ANOHNI’s originals highlight her mature style, ignoring the haphazard spoofs for which one can find video evidence online. Instead, we have Ebony Jet’s “Satellite of Love” and Sissy Fit’s “Sister Morphine,” two haunting covers that draw out real desperation from the outlaw perspectives of their source material. ANOHNI dispenses with Blacklips’ parodies of songs from movies, recognizing that ironic takes on Hollywood weren’t their most singular contributions to the world of drag performance.
The tracks by troupe members are often doleful, thanks to a considered curatorial agenda. Mere months before he died of AIDS, Russo encouraged ANOHNI to move to New York. Many of the selections seem like intimate moments in ANOHNI’s own tale of self-realization: Russo, for example, was a visiting professor at University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1990 while ANOHNI and Johanna Constantine were undergrads. Inimitable frontman Dean Johnson insults an unnamed nemesis: “I wish you’d choke on a fashion accessory,” and later, “You’d look cooler if you wore a Frigidaire.” Other tracks harness the era’s agitprop energy, among them Diamanda Galás’ virus dirge “Double-Barrel Prayer” and Vito Russo’s exhortation for gays to take political action without worrying about appeasing straight people. There are club-kid acts from the influential 1988 film Mondo New York, which inspired ANOHNI and Johanna Constantine-these include ubiquitous drag artist Joey Arias and queercore pioneers Dean and the Weenies, whose defiant, sax-laden “Fuck You” is one of the record’s hilarious highlights. The latter charms her way through “Punks, Get Off the Grass,” one of the spirited, magnetic singles she released with her novelty band the Eggs. The record’s generous sprawl encompasses a couple of tracks by late players in John Waters’ Dreamlander ensemble, Divine and Edith Massey. Of course, the album sets us in a much earlier period-one of punk, camp, and the fury of ACT UP. Musically, their capacity for earnestness separated them from precedent, imbuing their mourning with an openhearted, connective consonance that would become more common in the post-9/11 era. From the perspective of performance art, Blacklips seemed to arrive just after the peak of a polymathic Downtown scene that blurred drag, cabaret, theater, and activism. Vocal clips, which range from an interview excerpt with AIDS activist Vito Russo to a jokey advertisement for a Halloween show at the Limelight, play off selections from Blacklips DJ sets, chosen by Johanna Constantine. Original tracks by the cast-including an early version of ANOHNI’s “Rapture,” which would appear years later on her first record backed by the Johnsons-coexist with heartfelt covers of glam-rock forerunners such as Lou Reed.
Released in conjunction with a book of photographs, scripts, interviews, and essays, the 90-minute compilation coalesces around the group’s predecessors and some surprising documentation of their own songs, effectively showing how Blacklips laid the groundwork for ANOHNI’s subsequently skyward career. Then, they belted into song, and while the numbers could be as funny as the self-consciously inept acting, they were sometimes devastating and truthful, shot through with the inescapable horror of AIDS’ peak.Ī new ANOHNI-curated compilation, Blacklips Bar: Androgyns and Deviants - Industrial Romance for Bruised and Battered Angels, 1992 - 1995, places Blacklips in a lineage of queer music, nightlife, and politics. Troupe members vomited on the corpse of Jack the Ripper, pelted their audience with animal organs and tore a bloody fake fetus from the belly of cast member James F. They used one microphone, to ragtag comedic effect, and straddled goth and drag cultures, reaching for both fabulous and macabre aesthetics. Appearing at the Pyramid during the graveyard shift on Mondays, the troupe of 13 or so drag queens and fellow travelers wrote and performed short plays with irreverent names such as “The Swiss Family Donner Party” and “The Birth of Anne Frank.” The cast did all of its own make-up and costumes, relying on the genius of budding talents like future Michael Jackson and FKA twigs collaborator Kabuki Starshine. In 1992, elegiac auteur ANOHNI and kindred spirits Johanna Constantine and Psychotic Eve, all barely 20 at the time, formed Blacklips Performance Cult. Even decades ago, the venue could function as a space for mourning, transforming the mood from debauched to lamentful over the course of a single evening.
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