LEFT FOOT FORWARD

Rip It Up, Issue 211, 1 March 1995, Page 9

LEFT FOOT FORWARD

Some gays have all the luck. Jon Ginoli, lead singer and guitar man with San Francisco’s Pansy Division, is cradling a mobile phone on a ferry that’s crossing Sydney Harbour on a beautiful day. The Bay area punkers are overseas for the first time, touring Oz and New Zealand on the trail of their second album Deflowered. Ginoli formed the band in the winter of 1991, frustrated with lack of anything other than what he considered stereotypical gay music. “I wanted to have a band that other gay people, who were dissatisfied with the usual gay fare of show tunes and Barbara Streisand, could have for themselves.” But, by his own admission, he’s doesn’t always take a righteous stance. Like a lot of desperados who enter the rock ‘n’ roll game, Ginoli did it partly to get laid.

“I thought that might be a nice by-product, yeah. Rock ’n’ Roll has always been about sex, so I would say that was part of my whole scheme.” Pansy Division have thrown pop and punk into a pot and come out sound like Pete Shelley fronting Blondie with Brian Wilson producing. Lyrically, they’re like nothing you’ve ever heard, and the titles of their singles — ‘Bill and Ted’s Homosexual Adventure’, ‘Nine Inch Males’ — point to a deep respect for toilet humour. You don’t have to be there to get the joke, but they still get a hard time in more ways than one. “Occasionally we get accused of things, but I think after people get over the initial shock they see that we can write good pop songs.”

JOHN RUSSELL