Monthly Archives: April 2010

Steampunk is addicting, and it spreads like a virus.  Witness what happens when ONE librarian girl (me) is infected with steampunk love.

Yes, it starts spreading through the library!  All but one of those people looking at you is a librarian girl or guy (excepting the guy in the blue jacket – I have no idea who he is, but he seems to want to join our group!).  Two of these newbies put together their steampunk outfits on their own, and are already talking about future steampunk outfits.    Here we’re waiting in line to get into Studio 7 in Seattle, where Abney Park is going to put on their second Circus at the End of the World.

When we get inside, we fail to snag my preferred standing area – right up against the stage on Nathaniel’s side.  I have a deep weakness for kilted, violin-playing men!

Nathaniel

But, we are not too late to be up against the stage on bass guitarist Daniel’s side.  This is also cool, though the bass plays havoc with my camera’s video recording capabilities, as you’ll hear when we get to the video portion of this blog….

Being so close to Daniel gave me an opportunity to study out his costume, though, and now I’m definitely inspired to sculpt him as a penguin.  (I’ve already done Captain Robert – who can resist a penguin in leather with spiked hair?)

Captain Robert

Also we were closer on this side to the new back-up singer, Jody Ellen, who is AWESOME.

As with any Abney Park show many, many things went wrong.  The lights went out on stage during “Airship Pirates”, Robert forgot a few more lyrics, and he totally demolished his new mic.  You know, the ‘sturdy’ one he built to withstand stage performance?  🙂 I hope he can fix it, because this mic was Made of Win.  It wouldn’t be an Abney Park show if these small disasters didn’t strike!

We also were treated to several ‘circus’ acts, including a gorgeous fire dancer.

After the show, we met Nathaniel and Daniel outside, and they posed for pictures with me.  Also completely par the course when I meet these guys, I had a camera malfunction – this time I forgot I’d turned my flash off, so the pictures turned out very….grim.

They both liked my ‘zombie hunter’ outfit, and Daniel even bragged to Nathaniel that I was ‘his fan’ because I’d stood at his side of the stage (awesome that he saw and remembered me!).  Nathaniel said I’d have to be on his side for the next show!  And then my friend Bonnie was rewarded with one of Nathaniel’s ‘epic hugs’ for taking the picture of us!

Below is video of “Building Steam”.  At the very beginning, you’ll see that the mic manages to get in one good swing at Robert before Robert demolishes it!

Here are two videos of the fire dancers/eaters.  Pretty awesome – wish I could do this!  During one of these performances, Robert’s lyric cheat sheet was nearly burned.  That would have made for an interesting second half to the show….

There was also a lovely lady in a hoop.  I was so very envious of her boots….

And as one of the final performances (and according to Daniel performed this one time only!)  Robert sang his April Fool’s Joke.  (He had told the fans on April Fools that he was done with Abney Park and steampunk, and was going solo as a post-apocalyptic country-western singer named ‘Ranch Hand Robbie”.  Best April Fool’s ever.)

Here is Ranch Hand Robbie (at the beginning he’s trying to repair his broken mic with a tool borrowed from a fan):

Now I really can’t wait for Steamcon in November!