If Black Friday is going to be a tradition, chanteuse Niki Luparelli has a way to make it cool: Make it about the coolest person ever, David Bowie.
“Oh! You Pretty Things” and it Bowie-flavored striptease returns Friday for its third post-Thanksgiving bash, with “Niki ‘Stardust’ Luparelli and the Total Blam Blams” (aka Niki Luparelli and The Gold Diggers) playing the music complemented by circus aerials by Fonda Feeling and burlesque by the Lipstick Criminals, Fem Bones, Allix Mortis, Bettysioux Tailor, Malice N Wonderland and Kid Vicious. The dancers represent traditional burlesque and the edgier, campier neo-burlesque style.
There will be a David Bowie costume contest with a $100 prize, but the main attractions should be the band’s roughly two dozen songs, from ballads such as “Life on Mars” to rockers such as “Modern Love.”
“I’ve put on so many Bowie tribute shows that I’m probably already on his lawyer’s radar screen,” Luparelli said. “So, probably, if I meet Bowie, they are just going to be referring to me as ‘the defendant.’”
The audience can expect the evening to be both deep and wide, appealing to aficionados and casual fans alike. “They’re going to see a lot of beautiful ladies and they’re going to see more Bowie than they thought possible,” Luparelli said. “More Bowie than anybody else is doing. I think the show is a larger show than Bowie himself usually does.”
The band includes Brooks “Shields” Milgate on keyboard, Olga Supernova on violin, Gin Murphy on tenor sax, Johnny English on alto sax, Miss Christine on bass, Fanny Fandango and friends on backup vocals and of course Niki “Stardust” Luparelli on lead vocals, sass and boobs.
Luparelli’s Bowie-pun-laden blurb for the night:
On Black Friday, rather than pushing through the market square, driving like a demon from station to station and running wild through a million dead-end streets in search of Christmas bargains, you should instead spit in the eyes of fools, put on your red shoes and run to the center of things – Club Oberon, that is – where each table offers a seat with the clearest view and femme fatales emerge from shadows, disrobing to the best of Bowie all night long.
“Oh! You Pretty Things” starts at 8 p.m. Friday at Oberon, 2 Arrow St., Harvard Square. Tickets for this 18-plus show are $25 to $45.
This post was written from press releases.
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