Who: Varian (Open) What: The Threshold performs at The Magic Store. Where: The Magic Store When: Tonight Warnings: TBA Notes: Open party log! Regular rules apply. You can comment with your characters backstage, in the audience, hiding out on the catwalks, whatever. Please list your location and whether the thread is during or after the show in your comment title.
The trouble started early for The Threshold's performance at The Magic Store, but considering the band and the venue they were playing, no one was really surprised. The drummer, Mikey, found that the dressing room he'd been promised was next to a leaky pipe, something he discovered when said pipe exploded as he was enjoying the fruit he'd asked for in the rider. He came running out of the room soaking wet and screaming profanities and was forced to endure Varian doubled over with laughter as a few roadies tried to ply him with towels and led him off to fume in another dressing room.
The rest of the lead up to the performance went basically okay. There was an incident with the ticket printer running off a hundred tickets and firing them directly through the slot in the window to be chased and grabbed at by gleeful fans, but all that did was ensure the house was even more packed than had been expected. Standing room only was an understatement. The band had just settled back in Seattle to work on their second album, so people who had missed them the first time around poured into The Magic Store to see a local band gone big.
By the time the band made it onstage, the sound check had gone half an hour over its allotted time, and the crowd was getting antsy. But the band finally did come on, and they made all the waiting in the stifling heat worth their time.
The band was tight musically after a year of practicing and playing small venues and then two years of recording and touring. They were a well-oiled machine, and when the first fuzzy bass notes rang out and Varian came out from backstage, the crowd went insane.
Varian was about six feet tall and a slim, lithe powerhouse. He had hints of curves to give him a more substantial hip base to swivel at the crowd, and he had on pants tight enough to make Mick Jagger blush. He had enough of a bulge in the skintight leather to say something rather explicit about what gender he was supposed to be. Then again, the fishnet shirt with nothing underneath showed off smooth skin, hipbones jutting down into his pants like arrows. His black heeled boots left his legs a mile long, every inch down the the ankle coated in leather so tight it looked like it had been painted on. His eyes were rimmed with wet black eyeliner, eyelids covered in spikes of dark blue shadow that reached nearly to his eyebrows, black hair spiked down over one eye. A torn black cravat completed the rather eccentric look. Not that the fans cared, really. He could have shown up naked and they would have been perfectly happy. More than happy, actually.
All in all, the concert was a roaring success. Sure a bucket of paint was struck by a loose wire on the catwalk and exploded onto the crowd, but they loved it, thought it was just part of the show. And when sparks flew from the pyrotechnics, nearly setting fire to the backdrop, they only cheered louder.
The band performed a majority of their first album, along with a few unreleased songs from the second one in progress, and sprinkled covers throughout. No genre or band was safe, it seemed - the night started out with '20th Century Boy,' and later on varied from original material to songs like 'Red Right Hand,' 'Kiss With A Fist,' 'Boys Wanna Be Her,' and, in an odd, downbeat turn, 'Good Morning Heartache.' They were an indie glam rock explosion, all fuzzy guitar and good riffs and lyrical complexity, pulling from influences like Metric, Placebo, Nick Cave, The Kills, The White Stripes and The Dears.
With the glamor stripped away, they were a good band at their core. All the hype aside, Varian had been gifted with an extraordinary set of pipes for a rock star, honey smooth with enough growl to take on the best, and enough range to keep things very interesting. He always seemed viscerally connected to the music, singing like he was inside the music, like every sad turn the lyrics took struck him in a fresh place though he'd sung them a thousand times, and the audience responded to the rawness of his performance. He shook, he strutted, he got down on the floor. The musicians were all adept and well-practiced by now, and, if nothing else, they proved to the people who came to see them live that their main singer's androgyny wasn't the only reason to see them perform.
The show closed with an encore for their biggest hit off of the first album, 'Between Dreams and Desire,' and they walked offstage with a coo and a snarl from Varian, who tossed his cravat into the crowd and watched three girls and a boy fight each other for it.
The show's conclusion left Varian wading through backstage, covered in a sheen of sweat but smiling. Nothing put him in a better mood than a good show, nothing. Nothing made him more exhausted, either, and he shut himself in his dressing room, stripping off his shirt and collapsing in a chair in front of the mirror, regarding himself. He'd have to go to the obligatory after party later, but right now he could have a few precious minutes of being alone, of quiet.
{Show Playlist Begins with the five covers scattered throughout the show. All other tracks are examples of the band's musical style. Listen with volume cranked for maximum effect.}