Birds Before The Storm

Last night I attended the Red & Black Ball, a neo-victorian/surrealist/steampunk/anarchist bit of wonderfulness organized by the good folks of 2640. Almost everyone came in proper colors and in a wide array of finery, mostly DIY. It was hard for me, of course… black I’ve got plenty of, but red? My accordion is red, but I wasn’t playing. But what I’m getting at is that there were people of all ages and there was a seance and there was live, classical orchestral music being played by punks.

The world I want to live in has live classical music being played by punks, in case anyone was wondering. I wish that the event was a regular thing. After being into it for some years now, I finally understand why I love steampunk.

I’ll ramble more about Eccentrik Festival in the near future. In the meantime, I would like to share this groundbreaking revelation that swept over me during the set of Hellblinki Sextet (due to a intelligent comment by their bassist Brad): we can, in fact, define what a steampunk is. A steampunk is someone who curb-stomps steamnazis. Ideally, a steampunk curbstomps steamnazis against tesla coils. This begs the question, of course, of what a steamnazi is. Neo-victorian-colonialists come to mind.

I first heard that Abney Park (steampunk electronic rock band) was going to play on a zeppelin by way of their Official Page. I grew jealous. Then I discovered more details about it from Boing Boing and I was jealous of Boing Boing, for blogging about it first when I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. But then I realized that being jealous is useless. So I tried to sign up as a lackey for the flight, but that didn’t happen either.

So, like you do, I began to plot to kidnap/murder one of the members of the band to replace him or her for the duration of the flight. Naturally, I figured I should chose someone who it would be easy to disguise myself as.

But then I realized… Abney Park is a band of airship pirates. They will be stealing the zeppelin and either making use of it to harass British royal air freight or turning it into a populist form of travel.

Actually, that photo isn’t from the opening night, it’s from Wednesday night, as we worked diligently to piece the show together. But after a quick scour of Flickr for “Anachrotechnofetishism” I came across a good number of photosets with pictures from the evening: Alison Velvetgarden, Suite 100, Helix 90, Adameros, Porkshanks, and of course these earlier ones from Myself.

The show is up until October 3rd at Suite 100 Gallery, and you can even view and buy the work online as well.