FANZINE

I know I swore I wouldn’t be fooled again after getting shammed at that Sham 69 show like six months back, but I did, and I felt even more dumb because I wrote a listing up for the Christian Death show that happened last night at the Knitting Factory. In case you missed it, here it is again in all its embarrassing totality:

After nearly 20 years of really confusing iterations, it can be, mostly, settled that this is the closest to the original Christian Death that Christian Death is going to get, unless Rozz Williams somehow lifts himself from his self-imposed grave. Which he is not, unfortunately for all his legion of goth-punk followers, fans of the great album Only Theater of Pain, and other early Christian Death recordings before all the Confusion of Pain started with Rozz and Valor Kand, who owns the legal rights to the band name Christian Death. Yes, it’s all very complex for those who want to follow the trail; for others, it’s simple enough to say there were once two Christian Death(s), and that, for most of the true believers, this (sometimes referred to as Christian Death 1334) is the path Rozz would have  chosen. Now fronted by goth-queen Eva O, of Shadow Project, of former-lover Richard “The Night Stalker” Ramirez infamy, of former-lover Rozz Williams fame, Christian Death incarnation number ? brings all the goths to the yard at the Knitting Factory.

It should have told me something when I walked in to the club to about 12 people in the crowd, and about four goth kids dressed straight from the mall and looking about 20 years old, at most. I think I even texted my girlfriend that there were more amps on stage than people in the audience, but then again, it was an opening band. I should have left when the Christian Death roadie started duct taping silk roses and Halloween-decorative cobwebs to the stage and monitors, but I stayed to realize the fullness of my mistake. In my defense, the information about Eva O came from a (supposedly) very trustworthy source, of course now which is highly suspect, because who appeared last evening was not Eva O, but rather Valor Kand and his merry band of pranksters who looked like they were the embodiment of a vision concepted by a corporate director’s board and some top sellers from Hot Topic. Yes, this is what a goth band looks like! Although I wanted to very badly, I didn’t heckle the band (who was awful, as you might expect). I felt bad enough they dragged this name on for 20+ years only to play a show in New York City to 30 people. The four goth girls danced dreamily, in a way that should be reserved for the privacy of their bedrooms, and I took note that this was the worst show I’d ever been to. I snapped the blurry picture in order to remind myself of what a terrible night I was having and that this was surely no dream. —mkl