Authors David Ciminelli and Ken Knox discuss the queer rock movement in their book Homocore

By Richard Andreoli

Pansy Division. Team Dresch. Le Tigre. IAmLoved. To the diva-dancing gay population those names don't mean much, but for the guys and gals who move to the groove of powerful guitars, raging drums, and slamming beats, they identify bands from the queer rock scene known as homocore. Initially the offspring of punk rock, this in-your-face sound is as much a musical revolution as it is a political movement, inspiring numerous self-published fanzines (or "zines"), independent record labels, regular club nights, and annual festivals. This isn't a fly-by-night fad, it's a thriving community of LGBT rockers, and even in a city the size of Los Angeles, many people don't know it exists.

"Homocore was this large movement of underground queer artists who created a community for themselves," explains Ken Knox, a correspondent for IN Los Angeles magazine who, along with author and editor David Ciminelli, wrote Homocore: The Loud and Raucous Rise of Queer Rock (Alyson Books, August 2005). Paraphrasing their book, the term "homocore" was born in the mid-1980s when filmmaker and photographer Bruce LaBruce and G.B. Jones, member of the dykecore band Fifth Column, published a queer punk fanzine. In it they depicted a thriving but completely fictitious community loaded with sex, porn stars, nonconformity, and punk rock. They coined the phrase homocore, and soon mainstream queer media as well as other gay and lesbian -- identified rockers were using that and queercore as monikers. A Bay Area fanzine was even entitled Homocore, and thus the phrase became a part of our modern day pop culture lexicon.

"But it really wasn't just about this music," explains Knox. "It was really about a sense of identity that was completely outside the mainstream, something that they created for themselves. They played their music, did their zines, had their rock clubs, and it was a totally new sense of identity in rock bands."

In Los Angeles, homocore music really took off in the early 1990s, with Silver Lake being the focal point due to its more alternative residents. Leather bars like The Faultline and Gauntlet hosted events, as did the predominantly straight venue, the Garage. Big names like Extra Fancy, Glue, Black Fag, and Slojack were hot on the scene while art-rock musician and drag vamp Vaginal Creme Davis hosted events and published her own punk zines. However, just because someone is gay and in a band -- like The Pet Shop Boys, Bronski Beat, or Scissor Sisters -- doesn't necessarily make them homocore.

"It's a band that's decided to be very out in their lyrics and public persona," says Ryan Revenge, founder of Spitshine Records, an independent record label that releases predominantly homocore groups. Revenge began his queercore career with his band Best Revenge and then created a record label as a means of producing albums. "There have always been gay, lesbian, and bisexual musicians involved in rock and roll, [such as] Little Richard, but while Little Richard was writing good rock and roll songs, it wasn't really about him being honest about his sexuality. And that's fine, it doesn't lessen what he did, but that's not what he was doing." Many queer musicians, especially those coming out of the rapidly mainstreaming punk scene, wanted to express their issues in loud ways and found that avenue through homocore. "The difference between gay bands like Culture Club [and homocore] was the politics and the identity that was being expressed in the songs," Revenge says.

Early homocore bands performed hard rock but the current crop delivers a variety of sounds. What doesn't change, says Randy Bleu of the electronic group Hot N Heavy and former front man for $3 Puta, is the idea of using music to create change.

"At the time I started Hot N Heavy I weighed like 325 [pounds] and I was also really big growing up," says Bleu, who used to sneak out of his East L.A. home at age 12 and 13 to hit queer concerts because they were the only places he felt normal and accepted. "We were very politically and socially active, and tackled body issues in the community by wearing skimpy '80s Adidas shorts and tube socks and tank tops. Some audience members thought it was really cool, or brave, or funny, [and some] were really uncomfortable. But that ended up working because dialogue was started with audience members after the show. It was a good experience."

While Ciminelli and Knox's Homocore focuses on the larger names who both created this queer music movement and inspired the current crop of talent hitting underground clubs, the scene in Los Angeles has been somewhat quiet of late. Indeed, Knox points out that most of the L.A. bands who were hot between 2001-2003 have now broken up and almost half of the bands profiled in the book are now defunct. "The Gauntlet used to be a major space for queer bands but not so much since the Freak Show ended a few years back. Then the Garage closed," he says. "It's actually kind of sad. There are still queer bands, of course, but there's not really a 'scene' here in L.A. like there once was."

"It comes and goes in waves," explains Revenge, whose record label is still doing well; of course, to put that in perspective, Revenge says that if a band sells over 10,000 copies of an album, that's considered fantastic. "But there's still a huge following," he continues. "When Pansy Division comes to town they pack Spaceland, and if you put together a good lineup you'll get four or five hundred people, which isn't bad in L.A. considering on any given night there's probably 300 bands playing. Not to mention that we're talking about [an audience of] gay and lesbian people who are into rock."

"There's always a new audience," says Bleu, whose Thursday night event, La Polla Loca, is held at Little Pedro's downtown and is currently the main outlet for homocore Angelenos. "A whole new group of kids are growing up hearing about Pansy Division or Team Dresch and they'll find out about other bands. Some groups of queer kids will want to start bands of their own. So I think kids will come up waving the homocore flag again. It's not dead, it's just asleep."

Though Los Angeles may be "sleeping," Knox says that makes this the perfect time for his book to hit shelves. "I think it's important to document the movement," he says, pointing out that those who were involved in the scene will definitely enjoy seeing the results of their work. But beyond that, Homocore is a sort of backstage pass into that daring, exciting, and provocative world, which through its cult following in clubs around the country presents a brazenly aggressive approach to the queer sociopolitical movement. This, Knox argues, makes it important "for anyone who was not part of the scene or didn't know about it, but who have been looking for their own place in the gay community. Hopefully they'll read it and think, Wow, this is amazing that this went on and maybe I can do something like that myself."

And thus the movement continues.

Homocore: The Loud and Raucous Rise of Queer Rock is now available in bookstores or by visiting www.alysonbooks.com.