I've worked as a singer in metal bands for over ten years now, so I've definitely kind of put in my time building that underground family, that underground, loyal fan base.
We used to play the underground clubs like the UFO, and Middle Earth, and they were great because they would have on things like a poet, string quartets, and then a rock band! It was kinda cool!
I remember when I started performing, I thought, 'Why is this something that we do after hours, underground?' I was waiting on the world to change and the idea of this art to become mainstream, and I think that's what 'RuPaul's Drag Race' has really accomplished in such an eloquent way.
What made Manhattan Manhattan was the underground infrastructure, that engineering marvel.
Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos.
If the Jews had issues with the Polish people then why during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, did the Jewish underground hang two flags from the bunker - the Polish flag and the flag of the Jewish people? Why? They did it because they felt part of Polish society and that is how we view them as well.
It's so cliche, but I love the feeling you get from improv that anything can happen. The audience is already accepting that there are no props or costumes or furniture, so the performers can be anywhere doing anything; cut from underground to space, and it doesn't matter.
I was fortunate enough to be living in Hollywood, CA, when the underground punk rock music scene started. It was a small group of artists, misfits and weirdos, where everyone was welcomed and encouraged to express themselves.
I'd begun reading Crumb shortly before that, and other underground stuff, so that was an influence to some degree. Of course the Marvel and DC comics, they had been my main interests in my teenage years.
I was going to be a musician, no matter what it took. I supported myself with blue-collared jobs so I could write music and be in a band and play shows. I even got into an underground art scene. I was going to do whatever.