Devilish Dave resurrects Hell

Bash not without Salvation, however

Publication title: Edmonton Journal; Edmonton, Alta.
Pages: C.12
Publication date: Jun 9, 1995
Copyright: (Copyright The Edmonton Journal)
Author: Nicholls, Liz


The thing about Dave Jackson that could really drive you up the wall was just how persuasive the guy could be.

I say was because the self-styled publicist-from-hell is leaving theatre after a decade promoting it, raising funds and hackles and commotion in River City. And he's leaving Edmonton this summer after forever here for a new life in the theatre/shopping mecca of New York. The real whiff of sulphur and horns about Dave is that his ideas, no matter how hare-brained, always seemed like a good idea at the time. Fatally plausible. From the moment he got a job as the Phoenix publicist in December of 1985 during the Bob Baker regime, this terrifying phenomenon set in.

Even now I can't believe some of the lunatic things Dave talked me into. Like the Saturday I found myself on the end of a diving board, wearing the family rhinestones, long gloves, and my trench coat, and contemplating a watery death below. It was the Phoenix fund-raising dunk tank, and our Dave thought it would be great for business if people got a chance to paste the critic, three balls for a buck.

In this he was absolutely right. There was an instant queue of disaffected actors, disgruntled managers, and their relatives; it went on for hours. Phoenix made thousands. He had gotten around my major objection -- I can't swim (if the good Lord had intended us to swim we'd have sprouted fins by now) -- by convincing me somehow that the water in a dunk tank isn't deep. "You'll only be in it up to your knees,'' said Dave.

The argument had a spurious ring of truth, until the first submersion. You can drown in three inches of water if your head is under. Frankly, it didn't help to be wearing a full set of evening clothes and striped tights. But screaming and crying seemed to be out of the question for a good-sport critic confronted by a hostile constituency. I went home with my underwear in a bag.

In a (thankfully) short-lived job he had covering the arts beat for a local cable station, Dave wanted to demonstrate my chief qualification for my theatre reviewer job: the ability to be in the dark. The only place in the Journal of the day that there were no windows was the women's washroom. And that, with the lights turned out, was where we did the infamous interview. Great moments in the intellectual history of Western civilization that can make a person cringe years later.

There were press photo calls in laundromats. There were ugly stuffed frog contests. It never stopped. And then, in 1989, Dave, a decidedly lapsed Catholic, invented the "hell party, the fund-raiser that was as close to damnation as a soiree could be." Since then, in a mixture of dry ice fog, tequila shooters and gruesome red plastic furbishments, in warehouses, theatres, ex-Masonic halls, nearly 15,000 Edmontonians have gone to hell, at parties with names like "psycho-HELL-a-go-go'' or "to HELL on wheels'' or "a cold day in HELL (yule dance and party down)'' or "come HELL or high water.''

And arts groups -- mostly theatres, but also dance troupes, the AIDS Network, a local film festival, the Fringe -- have benefited, about $100,000 worth.

There was always quasi-religious kitsch. There was always "hotter-than-hell chili,'' made in Dave's own kitchen by friends who didn't really know how to cook.

There was a really vile concoction called Hell-Jell, in which vodka substituted for the water. Even the music was hell -- disco, metal, ditties from The Sound of Music, the Partridge Family, even Liberace's favorite, I'll Be Seeing You.

In fact, the latter may well be the last song you'll ever hear in hell. Which brings me to the three-day marathon hell party, the last instalment in this world, that represents Dave's grand finale, starting tonight at 9 p.m. with "Purgatory'' (Carole's Cafe) with live jazz by Dave Babcock, followed by "HELL hath frozen over'' (the Citadel) on Saturday night, and "Salvation'' in the wee hours of Sunday morning at 2 a.m. at the Dance Factory.

Dave "personally guarantees that Madonna is planning to be there.'' Amen, brother Dave.

Colour Photo; PR; BELIEVE IT: FOR SOME, THIS WEEKEND IS GOING TO BE ... H-E-L-L
Credit: THE EDMONTON JOURNAL