**Pansy Division at Fireside Bowl, (773) 486-2700, on Aug. 30
Pansy Division is back! With a new album Total Entertainment (Alternative Tentacles), on a new record label, and working with a new producer (Chris Xefos), the queer quartet is fresh as a daisy and ripe for the plucking. The band's trademark queer punk sound has a renewed vitality, particularly on songs such as 'Blurry Down Below,' 'When He Comes Home,' 'Not Good Enough,' the title track, and the hidden track 'At The Mall.' Total Entertainment lives up to its title with forays into country ('He Whipped My Ass In Tennis…') and rock disco ('No Protection').
I recently spoke with co-founding member Chris Freeman of Pansy Division about the band and the new album.
Gregg Shapiro: It's been 10 years since the release of Pansy Division's full-length debut disc Undressed—how do you think that the band has evolved since then?
Chris Freeman: Quite a bit. From the initial start of Jon (Ginoli) having a series of songs that he decided to put into a band form, all the way to being the full band unit that we are now, from the musical aspect. With the songs, we've gone from being tagged militantly gay to being a bit more open to a variety of different things. We don't have to define ourselves as being only a gay band. Some of our songs are addressing themes that are a bit more universal. After 10 years, if people have heard about us, they probably already know that we are a gay band so we don't have to slam it down their throats. At the beginning, there wasn't anybody else doing what we were doing. Part of the deal was let's be as out as we can because both Jon and I had been in bands prior where we were told that if we came out of the closet we would not have a musical career (laughs). We thought that this was a good chance to prove them wrong. Why don't we just be as gay as possible and see what it does. Sort of a cultural experiment, if you will.
GS: A mini-cultural revolution.
CF: That's right. We're little change agents over here trying to effect change in the music business.
GS: I'm glad you mentioned the fact that Pansy Division was something of a trendsetter. How does it feel to see what has occurred in the queer punk rock world in the wake of Pansy Division?
CF: Around 1994, when Green Day exploded, that changed everything. Nirvana, then Green Day, and the doors blew open with all of these punk rock bands. So, does that make it punk rock anymore? When I was listening to the original punk rock, back in '75 and '76, it was all about 'we hate what's on the radio and we want to do something exceptionally different. We don't want to sound like everybody else, because so many bands sound like each other. Is it Poco or is it the Eagles?' Back then it was more of a statement of individuality, whereas now it's about how much can you sound like the other guys?
GS: What about Pansy Division's impact on queer rock in general?
CF: Even there, it seems kind of scant. When we first started, we thought, 'Well, we're so simple. We're breaking down a door, I guess.' We fully expected that there would be dozens of bands coming out of the woodwork, and there really haven't been. There's an underground (scene) of stuff. In Vancouver, there's the Skinjobs, in Los Angeles there's IAMLOVED. There are actually a lot more gay bands in Los Angeles right now. Still, there are very few that have risen to any level of recognition. We still seem to be the benchmark for it. We don't mind that, but it's kind of like, 'Hey, come on. We don't want to be the only ones dancing out here on this dance floor' (laughs).
GS: Five years passed between the release of Absurd Pop Song Romance and the new album Total Entertainment—what was happening in the Pansy Division camp during that time?
CF: One of the things that we did for Absurd Pop Song Romance is that we upped our own bar. We had added Patrick (Goodwin) on guitar and we felt like we had made our best record with Steve Albini. We were really proud of it and we wanted to work it and tour it and get radio to play it and do all that stuff. We almost killed ourselves with the amount of touring that we did and we almost broke up. That, and it was our least-selling album out of the six that we had put out. It was time to regroup because something wasn't working for us here. We didn't want to continue the road-dog stuff because we didn't have lives to come back to. Having Patrick and Luis (Illades) in the band, they said, 'Well, we do have lives.' Me and Jon are scratching our heads saying, 'Well, we thought we did, but they sort of wandered away.' It was time to reassess what we were doing, and make it worthwhile to keep doing it, otherwise we're just going to bankrupt ourselves emotionally.
So, we took stock. We kept playing shows and doing mini tours. We'd work on songs, but more often than not Jon and I would play songs for each other and go, 'We've already got one of those. No, that one's not any good.' We were throwing away dozens of songs. Jon finally hit upon a batch of five songs, most of them ended up on the new record. I think 'Who Treats You Right' and 'Too Many Hoops' were in the batch. It took a while to get to that point because we didn't want to re-do ourselves. We didn't want to be as serious as we had been on the Absurd album because we thought maybe people were turned off by the serious tone. We wanted to bring back some of the humor. We also took stock of the market because if that (Absurd) was our least selling album, but personally it was one of our favorites, then how do you gage … . You can't really do something thinking or worrying about whether it's going to sell. On the same token, it is the music business and you have to wonder whether the label will be able to sell it. Speaking of the label, once we got back on track and built a plan for ourselves, we offered it to (longtime label) Lookout Records. This was right before our tenth year and we thought it was perfect timing. They sat on the plan for six months and we kept e-mailing and calling them and they kept putting us off. Half the year went by and we were waiting for them to make a decision and they finally came back and said, 'No, we can't do it.' After 10 years with the label, and we always made them money, they couldn't give us a reason. I think they didn't think we were cool anymore. We were never really cool to start with, but we were different.
GS: During the reshaping period, you also played an author in the movie Luster.
CF: I think I shot that in '97 or something. It took a long time for it to come out. Everett Lewis, the director, writer and producer, put the whole thing together with his own money, so it had to get done in stages. I'm really glad it came out. That was a fun little side trip. I had no intention of ever doing a movie and then he came to me and said, 'I have a part (in my movie) and I wrote it with your persona in mind.' I said, 'OK.'
