Rhinestones, Leather, and Studs, Oh My!

Rumor has it, rock music is back on the rise. Slayyyter's Worst Girl in America made it to Billboard's #1 spot on the dance list, powered by raging punk-inspired production and distorted, fuzzed-up vocals. Charli XCX recently cited rock as the world her next project would inhabit, saying (no doubt hyperbolically) that "the dance floor is dead." And Beyoncé's next album, the capstone to her trilogy of genre-bending records that kicked off with Renaissance, is said to be a rock album. Enter: Glitter Riot.

The event marks the fourth and final installation of Sunday Service, a weekly music series at Night Club 101 that asks of New Yorkers: Are you capable of jamming out till 1 a.m. on a Sunday night? (To which any self-proclaimed nightlife enthusiast worth their salt should respond, "obviously.") Glitter Riot brought musicians and drag artists together in holy matrimony, wed on stage in rhinestones, leather, and studs. These worlds may seem disparate in 2026, but for those who were born before the millennium—or who have studied up to compensate for growing up in an era of generic Top 40s radio pop—drag and rock have actually had a close relationship for decades. Just think of Little Richard, Bowie, Queen: these musicians have long been taking inspiration from drag, if not actually coming up in the scene itself.

photos by David Claee

Promoter Marisa Whitaker, who goes by the cheeky moniker 1-800-girlfriend, and hostess and drag artist Miss Woman the Woman are well aware of this time-honored symbiosis. "It's also pretty rare this day and age—they used to do it all the time, in this room at the Pyramid Club. They'd have Jayne County, and CBGB would do it. Drag is such an integral part of rock and roll, and vice versa. You don't see it that often here," said Whitaker. "We were like, let's combine forces, bring our two communities together."

Whitaker enjoys music professionally. Bringing artists together to produce shows is only half of her job, and the half she more recently embarked upon; she is also a music journalist for the independent publication Alt Citizen, and moved to NYC to pursue this career path. During her time in the scene, working for small publications and podcasts, she helped put on a few one-off shows—an experience she says snowballed quickly into more and more shows. Her real breakout moment was back in January of 2026, when she produced Music for Minnesota, a benefit raising money for the Immigrant Defense Network shortly after the killing of Alex Peretti and the waves of ICE sweeps that violently shook the state. It was a powerful experience, and one that encouraged Whitaker to continue to pursue promoting. "Monday morning we had no bill, and by Monday evening we had a full bill, a flyer out to the world, and we sold out Baby's two days later… It was unbelievable, and it was such a special thing to be a part of."

Whitaker and Miss Woman had discussed the idea of someday doing a combined show together, so when Night Club 101 reached out to offer 1-800-girlfriend a month-long residency, Whitaker took the opportunity to turn that concept into a reality. "I'm so in awe of Miss Woman," she gushed; "she's one of the bigger drag queens in Brooklyn, and with me doing the music stuff, it was a no-fucking-brainer to ask her to do this show."

Miss Woman may have brought the drag half of the show, but the rock half was not lost on her. She brought up the historic connection between the mediums when she opened the show, shouting out Jayne County as a reference point. Rock is directly linked to her own drag destiny: "I actually sort of first got the inkling to do drag because of a film called Hedwig and the Angry Inch"—brief pause to clock my predictable Gen Z lack of familiarity—"which is about a woman who moves from East Berlin to America to write music. It was my first introduction to drag, and really inspired me. It inspires my character today. So my roots are in Rock and Roll."

This rock 'n' roll spirit didn't necessarily permeate much of the between-set conversation on stage—those intermissions were filled with audience members smelling inflated condoms on Miss Woman's tutu to guess what flavour they were, and the laissez-faire jokes typical to any drag hosting gig—but that didn't mean rock was absent from the drag itself. Venus in Leather opened the show with a burlesque number by the aforementioned legend Jayne County. She stepped on stage in what would've been a simple LBD if not for the large, bedazzled banana from Andy Warhol's cover for The Velvet Underground & Nico plastered across her chest—and of course, later peeled open. Another rock reference, check.

Next came our first actual band of the night, Boy Afraid. The boys in question made a statement before they even began playing, with two of the three members dressed head to toe in leather—looks ranging from straight out of The Matrix to Michael Jackson if he was a British punk who possibly practiced Satanism in his free time. The second the first song started, front man Micky James made it clear the patent leather straight-leg pants were not just for show, as he danced with the dedication that male musicians of our time simply aren't aspiring to. James sang with the voice of a rocker; I immediately picked up on strong hints of The White Stripes in the vocals as well as the instrumentals of several tracks. While the band in this iteration has only been together about a year, the members have been playing together for roughly ten times that, with James himself having pursued several musical projects, including a stint as a solo artist. All that time seems to have lent itself to an intentionally crafted vision—their music and performance style polished and deliberate despite their aesthetics and lyrics being convincingly that of messy punk rockers.

Before the band left the stage, we were graced with the presence of Sweaty Eddie, who hobbled to the front with a Chuckie-like face only a mother could love, hugging his oddly square stomach tightly. As Boy Afraid began to play, Eddie shifted around, shaking with the vigor of someone on hard drugs, ripping layers off his chest—first his jacket, then his chest itself, revealing a nasty collage of organs. As the track closed out on a high, Eddie ripped his heart out of his chest, swinging it around on a string like a yo-yo. I'd never seen such an intense performance with so little actual movement. It was a hard act to follow in that it was simply absurd, but Mx.Ology stepped up to the plate. She performed a nasty little nonchalant dance to the even nastier, unserious crooning of Peaches' "Fuck The Pain Away"—a song that's genuinely better than it should be given the chorus is giving full-on cupcakKe. Is it rock? No. Does it matter? Who's to say. Peaches is an icon.

Following intermission, Burnt Mirror Beauties came on to give us the second music set of the night. If the bandmates looked like Freddie Krueger literally in their striped red and black sweaters, lead singer Soft Abilez looked like her glam goth rocker ex who was definitely way out of her league. Making their way to stage equipped with a stack of cardboard signs painted with phrases along the lines of "FUCK TRUMP" and "MY BODY MY CHOICE," one needed no further convincing that the music we were about to hear would be solidly punk, if not specifically in sound then in spirit. BMB's discography traversed several genres, with tracks leaning into the rage-induced anger of punk, the angsty moans of rock, and even the moodiness of shoegaze. Their onstage energy was high, matched by the strength of their volume and lyrics. The set even earned the stamp of a true punk show—a mosh pit, complete with bodies flying into a wall of more bodies at the speed of light for a few respectable seconds.