Rock and a Hard Place
fab searched far and wide to find two gay men who actually rock. Fortunately both Kelly Clipperton of Kelly and the Kellygirls and Jon Ginoli of the seminal Pansy Division are thriving and producing new and beautifully bent material. We put them together to find out what gay rock gods would talk about.

Kelly Clipperton: Other than the illustrious pleasure of being on book shelves alongside Pete Burns and Marc Almond, why write your book Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division now?

Jon Ginoli: Well, I’d been sitting on it for a while when I realized the stuff that I thought everybody knew about our band and the time we came up in, isn’t true. There are music lovers who really have no idea what the music scene was like for a gay band in the early ’90s, so I wanted to get the history out there before people start to forget about the moment when queer punk and queer rock bands — elements that had not been visible before — happened.

KC: Is it a chapter closing for you?

JG: Not really. I finished most of it a few years back when Pansy Division was kind of inactive but we’ve just released our new album, That’s So Gay, so the story continues.

KC: People always ask me, being the sensitive bloke that I am, how I developed a thick enough skin to face the scrutiny of being a performer. I can’t say I really have yet. You document many scenarios in the book where rather large objects were hurled straight at your head at shows. Art in the face of adversity; how do you do it?

JG: I had a lot of determination to make the kind of art that pleased me and I think we’ve been smart about how to reach a broader audience. But the at those shows where we supported Green Day there were large barriers protecting us from flying debris, so I don’t think we were taking undue risk.

KC: I would have had a breakdown, a shit fit, and taken off in a helicopter. I thankfully have never felt unsafe at a show but I’ve certainly felt unwelcome. I’m a solid fellow though and have the temper of a hooker on a slow night so I think people sense not to mess with me. And by the time I was making music folks like you had paved the way a bit and the boys in Green Day seemed to have your back.

JG: There were plenty of instances where promoters would try to dump us from the bill but the boys insisted that they wouldn’t play unless we did.

KC: Your profile did increase after working with them but you didn’t take off the same way they did.

JG: We returned on our own to many of the cities we played with Green Day but our new fan base was quite young and many of the cities didn’t have appropriately sized all-ages venues. The big pay off didn’t really come along. After the successes of Nirvana and Green Day indie bands were up for grabs by major labels. Pansy Division considered the jump but we felt that we’d have been eaten alive. We didn’t think we should be stars and try to…

KC: Play the game.

JG: Exactly.

KC: My new album Modernism is the first time I’ve ever had serious funding for any project. As a self-financed artist I feel liberated. Perhaps only a few thousand people hear your music but you know it’s getting out there the way you want. In the book you write that when you started Pansy Division “gay” equalled “otherness”. Certainly that social consciousness has changed.

JG: It’s a big step forward. I’m not interested in preserving the ghetto forever.

KC: Amen.

JG: I don’t want to be segregated from the rest of society but I do feel there’s a specific viewpoint that gay people have that is different. I’ve been thinking of the phrase “gay liberation,” which was the term used for gay rights before I came out, and that’s a great phrase. Liberation. A song “Life Lovers” on our new album is about how even though gay marriage is something we’ve been striving for, I like the idea that there are more possibilities that gay culture offers; different ways of looking at relationships.

KC: Is it easier for the public to swallow — pun intended — a man singing about queer subject matter if he’s not threatening to anyone’s idea of maleness?

JG: You make a great point. Rock ‘n’ roll is sexy. It’s always been about sex and I wanted to be vocal and honest about sex because I felt a lot of pop music was dishonest in how it talked about love. Pop always wants to talk about sex but it calls it love. We called love, love and sex, sex. I think that’s what made Pansy Division and many other queer rock acts unique.

KC: Gay men talking about sex and relationships still seems foolishly threatening. No one seems to bat an eye about Lindsay Lohan’s lesbian relationship but if Zac Efron announced that he was sucking cock… I find that double standard infuriating. Coming out didn’t ruin kd lang’s career, it actually heightened it, but almost a decade later Michael Stipe was dragged out kicking and screaming and still somehow hasn’t entirely recovered.

JG: So true. If Michael had come out in ’92 it certainly could have ruined his career. I used to gripe about him because I thought he was someone who could have…

KC: Lead the army.

JG: Certainly. He had the indie cred and had reached the arena too.

KC: In the song “Manada” you sing “Every time I go north to the border/Boy after boy always take me over/I’m going to Manada/The weather’s cold/But the guys are hot.” You’re a fan of Canada.

JG: What is really nice about Canada is that the media takes us more seriously, I keep meeting really cute guys and having fun in your country. I was charmed when we first started to tour up there so I wrote a tribute.

KC: The Pride we played together back in ’02 here was hilarious.

JG: Was that in…

KC: Don’t mention the name, we might play there again. Another disastrous setup with the beer garden, where everyone was, way too far away from the stage. What’s your favourite Pride to date?

JG: Our hometown. In ’02 we opened for Marc Almond and it was pretty thrilling, a huge crowd. San Francisco Pride in the ’90s was run by rank amateurs, so when they got it together in the new decade it was great to be part of it again.

KC: The ’90s had too much focus on corporate funding and not much sensitivity to artists or community. Someone realized, “Oh, gay people drink beer, get on it.” Still, someone’s gotta pay for it. I’ve had many heartwarming Pride shows but there have been some hideous ones too.

JG: We stopped playing Prides altogether for a while after an event in ’95 in Madison, Wisconsin. A thousand people are there and we’re on a big stage playing to only 30 of them because they were playing Cher and Whitney Houston over in the dance tent. Not everyone has to have my taste in music but we were an entertaining live band. The majority of the gay community wasn’t interested. We played a show later that night in the same town to great crowd of straight people who paid to see us. But all the gays, who could see us for free, weren’t interested. More often than not we’re still the only rock band on a Pride bill. You?

KC: One word: Cornwall.

JG: Where?

KC: Never mind. I find I’m too gay for conventional clubs where I spend time convincing bookers to take a chance on me, and not gay enough for a lot of Pride events. It’s an uncomfortable fence I ride. Speaking of riding, you certainly document your road sexploits in the book rather well. What city in the world has the biggest cocks?

JG: I wish I had enough experience in enough cities with a variety of cocks to be able to have multiple choices.

KC: (reading from Deflowered) “A blonde farm boy in the back of the van in Texas…”

JG: But I can’t say there’s a big-cock town. If you find it, you must let me know. I just hope it’s not Regina.

Jon Ginoli reads from his book, Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division, and performs an acoustic set on Fri July 3 at Chapters/Indigo Festival Hall, 142 John St and Sat July 4 at Glad Day, 598A Yonge St. Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band screens soon.

Kelly and the Kellygirls launch their new album, Modernism, on Thurs May 28 at Revival, 783 College St and then tour Canada and the UK in July and Aug.