GS: That's very flattering.
CF: It was very flattering. I said, 'You tell me what to do and I'll do my best.' It was hard. For the small scenes that I do have, there were many takes and many ways he wanted me to read. I have a different respect for actors, even movie stars, people who aren't really actors because they just play themselves, even that is difficult. 'When you say this line you can't move your head more than a quarter of an inch because you will go out of the frame.' It's so constricting, yet you have to be so natural inside of the constriction. Now, I look at acting, and I give it up to them.
GS: You mentioned IAMLOVED. You also produced Never Forget, their debut disc.
CF: I had just moved to Los Angeles, which was also part of the (Pansy Division) reorganization. I felt that I was done in San Francisco. I couldn't get a good job. There was always this constant threat that I was going to be pushed out of my rent-controlled in the Castro. The landlord kept saying that he wanted his granddaughter to move into my flat. Three months after I left, she did.
GS: How long had you been living in San Francisco?
CF: Fourteen years. I moved from Seattle, which is my hometown, in '87. I got tired of it and the town became desiccated with the dot-com boom and then bust. It drove the rents up. People were angry, so I had to go. I moved to Los Angeles and some people that I knew took me out to this club called Freak Show. Here were all these gay bands and it felt like 10 years ago in San Francisco at the Chameleon with us and Tribe 8 and all these gay bands that had just started up. It felt like that all over again. I was really excited—it was like a time capsule. The band that impressed me the most was IAMLOVED. I went right up to them and told them that I thought they were amazing and that they had something unique. I introduced myself and they said that they knew who I was. I said that I wanted to work with them and asked if they had a producer and they said, 'You're it.' It was basically a mutual infatuation that has kept going. I've worked with them on all of their songs and their presentation. I've also been working with a lot of other gay bands in Los Angeles.
GS: Speaking of producers, how is it that you came to work with producer Chris Xefos, of King Missile and Moth Wranglers fame, on Total Entertainment?
CF: We had always produced ourselves, with the exception of working with Steve Albini, but he didn't actually want to be labeled as producer. He only wanted his credit to be 'recorded by,' because he didn't act as a producer. He didn't make any decisions, he would not break any ties. He would only record what we asked him to. One of the things that happened on Absurd is that I took control. All the stuff between songs and the song order and I wrote the charts for the horns and the strings. In some ways that takes its toll. It makes an inequality in the balance within the band. At that point it was welcomed, but in hindsight, we didn't really want to go through that again. Patrick suggested Chris Xefos because he had gotten friendly with him in the bar scene. We all said, 'Perfect,' and we called him up and he said that he would love to do it. We are very proud of this record. He brought in a whole different level of stuff.
GS: One of those things, I imagine, was the horns, courtesy of Danny Cao, on a few songs, including 'No Protection.'
CF: Yes. And also Luis. Luis played saxophone on a lot of the songs.
GS: That's a great touch.
CF: It is. He (Chris) wanted to expand on that because we did touch on horns on the last record, on the song 'Bad Boyfriend.' He said, 'Let's have more horns on this record,' and I went, 'Uh, yeah, OK.' He also played keyboards and mellotron. His ideas were great —lots of little percussion and vocal tricks. He went all out. Kudos to him—he really was a referee for us. Also, he's gay, so it wasn't like having a straight stranger in the camp.
GS: Things take on a different meaning when they come from a fellow gay person.
CF: From outside, but now joining in. He really was a crucial person.
GS: Speaking of 'No Protection,' which is an anti-barebacking song—did you ever think that you would be singing about that subject in this day and age?
CF: I would have never thought that it would come back around the way it has, with AIDS on the rise again. I just learned the other day that a friend of mine, at 37, has seroconverted. It crushes me. What are people doing out there? There's another song on the record ('Spiral') about crystal, about the idea that someone is going down on this thing. Having to make comments about drug abuse and unsafe sex—couldn't it just be matter of fact at this point that you have safe sex? How can it be that all these people are coming up positive? The other thing is that we've been told for years, 'You know, Pansy Division, you'd be a lot more popular if you did dance music.' But that's kind of not the point. That's why we started out as a rock band; because we didn't like dance music. Then we thought that if we were going to do a dance record, how would it be? Some of our favorite bands in the '70s decided to churn out a disco song to concede that disco was here. Kiss did 'I Was Made For Loving You.'
GS: And 'No Protection' echoes that.
CF: Exactly. That's what we were trying to do. There's even a Kiss riff at the end if you listen for it. We thought, 'Let's do our Blondie 'Heart of Glass,' let's do our 'Another One Bites The Dust,' if you will. If we're going to do a dance song and it's going to be played in a gay disco, what's the message that we want? Have safe sex, please.'
GS: Are there plans for dance remixes?
CF: [We] would love it. If anyone reading this feels like they want to do an extended remix of 'No Protection,' a la Cher or somebody else, to really pump up the disco, please let us know.
GS: I also love the concept of 'putting the ass back in bluegrass,' as Pansy Division does with 'He Whipped My Ass In Tennis, Then I Fucked His Ass In Bed.' Sort of like, 'O Mary, Where Art Thou?'
CF: (Laughs) Good one!
GS: Was it fun to do a country song?
CF: It was. We have had country tinges on some of our songs because we do like country. But we never really pushed it too far until we hit this one and then it made sense. Jon played the song for me and I was ecstatic. I said, 'It sounded like a country song— let's really push the country angle.' Chris was all over it—'Let's get a banjo on here. Let's get slide guitar.' We were like, 'Yay!' We pushed the rhythmic track to be a lot more country and those other elements fit right on top. When we heard the outcome, we were rolling.
