La Fete Sauvage

Handbill for 1993 summer solstice party, La Fete Sauvage.

This handbill really reflects the period - punk and rave influences were combining. Things like the Big Bang parties and Club Fuck were influential for the LA crowd, and this event was directly inspired by an event I had produced in the Fall of 1992, "Magica Sexualis". The promoters (including Kevin Bourque - later to produce "Cirque Berzerk") were my neighbors in the L.A.C.E. Gallery lofts on Industrial St. in Downtown LA. La Fete Sauvage was more of a punk show (imo) than anything else, and featured lots of the LA Cacophony Society (Such as Rev. Al and Rich P60) people who had also been involved with Magica Sexualis. The Imperial Butt Wizards headlined Magica Sexualis as well as La Fete Sauvage.

This event was the second installment in life lessons about how Jell-o Pits are ALWAYS a bad idea. I tried it first at Circus of Mysteries, and learned what a mistake it was. It seems to me that the Jell-o pit is a perennially sophomoric misconception of adolescent males with avante-garde pretensions. In the fever dreams of art school boys, the Jell-o pit is a "build it and they will cum" performance art sex fantasy wherein a large volume of Jell-o has the effect of mesmerizing women into stripping their clothes off and writhing orgiastically in the Jell-o. There are many problems with this - and I tried in vain to explain them all to the producers of La Fete Sauvage, and dissuade them from making a Jell-o pit. But they wouldn't listen. They did it anyway. Like all Jell-o pits, their's did not gel. They had a kiddie pool filled with red syrup - ungelled Jell-o - that was set in front of the area (not a stage) where the Imperial Butt Wizards were playihg. It's beyond the scope of this text to describe the Imperial Butt Wizards, but suffice it to say that they are the last band you would ever want to set a Jell-o pit in front of. Despite the general mayhem of a Butt Wizards show, not much was going on in the Jell-o pit because, well, no one - not even Cacophony Society people - want to get into a Jell-o pit. Finally, however, a Japanese fashion photographer took this Kamikaze leap into the Jell-o pit. I knew this guy a little bit: Couldn't speak English for shit, always wore designer clothes from Harajuku, and always had an expensive camera around his neck. Suddenly there he was screaming in Japanese and moshing and splashing around frenetically in the Jell-o pit. I kind of forget, but there were consequences (there are always consequences with Jell-o pits). I think the sound equipment got drenched in Jell-o syrup. Of course there were never any naked ladies doing anything in the Jell-o pit - just the crazy Japanese guy who was like an understudy for the Japanese neighbor character in Breakfast at Tiffany's.