The Community Curator presents Zombie Prom

QUINCY, Ill. — The high school prom is a common theme used in different stories, movies, and life. A night some want to remember and a night some want to forget. Hours of planning, shopping, spending money and getting ready- all to make one special night magical or miserable.

Some of us may have counted down the days for the dance, the photos with friends, and the closing chapter the celebration represents.  And some of us counted down the minutes until the chaperones would let you leave for the night to go drink your blue frogs in someone’s basement or campfire party. That was the Boone’s Farm for millennials. It’s where you mixed McCormick’s with Mountain Dew and a blue Kool-Aid packet.  This all is the pre-Red bull era.

Whatever your poison or prom values may be, there is a desire in some of us for a do-over.  Your regrets have been answered and Holy Halloween, the do-over is here! State Street Theatre presents the first annual Zombie Prom on Saturday October 29.  And we don’t have to hide our spiked punch for this one! 

Zombie Prom is the much-anticipated adult Halloween Party this community has been craving. Blood, brains, and booze all under one roof. If you haven’t heard the latest from the underworld, you are not alone. The dark arts are often kept in the dark. However, this flyer has been floating around my newsfeed for this ultimate party to accommodate both the living and the dead. Who is throwing this diabolical shindig – an event some have likened to Anton LaVey throwing Alice Cooper a birthday party? It seems only fitting to dissect the brains behind the operation and in doing so I get to tell the story about how the lord of the dark arts became the community curator. 

Alex Sanders (known to many in the community as Big A) is the host for this event. I asked Alex to meet me at Spring Street Bar, where we first met one another.  Spring is headquarters for me and a childhood home for Alex. His father, Terry Sanders, is the most regular of patrons at the bar. So regular that he has the bar phone listed as his personal landline. Comfortable common ground is the place I wanted to be to get the real meat and potatoes. We started our conversation like how we start out any other… discussing our cannabis connoisseur recommendations. I’ve known Big A for a long time. It’s strange to think this exchange was once frowned upon, perhaps even illegal, and now he’s a budtender at Herbal Remedies. 

Being frowned upon isn’t a strange feeling for Alex.  Instead of bringing him down, he laughs in the face of disapproval. It’s the fuel he uses to embrace what he really loves in life – and that is alternative art. 

What is alternative art? It is the art that falls outside of the box. It’s art that people forget is art in the first place. It’s the setting, costumes, and actual words behind every performance. 

I asked Sanders to give me specific examples of alternative art.

“It’s pro-wrestling,” he said. “It’s Dean Malenko and his 1000 holds. It’s the makeup in any John Carpenter movie. It’s The Budos Band or Southern Culture on the Skids. It’s the admiration for being different.”

Without addressing the age-old debate and question “what is art?”, it is clear to see the lack of representation of alternative art in our community. If it’s not a blues band from outside of town or a French horn recital at a local church, you’re probably not going to hear much about it from the local art magazine. And if it is a local act, it most certainly will not be funded by those food and beverage taxes… But I digress. Basically, if it’s alternative, it might as well be considered dark arts at this point. Sanders recognizes this lack of representation and had been using his crystal ball magic to bring this art out of darkness serving as a showman at the State Room Theatre. His goal is to give people a chance.

This isn’t his first attempt at shining light on the dark arts. About ten years ago, a much less mature Sanders co-founded a group of artists and fans of alternative art known to the community as the Not So Fine Art Society. It was an effort to bring together the disenfranchised artists of the community that he felt were lacking representation. The Not So Fine Art Society brought us the idea for a local roller derby team, the Lincoln-Douglas Bar plays (regardless of invitation), and the Zombie Pub Crawl. The organization, known to be not-so-organized, focused on the gritty and guerilla acts of art culture. The dissolution of NSFA happened in 2014, after his partner moved and Sanders fell ill. It was a dark year for the dark arts, but goons like Sanders never say die.

After embarking on an incredible weight loss journey, marrying the love of his life, and finding his home with the band, Alex says he feels like he is “rising from the dead himself.”  With a more mature approach this time around, and a little help from his friends at the State Street Theatre, the alternative arts won’t be kept in the darkness much longer. Events like After Blues (an event held after Blues in the Park in the theatre that features local artists) and Zombie Prom are just the beginning of this do-over.

