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Out of the mouth of Old Baby
homage by Mel W.
The beautiful people are at every Old Baby show. I mean the real beautiful people: people like noted sexologist Dr. Ducky Doolittle and the premiere chronicler of the New York underground, photographer Katrina de Mar among others. Just going to an Old Baby show automatically makes you feel about 20% cooler than you were before. And as if that weren't enough, there's the music.Someone told me that Michelley Queen of Queens used to perform with The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, and I believe it. In some ways the Old Baby show is the same sort of theatrical experience as TVHOKB--it goes beyond the music being played. It makes the audience reconsider their relationship with the performers as the show is more than just some musicians on a stage playing, it's acting, it's performance, it's fiction. We're not just watching musicians, we're watching musicians playing the parts of musicians.
Describing Old Baby is a bit of a daunting task. Psychobilly is a term that may be applicable, but I don't want you to think of Old Baby in the same genre as The Cramps. The classic country&western riffs played with loud noisy guitars are mixed with a demented lounge mentality that makes the audience feel like they're part of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Stunning beautiful singer Michelley Queen of Queens dresses and acts like a parody of a beautiful woman, wearing a wig, false eyelashes and flashing fake Hollywood smiles at the audience while she sings (she reminds me a lot of a character that Katherine O'Hara used to do on Second City Television, Lola Hetherton, a faux-vivacious over-the-top blonde Vegas performer with a ridiculously loud laugh. Her catch-phrase was I wanna bear your child!) She never lets you forget that she's performing, that this is a show, and that the person you're seeing on stage is a character.
Perfectly offsetting the lurid mendacity of Shelley is bassist Julia Seizure (also known 
as the editor of the zine Boji for the Mentally Ill), whose placid expression and covert sensuality provide the perfect foil for the Queen of Queen's deceptive enthusiasm. I swear, you don't know where to look when these two are on stage. You want to look at Shelley because she sort of reminds you of those films of the last days of Judy Garland when she was all doped up and just a satire of who she used to be, but you notice this radiance from the side of the stage coming from Julia, whose combination of surliness and sexiness shine.
I know there are other people in this band, but I was too busy watching the women, so you should visit the website to learn more about them. Katrina del Mar's Old Baby web page