Brian Slattery Photos
Möbius Striptease.
There was a long drone from the keyboard, a pulsing wave of chord after chord. A flourish from the drums. The bass joined in, creating a quietly churning rumble. Then the projections began behind the drummer’s head.
“It was long ago,” the captions read. “It was far away.”
The drums escalated to a big, expansive rhythm as a smoke machine kicked in, filling Cafe Nine with haze and drawing cheers from the crowd.
Then the singer took the stage in a silver cape and approached the microphone. The music got more sparse, and she began to sing. Those with sharp ears in the audience would notice that it was a Meatloaf song, “For Crying Out Loud,” though it was recontextualized, transformed. An electronic voice gave exposition, fleshing out the beginning of a story about a dancer whose star is fading and she knows it. But she still has some life left in her.
The band was Möbius Striptease, and they were performing a rock opera — the challenge to the finalists competing the last show of the seventh annual Rock Lottery, held on Saturday night.
Before Möbius Striptease took the stage, Rock Lottery organizers Bill Saunders and Nancy Shea hustled around the filled-up club on State Street attending to last-minute details and talking about the bands’ willingness to throw themselves at the task Saunders and Shea had set for them.
Saunders and Shea.
“They haven’t killed each other or us yet,” Saunders said.
“The follow-through on this has been amazing,” Shea said.
In total, 38 musicians this year entered the Rock Lottery. Now in its seventh year, the event groups its willing musical victims into bands and then sets before them a series of musical challenges to overcome by preparing for and then performing in shows before a live audience and a panel of judges. Of those 38, Saunders estimated that half were veterans and half were first-time contestants, including a few musicians who were new to the New Haven scene.
By the finals on Saturday, the field of seven bands had been winnowed down to three: Móbuis Striptease, Hector the Innocent, and The Chest Rockwells.
Previously bands had selected five albums from the now-defunct Columbia Record and Tape Club catalog. If they thought that meant they’d have a chance to perform songs from their selections, they were wrong; instead, they got another band’s list. The assignment: To use that playlist, and write original material, to create a full-on half-hour rock opera.
This opera needed to have an introduction or overture. Part of one song from each album had to be used, “but the more songs you choose from each album, the better,” the instructions suggested. Bands could change the lyrics of existing songs to fit the story, or change the music but use a set of existing lyrics. They also had to write an original song that fit in with the existing list. The final musical element: somehow fit music or lyrics from Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage Acts I, II, and III into their own work.
Möbius Striptease had pulled a playlist that included T. Rex, Joni Mitchell, Meatloaf and Led Zeppelin. Hector the Innocent had to draw from the likes of Elvis Costello, Devo, The Modern Lovers, and the Monkees. The Chest Rockwells got a list that included Blondie, The Pretenders, the Police, and Talking Heads.
Befitting the decadence associated with the term “rock opera,” the judges — Ed Flynn, Rob Zott, Keith Yarbrough, and Ben Hecht — found themselves surrounded by multiple keyboard racks to be hauled on and off stage. Flynn, Saunders explained, was a “WPKN radio personality.” Zott had participated in two previous Rock Lotteries, including the first one. Yarbrough had played in five out of seven. Hecht had played in three bands — and won in all three.
Saunders and Shea provided the judges with score sheets on which they could rank the bands’ performances across 18 categories, from ability to meet the challenge’s specific criteria to onstage chemistry, presentation, and costumes, as well as ample space for comments. “We’re scientific around here,” Shea joked.
But the competition itself was all about the art. Of the rock opera.
Armed with keyboards, bass, drums, a microphone, a projector, and a smoke machine, the members of Möbius Striptease — Val McKee, Gil Morrison, Aaron Nobel, and Chris Serapiglia — showed that they had been hard at work. They wove together their playlist and an original, “Half Compatible,” to tell their sordid, sci-fi Sunset Boulevard-like story. Morrison proved a wizard on the keyboard, while Nobel and Serapiglia were a versatile rhythm section. Morrison’s costume, complete with angel wings and LED sunglasses, helped sell the show. But McKee held center stage for the duration, her voice soaring above the fray. Just as important, she also acted the part, letting the audience in on every shift in emotion from regret to joy to despair. McKee first balmed her lips with glowing, bright blue poison. Then drank the whole bottle. It ended with a synth-laden “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” from Led Zeppelin that finished with McKee collapsed in a heap on the floor, her journey over. The crowd erupted with applause; from the back, someone shouted “Bravo!”