Second chances require a lot of work and opportunity which is generally manifested out of love. You’re not going to dedicate real effort into anything unless you love it. Sanders said his love of art started around the age of five with the Looney Tunes show. He would sit at the piano and try to play the keys from some of the classical showtunes by ear. While the rest of the 80’s babies were singing along to Ernie’s rubber ducky song, Alex was busy learning The Barber of Seville. With Bugs Bunny as his instructor and an extremely talented ear for music, his love of music grew.

He continued making music, and eventually found his place as a bass player sometime in high school around the age of fifteen. Sanders said it was by accident, but it sounded like a predestined story to me. His friends said they needed a bass player, so he went out and bought a bass. He learned to play it by ear and is “the only member from that band he can’t remember the name of that is still making music to this day.” Sanders sits in and provides the rhythm for some local acts here in the community, but his heart and bass have been most recently familiar with the sounds of the popular local band, Gypsy Tango Foxtrot . My heart is in that band too as my husband, Mike Shull, sings and plays acoustic guitar for GTF. He is Sander’s cousin by blood, but brother by the band. 

The other extremely locally talented members of the band family include Brian Holzgrafe on violin, Christian Wingerter on electric guitar, and Megan Peters on oboe and as the lead vocalist. Talent isn’t the only thing driving this band’s success. It’s the dedication to practice. I can’t express to you how much practice goes into the magic they make. That magic is what you would call art music. They primarily play popular tunes in a progressive fashion, fusing multiple styles and genres with unique arrangements, often mashing multiple songs together into one piece, often with areas allotted for improvisation. The idea is very similar to the approach jazz musicians took in the 30s and 40s. Other than the talent, practice, and art music magic, I asked Alex if there was anything else that made Gypsy Tango Foxtrot different from other bands (other than the good-looking acoustic guitar player).  “Because GTF is a melting pot of every genre and style, there are infinite possibilities of what we can make because we don’t put boundaries on ourselves. And I think that’s the most freeing thing.” 

I got a cocktail.  Water for Big A.  He doesn’t drink, and I get the impression he’s never really had a taste for it.  As I sit down, Big A gets into the nitty gritty details of the prom.  The event starts at 7 p.m. Saturday and will have all the standard accoutrements of the proms of the living.  A photographer with a backdrop who can upload her photos directly to your phone, a raffle with some great local prizes, a costume contest, food courtesy of  Tasty J’s Food truck and Sugarbug Cotton Candy, and dance hits from throughout the ages courtesy of DJ Dusty Balls, aka Dustin Tweedle, who will be loading up the records he sells at Square Music into the hearse to spin at the event until your rotten legs fall off.  Around 11:30 p.m., they will crown the king and queen…

Just then, the door to Spring Street’s beer garden swings open like an old west saloon door and out saunters Big A’s dad, and my most regular irregular, Terry.

“No, go away for a second, I’m doing an interview.”

Terry sticks up his middle finger.

“Report this.”  

Don’t get it twisted. Terry loves his son and Big A loves Terry.  Big hearts run in the Sanders family.  They don’t always love a lot of things, but they love a few things a lot.  For Big A, it’s his wife Cindy, who he met when they were 16 years old, working at Steak and Shake.  She went off to the army and he played rock and roll, but fate would reunite them as a coach and a referee for the local roller derby team; another product inspired by the NSFA society.  Serendipitous indeed.  He also loves dogs.  He and Cindy recently had to say goodbye to their rescue, Buddy, who was treated to the good life after they discovered he had cancer just a few short months after adoption.  His last days were full of birthday parties with big-ole meat cakes, cheeseburgers for every meal, constant games of ball…the works.  The vet gave him four months, he lasted two.  

The story is choking me up and Big A deflects with some humor. 

“It was almost like the movie Goodfellas, when they take Joe Pesci in there like he’s going to get promoted, or whatever, and they cap him.”

As the conversation wraps up and Big A goes inside to shoot the breeze with his old man, I think about what to call this article.  I think about what Big A said he wants for the arts community in this town and visions of Rockabilly guitarists, luchadores, and the zombies in formal wear who break dance after the credits of the Thriller video all flutter around in the smokey air he left behind.  It might not be my thing exactly, but there’s something there.  It’s like going to an art show, and by walking through the space you get a feel for what the curator thinks is cool.  

Alex Sanders: Our Community Curator.

That’s it.  

Brittany Boll is a correspondent and host for Muddy River News. She’s also a mom and when she’s not writing or yakking it up with Ashley Conrad, she’s slinging drinks at Spring Street and other spots as needed. This gun’s for hire.