Princess Kennedy: Hot Buttered Nights

One thing I love about Salt Lake City is the current state of politics. Hot-button topics like liquor laws, equal rights and which club to support all make for good dinner party conversation. What’s great about it is sheer statistics. We have a lot of young people getting involved, and such times change the shape of social behavior.

Back in the ‘90s America was detoxing from the senior Bush administration, dealing with the height of the AIDS crisis and the woes of Desert Storm. In New York City a new mayor came into power and began his master plan to “clean up” the city. Any of this sound familiar? True dat, Manhattan is the most magical place on earth, but for a group of rock and roll freaks this was a little too much. Wanting to stay true to the N.Y. nightlife, they found an old theater in Tribeca and the legendary rock and roll drag bar Squeeze Box was born.  On any given night of the week you could see trannies socializing with socialites, club kids with super models and scrounge musicians with European royalty. It was Studio 54 on steroids and hormones. The incomparable Ms. Guy fronted the house band, Toilet Boys. They hosted the crème de la crème of the rock world like Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry, Steven Trask and the voluptuous horror of Karen Black. They also featured tranny superstars like Jackie Beat, Mistress Formika, Lady Bunny, Jayne County and, of course, yours truly.

The party caught on at the other coast. Los Angeles introduced Club Makeup with an 8-10 member house band that included people like David Navarro, Dave Schultz and Daniel Schulman. Finally, when San Francisco was reeling from the economic downfall due to the .com crash, they followed suit with Three Punk Bands and a Drag Queen. We all had something to say and collectively we were sick of closed-minded bastards and not fitting into the “Gay Agenda.” We needed to drink––a lot––and scream about it.

The major forefathers in this era were a group of overtly political fags looking to fuck shit up and voice their opinion in a way that left straights staring blankly and gays scratching their cloned heads. In 1992 Pansy Division came moshing naked out of the closet and on to the stage. Lead singer John Ginoli (who will be at Sam Weller’s on Friday, May 1) says, “Oppression was at an all time high and a new Democrat about to enter the White House was giving optimism and progress. Hope was the buzzword of the day.” (Sound familiar?) “I felt it was time for a group of punk-as-fuck, rock-and-roll-loving homos to get out there and shove cultural activism down peoples throats,” Ginoli says. Thus Pansy Division spawned the Queer Core movement. It sparked a career of unique proportions they could never have expected, including a tour with Green Day and extended coverage on Howard Stern, who coined the band as the gayest thing he’d ever seen. “Living in the bubble of San Francisco, we feared being accepted by the general public of ‘Middle America.’ It only took a few shows to see that the USA was ready for change,” Ginoli says. “It was easy to feel outcast among outcasts in both communities.
        In fact, after a show in Salt Lake City, a (queer) man rushed the stage after the performance wildly claiming that singing so bluntly about gay sex will set back our progress.” Bullshit! Now is the time and this is the way!

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Comments on this article

Posted on January 1, 2010 by James Letter

Dear sweet Kyle - my old fiend, you're writing style leaves me breathless!

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