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Steampunk Summer Sizzler
Aug. 1st, 2010 10:12 am After an abortive attempt to attend a steampunk event in Brighton a few weeks ago, Dave and I were not expecting much from the Steampunk Summer Sizzler last night, especially since it changed venues a couple of weeks beforehand and was nearly cancelled.
However, we duly dressed ourselves in all our finest steampunk gear and set off to Enfield Town station, looking bloody fantastic. We had a bit of trouble finding the venue - we spotted two other attendees on exiting Bethnal Green station and decided to follow the, but it turned out they had no idea where they were going and we ended up wandering around rather longer than we needed to.
However, once we finally arrived, it was all very cool. Robert Rankin, who was acting as MC as well as trying desperately to sell his books, pretty much grabbed me as soon as I walked through the door and spent several minutes trying to get me to buy things from him, but in a very pleasant manner. I was more interested in the hair ornaments on the next stall over, and did in fact buy one to complete my outfit - jewelled spiders! When I went to the loo to afix it to my coiffeur, I ended up in a conversation with what turned out to be Robert Rankin's wife, during which we compared successful and very cheap internet purchases of various parts of our outfits, which was fun. She then went off to open the musical part of the evening.
It has to be said that I would never expected to be sitting in a working men's club in Bethnal Green, dressed in a faux leather corset, listening to a woman in a striped dress and pith helmet playing Beatles songs on a steel drum. But it was highly entertaining, if rather bizarre!
The second act was Savile Row, who gave us rock songs with a steampunk twist, were obviously really enjoying themselves, and weren't actually bad, as it goes. They suffered somewhat from bad sound engineering, since the instruments were much louder than the singer, but overall I liked them - and Dave actually bought two of their albums on CD afterwards.
Then came the headline act - Ghostfire - and we quickly discovered that we don't like them live any more than we do on CD. The singer had much too big an ego for so small a stage, and not nearly enough talent to match his self-image. We stayed for two songs and then beat a hasty retreat.
Despite the fact that we left early, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, made very much the more so by the opportunity to look at all the other costumes on display. There was an impressive range, from perfectly ordinarily dressed people, through those who had made a nominal effort with a pair of goggles, various regimental uniforms, some truly terrifying corsetry, right up to full-on steampunk aficionados with all the gadgets.
Lots of fun, and a relatively early night - what's not to like? Roll on The Asylum weekend in September!
However, we duly dressed ourselves in all our finest steampunk gear and set off to Enfield Town station, looking bloody fantastic. We had a bit of trouble finding the venue - we spotted two other attendees on exiting Bethnal Green station and decided to follow the, but it turned out they had no idea where they were going and we ended up wandering around rather longer than we needed to.
However, once we finally arrived, it was all very cool. Robert Rankin, who was acting as MC as well as trying desperately to sell his books, pretty much grabbed me as soon as I walked through the door and spent several minutes trying to get me to buy things from him, but in a very pleasant manner. I was more interested in the hair ornaments on the next stall over, and did in fact buy one to complete my outfit - jewelled spiders! When I went to the loo to afix it to my coiffeur, I ended up in a conversation with what turned out to be Robert Rankin's wife, during which we compared successful and very cheap internet purchases of various parts of our outfits, which was fun. She then went off to open the musical part of the evening.
It has to be said that I would never expected to be sitting in a working men's club in Bethnal Green, dressed in a faux leather corset, listening to a woman in a striped dress and pith helmet playing Beatles songs on a steel drum. But it was highly entertaining, if rather bizarre!
The second act was Savile Row, who gave us rock songs with a steampunk twist, were obviously really enjoying themselves, and weren't actually bad, as it goes. They suffered somewhat from bad sound engineering, since the instruments were much louder than the singer, but overall I liked them - and Dave actually bought two of their albums on CD afterwards.
Then came the headline act - Ghostfire - and we quickly discovered that we don't like them live any more than we do on CD. The singer had much too big an ego for so small a stage, and not nearly enough talent to match his self-image. We stayed for two songs and then beat a hasty retreat.
Despite the fact that we left early, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, made very much the more so by the opportunity to look at all the other costumes on display. There was an impressive range, from perfectly ordinarily dressed people, through those who had made a nominal effort with a pair of goggles, various regimental uniforms, some truly terrifying corsetry, right up to full-on steampunk aficionados with all the gadgets.
Lots of fun, and a relatively early night - what's not to like? Roll on The Asylum weekend in September!
