“This year is a mess,” says Tim Kent as sweat drips from his head. “Nothing is done, everything is unfinished, and I’m not happy with any of it.”
It is the Friday night of Bushwick Open Studios, and there is less than half an hour until the start of a reception for friends and supporters. The artist – and former bassist for the Giraffes – is stretched out on a brown leather sofa under his loft bed. As soon as his girlfriend Charlotte, clad in black, begins cooing about the library he built for her, he makes an anxious beeline for his workspace at the far end of the apartment and continues cleaning, clearing.
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Described by the Soho Weekly News as “New York’s best party band,” Strange Party was a witty, stylish group serving up a fizzy cocktail of performance art with a dash of Latin-infused new wave. They were a huge outfit with six backup musicians and four vocalists upfront. And what vocalists! Led by downtown art star Joey Arias, the quartet was rounded out by Tony Frere, Paige Wood, and Janus Budde. They were eccentric and compelling — their guitarist George Elliot once described the band as “a little like heavy metal Ricky Ricardo.” Joey suggested they were just trying to turn art into fun.
It is hard to overstate the giddy hedonism of the early ’80s. Riding the tide of the ’70s sexual revolution, when feminism and gay power met the “if it feels good do it” ethos of the era, it was a great time to be young and on the prowl.
