The Next Big Thing

Brother Patrick has been out and about again and true to form he caught something that you probably won’t read about anywhere else… here is his story…

"There was a festival in Evreux (west of Paris) last weekend. The big plus point of the event is that you get the choice of 3 acts at any one time. There are 2 main stages, a place with groups from the neighbourhood and also The Banana Club, where you can expect to be surprised (Electrocute played there 2 years ago). So I left a set by a “used to be great group” to go to see what was going down in the BC and I don’t regret it.

David Rockmore is composed of a DJ, I-Dol and a performer by the name of Tomokomik.
I-Dol started, mixing 50’s / 60’s garage rock’n’roll a la Lux & Ivy favourites, Las Vegas Grind , Jungle Exotica with songs like “New Intern Watusi” and “Midnight Limbo” There were 2 screens showing people dancing that reminded me of The Cramps “Ultra Twist” clip (uncensored version!).

Suddenly, a girl dressed in a bunny outfit appeared and offered drinks to the audience along with a folded page with a bunny girl on it and also a ribbon. The music turned to dub and the bunny, a beautiful Asian girl turned up buck naked on stage, dancing lasciviously, sometimes talk singing stuff like “My name is Tomokomik/I’m a little fat these days but some men like that/how do you spell French?/I know about cooking and washing/I’m out of work for 2 days/We’re mammal, I’m a mammal”. When she didn’t speak, she sat down and applied her make up and dressed slowly. I-Dol was part of the “dancing performance” as one of the two girls dancing, more or less sans clothing, on the screens.

The note that Tomokomik gave to the audience explains the idea behind the performance. Here’s a brief translation (by the way: the girls speak French) : “Life is a never ending repetition : eat, work, fun, sleep, eat again - I think that every moment in life is important but repetition creates habits - since the second world war, everything goes fast but human beings haven’t changed, I call that sentimental crisis generation. This chronic stress has resulted in the mind working less, apart from during working time. As an example, take the ordinary day of a woman: goes to work at 8.30am/finishes work at 6pm/dinner at 8pm at a friend’s, so she went in 2 shops, as usual/gets back home at 11.30pm/before sleeping, she tries to remember what she did today/nothing special comes to her mind/that’s the effect of habits/that’s why I want to influence peoples' minds with regard to time. That’s where Tomoko’s Bunny goes into action … for example - dressed as a bunny, working in a shop.” “Now imagine the same woman in one of the 2 shops she went into. When it’s time to sleep, she’ll remember that bunny girl and burst out laughing. So now, a moment of her normal life stays in her mind. That’s how it works. My aim is that my performance might influence stressed people and help their unconsciousness to become conscious. I think that our generation’s disease is stress, chronic stress for some, deep stress for others – I belong to the second category”.

Not only that woman, I’ll certainly remember Tomokomik too!"