Jeffree Star
My Passion
Kill The Arcade
King's College, London
Monday November 26 2007

Style. Substance. Hype. Reality. This is not an exercise in random word association - it's the kind of stuff that naturally comes to mind when thinking about Jeffree Star. (Well, it's the kind of stuff that comes to my mind, but then I'm funny like that.) Here we have an artist who has quite deliberately set out to engineer his own fame, using his MySpace profile as an all-purpose stardom generator. Now, I know what you're going to say. That's not such a unique idea. After all, much of the success of MySpace is down to the fact that it gives everyone a platform for unrestrained self promotion, and there are plenty of people out there doing exactly that. Never mind the networking, let's just show off.

But it takes a certain genius to take things as far as Jeffree Star.

It all started from humble beginnings - insofar as Jeffree Star is ever humble. As a precocious teen in Los Angeles, with fake ID and a winning way with disco-glam style, he began hanging around Hollywood clubs, where, according to his biography, he ended up giving make-up tips to passing celebs (if we ever see Cameron Diaz sporting pink eyebrows, we'll know who's to blame). From the springboard of this minor notoriety as a club face, Jeffree Star launched himself as an almost surreally camp post-electroclash trash-rap artist. He slapped himself all over MySpace, presenting himself as a preternaturally stroppy glamourpuss with a persona that shifts wildly between barbed wit and me-against-the-world ranting. Inevitably or incredibly, however you wish to look at it, everything took off from there.

Of course, you can be sure there's more to the story than relentless MySpace pimping. Jeffree Star is managed by Peter Katsis, a major name in rock music management (Ministry, Korn, Limp Bizkit...Enrique Iglesias) who clearly knows how to deliver an artist to the target audience. I'm sure he's had a hand in delivering Jeffree Star to London tonight, if only because MySpace popularity doesn't cover practical stuff like air fares. But when you've had 25 million hits on your MySpace profile, and there are over seven hundred thousand people on your friends list, you can be pretty confident that someone out there likes you. And one thing Jeffree Star does not lack is confidence.

Curiously, given Jeffree Star's pumpin' electro musical territory, tonight's support bands are drawn from the rock zone. Kill The Arcade (now that really does look like random word association) open things up with an oddly mature take on the kind of boisterous pop-metal the likes of Taking Back Sunday have made their own. Although the band seem very young, their music sounds positively middle-aged in its conventionality, while the vocalist's between song big-ups seem to have been lifted wholesale from the Standard Textbook Of Things Rock Stars Say On Stage. As if to clinch it, I notice that two members of the band are wearing cardigans. Cardigans! Did we fight the Punk Wars so that modern bands can wear cardigans on stage? Ladies and gentlemen, we did not.

My Passion, by way of contrast, are an entirely modern rock band. With hairstyles that defy the laws of physics, and a sound that incorporates bangin' dancefloor elements amid the frenzied rock riffing, they slam together these supposedly disparate ingredients and against the odds bake a rather tasty cake. Hurling themselves about the stage in a frenzy of infectious enthusiasm, they're such a bunch of energy bombs it's impossible not to get carried away with the rollicking verve of the show. In a way, they're like a Britain's answer to Dope Stars Inc, and if I was a music biz mover and shaker I'd be inclined to see about getting the two bands out on tour together. In fact, if I were Peter Katsis I'd be inclined to offer My Passion a contract. I'm reminded of the time, back when club culture dominated music and it became de rigueur for all bands to at least nod in the direction of the dancefloor, Iron Maiden actually put out a dance mix of 'Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter'. That turned out to be a bit of shameles opportunism, but My Passion sound like they took a listen to Maiden's mix and thought - dance and metal in a head-on collision? Hey, why not? The resulting racket works better than you'd expect.

Massed screaming announces the arrival of the man himself. Jeffree Star's audience seems to divide neatly into excitable teens clustering down the front, and quizzical gay blokes, who stand at a safe distance as if unsure whether they've come on the right night. On stage, there are two keyboard players, male and female, a drummer lurking at the back - and Jeffree himself, pink of hair and skimpy of outfit, all boots, tattoos and attitude.

The beat pumps itself up into an insistent throb, and Jeffree stalks the stage, declaiming his lyrics in an accent that's equal parts camp and sarcastic, like a severely pissed-off Quentin Crisp after a particularly tiresome beauty parlour session. All his songs appear to be about sex, parties, plastic surgery, serial killers and more sex - you know, the fundamentals of life - with one element in common. The central character in all the songs is J. Star himself, who tends to cast himself as a sardonic observer, the scornful mascot of the beautiful people, the queen of cool who can see right through the glitz and the glitter - but likes it too much to let it go. And anyway, it's usually time for sex. The screaming teens don't waste time pondering the subtleties of Jeffree Star's persona, mind. They're too busy getting a dancefloor mosh on. The crowd turns into a seething mass of hyped-up humanity, prodded along by the beat's rinse and Jeffree's mince. The lyrics, when they're discernable over the thumping rhythmic rumble, are hilarious in their offhand scurrilousness. 'I wanna boy with juicy lips/who doesn't care I don't have tits/I wanna boy like me but hotter/to eat me out like Jeffrey Dahmer' remarks Jeffree on 'Straight Boys', as casual as if he was filling in a form at a dating agency.

It's probably fair to say that Jeffree doesn't have a huge amount of material in his repertoire - the set, which isn't lengthy in the first place, is bulked out by a brash, pop-punk workout which apparently is a song from the female keyboard player's side project - but then, we're hardly in the area of the diligent muso work ethic here. Why write songs when you could be styling your hair, or having wild sex in Hollywood nightclub toilets?

What the show lacks in length it makes up in surreal lewdness. The male keyboard player strips down to his Jeffree Star brand underpants, and a full-scale stage invasion kicks off during 'We Want Cunt' ('Cunt' in this instance, being Jeffree's nickname for himself). The song swaggers equally between self-aggrandisement and cheerful obscenity - 'All you dirty scene boys, you love Jeffree Star/I see you lookin' at my pictures, your dick's gettin' hard/Go fix your hair, make sure the flatiron's hot/Pull down your jeans, show me that motherfuckin' cock'. Along the way Jeffree drops some references to his status as an internet celeb that might almost count as self-deprecating, except that I don't think Jeffree has ever been self-deprecating in his life. 'Am I a boy or a girl? Well you'll never know/I'm not doin' your makeup, filthy pre-teen ho/Spread 'em, forget 'em and then say my name/I'm Jeffree fuckin' Star, of internet fame.' And then the chorus comes round, and all the teenagers in the venue shout as one: 'WE WANT CUNT!' In these times of delicate, tippy-toe political correctness, that's a piece of subversion right there.

Whether or not Jeffree Star can translate his internet fame into real world superstardom is a moot point. His fans are almost frenzied in their enthusiasm, but I suspect to convert those who are as yet unconvinced it may be necessary to write a few songs that don't have sex and swearing as their central themes - and I'm not sure how entertaining a U-certificate version of Jeffree Star would be.

I'm sure that Jeffree himself is in no doubt that stardom will happen - after all, in the time it's taken you to read this, his MySpace friends list has probably increased by another few hundred. Maybe it's just a case of waiting for critical mass to happen.

As Jeffree himself says, in the final lines of 'We Want Cunt': 'I know you all want me/So keep talking shit/Go on to MySpace/And leave me a comment'.

You know what, Jeff? I think I might do just that.