Recap: La Reine o' the Damned Ball!

Hi all!
Got home last night around 10 p.m.-ish after driving for about 10 hours straight from New Orleans.
Yep...had to be dragged out of New Orleans kicking & screaming b/c I didn't want to leave.

Straight off, the Ball...

was good!!

The place was good sized for the event so we were neither packed into a closet nor trying to have a party in an arena.
Here I am all spectral!


Boo!!
Yours truly went out & got himself a new mask for the occasion from the best local mask joint to go with the new clothes I'd been slowly working on getting for the previous six months.


I guess it worked as the ensemble got the nod from the Ball's host
(and some of the ladies )


The bands were great, with Ex Vo To leading the way with some sweet goth rock.


Jill Tracy kicked butt too:

but the huge shift in goth styles was a bit too much, I thought, for the Ball goers.
While the show area was stuffed for Ex Voto, for Jill the crowds thinned out some. I guess some couldn't deal to go from loud industrial to smokey cabaret piano. That, I thought, was a shame b/c Jill was worth hanging out for & listening to.

Plus her bass player was so incredibly pretty!


By the time I got back to my hotel it was about 3 a.m. Got to bed about an hour later.
The hotel, incidentally, is supposedly haunted (well, its New Orleans so what hotel isn't??!?) but the spirits didn't pay me a visit.
So I had to go looking for them.

For fans of the Interview with the Vampire movie, here are 2 pix:
Here's the house where Lestat had Claudia give a piano recital for a family before he cues her by saying something along the lines of "That was wonderful...now how about playing something a little bit more...somber?", and then they cut to the scene of the family's caskets being taken out for loading onto the hearses.


A few blocks away is this house:

This is the house where Louis & Claudia were living with Lestat, and which caught fire when they set Lestat ON fire.

Absinthe, anyone?

Unfortunately the place was closed when I took this shot so I never got to try any.

In the minutes before I left town, I made a quick run across the Quarter to St. Louis Cemetery:

Pretty place although its only a fraction of the size it used to be.
The only reason I made it this far into the cemetery (about 10 feet from the entrance) was because I lucked out & there was a tour underway when I arrived, and there was a manned New Orleans police car outside the cemetery. The city & archdiocese advises just outside the cemetery that its dangerous to go in alone. The place is enclosed and people can easily hide among the ruins.

All in all, good show. Wish you'd all been there.

Glad you had a great time, Darkwave!

I am, Sir, sick with envy.

It looks like you had an absolutely delightful evening.

Now which of those ladies did you say was Lorraine O'the Ball?

Erica, the cellist.
How I envied that cello...