Prom Queen

Is there any word more evocative of high school than prom? (Besides suckfest or wankerville, that is.) There’s something about the four-letter word that unleashes memories of teen angst cloaked in yards of taffeta and adorned with a garish corsage. Or so we would assume — we never went to prom, though we suppose we made up for it in college by going to more than our fair share of (cough, cough) sorority and fraternity formals, which featured serenading and other things the Night Ranger would rather forget.

In any case, we admit that we were a bit leery about attending the inaugural Rockabilly Prom at Californos. According to the party’s Web site, it was an all-ages shindig that featured five bands. The $20 ticket included dinner, there was a cash bar, and a king and queen would be crowned.

Debating whether to attend, we figured it could be Pretty in Pink cool (i.e., we wouldn’t mind mashing with Andrew McCarthy at the end). On the other hand, it could be lame like an actual prom, and the “all ages” angle was cause for concern. But because we want to support anyone doing something different in this town, we decided to go. With time ticking away, we embarked on our own date dash (and when we say “date dash,” we mean calling our friend John to be a Research Assistant), donned the trusty tiara that we keep in the car for such last-minute emergencies and headed over after 10:30 on Friday the 13th to check it out.

The dance was held on the lower level of Californos, in a great room we had no idea existed. It had hardwood floors, brick walls, large windows and barn-rafter ceilings. But we wondered if we’d stepped into a suckfest: By the time we arrived, the food was pretty much picked over, and RA John pointed out that the band sounded more like Danzig than like rockabilly. A small contingent of tube-top groupies in asymmetrical skirts jumped up and down in front of the stage. There were also a good number of people who looked as if they were actually in high school and a plethora of cameras documenting the night for posterity. We drank our Boulevard Wheats and waited it out, hoping things would pick up by the time we finished our second round.

Fortunately, it did. After the Danzig clone finished, the king and queen candidates were brought up to the dance floor, where the winners, who were crowned with Burger King crowns (but no pig’s blood), were ordained by the audience applause-o-meter. Then, IT happened, the thing we wholly expected to see while gallivanting around during V-Day weekend: a proposal — to one of the tube tops who could have been a doppelganger for Paris Hilton, no less. “I made sure to embarrass myself completely,” said a relieved and ecstatic Terry, when we asked why he decided to propose at the prom. “It’s too cliché to do it on Valentine’s Day, so why not the night before? I wasn’t sure if she was going to say yes,” he said of his GF of a year. “I’m a lucky man.”

After that luv interlude, the Honeybees, with their more traditional sound and great harmonies by the two female lead vocalists, took the stage, and the night just rocked from then on out. The people who had been taking refuge in the other room started streaming back in. Women with upswept hair swished by in vintage ’50s dresses, and guys with slicked-back hair and tattoos — some in zoot suits and some in Western suits with Colonel Sanders ties — milled about. There was some great swing-dance action to watch, and in between sets, Sinatra was played over the loudspeakers.

That’s when we caught up with Lynne G., cohost of KKFI 90.1’s Rockabilly Mood Swing. “Overall, it’s a great effort,” she said. “It says something about the KC music scene when a person decides to put an event on and actually does it.” (Promoter Jody Hendrix later told us that he also is going to try to plan a rockabilly luau this summer.) Added her friend Mary, a veteran of five high school proms, “This is better because there’s drinking, and the entertainment is a ton better than a DJ. Proms are generally awful in high school. A lot of people here never went to prom, so this is their chance to catch up.”

And catch up we did, though there was one void in our prom experience: We missed getting our picture taken in front of the backdrop. Hendrix told us that, alas, it wasn’t an elaborately themed backdrop, but there was one prop to pose with: a plant resting on a case of PBR. Which was also reminiscent of our fratastic formal days, though substitute “Bud” for “PBR” and replace “photo prop” with “drinking it in our date’s car.” Just don’t start serenading us, though, or we’ll poke you with our corsage.