QueerPunks.com: So, first off let us know a bit about yourself and where you come from as a person.
Larry-Bob: There were three pivotal events that shaped the trajectory of my life. The first was my initiation into punk rock when I went to college in 1984. The second was coming out a couple years later. The third combined those first two things, and that was finding out about early queer zines like Homocore and JDs in late 1988. Most of what I’ve done in the creative sphere since then has been shaped by those factors.
QP: You’re pretty freaking dedicated to promoting queer alternative things going as far as creating pages listing Queer Bands on Tour, Queer Spoken Word, and even have your own super long running ‘zine Holy Titclamps; what’s up with all of that?
LB: Library activist Chris Dodge once called me a librarian manqué, which sounds from the dictionary definition like it might be a bit of an insult, but I think the spirit in which it was meant that even though I’m not trained as an information scientist, I tend to think that way. When I find information, I have a compulsion to file it and share it with people. And also in constructing resources like the international queer hotlist I have gone on the assumption that there must be people doing non-mainstream queer cultural practice in different countries and have specifically gone on searches to find and update that information. I would like to help foster cultural potential for queer people everywhere. Even if I might never travel to where they live and directly benefit, the example people provide is inspiring.
QP: Why queer culture? Specifically, alternative queer culture?
LB: I feel that I have some idea of what advice and pointers to offer queer folks. I don’t really know as well what advice to give to
straight people. What I find appealing about the best of alternative culture is that it represents individual viewpoints, rather than the homogeneity of the commercial world. I would hope that I can point the way not only for people who are already involved in alternative queer culture, but also people who might not be aware that there is an alternative to mainstream gay false culture.
QP: Tell us about your own band, Winsome Griffles.
LB: Jack and I are the songwriters of the band, and we’re both queer. We also do some traditional material - most songs are either from before 1915 or after 2006, and not much in between. Jack has done a lot of music stuff, including producing the Glen Meadmore record that had songs on the soundtrack of Hustler White, and doing soundtracks for films like the documentary That Man, Peter Berlin.
What’s unusual about the band is the instrumentation. I’ve played piano most of my life; Jack plays banjo and bass. Our drummer, Brad, is a rock drummer, which saves the band from being a cabaret act. The lyrics are very direct and clear; there are enough bands out there vaguely mumbling. Our debut CD, Meet the Griffles came out this fall and we’ve started a series of regional tours to promote it; we went to the northeast in the fall, the northwest is next in late January, and we hope to do the midwest in May and the south soon too. We’ve also started making videos, and the first of them, Birthday Party Clown, is now available on YouTube.
QP: What’s your opinion of gay culture and the attitudes therein.
LB: Mainstream gay culture seems to aspire to living life as though it takes place in a photo spread in a glossy magazine or the set of a
sitcom. People leave behind everything that distinguished them before they came out. I think it’s perhaps a reaction to the ostracism that many gay people faced in high school, only instead of embracing difference, they’ve embraced conformity.
QP: Do you feel it’s important to promote alternative queer cultures?
LB: Yes, I think it’s important that alternative queer culture be visible so that it truly is available to people as an alternative. It can be hard to get coverage in mainstream gay media, which defines what is attention-worthy as either having the angle of being related to a widely-known, often straight celebrity in the case of the lifestyle magazines or being related to sex in the case of the porn press.
QP: Any final thoughts?
LB: Punk has been around for thirty years, and the queercore scene has been around for half of that time, though of course there were queers involved in punk from the beginning, and it’s up to us to remind the straight punk scene of that fact (not accepting the mostly straight white male version of punk history.) But in terms of an ongoing scene of mutually supporting creative queer people doing zines and music and film and not just isolated innovaters, it’s been more than 15, close to 20 years. And that’s a pretty good run.
Read another sweet interview with Larry-Bob done at the Amoeba Records blog.
Ah, the lovely and talented Larry-Bob - always a pleasure to read.
I don’t think there’s one person in the punk community, gay or straight, who should take Larry-Bob for granted. You are an invaluable resource to this site and the community at large.
Adam
QueerPunks.com
I don’t want to sound like I just want to start arguments here; don’t get me wrong I respect this guy quite a bit, but to me the term ”queer culture” does not make any sense.
Culture, to me, refers generally to an ethnical or geographical setting, and it’s not news that gay people have been a part of every culture since forever. Looking at myself, I consider that I am Canadian, caucasian, eat the same food than other people here, have more or less the same values. Being gay or straight does not enter in my criteria to define which CULTURE I belong to.
Now, I think for sure there are gay COMMUNITIES; it’s fairly frequent to see coalitions of gay filmmakers, artists, musicians, and so on. Although I’ve always wondered what differed that much from typically ‘’straight” and ”queer” alternative communities ( and to a certain point - why they were apart), I do acknowledge their existence.
Interesting. I havn’t heard names like “Jd’s” in years.
Star - I wouldn’t get too caught up on semantics. Culture, by definition, is about the collective manifestation of arts, literature, and other things that define a group of people as a whole. Let’s say, for example, the American culture (though I’ve known many people who argued tooth-and-nail that the US only has borrowed culture, but let’s not get into that) is the cumulative whole of the things the people in the US create. A subculture of that would be, say, punk. Also, the things queer people do as a whole would define the ‘queer [sub]culture’.
The term you use, community, is totally interchangeable with the term culture in this respect. Culture has more of a refined quality to the way it’s heard, while community is more loose. It makes sense you’d see the term culture and not like how it applies to something as fluid as sexuality, but in my opinion culture is just as valid a word as the things anyone else does.
Sexuality defines us as much as anything, and the things people do in the name of their identity (be it on a grand scale or a smaller one) is what defines what a culture is and is not. But, like I said before, culture and community can be interchangeable. It’s just a matter of what term you prefer to apply to it.
Can I say touché?
But seriously, I understand 100% what you meant by the definition of ”culture”; I had the exact same one in mind. The only thing that bogs me is the fact that sexuality is, as you very well said, a fluid thing and not something that has an effect on an entire persona.
My question is: How different has queer culture to be different from others? Maybe it’s only me that didn’t get into it enough, but I never succeeded in pin-pointing what could be part of queer culture, and what could not. Because I don’t think that a bunch of artists of all sorts working together can claim to create ”gay art” with the sole fact of being homosexual. There must be something more to it, right? Or if there’s not, I can’t tell what changes from the mainstream culture to more alternative ones.
Oh, and I hope you’re having wonderful holidays.
Wow Larry-bob is verrry smart. I liked dis part:
“Mainstream gay culture seems to aspire to living life as though it takes place in a photo spread in a glossy magazine or the set of a
sitcom. People leave behind everything that distinguished them before they came out. I think it’s perhaps a reaction to the ostracism that many gay people faced in high school, only instead of embracing difference, they’ve embraced conformity.” Ewww—is too fackin true.
kisses.