I’ve never had a very good working relationship with reality. I grew up in California. I was a latchkey kid. Rather than using my after-school freedom to bask in the warm Californian sun, my preference was to park in front of the TV and bask in the warmth of its rays. I watched a lot of cartoons and like the rest of my contemporaries I watched a fair share of 80’s teen movies: The Breakfast Club, Revenge Of The Nerds, Pretty In Pink… These films helped shape my imagination and it is an unjust tragedy that by the time I was a teenager the 80s were over and so were the values, big hair, and music that helped to define the decade. 

I’m an adult now, with few friends, but when I see one in particular it doesn’t take much to get him to join me for a Fabulous Downey Brothers show.

I met my friend Adam (who was 25 minutes late as usual) in front of an unassuming building a few doors away from The Tin Hat. He brought a mutual friend, Jay, a Red Indian who’s infamous among lady-killers for being one of the more silent of the strong silent types. The pair of them were stoned. We walked in, got our hands stamped, and after discovering that there was no bar were told that the venue was BYOB; which was excellent news, considering that I’ve lived a relatively impoverished life, at the mercy of overpriced bars and watered-down drinks. Before taking any time to appreciate the ambiance, the three of us skipped toward the closest mini-mart to purchase reasonably priced alcohol in copious quantities.

We returned, several forties and one six-pack later, finally willing and able to focus on our surroundings.

There was no stage in the traditional sense, only a small performance area at the same dance-floor level that would later be packed with punks, post punks, goths and other ghouls. The performance/dance floor was of course concrete, weathered by the high-heals and boot-bottoms that are indicative of generations of alternative miscreants. The club in general had an overall magenta hue with pockets of mood and ultraviolet-lighting, emanating from internally lit sculptures of giant mushrooms hanging from the high ceiling overhead.

My friends and I cracked our beers and toasted to what would later prove to be a very note worthy experience.

The womb-like shade that saturated the room was punctuated by rich blues and other colors used in the various murals and frescoes that decorated the walls. Only slightly obscured by psychedelic fungoids, my friend Adam pointed out a pair of windows above us that had been painted-over to become the eyes of a steam-snorteling creature. We hadn’t been there long, just long enough to start feeling the effects of our drink, and in the burgeoning malaise I stated simply “The windows are the eyes to the soul.”

The Downeys were headlining and would naturally appear last, but the show had to start somehow and needed an opening act. It began with two performers standing in front of a small screen, onto which was projected a series of money-shots and oral-sex scenes taken from gay porno movies.

The first of the live performers held the microphone, the other used a keyboard to work a sound-effects machine. The man with the mic spat out a few words I can’t recall, then covered his face with a black beanie, totally blocking his ability to see the audience and perhaps more importantly blocking the audience’s view of his eyes. His schtick was something akin to a schizophrenic version of an Andy Kaufman routine. Eyes covered and soul protected he asked, “Are there any hecklers in the audience?” Thus began a litany of bad jokes and insulting non-sequiturs, accompanied by equally random sound bites from his cohort on the keys.

It was a sight not be seen, but without question something to be recorded for the benefit of posterity.

I had no idea what to expect before my arrival and was therefore woefully unprepared to take notes, equipped with neither paper nor pen. Thankfully, owing to my 80’s upbringing, a childhood hero of mine taught me to make do with what I had, and it is thanks to the sage wisdom of Mr. Angus MacGyver that this article was made possible.

What I had was a zine; sheets of paper loosely stapled & crudely photocopied, previously purchased from a table near the club’s entrance and alleged to contain some insight into the great manic-depression left in the wake of the post-90s apocalypse. Only the zine’s cover survived; bright red and evidently illustrated by a caveman who was hopped up on fermented berries and attempting to record the Homo Habilis impression of an alien abduction… nothing but scratch paper to me. Every square-inch of the front, back and inside cover was graffitied with my notes.

Before I could start scribing, I needed a pen. The pen is mightier than the sword after all, but in a den of heathens a good pen can be hard to find.

The man in the black beanie was prattling on and the experience would be lost forever if I couldn’t find a pen to put to paper. I turned away from the delineated stage and solicited an open-minded couple sitting on a couch behind me, “I’ll give you one dollar if you can give me a pen?” They were blanched out in black-light. I remember that the woman was clothed entirely in hemp and that she was the first to dig eagerly into a bag without success. The boy dug into his bag. “I can’t find a pen-” he apologized “But I can give you a blood vile.” A blood vile? What the fuck would I want with a blood vile? He held it out… A 5.4mg vile, empty of blood, it’s colorless plastic walls lined in dew and the purple rubber cap punctured half a dozen times. It had been used. “What I really want is a pen, but I’ll give you a dollar for the novelty.” “Just keep it.” He said, and I did. Why not? It’s good copy.

