LIVE:
Corey
Feldman's Truth Movement
Cobalt
Lounge, Saturday, Nov. 4
I knew it was going to be a rock-and-roll night when I
hit the streets. Corey was coming--Corey Feldman
and His Truth Movement, a rock-and-roll experience sure
to thrill anyone who spent the '80s in a legally conscious
state. Live at the Cobalt Lounge. And I was up for anything.
There he was, unloading his wardrobe box on the hard streets
of Chinatown. The truth is, first I thought he was some
second-rate-roadie too small to lift the equipment off the
van, but then I saw his mug. His adorable, ruggedly handsome
mug. For a moment, I thought I sensed a trace of Gary Coleman
Syndrome behind those famous eyes. I feared he'd uncork
a haymaker on my fanboy azz--but no. He smiled. Corey
Feldman smiled at me. And he said: "How's it goin'?"
Once I was through the door, though, things got ugly. A
pair of panties, meant (I assume) for the star, caught me
'longside the dome. My standard 14 inches of personal space
was invaded by a babbling idiot sporting a jeans jacket
and a five-inch Gresham Rake™ haircut. Pick this chick
up by the ankles and you could have a suburban lawn cleared
of leaves in 15 minutes flat. She screamed: "Corey Feldman
is my man! Corey Feldman is my man!" It was sobering.
Wading through this Reagan-era flotsam, I made it to the
edge of the stage. And there he was. God/Lucifer/Corey Feldman,
rising from a suffocating sea of dry-ice fog.
All cynicism aside, he was amazing. When you stop to think
about it, it makes sense--his life contains all the necessary
Faustian ingredients for rock transcendence. You think Robert
Johnson drew a rough hand down at the crossroads? Try being
a child movie star in America. Feldman knows what kind of
baggage he's carrying around. He knows that half the people
in the country hate him--for no reason at all. If
that isn't fuel for breaking on through to the other side,
what could be?
The action never even stopped. Corey's costume changes
each revealed a distinctive and specific side of his multiple
personalities: the crazy, hysterically evil clown; the top-hatted,
alien ringmaster; the '80s heartthrob (the groupies loved
it when he sang Stand By Me); the California Coppertone
model; and the "real" Corey Feldman.
Feldman is a wise man. He knows the world is full of money-sucking
lawyers and parasite con men. If you're strong enough to
hear his call, he has a message for you: "Being Famous Sucks."
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