Commando
COMMANDO sorta sounds like a Pandora station if the seed was “Bikini Kill pegging Rage Against the Machine in the Marvel Comics Universe.” Or like, if RuPaul made the girls do new verses to Chop Suey! in the Rusical challenge on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Or if that noxious cultural moment that birthed rap-rock and all of its attendant misogyny, homophobia, and racism in the late 90's had been used for good instead of evil. COMMANDO is a multigenerational coalition of individuals who have shaped the last several decades of queer art-making, joining forces to use rock, hip hop, punk, metal, hardcore and experimental music in the service of create something vibrant, referential, innovative, and urgent.
With an arsenal of blistering guitars, driving percussion and a crucial perspective, COMMANDO use their ferocious energy and lyricism to unite crowds in the struggle to smash racism, queerphobia, transphobia, fascism and all things that close society's minds, eyes and hearts.
COMMANDO IS…
LYNNEE BREEDLOVE
DREW ARRIOLA-SANDS
HONEY MAHOGANY
ANDY MEYERSON
KRYLON SUPERSTAR
JUBA KALAMKA
PRINCIPAL DAMMIT
VAN JACKSON WEAVER
LYNN BREEDLOVE
From the Encyclopedia of Punk: “Through their raunchy stage shows, fiercely independent Queercore band Tribe 8, worked furiously to smash dominant perceptions of gender. They released a number of early records on small labels before moving to the relatively larger Alternative Tentacles label. Lyrically Tribe 8 (performed) songs that proclaimed the joys of sexuality and demonstrated the band’s defiant refusal to be pinned down to any one political agenda (which often landed them in hot water). A Tribe 8 show was not so much a basic punk concert as it was an outrageous provocative staged event with mock castrations.”
Lynn Breedlove is a trans writer/performer, author of Godspeed and Lynnee Breedlove's One Freak Show. He has been the lead singer for queercore pioneers Tribe 8, and spends most of his time ruminating about how he can be most useful in the next moment and then doing that thing.
A documentary about his work in Tribe 8 can be found here. He is a winner of a Lambda Literary Award for his work One Freak Show, and was the founder of Homobiles, the first rideshare service, a queer nonprofit ride service in the San Francisco Bay Area.
KRYLON SUPERSTAR
From Queerty, 2014: “I would be amiss to not give special honors to the work of the incomparable Krylon Superstar. We titled her work “Anal Arts and Crafts” and they were highly anticipated performances that took place at my weekly party, Foxy. Always jaw-dropping, ridiculous, wild and hilarious. And it was all about her ass. Whether it was doing a milk enema on stage, squirting it into a bowl of Frosted Flakes and enjoying a healthy bowl of cereal or when she stuck that corncob in her ass and popcorn magically came flying from her mouth. Or the time when the batteries she carefully put inside her gave light to the light bulb in her mouth. I’ll never forget the time Justin [Vivian Bond] commented on stage, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Krylon Superstar has had everything in her ass but the bathroom sink.” Well, moments later who takes the stage after having literally unhinged and removing the bathroom sink from the wall? Krylon. She then proceeded to shove the faucet in her butt. Oh yes she did!”
JUBA KALAMKA
Juba Kalamka is a Black bisexual artist and activist recognized for his work as founding member and producer of homohop group Deep Dickollective (D/DC) and his development of the micro-label sugartruck recordings. He has been a speaker, panelist, and curator for San Francisco Black Gay/Lesbian Film Festival, GLAAD and numerous others. He has received a Creating Change Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) for his activist work in queer music community, featured in the documentary Pick Up The Mic (Planet Janice Films, 2005).
In 2003, Kalamka continued his personal and artistic dialogues on sexuality and race with appearances in numerous queer adult film features, including Good Vibrations/Sexpositive Productions G Marks the Spot, Joani Blank's Orgasm! : The Faces of Ecstasy, and Trouble Films’ Fuckstyles series, and toured the United States with The Sex Workers Art Show in 2006.
He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Queer Cultural Center (producers of the National Queer Arts Festival) and the Strategic Committee of sex worker advocacy organization Desiree Alliance in 2011. He joined the board of national bisexual advocacy organization BiNet USA in 2018 and was appointed to the City of San Francisco Community HIV Planning Council in 2019.
HONEY MAHOGANY
From ABC News, 2021: Honey Mahogany: From competing in 'RuPaul's Drag Race' to making history in politics: “She was recently elected as the first Black and transgender chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, making her one of the party's highest-ranking transgender officials in the country...Mahogany has been busy working to empower transgender people and preserve the culture, character and history of the LGBTQ+ community in San Francisco. Along with Aria Sa'id and Janetta Johnson, she co-founded the first legally recognized transgender district in the world, Compton's Transgender Cultural District, which encompasses six blocks in the Tenderloin neighborhood...Mahogany is also a co-owner of The Stud, the oldest and beloved queer bar in San Francisco. In 2017, she and others formed a collective to take over the ownership and management of the bar, making it the first worker-owned cooperative nightclub in the country.”
The child of East African political refugees, Honey Mahogany was born and raised in San Francisco. Honey's father worked as a cab driver for Yellow Cab Co-op and Honey's mother put herself through school while raising two-children and eventually worked in finance. Honey Mahogany is an established performer in San Francisco, eventually garnering international attention when she appeared on the television show RuPaul's Drag Race. Since appearing on the show, Honey has become a regular host at San Francisco Pride and has also launched two successful POC centered LGBT events: Mahogany Mondays & Black Fridays. Honey's work has earned her commendations from San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors,; the State of California, Sainthood from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,; and awards from San Francisco Pride, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, San Francisco Young Democrats, San Francisco Women’s Political Committee, and the Women's Foundation of California. In 2019, Mx. Mahogany was featured in the Stonewall 50, Queerty's list of advocates continuing the legacy of Stonewall and the fight for equality. Honey was also featured in Out Magazine's Out100 in both 2018 and 2019, and in Vogue in 2021.
DREW ARRIOLA-SANDS
From Alternative Press, 2021: 10 TRANS WOMEN MUSICIANS WHO ARE CHANGING THE WORLD OF PUNK ROCK: “Drew Arriola-Sands is a notable presence in the modern hardcore scene with her band Trap Girl. However, the extent of her influence doesn’t end with putting out seriously kickass, aggressive and politically motivated tracks. The frontwoman is also the founder of Transgress Fest, a SoCal-based festival that uplifts the transgender and nonconforming punk scene.”
ANDY MEYERSON & PRINCIPAL DAMMIT
From the Charleston Post & Courier: “The Living Earth Show invigorates classical music.”
Now in its eleventh year of “outstanding” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “transcendent” (Charleston City Paper) performances, The Living Earth Show–guitarist Travis Andrews and percussionist Andy Meyerson–is a megaphone and canvas for the world’s most progressive artists. One of the premiere contemporary chamber music ensembles in the United States, The Living Earth Show has been recently presented at such venues as the Spoleto Festival USA, Sutro Baths (with Tremble Staves: a collaboration with the National Parks Service), Davies Symphony Hall (a collaboration with the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus), and The Met Cloisters (Lordship & Bondage: The Birth of the Negro Superman: a collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art). TLES has also has been an ensemble in residence at such institutions as Stanford University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the University of South Carolina, the University of Michigan, and numerous others. The ensemble is launching its own experimental music record label, Earthy Records, in 2022.