American energy in a menagerie of weirdness

ODD-ZOTIC: Trying to find an apt descriptor for her band, Labretta Suede of Labretta Suede & The Motel 6, Labretta came up with the phrase odd-zotic. Picture supplied

Imagine seeing through Blue Velvet director David Lynch’s lens, a posse that embodies a crossover of punk, Rocky Horror and theatrical rock with a smattering of psychobilly, the nostalgia of bad-ass car culture, B-grade art, in-your-face burlesque and pumping roots-based rock ‘n’ roll while hard-riding Hunter S Thompson’s dictum, “when the going gets weird the weird get professional”.

Now stop imagining, because Labretta Suede & The Motel 6 are on their way and you can see them for yourselves.

After a long, peripatetic, and hugely engaging conversation, first with Labretta’s husband, Johnny Moondog, then Labretta, that began with the question “did you begin with a concept or come together that way?” we’re none the wiser.

“We say that to ourselves sometimes,” says Moondog on the phone from the couple’s West Auckland lair.

“It’s ever evolving, depending on what inspires us at the time. We’re — hang on, here’s Labretta.”

OK. This is where the story starts to struggle to define the band.

Notes? Pfft! You try keeping up with a wide-ranging conversation with Labretta, then we’ll talk.

“We’re definitely our own thing and oddly there’s a space for us,” says Labretta.

“We’re roots and soul, garage, rockabilly — our own menagerie of weirdness.”

The US is clearly Labretta et al’s spiritual home. Despite the fact the country is on fire and in a plague, they are preparing to return in March to base themselves in Dallas, Texas, which is possibly just big enough to contain their menagerie of weirdness.

“Don’t let anyone tell you Austin is the only music town in town,” says Labretta.

“It’s full of Brooklyn hipsters now. Rock ‘n’ roll is synonymous with Dallas.”

When Labretta Suede & The Motel 6 first got to New York, rock legends like Blondie, and Patti Smith’s guitar player checked them out.

“They said ‘you’ve put punk back into New York City’. Those are big words from my heroes.”

The band has cemented its own little world in Dallas, says Labretta.

“They love our weirdo genre. We got branded as The Cramps from down-under. We throw in a couple of Cramps songs to keep people happy.”

Labretta has been around long enough to be able to comment on the oozing confidence of Millennials, a contrast with New Zealander-nervousness when taking the stage but she puts her own on-stage extroversion down to her Greek blood.

“I’m Greek so part of my culture is about song and dance. For me we’re loud and colourful people.”

She is also fuelled, as is the band, with American energy.

Such strong stage presence was essential to her performance as New Zealand’s first modern burlesque dancer, especially since she performed at one of the few venues available for the art — the Las Vegas Strip Club on Auckland’s Karangahape Road.

“The catwalk was amazing. It was a beautiful piece of art. There were poles around parts of the room for anyone who felt the urge to pole dance,” says Labretta.

“We played at the closing down of the venue. It was so sad, the last of the lowlife sleaze on K Road.”

But burlesque is a very different art from the strip-tease, explains Labretta.

“Burlesque is high-end, a tease. I see influences from Egypt, Turkey and the Mediterranean and somewhere along the line it became burlesque. Performing at the Las Vegas was more of a feminist stance. There was a lot of power involved in it.”

The Americanised band’s identity is in line with art in B-grade movies — which in 2012 or 2014 landed Labretta Suede and The Motel 666 (the name was tweaked for a Halloween gig at Samoa House) in hot water when Moondog, a fine artist/illustrator produced a poster.

For the artwork, he drew on the character of the tiki bar, an Americanised, kitschy exotic-themed drinking establishment that serves elaborate cocktails, especially rum-based mixed drinks such as the Mai Tai and Zombie cocktails.

The decor is based on what Wikipedia describes as a romanticised conception of tropical cultures, “most commonly Polynesian”. In some cultures the tiki bar might be regarded as less a post-war quirk in pop culture and more as tacky.

Others might take it as a cultural affront.

Headlined “Voodoo Tiki”, the poster’s comic book cover-like design featured a fierce, cartoon tiki face and a bare-breasted woman in a grass skirt, a bone through her bouffant, with a shrunken green head in one hand and a spear in the other.

Although Moondog’s intention was to riff on the American tiki bar and mash it up with Halloween, the band apologised but still received death threats.

They have moved on.

“We like to be loud and ridiculous about our shows,” says Labretta.

“We’re quite a party. If we’re up there in our smalls and fishnets we like to get a bit unhinged. Come into our mystical little world and get juju’d. It’s fantasy and escapism. We still live in the real world where people come to our show and think afterwards ‘what the f*** was that’.”

Labretta Suede & The Motel 6, Dome Bar, Saturday, December 12, 8pm. Tickets $26 from