Tucson, AZ

Last night I went to the Surly Wench after the La Siesta Motor Lodge art opening I wrote about earlier (it was rad). There were five of us ladies and our friend David, and one of us ladies had never been to the Surly Wench. Actually, she’d never been to Tucson, or anywhere in any part of the entire Southwest. It was pretty great to see a tourist delight in what I believe Tucson does best: conceptual art, folk art and community (she’d gone to a pre-All Souls Procession marionette painting party), and black-walled Rockabilly bars with a cheap cover and bands that play music you thought you would never hear again.

We paid the $4 to get in, said hello to people we recognized, and sat at a booth so we could look at everyone’s outfits and pretend we were looking for people we knew. The tourist asked me if I thought a wedding had occurred that night since there were so many people dressed up. Although I agreed some of the customers looked a little uncomfortable in their dresses, up-dos and heels (a sign of wedding attire from the back of the closet), I assured her that every time I’m at the Surly Wench, people (not just the ladies!) get dressed. It’s really a fetching mix of Goth, Rockabilly, Industrial, Punk, Rude Boy and everything in between styles, but from a general onlooker standpoint, everyone is just really, really dressed. We discussed, drank, and played two games of Exquisite Corpse.

The band we came in time for wore black trench coats and combat boots, sometimes strapping on black tinted goggles or what looked like a small welder’s mask and a military hat. They began the set with some version of some patriotic-sounding anthem, waving a dark flag of some skull-crest-thing. Two guitars, a Micro Korg, another synthesizer and an electronic drum set headed down to a dark, danceable place, with lots of fist pounding, heavy beats, and mesmerizingly aggressive vocals.

While none of us ladies are normally fanatical about Industrial Goth or IDM music, we were somehow all taken by these men and their intensely-followed regimen. It was like watching people work out…with their goal being to gain darkness.