<From Violet Blue’s Open Source Sex>

For those of you who like both Peaches and the Muppets, we give you …

<found at Hear>You>Me>

For those of you who are not up to date with your web-based vlog-inspired horror cult things, be prepared for Zomblogalypse, the true story of three crazy kids trying to survive and not go weird in a world where zombies and hippie zombies have taken over.  It’s very lo-fi, but pretty well acted, so get along and check out Episode 1 (also on Youtube) before they’re killed.

(Full disclosure: Hannah, the weird one, is a long time friend)

This shit is amazing.  Coldcut played at the BBC Electric Proms this year following a panel discussion on the wonderfulness of the Radiophonic Workshop.  Although I didn’t managed to get to see them, the wonderfulness of Youtube has helped me yet again.  And now it helps you.

<From Create Digital Music>

“The land of most folks’ awareness is the Island of Mundania and the surrounding islands. Across the Straits of Fear is the portion of the continent that folks are generally aware of to some extent (gay sex, threesomes, light bondage, and so on). Beyond the Great Barrier Mountains and the Lesser Barrier Mountains, which demarcate the limits of common knowledge of different fetishes, lie the more exotic forms of sexual expression (natori, shibari, cosplay, fisting, puppy play, and so forth). In the frigid arctic wastes to the far north are those activities which only a very, very tiny percentage even of veteran, seasoned kinksters finds appealing (nullification, erotic cannibalism, necrophilia, and that sort of thing).”

Franklin Veaux has just released his version of the famous fetish map by Katherine Gates, and, most excitingly, he’s done it as a real map.  So you can spend your time fantasising about travelling the Bondage Tape lands, crossing the Great Barrier Mountains into the Kingdom of Stocks and Benches, like a sexy Lord of the Rings.  Check out the map here.

I’m going to be spending some time playing Superstruct, a new online game from the Institute for the Future.  The main blog I’ll be posting from is infornography, so come over and check it out.

Last night Rolo Tomassi played their second gig in York, at the Junction.  As we missed the first one, Jim and I decided that we had to get our asses down and catch them this time.

The first act on where a bitchin’ trio of kids called Ghosts on the Intercom.  They’re very impressive to say that they were about 16 / 17, and particularly impressive given that they were the random fill-in for when top support Mirror Mirror pulled out.  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a first support at a local gig that I was this impressed by.  Playing mashup of new-school emo, old-school emo, math rock, jazz, slap bass, System Of A Down-style rock, punk, etc.  They’re not quite slick enough yet; you can still here the gaps when they shift from one extreme to the other.  But give them a year, and these kids will be one of the best bands in York.

Which, unfortunately, cannot be said of Darker Shades of Gorgeous.  I can’t remember the last time a room cleared so quickly: by the end of the first song, the crowd in front of the stage was something like a fifth of what it had been at the start.  Depending on who you spoke to, the responses were that they sounded like a shit Strokes, a shit Kings of Leon, a shit The View, or a shit mix of all of the above and every other shit pseudo-artrock indie band of the last few years.  As one charming gentleman was overheard to say in the toilets: “if you come to a math rock gig, you expect to hear fucking math rock”.

However, they were slightly redeemed by the fact that the lead singer was the spitting image of Donny Osmond.

Rolo Tomassi were good.  Really good.  Eva’s voice is incredible, going from one of the best metal screams I’ve ever heard to beautiful ethereal sounds with perfect ease (admittedly using two mics, but still very impressive), the band leaping from jazz to spazz core to prog to math rock without really blinking.  All of which makes it particularly difficult to criticise them.  But I’m going to have to.

If you’ve read any of the hype, you’ll be expecting a band leaping styles every two seconds, ridiculous gameboy styled instrumentation, and fitting every single genre under the sun into less than one minute.  Unfortunately, it’s not anywhere near as mashed up as you would be lead to believe, the keyboards are impossible to hear under the thrash-core instrumentation (which I’m fully prepared to accept is partially the fault of the Junction’s sound guy), and we are only basically talking about two genres: heavy and jazzy.  They’re just not as crazy as they think they are.

This is not to say that they’re not well worth seeing.  They are a stunning live act, a very good twisted pop act.  But, if you read the hype and think that you want to hear a band that sounds like that, check out Gay Against You, check out DJ Scotch Egg, check out Ove-Naxx, check out Girl Talk, check out hundreds of other acts.  And don’t think that Rolo Tomassi do what they say on the tin.

