Captions: The Make-Up

Polaroids from the original Gospel Yeh-Yeh tour

1996, city and venue unknown. The Make-Up would be playing songs from their debut album, a faux-live record called Destination: Love - Live! At Cold Rice. It was highly anticipated by 10-100 kids in every city with an independent record store. The band was the newest link in a chain of strange bands from Washington D.C. all fronted by Ian Svenonius and core members James Canty and Steve Gamboa.

First it was Nation of Ulysses, a wrecked manifesto of a band, followed by a ghost called Cupid Car Club who never toured and released just one 7” single which listed all members “DEAD” in the liner notes.

The Make-Up was James, Steve, and the addition of Michelle Mae backing Ian’s newest take on weird-ass punk which he called Gospel Yeh-Yeh.

I’m right up front, in the band’s face with a chunky Polaroid camera, big dumb flash flipped up.

Someone reading this was probably at the show with me, and might be able to place the pics. It was all ages, no doubt, and almost certainly somewhere in the midwest. Maybe Muncie? Several stops on this tour would have been basements and DIY spaces, but there’s a proper light rig behind James and his guitar in the photo above, so this might be a small club with some level of production, or a VFW hall rented by an industrious local promoter who brought in basic gear and professionalism.

It’s definitely not Rhino’s in Bloomington, but I do have photos from a later gig The Make-Up played there. I “promoted” that one. By then, the band were touring behind their second and third albums which both came out in 1997.

Different outfits on that tour. Equally cool, but maybe less fetching in photos. When paying James after the the show, I was personally amazed there was an economy in this thing. I passed him ~$650 in mostly $1s, $5s and $10s, and he asked how many tickets were sold and if I could explain the expenses.

I now know this to be called The Settlement, but then talk of money and business was exceptionally unexpected and awkward. The band had grown since the yellow suits tour, but we were still strictly in a no-paperwork zone. I guessed 120 or so people payed the $7 at the door. Rhino’s took their little cut, and I pulled out money to reimburse the cost of photocopying fliers. I took an extra $20 for myself, for my work, felt guilty about it, and left that number out when bumbling my way through it with James.

Back to the yellow suits. You see Ian’s dirty pants above? He spent a lot of the show on his knees; his suit was a mess by the end. The Make-Up sometimes carried a washing machine and dryer with them on tour. When they opened for Fugazi in bigger rooms, they rolled them out of a box truck at load-in like they were guitar amps, and positioned them up along the back of the stage. You could see the machines during the show, their necessity slowly revealed throughout the set as the outfits got scuffed up and sweaty.

Knowing now how few of these clubs would have the necessary/working hook-ups available for a washer and dryer, I’m still getting the joke a couple decades later. The most iconic stage prop I know of, one that resonates more for me than Ozzy’s bat, Iron Maiden’s Eddie, or even James Brown’s mic stand.