Pansy Division Plays Pride Show at NYC's Bowery Electric
Pansy Division, the trailblazing queer rock/punk band, will bring their bold, brash and witty songs back to New York for the first time in six years when they headline a special Pride concert at The Bowery Electric on Friday, June 26.
The group will preview new material from their upcoming album with the current lineup: Chris Freeman (bass, vocals), Jon Ginoli (rhythm guitar, vocals), Luis Illades (drums) and Joel Reader (lead guitar, vocals). Pansy Division will be joined on the bill by the goth dance band Bottoms and power pop group Youthquake. The show is produced by Pansy Division and Dan Fortune.
Pansy Division blew the closet doors open when they began performing in 1991 in San Francisco. There have been gay musicians hidden throughout rock music history, but Pansy Division 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.
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 stereotypic 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 alternarock scene.
Said 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," said 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."
Beginning in 1993, they put out an album a year for six years on Lookout Records. Their music caught the attention of former Lookout labelmates Green Day, who took Pansy Division on tour for a couple of months in 1994 at the height of the mania surrounding their breakthrough album "Dookie." Pansy Division toured and recorded almost non-stop during the 1990s, along the way recruiting a permanent drummer (Luis Illades) and a lead guitarist (first Patrick Goodwin, now Joel Reader).
1998's "Absurd Pop Song Romance" was a departure from their earlier work, a more serious album both lyrically and sonically. The follow-up album "Total Entertainment!" (for a new label, Alternative Tentacles) found a happy medium between the broad humor of the early records and the more mature approach of the previous album. In 2006, they released a 30-song career overview titled "The Essential Pansy Division," including a DVD of videos and concert footage.
Pansy Division's most recent album, "That's So Gay," is raucous and raunchy as well as being serious-minded. With some of their catchiest and most rocking songs ever, they're still loads of fun without being ironic or cynical. "That's So Gay" was released in 2009, as was a 7" single of "Average Men" containing a new non-album track (a cover of a Green Day's "Coming Clean").
A documentary film about the band, "Pansy Division: Life In A Gay Rock Band," played film festivals throughout 2008, and came out on DVD (with a bonus live DVD) at the same time. The band's stories and experiences came to life in Jon's 2009 memoir "Deflowered: My Life In Pansy Division."
They will perform with Bottoms, a gender-problematizing goth dance band, featuring Simon Leahy, Michael Prommasit and Jake Dibeler. Leahy, co-founder of the annual Bushwig festival, spearheaded the new "drag explosion" in the Bushwick nightlife scene. Leahy's prior band, teeth, has been toured internationally. Dibeler is a performance artist whose work touches on historical anxieties surrounding gay culture. In 2014 they were picked up by JD Samson's label Atlas Chair, releasing their debut EP "Goodbye" in January 2015. www.soundcloud.com/bttms
Youthquake is a hook-driven, aggressive brand of new style power pop. Fusing classic punk, glam, grunge, jangle-pop and surf guitar with melodic vocals, emotive hooks, and driving rhythms to create what they call "classic rock of the future." Their live performances are high-energy and visually engaging, mixing a biting sense of glam pageantry with a garage attitude of nonchalance and raw power.
V Magazine dubbed Youthquake's frontman Neon Music "The new glam king of NYC." Since the band's inception in 2012, Youthquake has performed alongside world-renowned acts such as Lydia Lunch, Bow Wow Wow, Glen Matlock, Sylvain Sylvain, hardcore legends Reagan Youth and NYC shock-rock pioneers The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. www.youthquake.tv
Pansy Division will perform at 7:30 p.m. on June 26 at The Bowery Electric, 327 Bowery at 2nd Street in New York. For tickets or information, call 212-228-0228 or visit www.theboweryelectric.com.
For information about Pansy Division, visit www.PansyDivision.com or PansyDivision.bandcamp.com