http://www.fischerspooner.com/

Remember being a 5 year old having just discovered your mom's high heels and bright red lipstick? Or finding your dad's leather thong underwear and his pipe and making them your own? Take that a step further and recall the first song that made you mad-crazy about music, dancing and performing wild interpretations in the mirror with your new image and perhaps a younger, impressionable sibling. Maybe it was Madonna's "Borderline" or Duran Duran's "Hungry Like The Wolf," which gave you those good times (or permanent scars as some would call them). Or, maybe that was just me. In any case, there is finally a way to recapture that as an adult. It comes in the form of a musical/theatrical, voyeuristic pleasure trip called Fischerspooner.

It was a moment written in the stars when classically trained musician Warren Fischer, from Los Angeles, and experimental theater performer/video artist Casey Spooner, from Atlanta, met in 1990 during a video arts class at the Art Institute of Chicago. Collaboration ensued and several years later the electro-pop, new wave duo performed their first show/impromptu rendition at a New York Starbuck's in 1998. According to a fansite run by Nick Doherty and Jordi Sanchez, Fischerspooner compares to the sound and live performances of the Pet Shop Boys to Wire, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode and A Flock of Seagulls.

Since then, Fischerspooner has swelled into a fully equipped stage show including the efforts of nearly 60 people at times. In costumes of feathered turbans, outrageous wigs, corsets and a rainbow of war paint, the pair and their entourage are determined to make the crowd "property of Fischerspooner" (NME). Warren Fischer has now taken a backstage approach to the show, while Casey Spooner plays ringleader to the dancers and singers as they entertain the audience in a completely narcissistic manor -- the kind reminiscent of the aforementioned childhood experiences some of us (cool kids) may have had. To trip you up a bit, the show also includes a live video link to the dressing rooms, allowing you to witness the transformation of humans into magical, flashy super-beings.

Not many acts succeed as authentic art troupes, but being funded by a gallery (Gavin Brown Enterprises Gallery, NYC) and the Arts Council of New York certainly qualifies them as such. A live Fischerspooner experience can cost upwards of $1,000,000 to generate and would be impossible to achieve without the backing of major funds.

Their debut album #1 was released in 2000 on International Deejay Gigolo Records and was only available as an import. The track "Emerge" has been released as a single, 3 new tracks have been added and the entire album is remastered, resequenced and repackaged. Ministry of Sound Records was selected for the forthcoming re-release of #1.

When Fischerspooner's #1 finally gets released here in the U.S., put it in your stereo, turn it way up and make sure you have a full-length mirror in the room. Then open your doors and windows, and parade around in your most gaudy, most delightfully hedonistic duds (remember a little body paint never hurts). Prepare to enter a world you never thought you could recapture -- a world of self-serving bliss, not unlike childhood.

-Julie Smith