And now Wonderbra have beaten their previous record at amazing things, by releasing a whole video of Dita being sexy.  Using the world’s most beautiful woman performing a burlesque routine to sell your product seems like such an obvious idea, but I’m far too busy watching it too care.

Found via Jezebel.

This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.  I’d love to show her to small children.

From Dabbled via Laughing Squid.

Dita + Wonderbra = Best evah

Dita von Teese is the new Wonderbra model.  I have already ordered the new catalogue. (From the Times)

Seal Cub Clubbing Club

YACHT

23rd August 2008

Seal Cub Clubbing Club
The Laze
The Uprights (I think)
@Brudenell Social Club

YACHT
@The Faversham

As an exciting birthday night out for Jim Hemmingfield Poetry (you should book him for gigs, he’s brilliant), we went to a free gig hosted by Stench of Muscle at the Brudenell in Leeds. Unfortunately, the first band (who I think were The Uprights but may well be wrong) were just a bit bland. They sounded a bit like the Pixies, and yes this is me damning with faint praise.

The Laze were less appealing. Very technically competent, good riffs, etc, but not as eclectic as they thought they were. When they started going, they sounded like the kind of band that would jump between metal, opera, jazz, funk, military tattoo, etc, and they kind of were. But when I say “jump”, I mean play one riff for about an hour, then play some sax-jazz for about an hour, then play some funk for about an hour, and so on and so on and so on and so on … If they were able to merge all those styles, if they were able to jump between styles without sounding like they were stopping one song and starting another, if they were just slightly more interesting, then they’d be amazing. But they weren’t.

The bassist’s rock god moves were pretty cool, though.

And then we got through to Seal Cub Clubbing Club. These guys were pretty good. Taking a lot of influence from Devo, they had the whole nasally shouting, americana, leaping between styles thing that always gets at least some positive action going. I was thinking pretty ok until they played their slower song (no idea what any of the songs were called, as the lead singer had a Wirral accent): beatboxing, synths, big heavy reverbs, it sounded mental. In a good way.

And their keyboardist looked like he was actually asleep. Which is the new punk rock.

After finishing off here at about midnight, we tramped down to the Faversham for some birthday dancing action at Bad Sneakers. We managed to catch the end of the set from YACHT, an american duo doing the whole drum machines and shouting thing that comes off really fash-y over here. But goddammit I liked them. Really silly, lots of fun, and something that you can dance to. They come highly recommended. The only problem with the gig was that every single person in the Fav looked like a dickhead. If you’ve ever seen Nathan Barley (and I highly recommend it), it looked EXACTLY like the club night that Nathan puts on. Of course, when the club night itself started, it became exactly that. It’s not that the music was bad (it really wasn’t), but the fact that whoever was DJing seemed to have a clever computer that told him, for each song he was playing, what the least appropriate song to follow on was. It was like some kind of beautiful art thing, but made dancing really hard.

And, as we all know, it’s all about dancing.

I’ve uploaded a new mix for you guys to download and listen to.  Tracklisting is:

Baby Got Back = Sir Mix-a-Lot

Teachers = Daft Punk

Teachers = Soulwax

How We Do = Mount Sims

Fix Up Look Sharp = Dizzee Rascal

Hollaback Girl = Gwen Stefani

OOIIOO = UMA

Syntax Error (Spudboy rmx) = Tiger Force

Atlas = Battles

Paper Planes = M.I.A.

Standing In The Way of Control (Soulwax Nite Version) = The Gossip

Over & Over = Hot Chip

It’s The Beat (Teenagers rmx) = Simian Mobile Disco

Weed Wine Wankers (SLUTTT remix) = Miss Odd Kidd

Penis vs Vagina = Party Shank

Put That Pussy On Me (Josh Console Not R’n'B rmx) = Spank Rock

Wearing My Rolex (Pirate Soundsystem Bassline rmx) = Wiley

I Like to Move It = Reel 2 Real

It’s pretty damn good.  Download it here, or the lofi version here

Well, it now looks like Al Qaida have a new ally in the war on the west.  Police in Gloucester have had a replica Bat’Leth, or “stainless-steel copy of a Klingon weapon”, handed in during a knife amnesty.

A spokesman for police in Gloucester, where it was surrendered, said: “It is a particularly nasty weapon that can, literally, take someone’s head off. We are very glad it is off the streets and we want more weapons handed in.”

It seems to me that the best thing to do would clearly be to invade Kronos, give them all MacDonalds and make them stop chattering in that heathen tongue.

From Daily Mail, via Boing Boing