thecockettes

The 2008 LES Howl! Festival (The Cockettes, The Slits, Trachtenburgs, Rev Billy and more) schedule

The Cockettes
The Cockettes

Though free shows are becoming scarcer and scarcer in NYC as September approaches, September 6th now offers three all-day possibilities. This one is part of the annual LES Howl! Festival, takes place in Tompkins Square Park, and looks sort of like this:

Tompkins Square Park, Sept 6, 2008
1.00 p.m. Middle Collegiate Choir
1.30 p.m. Blonde Boy Wilson with On Davis
1.40 p.m. “Bang the Drum for the Brothers,”J. Fitzgerald creates a dazzling spectacle of rhythm and rhyme.
2.05 p.m. TIMBILA
2.25 p.m Baby Soda
2.45 p.m. Tin Pan
3.05 p.m Reverend Billy
3.25 p.m. Trachtenburg Family
4.05 p.m. Becky Wreck
4.20 p.m. Ari Up’s Slits
5 p.m. THE COCKETTES and the Thrill Peddlers
6 p.m. The House of HOWL PRESENTS THE HOUSE OF BON VIVANT’S BALLHOUSE TRIBUTE

That’s just the schedule of one stage on one of the three days though. The rest of the Tompkins Square Park part of the schedule can be found on Howl’s very confusing website.

The other free shows on Septmeber 6th are the East Village Radio Fest at South Street Seaport and the Monser Island Block Party in Brooklyn.

The entire Howl! Festival runs from September 5-11 and involves approximately 30 different venues including the Living Room, Element, Bowery Poetry Club, Niagara, Rehab, St Marks Church and Vaishnava Academy For the Performing Arts.

The Cockettes

a psychedelic drag queen troupe founded by Hibiscus in the late 1960s in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. The troupe performed outrageous parodies of show tunes (or original tunes in the same vein) and gained an underground cult following that led to mainstream exposure.

In 1971, over differences in philosophy, the group split into two separate groups, the Cockettes and The Angels of Light. The Cockettes continued to work as paid performers while the Angels of Light chose to do free theatre without admission charge.

The Cockettes were the subject of a 2002 documentary, The Cockettes… [Wikipedia]

… (…how many original members there still are I’m not sure…) are also playing a few shows at The Theaters at 45 Bleeker Street (in addition the one in the park listed above).