Danation: It's not the heat, but the lack of humility

The problem with covering the Auteur Explosion events, held monthly at Fort Lauderdale's Cinema Paradiso, is what to call them. A combination of bands, short films, artists and more, the event brings together such a disparate cast of art-and-music scene characters that I can't really call it a concert or a gallery show or a night at the movies, though that last category is the one on which the rest of the event is based. There is a sufficient lack of venues to highlight local filmmakers that such a night was desperately needed—at least among local filmmakers—and they've been going off with some success since the event's debut half a year ago.

This past Saturday's Auteur Explosion, the seventh in the series, featured performances by local bands the Seeds of Evolution, the Craven and Astari Nite. I arrived fashionably late (OK, OK—I was late because I had been home watching Paul Blart: Mall Cop, so, really, I was unfashionably late), and so I arrived halfway through the Craven's set. The duo consists of keyboardist Danny Martinez and Timb, the easily recognizable singer-guitarist and performance artist whose pink hair, thick eye shadow, black skirt and heavily strapped black fetishwear boots tend to single him out in a crowd. With bleeping synths and Timb's low-end drone, the act bore some resemblance to Joy Division.

The homage to 1980s mope-rock continued with Astari Nite, which obviously takes more than a few cues from the Cure, including swirling guitars, medium-range vocals that explode into occasional high-end wailing and a flair for the emo-dramatic, courtesy of frontman Mychael Ghost. The bands played outside, and even though it was past 10 p.m., I sweated my ass off in a long-sleeved black shirt with the sleeves rolled up. But Astari Nite appeared to be immune to the tropical weather, its guitarist wearing a black suit, its bassist in shirt and tie, and Ghost wearing a jacket and a skullie. Sure, I've seen the look before on dozens of hipster kids at Poplife, but it still doesn't make sense to me. It's halfway through June, and the goddamned heat is already impossible. Who can wear that stuff in this heat, especially onstage and jiggling around? Wait till August, ace. These indie kids in their jackets and wool caps will melt right there at the side of the dance floor, like an über-cool Wicked Witch of the West. There they are one minute, staring at their shoes and shuffling around in a sort of half-hearted attempt at dancing, smoking their Parliaments and drinking a Stella or a PBR when suddenly—splort!—just a puddle on the ground, nothing left but viscera and a blood-soaked wool cap.

But not Ghost. He didn't even appear to be sweating up there onstage, though the jacket came halfway off midway through the first song and—Sweet Jesus, was he wearing a fucking cardigan under the jacket? No wonder Ghost looks as if he weighs in at about a buck 10; the man must lose 10 pounds of water weight just sweating through a set, though his face still appears extraordinarily dry. I found it hard to concentrate on even the simple act of note-taking in this mess. Feverish. Even ice-cold beer didn't seem to abate the heat and humidity. My shirt stuck to me like a second skin. Astari Nite is a tight band—like the Craven, the group has been in existence for less than a couple of years, but it performs with the self-assurance and solid chops of a band with far more experience. And the Cure/Britpop sound makes it markedly different than the typical local act. But as soon as the set was over, I made a beeline to the doors to get inside the air-conditioning of the theater.

Mind you, that quick exit from the patio was solely due to the weather and had nothing to do with the fact that Miami's Shameless Burlesque troupe was about to perform. I took a seat in the fourth row, so as not to appear too eager, and marveled through a show that, at first, bore a distinct similarity to the burlesque acts of old that the recent rash of neo-burlesque groups emulates. The first dancer used an umbrella to cover up her pastie-laden breasts through most of her set, while the second dancer's apian act bore in song and style a firm relationship to those ecdysiasts of yore. But the third act, which somehow managed to make cannibalism sexy, probably isn't the sort of thing that Gypsy Rose Lee or Lili St. Cyr would get behind. No matter—Shameless Burlesque, another act with less than a couple of years behind it, carried forward the newly revived burlesque tradition with style and grace. It's like going to a strip club, but more fun and less seedy.

I bailed out before the films started screening, as I had received word that Rob Elba of hoary local act the Holy Terrors was moving to Port St. Lucie and would be playing a last show at the Poor House with the Terrors and his on-again, off-again—mostly off-again—obscure-punk cover act, the Clap. Elba wore a T-shirt that read, "Yellow Rat Bastard," and the actual Rat Bastard, a Miami producer, sound engineer and sonic terrorist, was somewhere in the crowd—I could see his trademark black cap over a ring of frizzy curls over the heads of the crowd. Compared to Auteur Explosion, the crowd was maybe five years older, five degrees meaner and five Rourkes* uglier, with a few notable exceptions. I went into this show with eyes rolled. Elba had, after all, "retired" the Terrors about a thousand times before, and when I caught him between the Terrors' and the Clap's sets, sure enough: "Look, last year, I said the Clap was turning into a Christian band. I mean, whatever."

Port St. Lucie will have to wait.

(*After Mickey Rourke, now the universal measurement for ugliness.)

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