Angela's Sashes

Comments (0) By Falling James Thursday, Sep 6 2012

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Cat & Fiddle

6530 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Category: Bars/Clubs

Region: Hollywood

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"Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls," the Kinks' Ray Davies once declared in "Lola," his pop ode to a transvestite. "It's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world." Now Angela Bowie attempts to sort out who's who in her fascinating new book, Lipstick Legends, looking back in love (instead of anger) at all the young dudes who borrowed her makeup and got dolled up during the 1970s glam-rock scene. Drawing on interviews with Alice Cooper, the Warhol singer-actor Cherry Vanilla, rock impresario Kim Fowley, journalist Mary Finnigan, Deep Purple's Glenn Hughes and Jayne County (who's in town for a rare show, at the Viper Room on Saturday), as well as her own experiences as a model and fashion trendsetter, Bowie takes a wide-ranging look at the cultural, social and geographical forces that came together to inspire the all-too-brief explosion of transgender hedonism and free expression before AIDS took it all away again. Not only was she the wife of David Bowie at the height of his most creative period, Angela was also a major influence on his style and look when he transformed from an acoustic folkie into Ziggy Stardust. "Once I got the vision, then I was unstoppable," Angela says about the genesis of the book by phone from her Arizona home. "I got too excited. I got my claws sharpened and my brain honed." She marvels about the "uber pathos" of the drag lifestyle and "how drag is so effective as a tool of change," with drag queens "using drag to make a point and underline it." The Cat & Fiddle, 6530 Sunset Blvd., Hlywd.; Mon., Sept. 10, 8 p.m.; free. (323) 468-3800.
Mon., Sept. 10, 8 p.m., 2012