Old School Goths Represent!
Break out the eyeliner and Docs -- we're about to have a Continental flashback. Aging hipsters (ahem) that the "South Park" goth kids were probably modeled on will be thrilled with tonight's show at Hallwalls -- poet, playwright, scholar, critic, and labor activist Mark Nowak will be reading from his essay "'To Commit Suicide in Buffalo is Redundant': Music & Death in Zero City, 1982-1984". Cribbing his title from Michael Bennett's famous quote from A Chorus Line, the essay is featured in the forthcoming critical anthology, Goth: Undead Subculture, (edited by Lauren Goodlad & Michael Bibby, Duke University Press, 2007).
The show is presented by Hallwalls and Talking Leaves.... Books, who will have copies of the anthology available for sale and signing by the author (whereupon your ticket price will be refunded). To complete this funeral of the senses, the band that the article is based upon, Nullstadt (pictured in lovely black and white glory) will be playing -- the entire original lineup from 15 years ago, with excerpts from early '80s vintage Nullstadt video. Featuring Don Kinsman on vocals, the perennial David Kane on keyboards, Darren Burns on keyboards, Kent Weber on bass, and Greg Gizzi on drums.
“Zero City,” as explained in the essay, is both a literal translation of that band's name (null + stadt) and an epithet for post-industrial Buffalo. Mark, a Buffalo native and Canisius College alumnus (BA, English, 1988) with a MFA from Bowling Green (1990), is now an Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the College of St. Catherine in Minneapolis, where he has taught since 1999. His own book of poetry and essays, Shut Up Shut Down (Coffee House Press, 2004), with an afterword by Amiri Baraka, was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and he has also received several major grants from the Jerome and McKnight Foundations.
Don't be a conformist cheerleader. Be there.
Thursday, May 17, 7:30 PM
$10 (Refunded with purchase of Goth at event)
Hallwalls
341 Delaware Avenue, 14201, 854.1964
What Do You Think?
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