* WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT *
Continuing the Pride Month theme; tonight’s tunes are from San Francisco pop-punk pioneers Pansy Division.
There have been gay musicians hidden throughout rock music history, but when Pansy Division began in 1991 in San Francisco, they were the first to be so boldly open about it. Founded by guitarist/singer Jon Ginoli and soon joined by bassist/vocalist Chris Freeman, with the intent of forming a gay rock band, Pansy Division blew the closet doors open.
Raised on a diet of 60s pop and 70s punk, their sound was suitably crunchy and catchy as hell. They wrote in-your-face lyrics, but did it with a sense of humor. Not only did their music and stance defy stereotypical norms of rock musicians being openly gay, they also broke gay cultural stereotypes that rock wouldn’t interest gay people.
With album titles like Undressed and Deflowered, and song titles like “Bill & Ted’s Homosexual Adventure,” their bluntness and humor stood out amidst the ’90s alterna-rock scene. Says Chris Freeman, “there was a lot of gay culture we couldn’t relate to, so we tried to invent a place for ourselves in it, an alternative for other queer misfits.” Having had the experience of being ostracized by other musicians for being gay and by other gays for being into rock, “we tried to turn our alienation into something positive,” says Ginoli. “Instead of being depressed about it, we tried to make music that would make us—and our audience—happy. We could laugh about it, so we put that joy into the music.” — Pansy Division
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Homo Christmas
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As a band, our mission was to not live in a world where there was not an out, queer rock band,” says Chris Freeman, founding member of Pansy Division. “We thought that should be in existence, so we did it ourselves.” [...]
After the trauma of the AIDS crisis and the homophobia it unleashed, Pansy Division wanted to assert to the rest of the world that being gay can be great. “We thought, if we’re being told that being gay is so wrong and we’re being ostracized for this, let’s point out how well-adjusted and enjoyable our lives are. So it really was a conscious effort to say, ‘We’re not going to be sour about this,’ because that’s exactly what I think they wanted – to show how unhappy it is to be a gay person. We were singing celebratory songs about it instead.” The band’s songs like Twinkie Twinkie Little Star, 20 Years of Cock and I’m Gonna Be a Slut celebrate not only gay sex, but the joys of being free to be who you are and love whoever you want. — The Guardian
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The Summer You Let Your Hair Grow Out
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The band’s frenetic music and wild live shows got them signed to punk label Lookout! Records, home to bands like Operation Ivy, Rancid, Alkaline Trio and Green Day. They broke through to a wider audience when Green Day invited them to open for them on their Dookie tour in 1994. Suddenly, Pansy Division were blasting San Francisco queer culture at kids from small town America who, in those pre-internet days, had never seen anything like them before – or heard such brash lyrics about the mechanics of gay sex.
“We’d see people get angry by the third or fourth song and people were turning around and flipping us off, and then by the end of the 35 minutes, usually they were rolling around laughing because it was funny,” says Freeman. “But we couldn’t really graphically explain the gay culture in 35 minutes. We could only start something.” — The Guardian
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I Really Wanted You
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In 1992, Bay Area label Lookout Records signed an underground San Francisco band named Pansy Division to its roster. The band’s lyrics, couched in no-frills, earworm-y pop-punk, centered on two themes, both of which bought them infamy: gay romance and gay sex. Lookout was a powerful force in early- to mid-1990s punk rock, known for releasing music from Green Day and Operation Ivy, and the label had good reason to sign the then-fledgling Pansy Division, who were quickly gaining steam with frank, funny lyrics and memorable live performances alongside upstarts like Bikini Kill and Tribe 8. The band — now tagged as “queercore,” though they initially bristled at that identifier — put out its debut for the label in June 1994. Three months later, Lookout provided the band their biggest break yet: an opening spot for Green Day on an upcoming North American tour. Pansy Division’s lead singer and main songwriter, Jon Ginoli, was only vaguely familiar with Green Day at the time — he’d gone to see them in San Francisco twice, and they’d canceled both times. “And then, suddenly, we were gone,” Ginoli writes in his 2009 memoir of the band, Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division, “on tour with one of the hottest bands in the country.”
Pansy Division have now made it to the quarter-century mark, a milestone celebrated this week by the release of their sixth album, Quite Contrary. In retrospect, the band was clearly central in changing attitudes about LGBTQ people in certain punk circles — playing songs like “Fem in a Black Leather Jacket” and “James Bondage” to sold-out sports arenas, performing nude to draw audiences in small Bay Area clubs, so profoundly in-your-face gay when so many refused to be. In Deflowered, Ginoli recalls that Tré Cool, Green Day’s drummer, told the band that they were chosen as an opening act to kick back against the “dumb jock following” that had come with Green Day's MTV exposure. These new fans were often a hostile crowd for Pansy Division, who were occasionally pelted with coins while they performed. “Green Day and Nirvana’s success had blown open some doors, and we were trying to walk through one of them,” Ginoli writes — trenchant homophobia of the era be damned. — MTV
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James Bondage
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You were essentially the first rock 'n' roll band to be openly gay when you started. As you come upon your 25th anniversary, do you guys feel like pioneers?
Jon Ginoli: Yeah, we do. We really did feel like pioneers, because when we were forming the band, we realized we were listening for something to come along and... we hadn't heard it. And I said, "Dammit, I don't hear this—stories of gay lives—in music." So I put an ad in the paper [that read], "Looking for gay rock musicians." And I heard from [bassist] Chris Freeman who answered and said, "I've been looking for this for 10 years!" This was in San Francisco in the '80s, where the attitude was that gay people don't play rock 'n' roll—even though there were people who were gay and playing rock 'n' roll. But they wouldn't admit it. Because we were willing to stick our necks out when other people wouldn't, it brought us attention. I don't want to proclaim my superiority or anything. But we got through the door because we could see that rock 'n' roll was still closeted. We thought, "Nobody is gonna be out? We'll be out."
When you started, did you have gay kids getting in touch with you? Kids having a difficult time in school or life?
JG: I literally had boxes, big boxes, of letters we got in the '90s—when people wrote letters. I kept the best of them. I wanted to keep all of them, but it seemed ridiculous to carry all these things around. It was really important to a lot of people that we were doing what we were doing. Being openly gay. And they told us! When we started, we didn't realize that kids were going to be in our audience.
I hear the GOP had trouble getting bands to play their convention. Did Pansy Division get any calls, Jon?
JG: [Laughs] No. Or if we did, I missed them.
- Esquire
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He Whipped My Ass in Tennis + Coming Clean
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WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: Michael B. Jordan, Blake Shelton, Coi Leray (R 2/27/23)
Jimmy Fallon: Kaley Cuoco, Mike Birbiglia, Ari Lennox (R 9/20/22)
Stephen Colbert: Audie Cornish, Elle King, Tom Hanks (R 1/26/23)
Seth Meyers: Lea Michele, Janelle James (R 12/5/22)
James Corden: Ben Affleck, Chris Messina (R 4/13/23)
SPOILER WARNING
None. All repeats.
LAST WEEK'S POLL: SHOULD WE HAVE A THURSDAY NIGHT PRIDE PARTY ALL MONTH LONG?
Yes 86%
No 5%
π 9%