Arts.Guardian.co.uk
Mercury-prize winner Antony Hegarty tells John O’Mahony about the New York nightclub where he cut his teeth
On the corner of 14th Street and Washington, deep in the heart of New York’s meat-packing district, is the site once occupied by the seminal underground performance club known simply as Mother. Today, sadly, it has been taken over by a clothing chain, but little more than a decade ago this was the seething centre of the city’s downtown experimental scene, packed to the grungy rafters with punks, drag queens and various self-proclaimed “gender mutants”.
Every night, on a little stage tucked away at the back, wild and delicate creatures – with names like Kabuki Starshine, Sissy Fitt, Lily of the Valley – would strut about in outlandish costumes and garish makeup. Smiling and taunting, they would whip up a storm of improvised camp banter or act out kitschy scenarios borrowed from cult movies such as Psycho or The Blue Angel. On the flimsiest pretext, the performers would erupt into music – comic numbers laced with innuendo and expletives, and torch songs that reduced the audience to silence.