Singer-songwriter and guitarist Marilyn Mitchell, a member of the popular early 2000s San Francisco Bay Area all-trans female rock band Lipstick Conspiracy, shared new music and life stories on this week’s Out in the Bay — Queer Radio & Podcast and hinted that her former group may get back together.
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No one prepared you for Lipstick Conspiracy…..these are the girls your mother warned you about…..an extraordinary experience.
— Jenny Sherwin, CURVE magazine
Challenging an audience’s assumptions about sex and gender dates back to the earliest days of rock & roll, from the lustful hip-shaking of Elvis Presley to the confident but effeminate style of Little Richard. But a new generation of musicians is pushing the boundaries farther than ever before; on the independent music scene, transgender performers are achieving a new level of visibility and acceptance, and filmmaker Madsen Minax profiles a handful of transgender artists bubbling up from the underground in this documentary. Riot Acts: Flaunting Gender Deviance In Music Performance features performances from Systyr Act, Coyote Grace, The DeGenerettes, and Lipstick Conspiracy. Riot Acts was an official selection at the 2010 San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival.
–Excerpt from the N.Y. Times Review of Riot Acts, by Mark Deming.
..rough-around-the-edges pop music…approaches sexual politics with humor and spunk.
Julie Sabatier, Portland JustOut
After decades of dabbling in nonsurgical genderf@#k, rock ‘n’ roll finally has its first all-[trans] band…..a glammy ’80s dance party…..and a sincere desire to blow your mind.
David Schmader, Seattle Stranger / Portland Mercury
…layered with a rebelliousness and playfulness that carries [a] distinctive and subversive tone through.
Chris Jarvis, Gay Fresno.com, 2006
…the wallop of a regular ’80s-style chick-rock band…..Josie and the Pussycats, all grown up.
Rachel Swan, The East Bay Express
Glitter, sneers, and ridiculously high heels are abundant, as are raging keyboard riffs and catchy lyrics.
San Francisco Weekly
Lipstick Conspiracy’s trio of guitarists employ different rigs to drive the band’s ’70s-inspired sleaze rock. Sarafina Marachino plugs a Gretsch G3140 Historic Series into a Carvin SX200 combo, Shawna Love uses a Les Paul and a Fender Super Reverb, and Marylin Mitchell plays a Stratocaster through an ADA preamp, an ART Multiverb, a Tubeworks Mosvalve power amp, and two ADA cabs loaded with Celestions.
Wicked Textures, by Buddy Saleman, Guitar Player Magazine, July 2006.
Lipstick Conspiracy 