With all due respect, glitter did not start with Marc Bolan. And long before the Cockettes fled in terror from New York City to return to a town that knew how to appreciate them, Charles Ludlam and John Vaccaro were putting on plays in the pits of Manhattan’s underground that were more visually outrageous than any current rockstar’s most carefully executed fantasies.

Performers like Ruby Lynn Reyner, Wayne County (before those two decided to concentrate on rock and roll), Jaimie de > Carlo Lots, Jackie Curtis, Penny Arcade and scads of others all wore extraordinary makeup, glitter, arid costumes in such productions as “Cockstrong,” “Son of Cockstrong”, and “Heaven Grand iri Amber Orbit” at the Playhouse of the Ridiculous way back in the middle 1960s. Grotesque chalk white masks, kohl-rimmed eyes, sparkly spangly lips and eyelids, amazingly colored wigs of every shape and dimension, shiny g-strings, dildos, extravagant costume jewelry — all this and more covered the faces and bodies running rampant in the tiny off-off Broadway theaters. And even before that, in the very early 1960s, a young performer named Bette Midler appeared in Tom Eyen’s “Miss Nefertiti Regrets” at New York’s La Mama (a club dedicated to the playwright) clad in a lame bikini, fluffed out hair, and lots of red lipstick.