Correct Culture: Time, Hybrids, Clicks, & Drags

Major Music - Mixing a powerful combination of funky dance, bluesy rock, and urban pop, add in beyond-energetic live performances with a powerful fashion sense that references everything from old school punk to The Guardian Angels and fierce fast food fashion finds, and you have Farrad. His new CD is called The Time Is Now, and the song to catch first is "The Way U Do." If you are not dancing your butt off within the first few seconds, you simply have no soul. Zipper harness by Sohung Designs.

Caution: Correctness Ahead - Inbred-Hybrid Collective is an insulated performance art-based troupe of very select talent hoping to get out to a wider audience and fill a void that has been getting more vacuous since 2000, when much of that scene disappeared. Their Book Club Burlesque series is genius, using the old school-book club format mixed with performance art to create thematic events. The next event is based on Tin-Tin and takes place in late July. Their pictured leader prefers to go nameless, but as you can see from his ensemble of futura glam gorgeousness, the visuals will be ultra distracting.

Style Exiles - Multidisciplined visual artist and director Rob Roth provides custom image solutions for performance, rock ‘n roll, art parties, and club promotion and events. His creative stamina and relentless pursuit of a defined mythology consistently results in works of unprecedented originality, always refreshingly unselfconscious. Roth was a founder of the renowned downtown performance phenomenon Click & Drag, a cyber-fetish spectacle at the legendary nightclub Mother. There will be a new Click & Drag party on October 17 at Santos’ Party House; if not, an alternative venue will be arranged. Be warned: there is a very strict dress code. His most recent works include The Mystery Of Claywoman, a mockumentary/performance piece written by and starring Michael Cavadias as a 500-year-old woman from another planet, featuring Amy Poehler, Alan Cumming, and Edgar Oliver. The film version also stars Debbie Harry and Justin Bond. It follows his enormously successful rock opera Screen Test starring Theo Kogan and choreographed by Vangeline Theater. A DVD will be available soon.

Blog or Die - Even though print magazine ad revenue is down by 29% from just last year, there’s a slew of new titles hitting the stands in the hopes of reversing the trend towards on-line publishing. One of the freshest if not raciest is Try State, which features in their own words “quality art, trash, nudes, fetish, punk, music & fashion victims”. My reason for you to pick it up is that they feature some of the best up-and-coming international photographers and artists that you’ll see there first—before they get scooped up by the bigger titles.

Could there really be a good literary- and art-based site that isn’t pretentious, redundant, or stale? Yes. John Sebastian’s eclectic and eager The New York Optimist is a hodgepodge of short stories, features on emerging art talent, and other assorted visual candy. Definitely a treat for those looking for mental distraction of the correct caliber.

Endnote - Last column, I screwed up some of the photos and wanted to give two super-fine ladies their due. Street Treat Natalie Cora serves us with her jaunty pom-pom topped cap, and It Girl Lindsey Salerno shows us why being young, attitudal, and gorgeous is always a very correct thing.

Photos: Walt Cessna. See more from Walt Cessna on Facebook.