Justin Vivian Bond, soon to celebrate 25 years in cabaret with a show at Joe’s Pub, took the stage at the Cherry Grove Community House, for the first time in four years, for a show entitled “Love Is Crazy!,” presented by the Arts Project of Cherry Grove (APCG) on August 29, during the weekend of the full moon. Assisting were Musical Director and Pianist Matt Ray, and Nath Ann Carrera and Dana Lyn, on guitar and violin respectively. Matt Baney served as Technical Director and Alison Brackman was responsible for sound and lighting.
Mx. Bond began by lamenting the loss of love in a contemplative “Angel Eyes,” by Karen Ann Poole, Michelle Lena Mcerlaine, and Terence James Martin, and declared, “I love that song, I love Cherry Grove, and I’m happy to be here with you tonight!” Mx. Bond then accused, in an intense Buffy St. Marie song, “You’re Not the Loving Kind!” Mx. Bond gave us an impression of Peggy Lee sucking her valium out of the ridges in her acrylic nails, while singing “Is That All There Is?,” to introduce the Lee-inspired “Crowley a La Lee (“I’m living this mystery tonight”).
Mx. Bond’s eerie, spell-binding account of Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman,” hushed, but with a “power” outburst, followed.
Going on Grindr and other, more trans-oriented sites, Mx. Bond came to realize, “My type was Jesus!” and announcing, “This next song is about Jesus,” sang us an inspirational “Jesus Was a Cross Maker,” by Judee Sill. Mx. Bond offered a meditation on “the sacred feminine—whores of the temple,” embodied by the mysterious “Salome” and her seven veils, aptly ending, “There’s a chance you’re gonna lose your head.” Mx. Bond spoke of James Baldwin’s pioneering novel “Another Country” to lead into a haunting “Lush Life,” by Billy Strayhorn, both works giving us looks at gay life in the first half of the 20th century.
Mx. Bond sent healing power to the ailing Joni Mitchell with Mitchell’s “Sweet Sucker Dance,” complete with scatted coda, and Ronnie Blakely’s “She Lays It on the Line,” a song about Mitchell. In between, Mx. Bond shared a story about adventures with a mouse in a rented house in Rhinebeck, New York.
Mindful of the proximity of full moon, beach, and ocean, Mx. Bond delivered, for a fittingly quasi-ritual finale, a pairing of Kate Bush’s “On This Midsummer Night” and “Aerial” (“I gotta get up on the roof”). Encores were Tim Buckley’s “Driftin’” and, dedicated to sex-worker friends, in light of the recent rentboy.com indictment, an expression of nostalgia for the “Golden Age of Hustlers.”