Dear Megan,

 

i will do my best to answer your questions about the DragKing Queercore website. Please keep in mind, however, that these are merely my subjective thoughts on the matter.

 

The website (http://www.dragking.org/Queercore.html) is meant to be used as a convenient reference point, a place to find links to information, not the definitive source of information. As the caveat reads: "This is not the definitive source for information on Out Punk, Queercore, Homocore, Lesbian Rock n' Roll, Transgendered Death Metal, or any other genre of music, lifestyle, sexual orientation or orientations. It is instead offered as a convenient jumping off point for those interested in great music which supports Queer liberation and of course the Women's Liberation Movement." There is a ton of great stuff out there and this is just one place with links to it!

 

That said, on to your questions!

 

At 08:42 PM 11/14/00 -0500, mfoley wrote:

>Sluggo,

>Thanks a lot for agreeing to help me out!  If you could just answer the

>following questions by the end of the week (or weekend if you're really busy)

>I'd really appreciate it.  Ok, here goes:

>

>1.  I’d like to start out by getting some background info on you. 

>a)I need your full name, age, and occupation, and then whatever other

>miscellaneous info you feel like giving me. 

 

"Sluggo DragKing", "39", "performer", "i like to dress up as Mojo Jojo".

 

>b) Second, how did you first hear of/ get involved with queercore?

 

From 1988 to 1991 Tom Jennings and Deke Motif Nihilson put our a 'zine called "HOMOCORE" in San Francisco(where else?). We used to get that 'zine here in Chicago and i still have some old copies lying around. They had taken the concept from Bruce La Bruce and GB Jones in Toronto and the 'zine they used to put out:  J.D.'s, which began in 1986. Basically HOMOCORE grew out of the Maximum Rock 'N Roll letters pages.

 

In 1992 Joanna Brown and Mark Freitas started Homocore Chicago. This was before the Fireside and since things were always fucked up at the Czar Bar, their all ages punk shows were always the best promoted in Chicago. And the best politically. They wanted to create a space for queer punks to hang out and listen to live music, mainly queercore and feminist punk. The emphasis was on creating a space for dykes and fags to be together, as opposed to separate gay or lesbian bars. They had these great T-Shirts which read "A lifetime of listening to Disco is too high a price to pay for your sexual identity". (of course today i realize the value of a lot of that disco music and the racism and homophobia implicit in the phrase "disco sucks")

 

Homocore Chicago created an alternative to the consumerist, sexist, conservative gay scene and the homophobic, macho, sexist, bullshit hardcore scene. i would go to their shows and meet people i hadn't seen in years (for example Eddie the guitarist from Coat of Arms, a punk band from my hometown, or my friends from the Love and Rage collective in NYC). Our band, DragKing, always wanted to play these shows. But the one time Mark called us, because another band had cancelled at the last minute, we were too stoned and inebriated to respond. Our loss.

 

DragKing had always had a wierd relationship with Queercore because of the name "DragKing"(which was actually from the late, great Chicago hotrod and Indie Rock 'zine, "Speed Kills" published by Scott Rutherford). i used to correspond with a Queer activist in San Francisco, Matt Wobensmith, who wrote for Maximum Rock 'N Roll, published the great 'zine Outpunk and ran Outpunk Records. Outpunk records had reissued an album by the early British Queercore group Sister George called, "DragKing". Matt is really great and i used to get these great letters from him about queer theory, punk theory, activism, strategy, etc.

 

Soon after that, we discovered the British noise label "Destroy All Music" run by Jon Bates. That pretty much summed up our philosophy as a punk band at that moment so we tried to hook up with them. At the time they described themselves as "queercore", but they were actually much closer to the avant noise scene, which was just as boy dominated, sexist, racist and stupid as the hardcore scene, but in a distinctively more nerdy way. Jon was a sweetheart and eventually came to visit Chicago with his friend George. We put together a great "Destroy All Music" Festival in 1996 to honor their visit and protest the Democratic Convention which was happening at the time.

 

Through conversing with Matt and Jon i decided that the band DragKing "owed" the "queercore scene" some support and solidarity,  so i created the web site as an offering. Today the web site tries to support Women and Queer performers in a variety of subcultures. Because, as you know, queercore is dead. Oh, yeah and so is punk, by the way. And the web site does need to be updated.

 

>2.  I’ve heard accounts that queercore first started really emerging in the

>mid 90’s, although the genre of homocore existed in the late 80’s.  Is

>homocore and queercore the same thing?

 

Yeah, pretty much, in my opinion. The tag "homocore" is a bit more boy-centric.

 

>3.  Can you give me a short history lesson as to the beginnings of queercore?

 

First of all the tag "core" came out of punk. First there was punk, then, for the really intense, macho jock boy fucks, there was "hardcore punk". Minor Threat was cool and all, but "hardcore punk" soon became "hardcore" and the refuge of boys with short hair, rigid personal values and a lot of pent up frustration and anger.

