Interview: Glitter Porn Talks Community, Camp, and Queerness

Punk rock theatrics meets old horror movie magic whenever Glitter Porn takes the stage. The all-queer band hails from Colorado Springs. The band is made up of lead singer Marlowe Doll (ve/vem/virs), keyboardist Finch (he/him), bassist Alek (he/they), and the drummer, who is interchangeably known as the creature or “Gimp” (he/it). These four friends have been collaborating together on music since 2021, each starting as teenagers and eventually coming together to find a sound that mixes together a blend of synth and rhythm to create good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll.

The campy nature of their stage presence can be witnessed with each show they perform focusing on a different theme from wild west cowboys wrangling the creature to get it behind the drumset to Marlowe being carried on stage in a body bag as ve is resurrected in an homage to Frankenstein (which also happens to be the name of one of the band’s songs).

Here they speak about their band in their own words.

What is Glitter Porn?

Finch: We’re four friends that began making music together, and caught a lot of wind under our wings, and we’re very fortunate for the community in Colorado Springs, and trying to move up into Denver and find that as well. But music is a great way for us to have fun, and try and bring fun to other people, but also create awareness. Music and the topic of humanity is not always going to be fun.

So, it’s a way to blend fun, and also more important topics. We had the Palestine fundraiser the other night, and you get people out, and you get people dancing because people want to be doing that. But at the same time, you can be raising awareness, and funds, and community for things that need to be discussed, and need to be addressed as well.

Alek: We are just four best friends who all happen to be queer. So, the queer experience is a really important part of our music, and I think that people within our community really connect with that. And I think that our biggest thing is trying to make a show an experience

In what way do you connect with the community?

Finch: The queer experience is a really important part of our music, and I think that people within our community really connect with that. And I think that our biggest thing is trying to make a show an experience … We used to have Club Q, but there was a shooting. And that ended up getting closed down, and there was a bar called Icons that was also a good space for queer community that caught fire.

And since then, there hasn’t really been a new, dedicated space that has popped up for the queer community. And something that’s really interesting is that it feels like the music scene has become a third space.

Where at a lot of our shows, you see a very diverse crowd of people. And a crowd of people that aren’t going to oust somebody for being queer. And in fact, a lot of them are youth, and they are queer. There’s an older, queer community there as well. Playing Pride was a huge achievement for us, and we were really proud about that, because it was a staple. We are here, and we are here to create a space.

Alek: And I think especially since Club Q happened, right when we were starting to gain momentum on music, it’s become a quiet objective. It’s to create somewhere safe for people to express themselves … If there isn’t a safe queer space, then one will be created.

How did the band start?

Finch: It started with a couple of us as teenagers making music, and then the more we got to know each other, and the more this became the friend group, the more it became another way to spend time together and be able to create together. A couple of our bandmates started making some music together earlier on as teenagers. By the time we were making Glitter Porn, there were some really big life changes going on.

We were all moving around, becoming adults, and it was very strenuous. And I think music and trying to play music together was almost a way to force us to spend time together in a way because it was growing increasingly difficult to see each other. And there were issues that were popping up.

Being able to have a time together and express ourselves and create something together forced us to examine where we were at and build a stronger relationship with each other and subsequently make better music and grow together in a very exciting way.

Where did the name come from?

Marlowe: I came up with it when I was half awake. When I was waking up one morning doing the Salvador Dali thing where he would start falling asleep and then write down what he was thinking about. Except I didn’t do it on purpose; I was just like, “Ah, Glitter Porn. That’s a horrible combination.” So, yeah, that’s where that came from. 

I was like, “I want to make something called Glitter Porn.” And these people happened to be on board with that.

Over time, I started to ascribe that to the name of our band. Because the thing about queer art in general, people—It’s like when you go into a gay bar, and you see 150 straight people in there who are just there to watch the gay people. When those people think of queer art, they think of glitter, and they think of pornography. And obviously that’s our name. That is what is on the surface. That’s what we present first.

But then if you actually look at the songs and what our songs are about, they are about what queer life actually is. They’re about mental illness. “Mindsick” is about mental illness. “Attack of the Mushroom People” is a metaphor for a lot of things. But STDs is one thing that we’ve written abstract poetry about. “Safe Word” is about the importance of consent.

Finch: And the joy of consensual sex. 

Marlowe: It’s just that queer people are so much more complex than people who don’t understand them tend to give them credit for. And the name Glitter Porn is a joke about that.

Finch: Yeah, it ends up being the assumption, right? Somebody says, “Oh, we’re going to go see a queer band and they’re called Glitter Porn.” There’s the assumption there of what you’re going to expect. 

