For our Pride parties we always seems to look back in time for our inspiration, looking back’s always a great way to know you’re still moving forward as you see how far we’ve come and laud the people who helped us get here. Our first Pride party Gay Sex In The 70s celebrated the sex fueled days of Pride marches, soulful sounds, bath houses and Anita Bryant whilst last year’s party took us on a holiday away from New York as we enjoyed the sunny gay getaway of Fire Island, all Adidas shorts, hairy chests and modernist architecture. This year our inspiration comes, in part, from a time just before our usual disco roots; it comes from the free-love time of the late 60s/early 70s that gave birth to the underground drag troupe The Cockettes.
As the psychedelic San Francisco of the '60's began evolving into the gay San Francisco of the '70's, The Cockettes, a flamboyant ensemble of hippies (women, gay men, and babies) decked themselves out in gender-bending drag and tons of glitter for a series of legendary midnight musicals at the Palace Theater in North Beach. With titles like "Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma" and "Pearls over Shanghai", these all singing, all dancing extravaganzas featured elaborate costumes, rebellious sexuality, and exuberant chaos.
The Cockettes were founded by "Hibiscus", a member of a commune called KaliFlower that was dedicated to distributing free food and to creating free art and theatre. They first performed as an informal group of friends in wild costumes, this evolved into bigger, wilder, and more lavish productions, and the Cockettes' shows fast became not-to-be-missed events for the hippest of San Francisco's free spirits. The audiences were often as wild as the shows.
The Cockettes quickly returned to San Francisco, putting on their most successful and brilliantly titled shows including "Journey to the Center of Uranus" which featured soon-to-be-muse of John Waters, the divine Divine singing the song "A Crab On Your Anus Means You're Loved" while dressed as a big, red lobster. They gave their last performance 1972.
The Cockettes can be seen to have inspired the glitter rock era of David Bowie, Elton John, and The New York Dolls, and the campy extravaganzas of Bette Midler and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. "Their influence will be felt years from now,'' wrote Lillian Roxon, in her Top of the Pops column during the troupe's New York run. She proclaimed The Cockettes 15 years ahead of their time, and predicted, "Every time you see too much glitter or a rhinestone out-of-place, you (will) know it's because of the Cockettes."
With an ethos of love, androgyny, flowers and glitter… we can’t think of a better bunch of LGBT people to take inspiration from this Pride.
Born out of the hippy ethos The Cockettes took no payment for their shows, they just did it for the love, performance and the gender bending. Sylvester, who became one of the biggest disco stars of all time, cut his teeth performing songs by Shirley Bassey and Etta James as part of Cockettes shows.
The Cockettes began doing reviews using old material and then hit even bigger success writing their own original narrative musical shows.Truman Capote and Rex Reed attended a San Francisco performance of "Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma", and Reed called it "a landmark in the history of new, liberated theater..." and Capote squeaked "The Cockettes are where it's at!". The Cockettes became national media darlings and were invited to New York where the San Fran reviews had the city buzzing with anticipation. With Hibiscus leaving the group at this time, they left their hippy ethos of total anarchy, no payment and no rehearsal behind and took the dollar and opportunity to head over to the Big Apple.
Fame and opportunity awaited...they were greeted off the plane by Oscar de la Renta for example! Sylvester had hired the Pointer Sisters as part of his back up band and the new show was a double bill of The Cockettes with Sylvester (now the stand out star) opening in a solo set. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Liza Minnelli , Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Angela Lansbury, Andy Warhol and his own trail-blaising drag performers Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling were all at that first night performance. But the opening night was a disaster, with New Yorkers expecting a much more put together, less free wheeling performance and they faced an indignity that no gay person should ever have to face… Angela Lansbury walked out on the show! Andy Warhol followed and most of the rest of the audience. After the show Gore Vidal quipped, "Having no talent is not enough."
Fame and opportunity awaited...they were greeted off the plane by Oscar de la Renta for example! Sylvester had hired the Pointer Sisters as part of his back up band and the new show was a double bill of The Cockettes with Sylvester (now the stand out star) opening in a solo set. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Liza Minnelli , Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Angela Lansbury, Andy Warhol and his own trail-blaising drag performers Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling were all at that first night performance. But the opening night was a disaster, with New Yorkers expecting a much more put together, less free wheeling performance and they faced an indignity that no gay person should ever have to face… Angela Lansbury walked out on the show! Andy Warhol followed and most of the rest of the audience. After the show Gore Vidal quipped, "Having no talent is not enough."
The Cockettes quickly returned to San Francisco, putting on their most successful and brilliantly titled shows including "Journey to the Center of Uranus" which featured soon-to-be-muse of John Waters, the divine Divine singing the song "A Crab On Your Anus Means You're Loved" while dressed as a big, red lobster. They gave their last performance 1972.
The Cockettes can be seen to have inspired the glitter rock era of David Bowie, Elton John, and The New York Dolls, and the campy extravaganzas of Bette Midler and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. "Their influence will be felt years from now,'' wrote Lillian Roxon, in her Top of the Pops column during the troupe's New York run. She proclaimed The Cockettes 15 years ahead of their time, and predicted, "Every time you see too much glitter or a rhinestone out-of-place, you (will) know it's because of the Cockettes."
With an ethos of love, androgyny, flowers and glitter… we can’t think of a better bunch of LGBT people to take inspiration from this Pride.
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