Review: 'Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution' Blue-ray

No movement springs up overnight, and as tied to the eighties/nineties as the Queercore scene seems to be, there had been rumbles for decades in the films of Kenneth Anger and John Waters, Flaming Creatures, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Jayne County, Buzzcocks, and the fashions of Vivian Westwood. However, according to Yony Leyser’s 2017 documentary Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution, it was Bruce LaBruce and G.B. Jones’s button-pushing ’zine J.D.s that gave form to the movement and inspired a gang of young punks to give it a sound. And so came Tribe 8, Pansy Division, the spectacular Team Dresch, and a host of groups willing to actualize J.D.s vision… and often make it more specifically political.

While Queercore is superficially a rock doc, it makes a much wider point about a movement with nothing but disdain for limitations. Queercore was a philosophy that reached into all corners of art, and for a lot of people, it was a way of life. It wasn’t just a way to stand apart from straights in the “not-gay” sense of the term. It was a way to stand apart from any limitation conservative society—gay or not gay—considers acceptable. So Queercore culture didn’t just embrace the favorite music of straight boys—Rock & Roll—but it might also embrace such transgressions as porno, violent imagery, and the stereotype of predatory homosexuals while gobbing in the face of assimilation. What’s punker than that?

Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution is highly educational, studying the genesis of an important though rarely discussed tributary of rock history as well as exploring how it grew, flourished, and lives on today. It’s also a shitload of fun as we see and hear the bands in action, and view clips of some pretty hilarious short films that sprung from the movement. Aimee Goguen’s ’zine-like animations convey the spirit of the topic with wild flair.

One strange move was to cut Jayne County’s crucial (and really, really funny) talking head out of the discussion, especially since Leyser filmed her discussing gay artists of the original NYC punk scene, which is a topic barely touched on in the film. Fortunately, that twenty two-minute interview is included among the bonus interviews on the new blu-ray edition of Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution. Extra interviews with John Waters (delightful as always), Dennis Cooper, Kim Gordon, and Don Bolles from The Germs round out the supplementary features.

Review: 'Gimme Indie Rock: 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981-1996'

In the eighties, music fans who didn’t want to preen with the new wavers, pout with the hair metalists, or snooze with Lionel Ritchie really had to do their research. Groups like Black Flag, Throwing Muses, and The Feelies weren’t exactly playing alongside Mötley Crüe on MTV at 4PM, though you might catch them if you stayed up past Midnight on Sundays. You might also read about them in photocopied fanzines or get lectured about them from the Doc Martened blowhard at your local hole-in-the-wall record shop. 

In the Internet era, this kind of happenstance is less a prerequisite to discovering great underground groups, so from one point of view, Andrew Earles’s Gimme Indie Rock: 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981-1996 is about twenty years too late. Arriving in 2014, however, it still serves a definite function as a valuable tour of one of the least-eulogized roads of Rock history. More practically it’s a distillation of The Trouser Press Record Guide that hones a fifteen-year flood of small-label albums down to the must haves… or, at least, Earles’ idea of the must-haves. As is the case with any “best of” guide created by one person, the selection is highly subjective even as the writer reveals he chose some albums he didn’t like because of their historical importance. Taking that under consideration it isn’t unreasonable to wonder where certain artists (no Spinanes, no Velocity Girl, no Grant Lee Buffalo) or select albums (no Pony Express Record, no The Real Ramona, no The Stars Are Insane) are. Still I can’t say there are a ton of glaring omissions from Gimme Indie Rock.

As a writer, Earle certainly seems to have been influenced by The Trouser Press Record Guide (which he name-checks in his introduction) with his tendency to write about ecstatic music clinically rather than ecstatically. That kind of writing isn’t generally my cup of tea, but even Earle can’t hold back his awe from time to time, as when he uses more visceral terms to describe Team Dresch’s Personal Best, which “will knock unprepared listeners against the wall”. He is not fucking kidding.