This past Friday evening, atop the USS Midway, Funeral Party put on a show for a small group of loyal comic book and music lovers alike.  And as any Comic-Con after party goes, the drama never ceased to impress, making this, without a doubt, the best party I have ever been to... on an aircraft carrier. William Shatner has already landed his helicopter atop the out-of-commission WWII boat.  David Hasselhoff was spotted making his rounds and taking his dogs for a walk on the upper deck.  Lead singer Chad Elliott underwent a mysterious allergic reaction and was rushed to the hospital.  He never quite made it back to the boat, but Funeral Party still managed to put on a pretty sweet instrumental performance (don’t worry, Chad’s all better now).

Before the show, I managed to grab a quick Q&A with lead guitarist and back-up vocalist, James Torres:

So, can you tell me a little bit about Funeral Party’s history?
I wanted to start a band four years ago, and I approached the singer, Chad Elliott, and I asked him to start a band, and it kind of went from there.  We had other members.  Quite a few change outs of drummers, but officially for two years we’ve been a band.  We used to just play backyard parties and crazy stuff like that… people would get shot and stabbed.  We moved up from there to venues and then we got signed last year to Sony.  And our album is coming out in January.

Where’d the name Funeral Party come from?
Our singer [Chad] came into his sister’s room one day and she was listening to The Cure, the song called “The Funeral Party.”  He asked her about it… Long story short she told him the name of the song and he knew that was gonna be the title of the band.

Tonight, who are you most excited to party with on the boat?
David Hasselhoff’s daughters.

What can you tell me about your upcoming album?
Well, its our first efforts and the music itself captures youthfulness and the whole scene that we came from.  The theme of the album is escapism.  It’s like trying to leave.  Pick up from where you’re at and just take off on a whim, in a moment’s notice.  Which is what we’ve been doing, touring around the world.  Being able to escape Whittier, which is where we are from.  Which is so hard  - everybody that is born there is considered under the Whittier curse.  You know you’re never gonna escape, but luckily we managed to escape that whole stereotype.

Are you excited about all the hype behind the band and the dance-rock genre?
I’m more or less excited to just be able to be travelling.  Just be in a different city every day.  It’s really fun.  As for the album itself, yeah I’m really excited that we are gonna be projecting onto a higher level, a higher platform.  To be able to express our music and get what we want out there.  Yeah, I’m really excited.

Around 8:30, the band began to play… minus Chad.  They were still dead on, completely synchronized even with the absence of lyrical cues.  Playing for half and hour, I can only assume they played the majority of their upcoming album and even though I couldn’t exactly tell what the songs will sound like with vocals, instrumentally they all make for quite the dance party.  Should be a good time.  Who doesn’t love a funeral party?

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Funeral Party’s debut album should be out around the second week of January, 2011.  Check out their first single:

“Finale”

For more photos check out Danielle Polikoff’s set on flickr