TCB

Every Day Is Halloween

Nostalgia is, by definition, nothing new. But the Regression scene at Elysium Sunday nights is less nostalgia than genuine phenomenon. Week after week, Austinites crowd into the Red River Goth palace not so much to relive the Eighties as revive them. "TCB" sat down Monday night in an empty Elysium with owner John Wickham and Regression DJs Pumpkin Spice (also Wickham's wife) and Spider Lily to discuss why Austin just can't get enough Eighties. "They never really went out of style," notes Pumpkin Spice.

TCB: Why have Sundays at Elysium taken on such a life of their own?

John Wickham: Mainly because the Eighties is something that all of us of a certain age can relate to. Everybody has their Eighties songs. I think everybody has a frame of reference for the Eighties. It's like talking to somebody our age about Star Wars. Everybody knows what you're talking about.

TCB: Austin has had an Eighties night continually since at least 1989, and since 1997 at Atomic Cafe/Elysium. How has it evolved over the years?

Spider Lily: In the beginning, it was always the same song you hear by Blondie all the time, the same song you hear from the Cars all the time. Now the crowd requests more obscure Cure songs. They're tired of "Fascination Street," they want to hear something else.

JW: When we get 25-year-olds in the bar, they obviously don't remember Trio's "Da Da Da" from the Eighties, they remember it from the Volkswagen commercial. When Donnie Darko came out, we had Tears for Fears and Echo & the Bunnymen. It changes. The more that the music gets back out into the mass media and people hear more of it, the more they go, "Oh yeah, I like that song."

Pumpkin Spice: It's funny, because a lot of them don't know the actual name of the song. They'll request it by the commercial.

TCB: Are there certain songs you know will be a hit?

SL: "99 Luftballoons."

PS: "She Bop."

SL: "Rock Lobster." "I Love Rock-n-Roll."

PS: Those are the ones where if you play a song and clear the dance floor – actually it's never really cleared, but if you go, "Ooh, I shouldn't have played that" – you play something like that and it brings them all back.

TCB: How much do you think it's about the music and how much is about the scene?

PS: If you look at the dance floor, it's pretty packed usually. There's no room to dance.

SL: I think [people] like to be in a place where they can do whatever the hell they want to and not be embarrassed. I think they like being in a huge crowd of people where they can dance to songs they know are cheesy as hell and no one cares.