In one show of tolerance, Genesis P. Orridge is certainly free to stroll around in dragbut he's probably grandmothered in as a musical pioneer. He's here to support Dream Into Dust, the first band on the bill. They're a harmless bunch of moping feedback folkies. Still, the sullen creeps have to know who they're so earnestly entertaining.
The staff at Club Demarara hasn't been so properly briefed. I ask the two guys who've been frisking the clientele if they're aware it's a night of White Power. That's news to one of them: "You mean 'We hate niggers' stuff?"
"I haven't heard anything like that," replies the other doorman. "I've noticed that some of the people here aren't pure white."
Then I explain about the tolerant new Nazis who are for all races being free to be forced to live apart. "So," says the first doorman, "there's no hate involved."
That depends on your standards. I walk back into the club, and the video monitors are displaying supercool graphics of multicolored swastikas. Hate's in the house.
So is some pretty awful music. The duo of Changes, however, is clearly creepy as hardcore folk noir heroes. Remember that label. It's a code word, and I've already had to warn a few innocent musicians that they might want to reconsider billing themselves as "goth-folk."
They're willing to take advantage of their captive audience, too. Everybody's mainly here to see headliners Blood Axis, who try to bring the scope of Wagner to industrial musicalong with the philosophical beliefs of Ezra Pound. I get a look at the Changes set list, and it's 22 songs long. That's the same length as U2's current show.
I decide to head home, even if it also means missing a set by DJ Heathen Panzer. The season finale of Carnivle is on tonight. I'm pretty sure that Nick Stahl will decisively kick the ass of the evil preacher who's encouraging his flock to vote the Democratic ticket. That's the kind of occultism I can respect on Easter.