Somewhere next to the table where I had previously purchased my scratch paper there was a man in thick-rimed glasses and a newsie hat… a Mod. I offered him the same dollar I did the phlebotomist. “A dollar really isn’t that much,” he said. “Two dollars,” I tried. “Well…” he was reluctant, so I tried again. “Three dollars!” “Tell you what,” he compromised, “why don’t you just take the pen, and return it to me when you leave?” How fucking important was this fucking pen to this fucking asshole? I offered the man three dollars and since when does ink have a higher street-value than blood?

I took the pen and returned to the audience. The opening act was coming to a close. I hadn’t switched into full journalism mode so my notes are lacking, but from what I can reconstruct I said to Adam, “If this was the 80s, people would start throwing beer cans!” He challenged me with a defiant, “Oh really?” No need to waste good beer, so I downed what was left of mine and politely tossed the empty can (underhanded) toward the masked man. After a few seconds the audience started to get the joke and the beer cans were thrown as freely as the heckles. The opening act was over.

“What did you think?” I asked my friend. The stage had been cleared but the small screen was still ripe with fellatio and the best response he could give was, “There was just, so much dick-sucking.” He was right.

All I saw of the next act was a horsewhip held high above the crowd. The band was Trannysaurus Rox. One of T-Rox’s performers had been walking around prior to the opening act wearing a pair of ass-less chaps. My friend’s friend, the Red Man, had remarked (quietly) on what a fine ass it was. The transvestite in chaps was a backup singer, and another wearing a dress was the lead. I couldn’t tell who was who, or what was what, but I remember the lyrics had resonance. “Suck dick!” and “Big-ass black dildo!” So spoke the voice of a generation.

Suddenly, my attention was divided.

After obtaining a very valuable pen, I had settled in the rear of the audience. I was in a small alcove standing between a door and some shelves cluttered with nothing in particular. A boy with a contemporary haircut kept coming and going, in and out of the door opposite the shelves. I stopped the boy and asked, “Is that the green room?” He had no idea what a green room was. We talked, mostly at my insistence.

The room he was coming and going from wasn’t green, but rather the boy’s bedroom. To my surprise The Josephine was also a residence. The boy with the contemporary haircut lived there with an undetermined number of additional eccentrics. Out of curiosity I asked, “I paid seven to dollars get in… Does that money go toward the gas and electric bill?” He had no idea. But being a boy, with a contemporary haircut, young and full of youth’s confidence, he ventured a guess, “I guess it goes to the bands.” It was as fine a guess as I had ever heard, because the bands deserved it, and if not, the boy certainly didn’t.

The boy’s rent is 450 a month and he’s not a music enthusiast. He got his room the same way we all do, by answering an ad on Craigslist. By his own admission he couldn’t name any bands currently en vogue, so it was funny that he respond in so accusatory a tone when I said something like, “The Downeys are the only real band I follow.” He immediately asked, “What do you mean by real band?” “Fuck you-” I thought. By this time I was very drunk and wondered: Who is this young punk, with a contemporary haircut, to ask me anything? Still… I was on the spot and desperate, so I answered as best I could, “I guess it’s hard for me. I grew up between ages. I used to think that the future would be like the movies. I thought that the future would be like the 80s, and now that it’s not, I live in the past.”

The boy with the contemporary haircut could make little more sense out of that statement than I.

What do I mean by real band? I mean a band that I can touch. Most of what I listen to is stolen from the internet, pirated from a bygone era that was perhaps the last gasp of what could’ve been a great civilization. The Fabulous Downey Brothers are visceral. They have exactly the right sound, as well as the right tools and the right talent to back it up. I will never stand within three feet of Nina Hagen, The Waitresses, or Klaus Nomi, but I can stand within striking distance of a Downey. They are now and they have value now.

Thank god the boy with the contemporary haircut had no idea what I was talking about. I tried asking his name (for the benefit of posterity) and he conveniently realized the urgent need to excuse himself and become better familiar with the sound system.

I was left alone to think, so I thought: Journalism is my only connection to the real world. I’ve been told that I’m a natural empath but the truth is that I am at best an interpreter, and seeing things through the eyes of a chronicler is the best I can hope for. An empath can sense what’s happening as and/or before it happens. An interpreter can only convey the point after it’s been made, so let me get to the point.

The point is that me, my friends and I, had run out of beer… so we skipped the next few bands in favor of more alcohol, in combination with empty carbohydrates, at the nearby Tin Hat. We returned just in time to catch the Downey’s setting up.

