Anyone seeking the downtown cabaret experience need go no further than at Joe’s Pub for one of Justin Bond’s performances, complete with subway rumble underneath. Appearing on their schedule every few months, he is not to be missed. Outfitted in a straight-cut black dress lightly cinched with a wide red ribbon, the gender-bending Justin delivered a powerhouse performance that was half autobiography and half cultural critique, by turns stinging and hilarious.

With his voice running the gamut from vengeful growl to knowing purr, Justin explored the wide world of the wild side. They included many of his own songs such as “Equipoise”, a country-western toe-tapper about growing up as a tranny in a small town and “Salome”, a two-edged ballad to the sacred feminine spirit, as well as “Golden Age of Hustlers” (Bambi Lake) and “Something Cool” (Billy Barnes), a Blanche DuBois character study. Other high points included “Patriot’s Heart” (Mark Eitzel), a Leonard Cohen-esque paean to a male stripper and “Alabama Song” (Brecht/Weill) which brought his set to a close.

A free-form performer, Justin parried with the audience, riffing on self-immolation, AIDS, insanity, and his experiences with the San Francisco queercore band Popstitutes. He also found time to read a poem by Richard Loringer, and invite counter-tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo to wow the audience with excerpts from Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula and Purcell’s The Fairy Queen.

If you’re looking for another evening out with the mossy evergreens of the past, this isn’t it. Justin is fearless as he inhabits, explores, and celebrates in song the emotions, journeys, and lives that thrive and survive in their own authenticity on the margins of so-called polite society. Yet for all of their outré behavior, they are achingly human. That is Justin’s gift and is to be savored.

Bob Barnett
Cabaret Scenes
November 14, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org