For years, as I was growing up, I’d watch various sci-fi near-future films like Freejack, Strange Days, or any number of others where at some point in the movie, for one reason or another (quite likely more for a good soundtrack and/or good eye candy than for any reason really related to the plot) the main character would have to go into a dance club. The club would invariably be dimly lit, hazy, reverberating with pounding electronic beats, and packed wall-to-wall with beautiful people in incredible outfits that were usually some variation of leather or vinyl, often titillating or outright revealing.
I’d always see these scenes and replay them over and over in my head or on tape when they were released for rent, drinking up every detail. These were the clubs I wanted to go to. I wanted to be one of those people, walking through the crowds, relishing the mix of dark sensuality and sexuality that the scenes presented. Where in the movies, these scenes were usually played to put the main character (and, by extension, the audience) out of their element and at some level ill at ease, all I wanted to do was step through the screen and join in the party.
Anchorage being Anchorage, of course, for me it was nothing more than a fantasy. I did my best to find the music, and didn’t to too terribly shabbily — in junior high, when nearly everyone I knew was listening to Whitney Houston, DeBarge, and Bon Jovi on the pop stations, I was digging through the racks of tapes in the store to find Men Without Hats, Shriekback, and Depeche Mode. The only songs on the radio at that period that ever really caught my ear are those that now often get lumped into the “New Wave” category — Pet Shop Boys, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, and so on. Soft Cell hit big with ‘Tainted Love‘, and I discovered that the rest of that album, Non Stop Erotic Cabaret, was far more interesting than that simple pop song, with gems such as ‘Seedy Films’ and ‘Sex Dwarf‘ finding their way into my world.
I just want to quickly say how insanely impressed I am with how many of the artists I’ve mentioned in this post are available on the iTunes Music Store. Sometimes it’s just an album or a few songs, but almost every one of these links is a working iTMS link, and even though many of these artists are the more “popular” artists of the alternative scene, I’m still quite surprised that I found as many as I did. Kudos to Apple and the music companies both. As the years went on, I continued to focus only lightly on pop, finding myself drawn more and more into the worlds of ‘alternative’ and industrial music. Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Ministry, The Cure, Primus, The Violent Femmes, Nitzer Ebb, Sisters of Mercy, Peter Murphy, Love and Rockets, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult — here was the music that meant something to me. Not the processed pablum that the top-40 radio stations tried desperately to convince us that we had to buy, but the darker, twisted, charged, sometimes violent but often tongue-in-cheek wierdness that would never be popular. I loved it all.
So I’d found the music. To give Anchorage its credit, we tried the clubs. The first I ever found was Sharkey’s, a split-level non-alcoholic teen club with top-40 and hip-hop upstairs and alternative and industrial down in the basement. It was the perfect introduction to that world for me. Suddenly, I discovered that even in Anchorage, there were more people like me, and every weekend, this unfinished basement of a building in downtown Anchorage would fill with all the rest of Anchorage’s burgeoning alternative population. There was a big concrete support pillar right in the middle of the dance floor, and while most of the time it just stood there, any time a good ‘mosh’ song started pounding out of the speakers — Ministry‘s ‘Jesus Built my Hotrod‘, for example — suddenly there’d be a mass of people circling around and around the floor, with the pole at the center of the circle, all of us building up momentum until someone got crazy enough to turn around and suddenly start pushing through the opposite direction. Sure, there were occasional bruises when bodies collided, but never any violence, and it was all in fun — we knew exactly what we were in for, and if someone ever tripped and fell or got knocked down, immediately there were arms and hands all around hauling them back up and tossing them right back in the press.
Eventually, Sharkey’s closed, and Anchorage worked its way through club after club. I was fortunate enough to be the DJ at quite a few of them in the 1990’s, and some of my fondest memories from my time in Anchorage are from those days. Standing in the DJ booth, looking out over a sea of bodies dancing and having fun, watching people try to leave the dance floor only to have them run right back on when the next song came on, laughing as they cursed me with a grin on their face because I wouldn’t let them rest. Feeling the energy of the club at its peak — watching the bodies move, knowing that they were there, dancing and having fun because I was giving them what they wanted, getting the charge off of the atmosphere. It’s almost indescribable, but I would leave the club every night incredibly amped, feeling like I’d taken all the energy generated over the course of the night and pulled it all into me, channelling it from the dance floor, though me, back into the music and back into the people on the floor.
Of course, all good things must come to an end, and as times and trends changed, what was left of the alternative scene in Anchorage finally gave up the ghost. Some people had grown and gone on to other things, others had left the state seeking bigger and better things, others had just disappeared into their own lives. Not long after that, I decided it was time to follow my own paths outside of Alaska, and I packed my bags and left, moving down to Seattle.
And here, finally, in a sense, we come full circle. In Seattle, I’ve found the things that had originally started me down these long and winding roads. Not only do I still have all the music that has found its way into my collection over the years, but after a long work week when the weekend rolls around, I can head out and immerse myself in crowds like those in the movies that had caught my eye for so many years. Going to the Vogue on the weekends is very much like I’d imagined these clubs could be all so long ago — the music, the people, and oh, yes, the outfits! The club isn’t as expansive or as lavish as those in the movies (this is the real world, after all, and not a big-budget film), but it has all the right elements, with the definite added bonus of being real, and not just a short sequence on film in a dark theater.
Sunday nights are ‘fetish night‘ at the Vogue. Most Sundays, as I’ve mentioned before, this just means that things are a bit less ‘tourist’ friendly, and you’re more likely to see the more extreme outfits on display (and sometimes, there’s not much to display at all). Occasionally, though, there will be special events going on, like tonight’s presentations by Blue Dungeon. Three times during the night, the floor and stages were cleared, and Mistress Blue and her troupe took over with demonstrations. While I’m not a fetishist myself, the performances are a lot of fun to watch, and everyone involved obviously enjoys what they do (and have done). Once the shows were done, the music came back up, and the floor was once again filled with people out having fun, dancing, flirting, and enjoying themselves.
Tonight, as I left the dance floor and stood against the wall, I had to smile. Years ago, things like this were nothing more than a fantasy, something I’d seen and knew that I wanted to be a part of, but didn’t have the opportunities to take advantage of. Now, though, it’s a fantasy no longer, but a world that I’m part of. A small part, perhaps — while I can go out onto an empty dance floor and dance until I exhaust myself, I’m all too often painfully shy when it comes to actually talking to anyone, and so have met only a few people over the past two years of putting an appearance most weekends — but a part none the less.
And try as I might, when all’s said and done, that’s cooler than I can really put into words.
iTunes: “Cuz It’s Hot (12″)\” by My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult from the album Black Box (1990, 10:17).
