What better way is there to spend a Friday night then in a confined space with French-Canadian art-punks and the freak kids who love them? Riding off a bit of buzz since the release of their spazz-tastic sophomore album, Sur Les Traces de Black Eskimo, I’d heard their live show was a sight to be seen, but I guess I hadn’t fully prepared myself for the complete experience. For 45 minutes I felt like I'd stepped into some sort of David Lynch music video. If Eraserhead’s Lady in the Radiator lost the chipmunk cheeks and got a little color, you’d have the lead singer of Les Georges Leningrad, also known as “Poney P.” Having hundreds of kids (all-ages show, natch) dressed as bizarrely as humanly possible (boy in polo dress, polka-dotted tights and a bird mask on his head takes the cake) moshing/dancing by the stage in the red glow of the spotlights completed the Lynch-ian feel of it all. The thought crossed my mind as I hung back in the corner- could it be I’m getting too old for this?

Shows at the Open End Gallery are basically upscale basement shows, featuring a large art space converted into a venue simply by putting a tiny stage in the middle and a "bar" in the corner consisting of a cooler of PBR and two boxes of wine (one PBR, two dollars; one plastic cup of Franzia, priceless). A huge white parachute hangs over the ceiling covering the stage and most of the room, probably in a vain attempt to contain the sound, which isn't especially good unfortunately. The aforementioned red spotlights gave the stage an extremely eerie glow that was only enhanced by the parachute above, setting an entirely appropriate creepiness factor for the madness we were about to witness.

With no dimming lights to announce the band was about to play, LGL unexpectedly darted out on stage- in costume. Singer/keyboardist Poney P was all dolled up in a black polka-dotted dress and a dark, ill-fitting wig that continued to fall lower and lower on her face throughout the show, slowly covering up the cat whiskers she'd painted on herself. Meanwhile, drummer "Bobo Boutin" dressed as some sort of superhero he labeled "La Créature," featuring the tiniest leopard hot pants known to man (which consistently showcased his extremely skinny ass, as he had no qualms about bending over in front of us), a cape, a Zorro mask, and drawings of weird birds on his chest. Finally, guitarist/electronic noise guru "Mingo L'Indien" rounded out the zany trio, sporting an orange and yellow spandex number that covered his entire head and body and just said "superhero" on the front in felt letters. I should add that all these costumes were clearly homemade, and hilarious. Though I half-expected Poney P to launch into a creepy rendition of Eraserhead’s “In Heaven, Everything Is Fine,” they instead stuck to material that didn’t give me nightmares by kicking things off with “Sponsorships,” a raucous sea of synth-laden, melodic noise and unintelligible lyrics that FREAKIN’ ROCKS. In fact, that description applies to the majority of their songs. Blazing through many of the tracks from Black Eskimo, Poney P and Bobo Boutin spent their set prancing around the stage, pretending to hump each other, banging away on each other’s instruments and somehow making bizarre music out of it all, while Mingo L’Indien just bounced back and forth in place to the hot beats behind his mystery box o’ noise. The band members occasionally tried to talk in between songs, but the mixture of the bad sound and their French accents made it difficult to really understand what they were saying. For the same reason, it was still funny. After a rousing finale of “Supa Dupa,” Les Georges Leningrad bounced off-stage sans-encore toward their makeshift dressing room to convert back into real people again.

Conclusion: no one is too old for good old-fashioned lunacy, and I sure was glad to be a part of it, even if my days of polka-dotted tights and moshing are long behind me (or never were in the first place).