CONCERT REVIEW: Yard Dogs Road Show, Spiegelworld Tent – New York City

You’ve got to love a show that opens with a trio of amazing, sexy, tattooed belly dancers, followed by hard-thumping accordion solo from a cute blonde in a bustier. From there, the truly one-of-a-kind Yard Dogs Road Show moves on to other mainstays of traditional cabaret, including sword swallowing, burlesque dancing, hobo poetry, vaudeville humor, sideshow antics and many other largely arcane performance disciplines – all brilliantly choreographed to the beat of a kick-ass band comprised of the very freaks, geeks, and tramps who make up the troupe.

And it’s doubtful you’ll find a better venue for all of this old-school entertainment than Spiegelworld, the temporary tent city in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport that lavishly recreates the look and feel of the infamous Berlin cabaret scene of the 1920’s. With such a properly decadent set and setting in place, it’s easy for all assembled to slip back to a time before television or even the movies, when top-notch entertainment meant a naughty variety show, performed in front of a live audience, without a safety net.

Yard Dog Road Show proves, among other things, that despite modern society’s systematically shortened attention span, there’s still nothing better than a small tent, a great band, flowing booze and the constant expectation of the unexpected. And so, a sophisticated New York crowd soon found itself under the time-warp spell of head-hobo, and YDRS founder Eddy Joe Cotton, Tobias the Mystic Man (sword-swallower and magician), Guitar Boy (a spandex-sporting "guitar hero"), the Black and Blue Burlesque dancing girls and other spellbinding attractions.

Yard Dog Road Show dates back to the late nineties, when the original members took part in Acid Test recreations with Ken Kesey and his legendary band of Merry Pranksters. The show has grown since then to a national touring act, with life-size wind-up dolls, on-stage dueling, and elaborate derelict dream sequences—all of which make it like a wonderful acid trip without the comedown.

And who wouldn’t want that?