LORDS OF ACID / PRINCESS SUPERSTAR – DISTRICT
By Marisa Torrieri Bloom
Lords of Acid, Princess Superstar, Tony & The Kiki, and Mz Neon offer cheeky, lewd thrills to Connecticut music fans at the District Music Hall.
Lords of Acid — a Belgium-born, nineties techno-industrial act renowned for its hedonistic lyrics — played its first headlining show in Connecticut on Thursday, giving the audience at District Music Hall an immersive, high-energy, borderline-X-rated experience.
The Norwalk stop was the first on Lords of Acid’s Cheeky Freaky U.S. Tour, featuring four eclectic musical acts, starting with a 7:30 p.m. post-dinner set by performance artist Mz. Neon, who also celebrated a birthday that night.
Up next, Tony & The Kiki (featuring vocalist Anthony “Tony” Alfaro, singing and dancing to a backup track) hit us with an unexpected storm of talent. Billed as “Glam Rock n’ Roll Queens from Queens,” Tony & The Kiki banged out about a dozen songs, mixing disco, metal, and 80s synth pop with Rockette-worthy high kicks, drawing in new listeners with humor and big, Broadway-style vocals. It was a riot!
Donned in a fringe, studded getup and heeled boots, Tony strutted their stuff to a backing track pumping through the speakers, mesmerizing with every head turn.
Tony’s stories that preceded the songs were both memorable and hilarious, though my favorite moment came toward the tail end of the set, with a cover of Tiffany’s cover “I Think We’re Alone Now.” For me it was also a full circle moment: Three years ago, on that very same stage, my band opened for Tiffany herself. Hearing that hit again, in all its electro-retro goodness, was surreal.
I spent 20 minutes gushing over Tony in the fan line post-show, before rushing the stage to see iconic NYC rapper/DJ Princess Superstar (Concetta Kirschner) — a favorite of the early ’00s electroclash era — hit the stage at 8:45 p.m.
Wearing a tight bodysuit, silver boots, and a rotating array of blinged-out jackets, Princess Superstar’s arrival felt nothing short of magical. She played all the fun songs, from the raunchy rap favorite “Bad Babysitter” to her viral hit “Perfect (Exceeder),” at one point shooting dollar bills out of a play gun while a music video streamed in the background. I danced so hard, my knees are still sore. The Gen X mom is better than ever.
Lords of Acid, featuring hyper-sexy, vibrant frontwoman Carla Harvey, our self-proclaimed “acid queen,” ran onstage next to a loud and heavily Gen X crowd. Clad in a hot pink latex dress, Harvey pranced the stage while singing and thrashing her long- haired head as original Lords musician Praga Khan bounced along with his keyboards (and the male vocal parts), and the full band fleshed out the experience.
I’ve loved Lords of Acid since first hearing them in 1995 at Tracks, a now-defunct Washington, D.C., nightclub, which played the hell out of the band’s 1991 breakout record (Lust) every Thursday on goth-industrial night. They are the rare musical act that appeals to both ravers and goths, with the raw, angry industrial effects mixed in with club-heavy beats and over-the-top provocative lyrics.
In Norwalk they played all their lewd classics — from club banger “I Sit on Acid” and “Rough Sex” from Lust to my personal favorite, “Crab Louse” from their 1995 album Voodoo You. But possibly the best moment was when Harvey called all the ladies to the stage to join her in a group rendition of “Pussy” — a cheeky, memorable ode to the P (and the only decent track off their 1997 album Our Little Secret).
I immediately jumped when she called to us to join her, along with a slew of younger fans, for the five-minute singalong-slash-twerk-a-long. Hugging Harvey at the song’s end was just the best. I love her so much more now.
The band also played a handful of songs from their brand-spanking-new album, Mundo Bizarro, which has a more guitar-heavy rock n’ roll feel than earlier releases, and features Harvey’s vocals on several tracks (Princess Superstar and Tony & The Kiki are also featured on a couple of songs).
As Lords of Acid closed out their set with a rousing rendition of “Out Comes The Evil”, I couldn’t help but reflect on how their music wove its way into my life at a young impressionable age. I’ll never forget blasting the Voodoo You CD in the car, age 19, or how a certain cokehead friend of mine would only snort lines off that album (because she only liked her drugs with good music!). Spoiler alert: She’s sober now (thank God) and would be the first to tell you that their music still holds up even when not inebriated.
Lords of Acid creates songs that always feel like a high, a sweet escape from an existence far removed from the nineties, good and bad. The entire show they curated was the cheekiest, freakiest one I’ve enjoyed in a long time. I’m only sorry I had to wake up at 6 a.m. the next morning to drive my kid to school.
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