Yes, you read that headline correctly. The Bloody Digusting News website reports: “last night at the 2007 Scream Awards Paris Hilton was nearly booed off the stage once again, but by the time they finished showing the first ever footage from Darren Bousman’s Repo! The Genetic Opera all of the boos had turned into cheers.” This rock opera about organ repossession takes us to the year 2056, in which a worldwide epidemic causes organ failure on a massive scale, enabling a biotech firm called GeneCo to begin renting out genetically-perfect organs to those who can afford them. The nature of the program is similar to a car lease, and the firm sends out a repo man if the recipient can’t make payments. In addition to Paris Hilton and Nivek Ogre, other talents involved in the project, on and off the screen, include singer Poe, Daniel Ash from Bauhaus, Yoshiki Hayashi from X Japan, Bill Mosely and Sarah Brightman. Ogre plays Pavi, the younger son of the evil mastermind behind GeneCO, and Hilton is cast as Amber Sweet, a “sexy aspiring opera diva and scalpel-slut will stop at nothing to get her moment in the spotlight.” Is this to be the Rocky Horror Picture Show of our generation? I sure hope so!

• Behind-the-Scenes Footage
• Repo! The Genetic Opera on IMDB
• Production Stills from the 10-Minute Trailer
• Website for the Theatrical Production of Repo

All this talk of sartorial darqueness is making me want to tar and feather myself.

Wait! I mean that in the best possible way…

Footage of beautiful, comedic madman Frank Tovey, aka Fad Gadget, attacking auxiliary bandmates – borrowed from Einsturzende Neubauten – on German television.

The brilliant songwriter was fond of slathering himself in various forms of goop and leaping into his audiences, as well as “playing instruments with his head”, but apparently the world just wasn’t ready for that sort of thing back in 1982. Despite being a huge influence on later luminaries of the gothic/industrial movement, Fad Gadget remains relatively obscure.

Whether you’re already a devoted fan or want to become one, I can’t recommend Mute’s posthumous collection, Fad Gadget by Frank Tovey: A Retrospective in Sound and Vision highly enough.