“You guys hit it out of the park,” Flynn said from the judges’ table.
“You truly took some rock songs and made it operatic,” Zott said.
“You did a great job at making a seamless story,” Yarbrough said. To McKee specifically he said, “You were actually acting.”
“You set the bar pretty high, Möbius Striptease,” Hecht said.
It seemed that way. Möbius Striptease had delivered a professional-grade performance, one that was obviously the product of a lot of thought, a lot of work, and a lot of talent. Could either of the other two finalists top it?
Hector the Innocent — Marshall Broyles, Steve Gambini, Zachary Hollback, Marice McNeill, Tristan Powell, and MIke Volpicella — didn’t have projections or a smoke machine. But Powell, on guitar, did have curly horns growing from his head. They had cabaret costuming. And they had a solid concept, a Faustian story about a man who makes a deal with the devil, served up hot with a heaping side of rock ‘n’ roll ‘tude. There was some very clever lyric rewriting of alt-rock classics to better fit the story. Volpicella proved an able frontman with an ability to scream. McNeil, Gambini, and Broyles were a muscle-flexing rhythm section. And Powell and Hollback were strutting leads. Tongues were wagged and eyes were bugged to drive home the story’s moral that, as Volpicella put it, “when you make a deal with the devil, you’re the asshole.” It all culminated in a spirited musical duel between Powell and Hollback on shredding guitar and screeching sax.
“I’m just trying to catch my breath!” Flynn said after Hector’s set.
“You sound great together and you had a lot of fun,” Zott said. “I love the way you took the lyrics and bent them to fit the story.” Yarbrough and Hecht agreed. Möbius Striptease may have excelled at the opera part of the rock opera, but Hector the Innocent brought the rock part. Maybe this would be a contest after all.
Then came The Chest Rockwells. The five-piece — Jeff Cedrone, Matt DeSanti, Alon Gordon, Jon Ozaksut, and Dustin Sclafani — tore into a dizzying array of songs from their playlist, bouncing from one end of the rock spectrum to the other. DeSanti and Ozaksut might have been the sharpest rhythm section yet, while Cedrone’s angular guitar and Gordon’s atmospheric keys created a nervous, crackling energy for Sclafani to convey the concept. With a mop of curly hair, a braided beard, sunglasses, and a frantic, rapid-fire delivery, Sclafani embodied the electric and somewhat disturbing persona of a cokehead looking, with increasing desperation, for his next bump. Sclafani’s escapades led him all over the stage and eventually off it, as he took a seat behind the judges to howl at the band while Cedrone took over vocal duties. But soon he was back, and in his downward spiral. He revealed at the end that it had been 15 minutes since his last fix.
“Pray for me,” he said.
The judges were divided on whether the concept worked. Zott thought it didn’t. Hecht thought it did. All of them agreed, however, that the Rock Lottery had managed randomly to put together a heck of a group.
“I think you guys should stay as a band,” Zott said.
But a decision had to be made. Which band would emerge victorious — and win eight hours of recording time at Firehouse 12 on Crown Street for their trouble? The judges put their heads together. They nodded. Saunders and Shea returned to the stage to say that they were surprised by the results. Sometimes there was a split decision, or disagreements among the judges. But this year, the judges were unanimous in awarding first place in the 2018 Rock Lottery to Möbius Striptease.
The crowd seemed to agree with the judges’ decision, but also with the broader sentiment that Flynn expressed in the final round of judging.
“No matter what happens,” he said, “what a triple bill.”
As if in response, while the judges were deliberating, someone near the bar started up a sing-along of Queen’s “We Are The Champions.” Half the people in the place joined in, and they sang through it all at the tops of their lungs.