Connie Walger sleeps, but Connie Oh!, her performer analogue, does not. Walger explained this to me while her “happy death metal” band, the Fuzzy Bunnies of Death, loaded up the U-Haul van they’d rented for last Friday night’s “Cabaret of the Nameless,” held in a decrepit warehouse full of artists’ studios near Kedzie and Cermak. Connie Walger wears glasses and studies fashion at the International Academy of Design and Technology; Connie Oh! wears black lipstick and slaps people she doesn’t like.
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“We’re the Fuzzy Bunnies of Death,” Connie Oh! yelled to the few dozen people in the audience, all of us sitting around the band like they were about to tell a bedtime story. “We’re happy you could be here so that we can kill you!” Everyone cheered. And then the band ripped into a shit-awful bottom-heavy ditty, complete with lots of sliding on one of those hesher guitars you can legitimately call an ax, unmiked rat-a-tat-tat drumming, a ten-finger keyboard slam, and unconfident sludge bass. It was awesome.
Throughout their set Connie Oh! would stop singing from time to time to perform little skits with her stuffed-animal friends, tearing open a green teddy bear’s chest to reveal red licorice whips, ripping off a dirty rabbit’s head and pulling out globs of cotton candy, which she then hand-fed to the audience. We stretched our mouths toward her like baby birds.
Halfway through Ratty’s performance I pretty much decided I was in for the long haul. When Betty Devoe, who helped book all the acts, announced that a circus was coming on next, I got all swoony.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Suzy Poling.
