Magnetic Baby
"I can't pay my rent but I'm fucking gorgeous."
That's Justin "Precious" Tranter, the gender-bending frontman for Brooklyn-based Semi Precious Weapons, a semi-successful gay parade of hard rockers who are the subject of Magnetic Baby, Cabin Creek Film's latest documentary and its first to be distributed entirely online. The doc series, which follows the band as they navigate the ever-changing record industry, is being distributed through MySpace and iTunes.
Tranter is so transfixing as a peacock diva you wonder why more gay men aren't frontmen. He struts. He preens. He creates outlandish bespoke costumes for each show. He's almost the Gwar of gay.
You may recognize Cabin Creek as the production company behind Shut Up and Sing, the 2006 doc distributed by the Weinstein Co. which revolves around the aftermath of singer Natalie Maines' statement at a 2003 London concert, where she said, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
Two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple executive produces, David Becker directs. Two episodes are online now, with four more to come.
If you like that lot, may I suggest checking out RPLA, who singularly failed to ignite camp-rock mania circa 1993, despite being described (by, uh, me) as sounding like, "The Cult shagging the Shangri-Las". Video for the quite awesome single 'Absolute Queen of Pop' tucked away in the vids section of their MySpace page (myspace.com/rpla) At least, it seemed quite awesome back then...
Posted by: Mark Day | May 21, 2007 at 09:56 PM
Wow, they have a spectacularly anemic MySpace presence. But hell, they're there despite not being active. Thanks for pointing them out.
Posted by: Steve | May 22, 2007 at 07:37 AM
Well. I love this fucking band. I have seen them play tons of times. And actually, I think, I might be wrong, but I am almost positive justin is just really feminine and not gay. I have seen him "play" with a quite few girls. For real. Thanks for writing about them. They are my favorite. And god damn the are so good and so sexy live.
Posted by: Leslie Stephens | May 23, 2007 at 04:15 PM