The Pleasure Principle • The Divine • 7th July 7.30pm Doors open
The Gary Numan Drag King Tribute Show first, followed by an afters alt 80's music party.
Gary Numan: Late-70's patron saint of anxious butches, leather daddies, synth freaks and every queer who ever wanted to look like they came from the future. A cis straight man? Yes. A Drag King icon? Absolutely.
He subverted masculinity precisely because of the vulnerability he was showing from the emotional distance and isolation, the robotic submission to capitalism, manhood, and being a target of attraction that is beautifully strange (in comparison to feminine, or even other masculine, standards of beauty).
The legend goes that before an early TV appearance, the makeup department caked him in thick white foundation to hide severe acne, then ringed his eyes in black so he wouldn't disappear under the studio lights. Instead of looking "normal," he looked ghostly, alien, and almost inhuman. He decided to become part of the joke.
That accidental android look became his signature, quietly dismantling late-70s ideas of what a “rock frontman” should look like. In an era obsessed with macho men punks, Numan gave the alternative community some vulnerability, and mirrored pain back with romantisation. The future, it turned out, wore suits and eyeliner.
Gary Numan showed up in King makeup, PVC, impossible cheekbones and cold industrial synths that sounded like factories having existential crises. His science fiction fantasy was fully immersive, he was one of the firsts to embrace dramatic stage lighting, projections and stark visual strobes and spotlights, bringing the stage lights and smoke as much as an instrument as the synthesizer itself. In that spirit, tonight's cabaret will also use light as part of the performance.
Without Numan, there is no industrial cool, no dark synth revival, no generation of goths, rivetheads, Drag Kings and queer weirdos finding freedom in chrome, leather and post-punk emotional detachment. His influence runs through industrial, synth-pop, EBM and alternative music, inspiring everyone from Nine Inch Nails to countless underground queer artists.
All just because he made masculinity simple and weird enough that queer people (and even cis straight men) recognised themselves in him.