Pioneering queercore punk band Pansy Division is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a new album, “Quite Contrary,” and a tour that is coming through Philly Sept. 21 at Kung Fu Necktie.
The first openly gay rock band was formed in San Francisco in 1991 by guitarist and singer Jon Ginoli and bassist and singer Chris Freeman. Their music quickly caught the attention of former labelmate Green Day, who took the band on tour during its own rise to fame.
Freeman said Pansy Division’s sound has evolved over its 25 years from the indie punk-tinged rock of its early days.
“As with any band, you’ve kind of got to create a space for your band to exist and usually that’s a narrow version of what you can be,” he said. “The easiest example I can point out would be The Beatles. They started out very simple, then after they were able to put that thread through the needle, they were able to expand. I think we’ve been able to expand quite a bit with our songs and our arrangements. The first album was done by session musicians that Jon knew: ‘Here’s the songs but we really don’t have a sound. We just know we’re just trying for this simplicity.’ Once we got some members in the band that were permanent, they can assert their personalities through their music. So we’re more of a band. Around the ‘Absurd Pop Song Romance’ album in 1998, that’s where we started to say, ‘Now we sound like a band.’”
Freeman said Pansy Division has definitely outgrown the punk label.
“Punk as a genre had its moment and now it’s if you’re a punk band that’s cute,” he said. “What we were trying to do was stay in a musical vein that was not tapped at all. Both Jon and I were big power-pop fans, more so than punk. At the beginning, ‘punk’ had a more diverse meaning. If you look back at the very first punk bands, none of those bands sound the same. It’s only later that punk became this musical straightjacket where, if you are going to be considered punk, you have to sound like this. That is something we tried to snap out of. Punk is sounding different than everything else, not similar to everything else. I think now it is an easy message for everyone to get, thanks to bands like Green Day and The Offspring. I’m not sure if it’s going to draw newer fans to us for the aspect of being a punk band. I think this new album is the least ‘punk’-sounding of our records. We wanted to go for a guitar-rock album. We’re just a guitar band.”
Freeman added that the subjects the band sings about have definitely evolved from the sexually explicit and humorous lyrics Pansy Division was notorious for.
“We’ve kind of looked at the topics we have covered. We were more a joke band at first. We didn’t take ourselves serious because we didn’t know there was going to be an audience for this. We had no idea,” he said. “Over the years we thought, What would a Pansy Division fan want to hear? No, we’re not trying to second-guess ourselves but we’re also trying to eliminate things that are repetitious. Let’s not write songs about boys since we are in our 50s. We’ve already got a couple of big dick songs so we don’t need to tread that again. What does Pansy Division have to say anymore? What are we trying to do? What is unique to us still? That kind of search for things, trying to be musically relevant and entertaining to ourselves, and still have something to say, it’s hard to do. That’s why it’s fewer and farther between that we are able to put out albums. We just figure, Well, I don’t think we’re ready for another Pansy Division album yet. But now is the time and it’s the perfect timing. We had to do something for our 25th anniversary and Jon had a healthy batch of songs and the rest of us were able to supplement. So I think it worked out great.”
One of the more notable songs on the new album is “Blame the Bible,” which, in typical Pansy Division fashion, takes aim at the antigay rhetoric and actions, as well as the hypocrisy, that seem to go hand in hand with some religions and right-leaning politics.
“I think it might be one of our most overtly political songs,” Freeman said. “Normally we’re political with a small ‘p.’ By nature of our existence, it’s a political band. We were careful about this song in particular because it’s going to push some buttons. It’s one thing to come out of the closet as gay. It’s another thing to come out of the closet as atheist. That’s the closet that we opened on this album. It’s time to say how we feel about this. But as with anything we’ve done in the past, it’s easier to deliver a message when it’s done with humor. People get things a lot better when it is not being preached at them. We’ve tried never to be preachy in our songs. It’s either funny or self-revealing, so trying to make this funny is a big part of it. But there are going to be people that don’t think it is funny at all.”
Pansy Division is widely regarded as a pioneering gay rock band, but Freeman said he and his bandmates don’t hear much about bands they have inspired or influenced over the years.
In fact, Freeman said, more often than not, they hear the exact opposite.
“I’ve heard more bands who have in the past said things disparaging about Pansy Division,” he said. “The biggest example would be Scissor Sisters, who were clamoring to open for us at Folsom Street Fair back in the day but then, as soon as they got popular, were quick to dismiss any connection they had to us. They basically said, ‘Oh, we don’t care about Pansy Division.’ Which I thought, Really? Did you have to say that? To go on record and say, ‘I don’t like that band,’ especially in light of having opened for us in the past … OK, well, where is your band now?”
Freeman said when his band formed, the members couldn’t have imagined how much the industry would charge for openly gay artists, or how much of an impact the band would have on established gay artists.
“I never would have envisioned this,” he said about the band’s success. “I think Jon had more of an idea that it could do something than I did. It was only later when it dawned on me that someone was listening and this could do something. But to say that we would have gotten to this point, it was only in our dreams that we thought an artist can have a number-one hit and be out of the closet, like Sam Smith. That points to the advances that have been made in the music business. When we were on tour with Green Day we met so many closeted musicians. We met Melissa Etheridge and The Indigo Girls and Michael Stipe and later Rob Halford. They had seen us play and said, ‘God, you guys have balls.’ And we’d say ‘Girl, come out of the closet. It’s time.’ They’re like ‘Yeah, but … ’ And we’d say, ‘There is no but. We just broke down the door. We just sang about sucking cock to 8-year-olds.’ I think we broke that door down. You can gently go in there now and create your space. And not one of those artists who came out — not one of them — has had an adverse reaction. They all were fine. They all did well. In fact, you could say they did better. So that was something that we were happy to see.”
Pansy Division performs 8 p.m. Sept. 21 at Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St. For more information or tickets, call 215-291-4919 or visit www.pansydivision.com.