The crowd was even more mixed than before. Splatter Punks, Post-Goths and Italio-Discotechs hybridized with Homos and Homophobes. I thought it particularly noteworthy that I saw one punk whispering into the Punjabi-Pierced ear of another, and I wondered what secrets sounded like when whispered through chains… But my eyes were on the band.

The Fabulous Downeys are nothing if not consummate professionals. They’re on time for one thing, and for another they come prepared. Every act I had been witness to that night was winging it, but the Downeys are in it to win it. First, they marked out their spots with chalk. They then taped a list of the evening’s sets to the weathered concrete floor and proceeded to plugin and duct-tape a series of electronics: chords, keys, and the wires of wah-wah peddles intermingling with discarded cigarette butts.

They’re a sextuplet of five boys, including the two technically Downey brothers Liam & Sean, and the fabulous Downey wife, Chandra, who is as much radiant as she is winsome (as in some dream come true). According to the internet they’re the weirdest band on earth and I for one can only hope to support the opinions of the internet.

They were all dressed alike: black tights, black shorts, black shoes, black tops, and on top of their black tops wore white lab coats, decorated in Dada-inspired Fun Foam. What is Dada? What is Fun Foam? Ask the internet.

By this time I was simply too drunk to be fully conscious of what was happening, which was convenient, since the Downeys are a subconscious experience. In point of fact I can only recall two songs sung by The Downey’s that night. The first I remember because it wasn’t on the CD I purchased, the second I remember because when my drunk friend demanded they sing it for an encore I thought “They already sang that song you drunken bastard!” and I didn’t want him to embarrass me in front of the only real band I follow.

And what a band… Every song rehearsed, scrutinized, and honed to perfection by two true performance artists.

Sean and Liam take turns as lead singer. The first set was Sean’s, the more introspective of the brothers, and he sang Properly Dead; a Pac-Man-style tone-poem about a person who opens a shed. What’s in the shed? There’s a head in the shed! It’s properly dead! The crowd loved it and so did I. I loved being there, I loved being a part of the crowd. Again, having lived a mostly sheltered, relatively downtrodden life, it was a giant leap for me to be a part of something that wasn’t already history. This was history in the making.

The house lights started to strobe. Sean’s set was over and in a slow, uniform-motion, the six Tri-Lambs began removing their white lab coats, effecting an animatronic costume change. The stack of speakers on one side of the stage hummed a monotonous note, while the speakers on the other-side hummed a higher one; a binaural beat in the 7-13 hertz Alpha range. The audience was being forced to dream.

The Dream Machine stopped and the six Tri-Lambs had metamorphosed into six heads framed by grey, retro-shaped Fun Fur. As an unfamous illustrator I’m unpayed to be unfamiliar with the basics of color theory, and I was therefore singularly unaware of grey’s unique ability to take on the characteristics of whatever colored light it’s closest to. Each disembodied head was irradiating its own tone, like six bars in a robot rainbow, and one of them was about to start screaming.

The only song I can remember of Liam’s was Worms. It’s a pretty straightforward tune, all the classics are, essentially it’s a wandering minstrel’s challenge to the public. “Hey, what do you think about worms?” “What do you think about what?” “Yeah, what do you think about worms? Yeah…” I happen to like worms, but even more I liked the act: a shaggy spider-crab, crawling around the floor of a quasi-secret/pseudo-private night club, rummaging for cigarette butts among the cables, in a grey, iridescent ruff.

He dropped his mic.

The crab was probably blinded by stage lighting, but I was on the other-side of the spotlight and could see just fine. I reached into the bog of squirming electrical cables and pulled out the microphone, respectfully handing it to the shaggy crab as a squire would pass a sword to his prince. The crab continued screaming. He dropped his mic again. My friend’s friend, the Red Man, appeared out of nowhere and returned the mic as I had done… but was unable to resist speaking (quietly) into the microphone himself. “Here it is-” he said… and there it was.

And there we were… drunk, silly, forced by means electronic enchantment into a dream-state. Indeed, the rest of the show was the stuff that dreams are made of; synthesizers, flashing lights and glittering Fun Foam. Richard Elfman would’ve been proud.

In the 1980s an enthused audience member might salute his/her favorite band by holding a lit cigarette lighter in the air, but the 80s are over and so too are the values, big hair, and music which helped to define the decade. Today’s audience sill salutes, and holds a glowing smartphone in the air, so they can salute a second time by posting pirate footage of their favorite band on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. It’s a different way of doing the same thing, but the sentiment remains, and some 80’s wisdom still rings true. In the words of Ted Theodore Logan and Bill S. Preston (Esquire) “The best place to be is here-” “And the best time to be is now.”

And truer words were never spoken…