Being on the road, in new places all the time, naturally presents challenges regarding my weekly “dance therapy.” Back at home, I could go out and jump around like an idiot to noisy music two or three times a week, and it was good for the soul. Out here, however, City Club’s not available, and finding decent goth-industrial clubs can be something of a crapshoot.
Knoxville, after some investigation, advertised a goth-industrial-steampunk club called Temple. Oh, hello. That’s three of our favorite things, all in one place. So, we planned an expedition to the city that was once known as the Underwear Capital of the World to check it out.
We were not disappointed.
Temple all starts with J., who seems to be very much the heart and soul of the thing. Some time back he apparently found himself at a bar somewhere in town, on one of those dead nights. “There were like four customers, and so I asked the owner how busy he was on Saturday nights. ‘About like this,’ he said, ‘but with less people.” So J. asked if he could bring some friends and some music on Saturday. The owner said sure, so they did just that–showed up with their music, had a grand old time “just playing whatever the fuck we wanted,” and went home. The bar owner asked if J. and his friends wanted to come out every other week, which was naturally fine with them, as the local goff/alternakids had nowhere else to go on Saturdays. The very next time they showed up, the bar’s owner said that there’d been so many people the previous week asking where the hell the goff/alternakids were, that he wondered if they wanted to come every week. And thus, Temple was born. More than one person during the evening spoke of how hard J. works to make sure that Knoxville’s goth-industrial scene is a welcoming and vibrant one, and from what we saw, he’s successful.
There’s no specific DJ for Temple. Like any scene, there are eight or nine people who are DJs, and Temple just lets three or four of them take over the decks for one-hour sets each week. The playlist is “whatever the fuck you want,” which had us a bit leery at first, but proved to be of the awesome–there’s a list of the stuff that made me happy a bit later. The crowd at Temple is incredibly friendly, too. Pretentiousness and attitudes are apparently not tolerated; the usual club-drama was there, as it will be in any place you go to, but it’s nicely subsumed and the atmosphere is very welcoming to new people. J. said, “If you see someone you want to talk to, just walk up and talk to them, and you’ll be in a conversation before you know it.” This was pretty much true–and believe me, it isn’t always.
Temple takes place in a club (this is its second location; they outgrew the original bar, it sounds like) that used to be a movie theater that also served food. Whuh? Long story. Anyway, upshot of it is that the original lobby (where the box office is) has been turned into a small auxiliary bar and dance space, while the main part of the theater is now the club. The screen has been replaced by a stage and wonderful seven-foot high red speaker-stacks on either side, and then the dance floor is in front of it. The floor spans the width of the theater, and is maybe half the length of our home club’s massive dance floor–so it’s half as deep but twice as wide. There’s a lot of dancing space on the polished tile. From there, the floor rises, like it does in theaters, and there are three or four small terraces full of tables and chairs for socializing, with the main bar on the topmost level. It’s very easy to get around, and the lighting is properly dim but still unusually bright for a goffclub. The outdoor smoking patio is the only place where it’s easy to talk, of course, so even nonsmokers will spend a fair amount of time out there.
Wandering around to get our bearings, we met Z, a steampunk-stuff artist who had a display/sales table. She was super-friendly as well; Lexie and I hung out talking with her for a goodly while, while the music ramped up.
Listing the good stuff we heard will give you an idea of how eclectic the mix was. We danced to “Strict Machine” by Goldfrapp, “Exterminate Annihilate Destroy” by Rotersand, Concrete Blonde’s “Bloodletting,” “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” by Pop Will Eat Itself, “I’m Your Boogie Man” and “Pussy Liquor” by Rob Zombie, an “Spin Spin Sugar” by Sneaker Pimps, “Tear You Apart” by She Wants Revenge, “Nemesis” by VNV Nation, “100%” by Angelspit, and “Straight to Video” and “Shut Me Up” by MSI. I heard some wonderful new things too, and the DJ who spun them was not only kind enough to tell us what it was, but said, “Come back up at 2 when I’m done and you can have the CD.” So she just gave me the whole mix of her set! So, I learned and go to keep “Dirty Laundry” by Bitter:Sweet and “Supermassive Black Hole” by Muse.
In the meanwhile, we met people. We met Spleen and Karmakaze, who are two of Asylum’s three DJs. We also met R., who runs the place where Asylum takes place, and S., and E., and…anyway, I’m not used to meeting so many people so quickly. It left us with a good feeling. As the night wound down, R. and his roommate C. invited Lexie and I back to their loft for an after-gathering, and we wound up staying up all night. A good time was definitely had in Knoxville.
