BEST OF MANHATTAN
Entertainment

BEST KNITTING FACTORY TAKEOVER

THE DROP DEAD FESTIVAL

I vant to fuck your brood. A well-known haven for art rock, melodic indies, experimental jazz, breaking bands and other music that gets earnest ex-college-radio-DJ types to come all over themselves, Knitting Factory threw a nice curveball with September's three-day Drop Dead festival.

In a coup that's likely due to the wall-to-wall crowds at their Johnny Cash tribute earlier this year, NY Decay Productions secured the whole club for their annual pan-horror-rock festival featuring vendors, horror film screenings, giveaways, zombie burlesque and roughly 50 bands ranging in sound from greasy roots punk to rockabilly, surf, goth, experimental and anything morbid. Headlining acts included Ausgang and Skeletal Family, genuine proto-goth artifacts of the 80s UK scene, contemporary art goths Cinema Strange and Bella Morte and contemporary surf-rockabilly heroes Deadbolt, morbid experimental musician David E. Williams, DC punks the Alphabet Bombers and others from both here and abroad.

Not catering to the mall punks, gothic techno-metalheads or the posturing nouveau-rockers, Drop Dead Festival was instead meant for Misfits-worshipping misfits who crawled out from the woodwork in search of the likeminded. Basically, it was Halloween—two months early and three times as long.

We raise our cup—filled with the blood of three virgin lasses, of course—to NY Decay Productions, and to Knitting Factory.

http://dropdeadfestival.com