Peaches / Drums of Death
The Phoenix. Wednesday, May 20, 2009.
It had been five years and a couple albums since I'd seen Peaches playing1, so I figured I was curious enough to join J., who was quite keen on it, in checking out the Peaches Spectacle, 2009 version. Even if that meant a trip to the Phoenix, and a show in what would almost certainly be a cramped, fidgeting mess.
The opener was Drums of Death, one of the producers on Peaches' new I Feel Cream. Taking to his table of gear in pancaked skull makeup, from the back of the room he looked particularly like Manservant Hecubus as a professional wrestler. He turned in a set of extraordinarily bland dance music that quickly had myself and my friends rolling our eyes and looking at our watches. I am clearly no sort of authority on dance music, but I certainly found his stuff very tame and press-the-presets unoriginal. At his best, he reached a sort of bland generic-ness, tho when he turned the BPM's down and sang more the results were far worse. Some people near the front were clearly into it and danced and cheered, but it seemed like many of the people in the room were standing around glumly waiting this out.
As he was finishing, we moved up to improve our vantage point and the room quickly felt sticky hot and claustrophic as more people came to squeeze themselves up front. I spotted R. moving through the crowd and when she made he way over to us, she surveyed the crowd and said, "This is less... flamboyant than I was expecting." Looking around, I think I would concede that the crowd, while containing a good representation of a variety of persuasions, was less ostentatious than the Peaches crowd of five years ago.2 But still an interesting cross-section, as Peaches' music pulls in people from a number of camps: transgressive art-queers, dancefloor types, savvy pop-spectacle types, indie folk. All put together, it means that the 'stand quietly, bob politely' contingent are in the minority and endangered by those less concerned with, like, not violating other people's personal space as they heave themselves around. This is the price one pays when going to a show like this, mind, so I'm not particularly complaining.
When the PA started playing a piano-y version of "I Touch Myself" the crowd was getting itself fairly amped up. And moreso as the three-piece band (drums, plus two on knob twiddling/guit/keytar) stepped to the stage to the strains of the theme from A-Team, leading up to Peaches' grand entrance in a shirt with gigantically puffy sleeves, looking a bit like the apple from the Fruit of the Loom commercials. She began the show with a bit of Blue Man Group-esque japery, conducting the drummer with her gestures, before launching into "Show Stopper" from the new album.
And it was on. The next ninety minutes were about the music, yes, but also about the carefully choreographed show — now crowd surfing, then moving up to the elevated DJ booth3 and on and on. The band did a solid job presenting the songs with a live edge without overstating Peaches' elegant musical minimalism. There were also some attempts to transcend live limitations, complete with the projected heads of backup singing Peaches for "Lose You". And costume changes. And lasers. And a blinking crotch light to finish the set out with. Glow-in-the-dark matching keytars? Hey, why not!
Peaches seemed pleased to be playing in front of a healthy hometown crowd, but reminded us that she had to flee the nest to make it big, commenting, "where the fuck were you when I used to play the Cameron House?" After an hour, I was fading a bit, but Peaches was going strong and there was still lots of dancing and a steady stream of people pushing their way up to enter the Presence of Peaches. The set ended, unsurprisingly, with "Fuck the Pain Away" and loud cheers before a two song encore.
We moved back during the gap before the second encore ("Take You On") to get some air and position ourselves closer to the doors. I saw Gentleman Reg over by the back bar, so I figured I still had time to get over to Buddies to see his set. So, as the song ended, headed out and for the brisk walk over. It was a fun show, but a bit wearying. If I'd gone in with a different, more "let's get this party started" sort of mindset, I'm sure I'd've been blown away.
A recording from this show can be found here.
1 Timelessly vivid memory of that Opera House gig: Peaches clambering to get to the top of the speaker stacks, and once she'd taken to her perch, announcing to the crowd: "It's dirty up here! It's even dirtier than me!"
2 I leave it to anyone with an interest in such things to contemplate the ramifications of the mainstreaming of an artist like Peaches. If the crowd is less fashion-conscious/wearing less fetish gear, does it mean that the artist is less cutting edge?
3 Rockin' out above the styleized Phoenix logo, it felt as if Peaches was saluting the crowd like some sort of sexed-up, robo-rockin Evita.
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