[ATTENDED: May 29, 2018] Fascinator [rescheduled from January 12]
Fascinator is Australia’s Johnny Mackay he was the frontman of Children Collide, an alt-rock outfit, but he was always experimenting with electronic music so he created Fascinator as a side project. Then he moved to New York and Fascinator became his main project.
I have to admit that when I first looked up Fascaintor, and read stories like this: he’s turned Fascinator live shows into something wild, whimsical, and theatrical, employing masks, costumes and a rotating cast of backing performers (from The Sydney Morning Herald), I had high hopes for a wild show.
I mean, here’s a quote from the man himself:
“There’s this character I’ve created, this cosmic shaman from space, Lord Fascinator, who comes down and visits Earth and shows people the magical melodies he’s created,” Mackay says. “I often perform behind a mask, and sometimes I’ll have 13 people on stage, all wearing matching masks and kaftans.”
Well, Fascinator wasn’t all that wild. Lord Fascinator came out with long blond hair and sunglasses wearing a white kaftan, cloth pants (a 
very different all-white from Andrew W.k.) and interesting shoes.
He has also said
“For a while I had an ‘air instruments only’ policy. I’d be making all the music, but I’d have an air guitarist, air drummer, air whatever. We played this show at the Bowery Ballroom, supporting Pond. And there was this guy in the audience cracking the shits about it. He was yelling out ‘You’re not even playing real instruments!’ It was like ‘um, yeah, we know’.
For our show Lord Fascinator had one accompanist, Lord Decorator. Lord Decorator did not play air instruments, he played oud and hand drums and violin. He dd not wear a mask although he did wear a kaftan.
Fascinator came out with his white guitar and a little electronic contraption. He started a beat, manipulated the pitch, created some kind of sounds (I don’t know if everything eh made was live or not), played some cool trippy guitar and sang.
Essentially that’s what he did for 45 minutes. There were many tempo changes and presumably many different songs. Lord Decorator changed instruments constantly and it was clear that one song was ending and a new one was starting–Lord Fascinator often changed the drum beat to a new tempo, but he never stopped the flow of th emusic while changing things up.
What was quite fun was when he brought out his old Casio DG-20 which he played for almost all of the rest of the set. I had never seen one in the wild before so that was really fun. The sounds weren’t quite as crazy as I assumed they’d be, but I i did see him change the programming bunch of chimes (lift the guitar into the light to see what the buttons are, push something, move on).
Basically the set was about 45 minute of psychedelically, vaguely Middle Eastern music. It was largely dancey–the guys behind me were a pool of sweat from dancing so much–but with some really cool sounds and effects and accompaniment.
So it wasn’t the wild mask-covered air guitar show that I imagined, but it was certainly an enjoyable set. He has a new album out, i wonder if as a headliner he tends to go all out with the costumery.
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My friend Al and I saw Primus back in 1990 or 1991. It was an amazing show and I have been a fan ever since. And yet for some reason I had never seen them live again. During all of their iterations and tours–headlines, festivals, everything. In recent years I have really wanted to see them but something always kept me from going.
