Before Pansy Division took the stage last Friday night for their first headlining East Coast show in six years, a potent buzz of energy had already filled Bowery Electric’s downstairs performance space. It was a cocktail of bona fide enthusiasm and good-natured insolence, as befits an audience gearing up to see one of the most prominent queercore bands, especially on this particular night—to much surprise and merriment, the Supreme Court had legalized same-sex marriage across the nation just that morning. This show, then, right down to its location on the Bowery, a site of heavy with a historical, gay subculture, felt like a suitable celebration.
Pansy Division formed in the early 1990s as a response to bandleaders Jon Ginoli’s feelings of isolation from both the dance-oriented gay scene and the similarly unvaried, hetero punk scene in San Francisco. Though resistant to the queercore label ("While too raw for mainstream rock," Ginoli writes in Deflowered, his memoir about the band, "we’re way too poppy and wimpy for many punk fans"), Pansy Division served an ambassdorial role in bringing explicitly queer music to a wider rock and punk audience in the '90s, most significantly as openers for a then-ascendant Green Day. They were out-and-proud from the start as a political maneuver, and here, in 2015, with the Supreme Court’s ruling setting the country ablaze in garish, rainbow-gradient profile pictures, a determinedly punk celebration of queerness was in desperate order.
Yet as show openers Bottoms took the stage, it was hard not to reflect on how the scene has evolved, and consider how Pansy Division to now exist in a vastly changed queer music scene. Bottoms, upstart electronic "drag terrorists" vividly set the tone. Lead singer Jake Dibeler, sporting a red wig, a black dress slit to the hip, and spooky white contacts, howled through tracks from their exceptional Goodbye EP. Posing fabulously for anyone with a camera, he went on to reveal a black jockstrap beneath his dress as he crawled his way down a staircase or dropped into a full-on split (which happened often). Comprised of Dibeler, drummer Simon Leahy, and keyboardist/programmer Michael Prommasit, Bottoms was born out of Brooklyn’s Secret Project Robot and the grimy Bushwig drag scene, and they trade in a politicized brand of electro with lyrics that focus on distinctly queer, dark subject matter: having a negative body image, coping with HIV and AIDS, negotiating childhood traumas. Even their cheeky name wasn’t chosen lightly. "We started Bottoms to make shitty house music, basically, for faggots," Leahy explained in an interview earlier this year. "Being the bottom [is also like being] the bottom of society."
Youthquake followed, and though thier politics are more subdued, they’re no less vital. The chugging, rock three-piece is led by lead singer/guitarist Neon Music, an artist and DJ who’s previously collaborated with transgressive icons like Kembra Pfahler. Youthquake is more sleaze than punk, and put on a dynamic show that drew most of the idling crowd to the front; at one exquisite high point, Neon slammed her pearls against her guitar to close out one of their songs. Neon has cited Hole, White Zombie, Marilyn Manson, and other '90s progenitors as musical influences, but the band also consistently covers L.A. billboard darling Angelyne in a spectacular act of queer irreverence. Though not as lyrically forthright as Bottoms or Pansy Division, last year’s Honey Wagon 7’’ is a good introduction as any to their mission: resuscitating rock’n’roll’s neglected spirit of individuality. "I want to bring rock music back in a real way because I think real rock music stands for truth and liberation," Neon toldMagazine of Paradise back in 2013, “and what I stand for is just to be yourself, whatever that is."
By the time Pansy Division came onstage, I was more curious than ever to see how their sneering, very-'90s pop punk held up when compared to such bold, gripping opening acts. It didn’t take more than a few noisy seconds of opening number "Fem in a Black Leather Jacket" for my worries to dissolve. Here was a truly out, unapologetic band who have meticulously catalogued their career though a website (complete with tour diaries, photos, lyrics to all their songs, and a list of every gig they’ve played), a Bandcamp (complete with all of their releases dating back to the '90s), and Ginoli’s memoir as a way to make visible the legacy of gay punk and rock into the larger canon. As Ginoli explains in Deflowered’s prologue, "a lot of gay history is hidden and inaccessible… we should write our own stories ourselves instead of waiting for historians and fans to do the archaeology."
It’s a noble mission for a gay band to take on, and one I kept coming back to throughout their set. This was especially the case during "Fem in a Black Leather Jacket", which was the first Pansy Division song ever written, back when the band was little more than a daydream for Ginoli, who was at the time a twenty-something Rough Trade employee looking for gay rock icons. Rollicking and hilarious, "Fem" perfectly sums up Pansy Division’s cheeky sense of humor and penchant for pop, while simultaneously shutting down the aggressively red-blooded nature of the leather jacket-wearing, straight dudes who have inhabited rock music’s history for, well, ever ("I don’t like macho, put it away/ Doesn’t appeal to me straight or gay," the opening lines go, "But I know a boy who catches my eye/ He don’t act tough, why should he try?"). Pansy Division was making political music from the beginning, but shot through with humor and goodwill in a concerted effort by Ginoli and the rest of the band to make music that was as militant as it was joyous, write songs that could raise awareness while still making people feel fucking happy.
Although that joy was mixed with the general feeling of accomplishment owing to the SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage, Pansy Division didn’t make the legislation too big a focal point. Instead, it was mentioned in a brief bit of banter between songs, when Ginoli called attention to the only sticker on Freeman’s bass, a black strip with white, bolded letters that read: AT LEAST I’M NOT CHRISTIAN. In Deflowered, Ginoli explains that Freeman became involved in Christianity in junior high, but, as he struggled with his own double-edged sword of being both interested in loud rock music and attracted to the older male teachers at his school, bristled at the religion’s hateful, opportunistic proponents. Ultimately, Freeman called the Bible "a ridiculous made-for-TV piece of crap," a sentiment he clearly still identifies with, calling out the Bible thumpers who’d wasted no time in condemning the Supreme Court’s ruling. "Fuck them and fuck their lord!" he called out to an uproar of applause.
"He’s had that sticker on there for years and it’s still perfect," Ginoli joked. "It’s God’s will."
The rest of the night assured me that Pansy Division’s magic is still alive and thriving, especially when paired of 2015’s most thrilling queer rock acts. The band tore through classics like "Bunnies", "Dick of Death", and "James Bondage", and covered Pet Shop Boys’ "It’s a Sin" in a nervy, apropos tribute. Ginoli, with his shirt torn open halfway through the show, was in fine form as Pansy’s leading man, even when he relegated himself to the sides to allow other members the spotlight. Earlier in the night, I noticed that he spent much of the opening acts behind Pansy Division’s merch table, watching the other bands with a smile and selling his own group’s LPs, books, and t-shirts, striking up conversation with browsing fans. Witnessing a new generation of queers in conversation with the old, both in the audience and on stage, he seemed at home.