 

Basically what happened was that there were people who identified both as punk and as queer. People like Dave Dictor of M.D.C., Vaginal Creme Davis, Bruce La Bruce, G.B. Jones, Tom Jennings, Deke Motif Nihilson, everyone in God Is My Co-Pilot, Donna Dresch, ad infinitum. All these people were inlfuenced by the growing anarchist movement and activist groups like ACT-UP, Queer Nation and political punk bands like CRASS, etc.

 

This was not such a stretch really. From it's origins punk encouraged anyone and everyone to start a band or a 'zine or make a film or create their own clothes. A "punk" was originally a prison term for the recipient of gay sex. Punk revelled in being the most despised, the most scorned, the most rejected. As Iggy Pop says, "I've been dirt and I don't care". In fact it's a badge of honor. Punk was always gay. Think about the Buzzcocks. Think about Dee Dee Ramone was giving head on 42nd Street. Think about Darby Crash. Think about Phranc and her first band, Nervous Gender. Dick Hebdige described punk's collage of symbols by refering back to the "bricolage" of Jean Genet (the gay French writer who spent much of his life in jail). Sid Vicious wore Tom of Finland shirts from Malcolm McClaren's SEX shoppe. Punk bands like M.D.C. have written explicitly gay protest songs like "America's so straight..."(which appeared on their first record), and the Dead Kennedys used photos from the riots in San Francisco which followed the assasination of Harvey Milk on their first album cover.

 

So Queer punks created a space where they could be both queer and punk without some bourgeois preppie gays or straight-edge skateboarders trying to smash them.

 

However, today the term is meaningless. For example "Queercore" is also the name of a program of Gay City Health Project in Seattle Washington, "addressing the unique concerns and perspectives of gay and bisexual men under 30."

 

>4.  What prompted the shift from calling queer punk music ‘homocore’ in the

>late 80’s, to ‘queercore’ in the mid 90’s?  Did this shift reflect a changing

>ideology in this genre, for instance from being strictly defined by

>homosexuality to a more versatile inclusion of all things queer?

 

This shift was the reflection of a developing consciousness. One might also ask why was ACT-UP superceded by Queer Nation? One might also ask why did it take so long to recognize that not all queer people are white, middle class men with pro-capitalist, consumerist values?

 

>5.  What’s your definition of queer?

 

Queer is transgendered, lesbian, gay, drag, transvestite, homosexual, or otherwise challenging the dominant heterodoxy.

 

>6.  What’s your definition of queercore?

 

Creative expressions, primarily punk music or 'zines, which problematize conventional conceptions of gender and sexuality.

 

>8.  How do you, as an advocate of queercore, see yourself as fitting into the

>more normalized and commercialized gay movement of the 90’s?

>

 

The question is always: Do you want "out" or do you want "in"? Do you want to be accepted by the capitalist dominat culture? Do you want to be able to shop, consume and exploit like the bourgeois, white, straight denizens of the status quo? Do you want to have the lifestyle you see advertised on television, or do you recognize that that lifestyle is only made possible by the suffering and exploitation of the vast majority of the other human beings living on our planet and the eventual destruction of that planet?

 

The promise of queercore was a subversive counterculture with a radical critique of bourgeois gay conformity and homophobic hardcore conformity. So, in answer to your question about the 1990s, i would have to answer simply: "i don't". More important to me was a 'zine published here in Chicago by some lesbain activists, entitled "It's Time to End the Gay Rights Movement as We Know It". This great 'zine is still available online:

http://www.suba.com/~outlines/broadside/index.html

 

Queer youth are still three times more likely to commit suicide than straight youth. The AIDS crisis is only over if you are a middle class white man in the U.S. (or Europe). HIV infection rates are skyrocketing among heterosexual women, gay and bisexual youth, and gay and bisexual men of color (not to mention groups overlooked completely by CDC studies). HIV+ immigrants have repeatedly been threatened with deportation and denial of health care.

 

Today we need to move beyond punk and queercore, which have become products of the multinational corporations which are always eager to sell us "rebellion" and "subversion".

 

>12.  Who do you see as being the most influential (important?) bands in

>queercore?

 

The most important bands are the ones which are playing in the garages, basements, and VFW halls in small towns throughout North America, Europe, Japan, etc. The most important bands are the bands i will never hear or hear about, but who bring meaning to someone's life who would otherwise be hopeless and depressed. For example, The 12" Tor-Tea-Ahhhs (ever heard of them?) were formed in May of 1996 in a Chicago suburb to "combat the boredom and homicidal urges of the three band members", all high school kids. They had no instruments, no experience, and no idea what they were doing, but they had soul. And they fuckin' rocked!

 

So fuck the top ten lists and the corporate record sales charts and the CMJ lists and the history lessons. History is what's happening. Yeah, Tribe 8 are great. But let's move beyond the hierarchical notions of "importance" and "influential" which are actually vestiges of a capitalist, consumerist value system. Punk is supposed to be about "Do It Yourself", right?