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The Salt City Goes Goth for Fetish 7

I first became aware of Voltaire a few years ago through my good friend and guitar player Justin Wortman. Justin would often wander through Armory Square in Syracuse busking for tips. Among his repetuare were three songs by Voltaire: Vampire Club, When You're Evil, and God Thinks. The songs were some of my favorites. I began to check out some of Voltaire's other material and loved it.
Voltaire made his first live appearance in Syracuse at Trexx Nightclub for the seventh annual Fetish Ball. The show also featured live performances by DJ Darkwave, DJ Dante, and my friend DJ Electric Jesus.
For the show, my housemate Clarke Smith, (whom I recently turned on to Voltaire), got the cab company he works for to pick up him, Dawn, and myself and drive us to the show. We arrived at 10 PM and made our way inside. I was on the list for the show and when I arrived, Electric Jesus gave me a pass and took me back to Voltaire's dressing room where he was tuning his guitar and warming up for the night's performance.
Dawn and I spoke with him for about ten minutes and snapped a few photos. I gave Voltaire a few of my buttons and stickers. He laughed at the "I Gave Tom A Dollar To Go Away!" slogan and pulled out a dollar to give me. I tried to refuse it, but Voltaire insisted. But before giving it to me, he pulled out a Sharpie, signed it, and transformed the picture of George Washington into a caricature of himself. After that, Dawn and I thanked Voltaire for his time and headed for the bar for drinks.
While we waited for Voltaire to play we checked over the wares being displayed at a sex toy booth, and listened to DJ Dante. During that time, the club filled with people dressed in various costumes and bondage gear. It was a fantastic looking crowd. Finally, midnight came and Voltaire came onto the stage.

Voltaire is often described as a modern day renaissance man. He is a singer/performer, as well as a creator of comic books, animation and toys.
Voltaire was born on January 25, 1967, in Havana, Cuba. He is a musician in the goth scene who takes his stage name from the pen name of the famous French Enlightenment writer François-Marie Arouet.

He refuses to reveal his given name, even joking that Voltaire is his real name.
There have been hints at his real name in his books- for instance, he talks about a boy named 'Bernie Weinstein' who changes his name to Voltaire in What is Goth?. This same name is mentioned in his song 'The Vampire Club'. Voltaire states that it is not his name, and that it is simply a running joke. Bernie Weinstein is meant to represent many of the people he has met in the goth scene.
At the age of ten, Voltaire was inspired by the films of Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad), and began animating on a super 8 camera. By piecing together snippets of information from fanzines, he eventually was able to teach himself how to make foam rubber animation models and animate them. He got his first job as an animator at the age of seventeen with Parker Brothers.
Voltaire was able to land his first directing job in 1988 with MTV, creating the classic "MTV-Bosch" station ID in the style of Hieronymus Bosch. The stop-motion tour of the hellish Garden of Earthly Delights won several awards including a Broadcast Design Award. He has also made morbid station IDs for clients such as Cartoon Network, USA Network, the Sci-Fi Channel, and most recently for Fangoria TV. Besides his work with commercials, he has made short films and series such as Rakthavira and Chi-Chian, basedon his first comic book, a graphic novel series that included 6 issues published by Sirius Entertainment.

It is a dark Cinderella story for the 31st century set in Manhattan that was picked up as an 14 episode stop-motion animated web series by the Sci Fi Channel's website (www.scifi.com/chichian). It won The Flash Forward's People's Choice Award and greatly widened Voltaire's audience.
Other notable comics and books by Voltaire include "Oh My Goth", "What is Goth?" "Paint it Black-A Guide to Gothic Homemaking" and most recently, "DEADY". The latter includes collaborations with Clive Barker, James O'Barr, Neil Gaiman, Billy Tucci, David Mack, and many other luminaries of the spooky comics realm.

In addition to his musical career, Voltaire is a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City where he currently teaches stop-motion animation.
In 2004 Hong Kong's Toy2R introduced Voltaire to the world of urban vinyl by making a toy of his comic book character, DEADY. It was an instant hit and lead to a string of other Voltaire toys including a line of "Pocket Goth" plush toys for Toy Network. The toys can be found at all major amusement parks and crane machines at Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, and other major stores.
On the side, Voltaire is also the lead vocalist of a New York City based new wave quintet known as The Oddz. (http://www.myspace.com/theoddz)

The show at Trexx was excellent. Voltaire came onto the stage alone with just his acoustic guitar wearing a black sweater with a large skull on it and black pinstriped bondage pants.
He opened the show with the song "I am Rammstein" and it got crazier from there. He performed songs such as "Zombie Prostitute", "Reggae Mortis", and a song called "My Ex-Lovers' Lovers" during which he convinced the audience to drink every time he said the word "Die" during the chorus.
During the perfomance, Voltaire informed the crowd at Trexx that he would have another song featured on the show The Grimm Adventures of Billy and Mandy in an upcoming episode and played it for us. He also premiered a song that he had just finished that day. It was very funny and the crowd felt privledged to be the first to hear it.
During one of his monologues, Voltaire told the Fetish 7 partiers about his ten year old son's school report which was about war. As part of the research for the project his son created a survey asking which automatic weapon from a list was the most destructive. The idea struck Voltaire as odd, and made him question what his kid was learning at his school. He then went on to perform a song which he wrote for his son, called "Goodnight Demonslayer".
He punked Star Trek fans with the song "Sexy Data Tango" and taunted the Goth crowd with "Vampire Club'. He ended the show with the songs "When You're Evil" and "Hell in a Handbasket". After the show, Voltaire sat at a merchandise booth selling his CD's and signing autographs for fans.
DJ Darkwave took over as the Fetish ball continued. As part of the Fetish 7 festivities, there was a Human Buffet, where party-goers could eat cupcakes shaped like breasts and penises off of a scantily clad man or woman wrapped in green Saran Wrap. The catch was, munchers must not use their hands and pick up the sweets with their mouths. It was a lot of fun. There were also several woman, including my friend Sarah, that had their breasts painted with liquid latex and were walking around the club. It was pretty cool. (I mean, who doesn't like boobs?) I posed for a few photos with them.

Around 3 AM, Dawn, Clarke, and I decided to take off and hit a diner. So, we called the cab, and went to TJC's Diner on Syracuse's north side. After breakfast we headed home. It was nearly 5 AM by the time we got there and we went directly to bed. It had been a great day.

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