Nailing It

"There is no rules, I want to look like my old timey grandma but I want to be tattooed like a sailor. I want to be a little lady-like but I'm also going to put fire in my mouth. Who doesn't want to live like that?”

Go-Go Amy lives the burlesque dream. She travels the world with her company, Pretty Things Peepshow – performing at Ozzfest 2010 with Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue, The Reeperbahn Festival in Germany and featuring on The Colbert Report. In fact, since the creation of the company in 2009 they have performed in over 400 shows. This September Australia is going to be graced with style and beauty of these cabaret performers with their own sideshows and featuring at the SPA-presented Gangsters' Ball in Melbourne. “I've been looking for a way to come back and I've never done an act at The Gangsters' Ball. It's a challenge for our show to travel as to what can you fit on a plane and what can you legally get into a country sometimes. The second I get off the plane I have to build a new bed of nails, but we just keep building props; I got a bed of nails in Germany, one in New York, one in Scotland.”

It's a show filled with excitement and danger, while showing tribute to a different time. Everybody these days has some love for forgotten era, whether it be a steam punk fan or some '90s purist. Go-Go Amy's style is so eye catching but she sees something pure too in the present. “Everyone has something in their life they regret. And there is absolutely no way you can change your past so you just act like you can change somebody else's past. These throwback movements have this nostalgia for the past that doesn't see really see the bad part of it. People see me at shows and see my pin-up hair and see me in my fancy evening gowns and they ask me, 'don't you think you were born in the wrong time period?' and I'm like, 'absolutely not' because I love the liberties that women have now. I like the hair, the acts, the outfits, but I definitely like the way the world is now.”

The passion over the '90s right now really has a lot to do with the lack of control of authenticity in this age of internet and extreme marketing we are all surrounded by. Acts like the Pretty Things Peepshow are intrinsically linked to the other periods for the same reason, wanting to shock and amaze in an era of too much content. Go-Go Amy sees it like this: “It is part of human nature that people want to be amazed by something. Literally anyone who has a computer can make a movie, make an album and everything is so accessible and easy to fake that when our show comes to town and someone is actually swallowing a sword and someone is actually walking on broken glass, there is something about seeing a live show that is really missing in people's lives. People will never not want to be amazed, and people also love boobs. Boobs are never going to go out of style.”

Gangsters Ball Dates:

Saturday 7 September - Sydney
Saturday 14 September - Melbourne
Saturday 21 September - Brisbane