Music to spoon by

Brash, bawdy and irreverent, every night is Fat Tuesday when Fischerspooner hits the… Brash, bawdy and irreverent, every night is Fat Tuesday when Fischerspooner hits the stage.

There may not be enough adjectives to describe a visually enthralling Fischerspooner performance. The shows are as much performance art as they are pop concert – an amalgamation of theatrics, sexual energy, humor and unbridled kitsch driven by throbbing electronic pop music.

The brains behind the Fischerspooner extravaganza are a pair of former Chicago art school cohorts, Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner.

Spooner is the frontman, a ringmaster who does just about everything but swing in on a chandelier. Fischer is the man behind the curtain, calling the shots on stage direction, music and special effects.

Together, they give fans plenty of aesthetic to digest. Part Vegas glitz, part “Rocky Horror,” Fischerspooner blazes across the pop culture spectrum.

“I think on some level we’re trying to tap into this historic art,” Fischer said. “But once you decide to do that, it takes on pop culture in a serious way.” He adds, however, that from an artistic point of view, “you put yourself in what’s your nature, and not do what other people do.”

Fischerspooner shows feature a coterie of female dancers and backup singers who accompany Spooner during most of the carefully choreographed show. The costume pageantry is sleek, quirky and unequivocally sensual. Spooner may start out a show dressed as some sort of postmodern buccaneer, and finish it wearing nothing but sequined briefs and tube socks.

At times, the performance becomes a cavalcade of simultaneous activity, with Spooner singing, dancers executing tight steps and a performance artist spewing fake blood over the crowd. Spooner also loves to verbally and physically engage his audience as much as possible. Between songs, he’ll indulge in sardonic repartee, borrow cigarettes from fans or grab a camera from the audience and photograph the crowd.

“We’ve been doing shows on this scale for a while,” Fischer said. “It’s exciting to watch the experiment grow and infiltrate pop culture.”

Fischer and Spooner met while studying at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They shared a mutual interest in film and video, but eventually went their separate ways. A few years later, they reunited in New York and began to devise the Fischerspooner experience.

The two started out on a relatively modest scale – a one-song performance at a New York City East Village Starbucks in 1998. Word about the act, which involved Spooner playing the exaggerated poser to backing tracks coming from a CD player operated by Fischer, soon set the art world buzzing. As their art evolved, it became more ambitious, incorporating dancers, special effects and elaborate costumes.

Much is made about the outlandish performances, but Fischerspooner’s music remains its foundation. Fischer composes the music and Spooner pens the lyrics. Unlike a lot of dance music, Fischerspooner’s brand of electro pop takes listeners through emotional highs and lows. The duo’s debut album, #1, hit U.S. record stores earlier this year.

In the midst of touring and enjoying a place on Billboard’s Top 20 club chart with their single, “Emerge,” Fischerspooner is looking forward.

Fischer says another album is already in the pipeline, and they’re exploring a feature film possibility, one that combines music, narrative and special effects. He adds that they’ve been approached about doing a youth-oriented pop music show in Las Vegas.

“There’s a lot of professional opportunities out there,” Fischer said. “Performance concerts ideally lends itself to theatrical narrative.”