Black Fag Plays on Predictability

Here’s the point: Gay stereotypes are hilarious! It’s true, except, it’s not.’

Liz Armstrong

We were in Sam's Town Live, a quasi-octagonal room with green lighting that gave everyone an unflattering ghoulish pallor, for the closing night of BYO Records' annual Punk Rock Bowling Tournament. You got a dirty look if you deviated from the dress code: tight black jeans and smelly band T-shirt or short skirt and titty top. If you smiled, no one smiled back.

As if to really, really catch us off guard for the opening act, a faux-gay Black Flag tribute band from LA called Black Fag, piped-in warm-up tunes came courtesy of the Beatles and freaking Jimmy Buffet. Black Fag frontman Liberace Morris sauntered onstage in a silky Asian-inspired smoking jacket, disco ball pants, sparkly gold blouse with butterfly collar, leopard-print cravat and press-on mustache enhanced with what looked like shoe polish, sipping and spilling in equal amounts the contents of a plastic martini glass. "Hello gor-geous!" he warbled to the audience.

Guitarist Greg Streisand, in coral slip and grandma rouge, smiled prettily; bass player Cher Dykeowski, a Rambo type in a doo-rag that looked like a leg ripped off a pair of sweatpants, grandstanded like she had everything to prove. People shielded their eyes from this gloriously blinding sight, smiling a little uncomfortably. But when a grungy cover of Blur's "Girls & Boys" smeared into Black Flag's "Six Pack," the fist-pumping ensued.

Liberace interjected his own lines into the lyrics—"Can I get a six pack in me? Hel-lo!"—snapping and sashaying. The shaved-head dude next to me spazzed out, singing along in a hoarse voice. His girlfriend in pumps and stockings, garters visible, minced up to check on him. "Um, you're getting a little excited," she warned, reflexively putting her arm around his waist.

A couple songs in, two way-homo leather daddies in short denim shorts and motorcycle hats with bruises painted on their knees skipped out holding hands; Liberace brandished a glow-stick as best as his limp wrist could muster. For an anthemic version of "No Values" they all donned gold glittery porkpie hats and canes, bringing a little bit of Broadway to punk rock bowling.

Liberace's all sassy choreography, show tunes and jazz hands; he vogues to power chords, examines his manicure, cocks an eyebrow, sighs in a huff, sashays and prances and trills. And those of us who don't look like we had a bucket of cold water dumped on our Mohawks are whooping it up. It's fabulous, fierce, flamboyant and whatever other cliche gay f-word you want to inject.

Here's the point: Gay stereotypes are hilarious! It's true, except, it's not.

As seems to be the case with racial epithets, if you're in on the joke it's okay to laugh. But a closer examination, given the hostile, elitist, group-think culture that is blank-brain punk rock, begs this question: Why is Black Fag doing this? Is this a sort of Take-Back-the-Night reclamation of faggotry? A celebration of queer culture? An excuse to wear shiny things to the heart's content?

After their set, emcee Jeff Hilliard started pissing off the audience with jokes about self-hatred, neck tattoos and mosh pits. Those cherished buckets of ice went flying onto the stage. "Put some balls in your mouth!" a dude yells at him. The longhair next to me belched, threw down his beer can and stomped on it with one foot. Someone else was screaming, "boobs!"

Juxtaposition of punk rock legend and utter queenery might stimulate certain parts of the brain, but the jocky homophobic vibe lives on.

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