Tinkle on guitar.

BIJOU is always a gem of a night, featuring both up-and-coming and established performers in a drag (and non-drag) cabaret. Trauma Flintstone’s April 9 BIJOU at Martuni’s was a little more pop and folky than ever. Trauma lined up two singer/guitarists, one blues singer, one sexy Goth burlesque dancer, and one show tune queen. A very nice mix, as usual.

Opening the show, for her very first solo appearance was composer/musician Tinkle (aka Peter Fogel) who has been the force behind many projects, including being the dynamo behind the bands Pepperspray, the Whoa Nellies, and Enrique, as well as the musicals, Cyberotica and Club Inferno. She was stuffed into a smart blue sequined number setting off her flaming red bobbed wig. Crooning about her lost love, “Angel Eyes,” with deep melancholy she sang: “Drink up, all you people; order anything you see; the drinks and the laugh’s on me.”

Later, Tinkle changed into a gold lame mini-dress and grew her hair suddenly long to sing the song she wrote for Princess Kennedy and her notorious tranny-chaser friends, “That Look You’ve Got,” offering, “You’re capable and rape-able, so if you’re looking to get lost, lose yourself in me!” Tinkle then brought out her back-up boys—drag kings with pencil-thin mustaches, derbies, and snazzy suits—Mr. Champers (Connie Champagne in real life) and Mr. Lee (Leigh Crowe) to accompany her on “My Deep Purple Dreams.”

Returning diva Mama Tracy St. Cyr is one of the original Finocchio’s performers from 1959 and on. This triple Gemini will soon be turning 73 years. She always sings a capella at Martuni’s, and knocked out some very fine blues tunes that night. Looking mighty swell in black and gold sparkles, Mama did her signature song, “Send Me to the Electric Chair,” an old Bessie Smith piece about a woman who shot her man who got caught cheating. Mama came back to grind out “Dr. Longjohn,” the dirty dentist who drills his patients, fills their cavities, and takes away their pain. Mama was so impressed (“You thrill me when you drill me, baby!”), that she just had to see that doctor every day.

Her final song was from the ‘50s by Johnny Ray, the famous crying singer, doing none other than “Cry,” with the advice: “If your heart aches, go right ahead and cry.” Also going solo was Stephen Cheslick-Demeyer, one-half of the queer country duet, Y’all. He has moved to SF from down south. Performing on acoustic guitar, he sang his original cynical song about falling in and out of love in June in Tennessee, when “it’s much too sticky; if you’d have come in the spring, I woulda been more picky.” He came back in his “Bound for Glory” T-shirt and way kewl tats all over his neck and arms, to give us more cynicism about lovers, showing the difference between being in love at 23 and being less vulnerable and less naïve as a mature man—“There’s love and then there’s something else entirely.” His last song was a kiss-off to another failed relationship: “Your work is done, now it’s time to run; so kiss me on the mouth before going south, and say goodbye.”

And then, providing something for the dyke girls in the audience and those who appreciate old fashioned burlesque, Lily Le Rouge (a gothic beauty who has appeared all over SF but rarely in the rarified world of the Castro) was the perfect eye candy. She appeared as Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride in white lace wedding dress trimmed in blue to match her face, arms, and hollowed out eyes. To the soundtrack of the movie, she peeled off her long train, then her veil, and dress—stripping down to just panties and pasties shaped like ghosts. She may have been a corpse, but she certainly was lively.

Miss Summer Clearance, dubbed as the show tune medley queen, sang—you guessed it—a medley of “Love for Sale” and an obscure prostitution tune, all about her soiled and slightly used love, available by the hour. Dropping her long tasteful gown, this naughty little chippie showed her street corner garb beneath and sang, “I can tell by looking that you’ve got it HARD for me.” She came back later bundled in a winter coat and fur-lined hood to sing “Steam Heat,” which couldn’t keep her warm; she needed someone’s love to keep away the cold.

Tom Shaw, who usually does almost all the accompaniment on piano, did his own number to his piano playing with a rather obscure 1934 piece by Ira Gershwin and Harold Arlen, which seemed to follow the unnamed theme of the evening—dysfunctional relationships: “You’re a builder-upper, a breaker-downer, a holder-outer, and I’m a giver-inner; sad but true—I love it I do, being broken by a broken-hearter like you.” Jeez dude, get some self-esteem!

Trauma returned to do an unbelievable boogie-woogie version of “What’s Goin’ On?” followed by the lyrics of “Jack and Diane” to the music of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” Tinkle did her final number with her retinue doing the Chicago rock group’s “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” and “I Love Rock ‘n Roll Music.”
After giving a plug to The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’s Easter birthday bash in Dolores Park (where Trauma will co-emcee), and introducing Katja Ludmilla Smirnoff-Skky out of drag doing the high soprano “Habanera,” Trauma sang her smutty signature song, “Titty Fuck.” In case no one understood the concept, she rubbed the phallic microphone between her fake breasts, “caressing that one-eyed snake” and hoping for a pearl necklace. Nothing but class here at Bijou, folks! And don’t we just LOVE that?!!