But you come in and you have a completely different experience of not only challenging topics, but the idea of love and excitement within that gay panic. We try to encapsulate a lot of different feelings that end up being relatable, not only to the queer experience, but to the human experience. And that’s why we end up having a pretty diverse crowd.

The big thing is getting over that step of the assumption of what a queer art should be. And by labeling and lambasting ourselves with the assumption, then it gets that out of the way. 

It’s also interesting because it’s a lot more shocking than you think it is. We got a spot on the Colorado Public Radio and they were like, “Glitter Porn? Now, I don’t know if I can say that on the radio.”

Marlowe: Because like Sex Pistols was 40 years ago.

Where does your inspiration come from?

Marlowe: I really like being able to communicate something literally in a way that still expresses a lot of emotion. Some of my bigger inspirations on lyricism were the last four David Bowie albums where he was getting older. And at that point, David Bowie was just some kid’s granddad.

He didn’t really sing a lot of nonsensical or highly metaphorical lyrics anymore. One of my favorite David Bowie lines is “pictures on my hard drive.” It’s very straightforward. It’s very like, “This is where I am.” It is raw, and it’s emotional, and it paints an accurate picture, but it also speaks to something deeper inside of you that you don’t necessarily understand.

Also, being someone who is neurodivergent and mentally ill and queer, a lot of my experiences are kind of bizarre in a way that is not bizarre to most people. And so being more descriptive with that still tends to be pretty interesting, I think. We started in a different place with a lot of our inspirations artistically and aesthetically because our whole first EP has a lot to do with campy stuff like monster movies.

How did you come together when it came to finding your sound?

Alek: I think that the two hallmarks of our sound are catchy hooks and cheap thrift store keyboards.

Oh, yeah! What happened to the baby grand piano?

Finch: Got stepped on too many times. We’re trying to get a new one, though.

When I talk about theatrics and stage presence, your band really sticks out in that regard. 

Gimp: *Big thumbs down*

Alek: It’s not an act for the gimp. This is real life. That’s how he acts all the time. It’s an act for the rest of us.

I’m thinking more so in terms of how for each show you have a theme. Where do these ideas come from?

Marlowe: For me, it’s kind of obvious. But as a little kid, my two loves were music and monster movies. Glitter Porn, the way we perform on stage, is often evocative of what I would want to be doing in a movie. Or what I would want to be making if I had a camera. This is going to be something that is very over the top. And there are costumes.

It’s a layer away from reality. The reason that we’ve gone in this direction is because when you go to a live show, there’s a really big chance that there’s no reason for you to be at a live show. And you could just be listening to that music at home.

With Glitter Porn, we all really wanted to use our passion for visual storytelling to make it more fun for the audience. To make the audience a part of it. I don’t want this to be like, you’re sitting in formal attire with your back perfectly straight listening to classical music being played by a bunch of people who don’t go out and experience life. People who stay in a room and practice an instrument. They just focus on doing something so perfectly that it is forgotten.

Alek: It’s doing it right versus doing it correctly.

Marlowe: I want this to be a thing where it’s like, “This is not us standing here and singing at you.” This is all of us getting together and being as strange as we can be and expressing ourselves as raw and as viscerally as we can.

Can we talk about the gimp in the room? Am I allowed to use that word?

All: Yes!

Finch: I’ve been legally advised to not talk about the Gimp.

Alek: By the powers that be, I am not allowed to talk about our creature.

Marlowe: I can say that “gimp” as a word is not a sexual reference. It is a vaudeville reference. I started calling him the gimp because he would eat whatever I gave to him, and that was a vaudeville act. A gimp was someone who would eat whatever you gave them. Objects, food, whatever. 

Alek: People seemed to really like it at our first show.

Marlowe: After a while, he stopped eating everything and only ate fish oil and peanut butter. 

Is he still eating the fish oil and peanut butter? 

Finch: That’s generally what we feed him. I think he might be eating some right now.

And so the gimp is your drummer.

All: Yes.

One of my favorite things about the show whenever you perform is when you dance around in the crowd. And you tap your drumsticks together on beat. And it’s a fun little moment. Can you—in the best way possible for our readers—describe that experience for us?

Gimp: *The gimp gets out of its chair. He looks around. He thinks for a moment. He begins jumping excitedly. He grabs Alek’s arms and raises them in the air, runs over to Marlowe, and does the same.*

He just loves to see people dancing?

All: Yeah, there you go. 

Finch: He loves to see people dancing together.

Is there anything you’d like to promote? Any future projects you have planned? Anything coming out in the near future?

Marlowe: We’re working on an album. We’re trying to get it out by the end of this year.

Finch: Get out and vote.

Alek: We’re going to toil away in our cave.

Finch: Oh, and please, please, don’t be afraid to be as weird as you want to be.

Photos by Max Rudnicki