Princess Chelsea’s Midwinter Ball recreates the strange world of Twin Peaks with the band perfectly embodying the beautiful and supernatural that inhabit that fabled imaginary place.
Created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, the series is regarded as a pinnacle in television drama.
The series ran for two seasons 1991 to 1992, before cancellation. The pilot show of ninety minutes ran as a stand-alone feature at the New Zealand Film Festival, possibly 1990. I saw it but was well over thirty years ago.
That was when its captivating blend of eerie beauty and dread first cast its spell over me. That description perfectly describes all of Lynch’s work as a movie maker, with the Peaks series being his masterpiece along with Mulholland Drive.
The world of Hollywood and beautiful men and women. Music from Doo-Wop to Girl Group to female ingenues. Why does this music carry an underlying secret dread?
The Smiths came up with a partial answer to this riddle. Pretty Girls Make Graves
Give up to lust/ O heaven knows we’ll soon be dust.
In the third and final (so far) Twin Peaks season screened in 2017, each of the eighteen shows (bar one) ended with a show in a cabaret nightclub, and a featured artists shot in real-time performance.
Many were Indie Pop or Folkies. Trent Reznor appeared in one and my imagination is telling me he performed Hurt.
The production team have recreated this with the love of an obsessive perfectionist. The Wintergarden is the perfect venue. Equal parts magnificent and charming, Siamese-twinned with gaudy and garish.
As is the whole Civic Theatre complex. The previous show here was the magical conjuring of Led Zeppelin, and the invocation Way down inside, I’m gonna give you my love.
The Red Room is there situated stage left. It is perfect unpeopled. But there is a photographer there and people line up to get their images taken.
Little do they know that they have been captured into that realm. They may not hear the Harris evil cackle, as they are snapped.
There are artificial Christmas trees, and smoke mist generators.
Many have dressed up. Special FBI agents, sheriffs, waitresses carrying cherry pies.
Some resemble the characters. Dale Cooper, Audrey Horne, Laura Palmer, Shelly Johnson. No Bob or malevolent dwarf though. Maybe a freakout too far there?
The woman dressed in thick clear plastic was a nice macabre touch.
I meet Chelsea Nikkel in the men’s toilet. I am staring at mirrors with hand-written warnings.
There’s a sort of evil out there/ Laura has secrets built around those secrets/ The owls are not what they seem.
Fantasy and reality merge. I choose fantasy.
Princess Chelsea takes the stage, the band around her named the Dream Warriors for the night.
Time, one of five songs from the last acclaimed album Everything is Going to be Alright, starts the feature show.
Nikkel looks like Betty Boop with her close-cropped hair style. Two guitarists, bass, drums and keyboard player. Backing singer Kate resemble Lara Flynn Boyle.
The players swap instruments as the show proceeds. There is full-size harp on stage. Nikkel is a multi-instrumentalist and plays guitar, keyboards and clarinet.
Falling has a long entry coda with the guitars playing the famous slow twang of the series opening theme. Builds to a crescendo.
I Love My Boyfriend (The Loneliest Girl) is the perfect shining Indie Pop with a tragic core buried within. The drums often lead, with crisp accents and dominant defining tempos.
The singer has the distinctive high tone of the Chiffons or the Ronettes, as opposed to the more R’n’B vocal style of a LaLa Brooks or Darlene Love. In that fashion she does reach back to Fifties Doo-Wop.
More innocent than Mary Weiss singing Leader of the Pack. Chelsea is naively sexy and erotic.
Lynch perfected this musical obsession he has, with Mulholland Drive. Pivoting song is I’ve Told Every Little Star sung by Linda Scott (1961).
Monkey Eats Banana is mostly instrumental with a vibraphone on the intro.
Audrey’s Dance is all instrumental, and I assume it is written for this show. Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) is a central character, as Laura’s best friend and some sort of doppelganger.
It’s Pop Jazz with clarinets, piano keyboard, and invoking the woods at night covering up a dangerous rendezvous.
Floating is the song written by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch, originally sung by Julee Cruise. Our hearts are free… There is a red trumpet as a nice touch.
Half Hexagon play a support set of ambient experimental Art Rock, which could be an attempt to counter and nullify some of the dread in the dreamy beautiful Dark Pop of the Twin Peaks world.
Or to add to it.
A new band formed in the crucible of Lockdown hysteria in 2021.
James Milne (Lawrence Arabia) is on synths, keyboards and gadget. Julien Dyne (Soundway Records) on drums.
A third member, Yolanda Fagan is also present.
Electro trance dance with metronomic precision drumming and quick fills which would bring a smile to James Brown.
There are baroque intros, sometimes strings. A lot of Ambient Disco, perfect dance music but the dressed-up audience are content to sway and groove.
I think I hear Fire Walk! to announce a song which sounds like Doctor Who theme music.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is a great movie but make sure you watch Season One and Two first!
Towards the end they can sound like mutant Surf, throwing out Davie Allan & Arrows riffs and finally washing up with the psychobilly of Suicide.
Intriguing music and they could fit right into the nightclubs of Twin Peaks season three.
Princess Chelsea and the Dream Warriors are already there. Red Room inhabitants, it would seem.
Everything is Going to Be Alright (Part 2) closes the show.
I think of you sometimes/ And it makes me feel blue/ I walk outside/ And everything’s gonna be alright.
We should do this every year, says Princess Chelsea.
[Special] Agent Orange [Peel]
Photography by Azrie Azizi
Princess Chelsea
Half Hexogon
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