Blacklips Bar: Androgyns and Deviants – Industrial Romance for Bruised and Battered Angels, 1992–1995 is a compilation combining original recordings and select DJ tracks from the vaults of Blacklips Performance Cult, a collective of underground performers, artists and drag queens who took to NYC’s… Anthology Recordings
Blacklips Bar: Androgyns and Deviants
…Pyramid Club stage every Monday night at 1 am to perform original plays. The broad spectrum of emotional expression, ferocity, humor and transgression evident in these collected recordings are a further indication of the group’s oeuvre.
In 1992, ANOHNI founded Blacklips Performance Cult with collaborators Johanna Constantine and Psychotic Eve. Originally intended as a cabaret and DJ night, the constellation of people drawn to Blacklips soon melded into a late night ensemble in which members took turns writing scripts that were then performed by the group. Blacklips continued a tradition of urban queer subcultural resistance embodied within the writings of Jean Genet, John Rechy, and the post-punk feminist Terence Sellers. Inspired by Lotte Lenya, Candy Darling, and Leigh Bowery, Greta Garbo and Sister Dimension, performers took the stage primarily to entertain and address each other, while entertaining late-night thrill seekers.
Staging collectively conceived plays set Blacklips apart from other expressions of creativity in nightlife of the era, aligning the group with predecessors such as The Cockettes, Angels of Light, Bloolips and Theater of the Ridiculous. Blacklips members built sets from garbage and industrial refuse that they found in the streets of the East Village, in homage to Jack Smith and the aesthetics of post apocalyptic punk. The group staged spectacles that were alternately surreal, slapstick, emotional and absurd. This weekly laboratory also served as the first showcase for ANOHNI’s music.
Some plays included gory revisions of Jack the Ripper and Frankenstein. Offerings such as Clayworld functioned as intergalactic morality plays. Satirical appropriations of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, Adrian Brook’s The Glass Arcade, and Boys in the Band, feasted on a century of queer culture. Plays such as Death! and The Funeral of Fiona Blue often ended with “a pile of dead bodies” on stage, reflecting the impact AIDS was having on the downtown scene.
Androgyns and Deviants places you squarely within the shiny black brick walls of the main dance floor at the Pyramid, bathed in shards of light from the disco ball, waiting for the show to begin amongst a gaggle of stragglers, queens, and voyeurs. A montage of sound bites, original recordings, and Blacklips DJ favorites emanate a sense of Blacklips bar’s joie de vivre. Remastered original recordings by ANOHNI, including an unreleased version of “Rapture,” as well as the never before released composition “The Yellowing Angel” suggest the feeling of suspension that would sometimes interrupt the hysteria… Anthology Recordings
01. Shoot Yer Load
02. Good Morning Heartache
03. Punks, Get Off The Grass
04. Ladies and Gentlemen
05. Satan’s Lil’ Lamb
06. Janet Vampire
07. Stairs – Uncertain Journey
08. Disrupt Their Lives
09. Rapture
10. Double-Barrel Prayer
11. Sister Morphine
12. Natasha
13. You Think You’re a Man
14. So Disgraceful
15. Satellite of Love
16. Fuck You
17. People are Small
18. Angels in Pain
19. Your Cigarette
20. Tenterhook
21. Suspecting Mrs. Shyster
22. The Yellowing Angel
23. 13 Ways To Die
24. Useless Man
25. My Final Moments
26. Golden Showers
27. Love Letters
28. Blacklips