Skip to main content[DISCO VS. THE SHOW] "It's going to be a bloodbath," said Sexy Pants' Matt "New Member" Hubele, when, following his performance at the Fez during MusicfestNW, he told me about an upcoming gig at McFadden's, a booty-dancing establishment.
It seemed he would be absolutely right: I had just witnessed the men of SP (four singers and a DJ) strip to tiny running shorts, select a "lucky" volunteer from the crowd and strut their hairy legs over her as she lay on the stage. And on Friday night, PS invaded polo shirt and miniskirt territory.
The show was preceded by an invite-only third anniversary party for the bar. Mixed in with the anniversary crowd were about a dozen fans of the band who clapped and sang along as impressively tight choreographed robot motions and ass-facing-the-crowd pelvic thrusts (with serious range and lower-back flexibility!) kicked off the set. But behind those two rows was a talkative crowd, facing the show but generally ignoring it. Normally it's difficult to drown out a dance act with bar chatter, but SP simply wasn't loud enough, and after the show the band and the McFadden's sound person each blamed the other.
Mostly due to the poor sound, SP played a short set of about 20 minutes, and Hubele told me afterward: "They were about to pull us off when we stopped. I guess people kept asking them to put the booty music back on." The objection was to the lack of dancing, not SP. The crowd had no cause to be angry: There were no extended forays into the audience and none of the singers ascended the small wall surrounding the sound booth to show us his ass curve.
I suppose it's hard to harass an audience when your microphone isn't loud enough to talk shit to them properly, but I wanted to see Sexy Pants win over the crowd with their homoerotic antics or be killed trying. When the chances of the former were ruined by a weak PA, would some blood have been too much to ask?
WWeek 2015