I'm talking about the reason Lou Reed had a drag queen girlfriend during the Velvet Underground's heyday.
Ask any San Francisco or New York hipster: Drag queens are an essential part of the underground scene-and I'm not talking about a queen lip-synching to Cher in a $200 wig, while Dockers-wearing fags scream, 'You go, girl!' I'm talking about genuinely subversive performance artists: whiskey-drinking, thrift-store-trash-outfitted, fright-wig wearing, Vaudeville-inspired, gallows comedians. Seattle's music scene can certainly hold its own with most major American cities: We've got the snotty attitudes, the political guts, the DIY smarts colliding with rock star struts, and more drugs than any of us would care to admit.Ībout the only thing missing from Seattle's rock landscape-until two ferociously smart young men brazenly infiltrated the scene last year-was the presence of truly unnerving, edgy, and ugly-cool drag culture. You can say whatever you want about the quality of Seattle's musical output, but no one can deny that our music community has always been rich with possibilities.
