There was once a very spooky music venue called Quarry. Unspeakable horrors took place there. I was once there to witness a pit bull savage an entire audience, for example. This past weekend, the venue got even spookier. To celebrate Halloween weekend, the infamous birthday of Pinhead from Hellraiser, Quarry hosted the very scary Quarry Horror show.
Hosted by Dr. Foxenfurter (a.k.a Foxencyn), the evening consisted of music, drag, performance art and the giving out of sweets and toys. It began with a performance from Bye Louis under the name Talking Headless, who, for one night only, were performing Talking Heads songs. I was utterly perplexed when I first noticed how similar the names Talking Heads and Talking Headless were. It couldn’t just be coincidence, I’d thought to myself, but then I realised it was halloween, and anything was possible.
They were a remarkable tribute that in many ways were better than the actual Talking Heads. Not actually, obviously, because that would be a mad thing to say, but they were really good still. They were unbelievably convincing and the set was extremely tight, and by the time they closed the set with ‘Burning Down The House’, I was utterly chuffed, because the music was good, and because I was pissed now.
Following this there was a very strange performance from a group of artists under the name Matting. Initially, when this performance began, I wasn’t really aware a performance was happening. The crowd was split into two halves and a woman dressed as a little girl with a doll came out and started telling us to shush. Initially I thought to myself, maybe she’s really drunk, like me, but then her friends (the rest of the group) came out to join her and they did something, unlike me, that was actually worth watching. There was some dancing and it was pretty spooky. Worth checking out.
Between the sets we were treated to various quizzes and Rocky Horror performances from Dr. Foxenfurter. They asked us all sorts of questions we were too stupid to know the answers to, and then they reluctantly handed out pity prizes (toilet duck etc) and we were thrilled! The Rocky Horror performances they did were also very good! I don’t know much about Rocky Horror, but the performances were really specific, so if it wasn’t similar to the film, that would be quite mad. They were a very funny host throughout though, and a pleasure to disappoint.
Hamer were also flown in from Leeds and played an ear melting set of garage rock jams. Think King Gizzard in their Nonagon Infinity period. I was situated right in front of the speakers for this set and both my ear drums were burst then surgically reattached during the set without me being made aware of it. Good stuff!
The final bunch of the bands were Silent K. I played around with the thought experiment of what the silent K could be, but came to the conclusion that there were in fact no words that featured a silent K and that it was simply a red herring. Regardless, they rocked my socks off and it was a fitting set to end a great knight.
The evening finished with DJ slots from Father Connor (Fend) and the Bitch Of Eastwick (GRT). More spooky songs, more spooky dancing, and a VERY spooky drink (Magnums, which is like calpol but really high alcohol percentage). I even got a Nabzy’s on the way home, which was brilliant, and the service was unbelievably speedy as usual. I can’t speak highly enough of Nabzy’s. And The Quarry Horror Show.
Comments