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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 2003)
______________________ november 21. 2003 s Ju st ant] 5 5 M USIC ▼............. Fill your Speedos with song The north wind blows big queer fun into Portland by REVIEWS D-D-D o n ’ t S top the B eat Junior Senior • Atlantic C or i T aratoot t’s official: America LOVES queers. Well, the hoys at least. t you find yourself surround ed by beautiful men in Speedos and masks, soaked in a sonic shower o f sweet angelic indic-pop voices and/or entranced by the forthright lyricism of a charismatic queer Canadian, you just might he at a Hidden Cameras show. Led by frontman Joel Gibb, the Cameras flaunt a definite flair for onstage orchestral excess. With their debut release seducing the seven continents, The Hidden Cameras have finally imprinted their live per formance gixxi vibes onto metal and plastic. The name of the band’s virgin recording? The Smell of Our Ou/n. You’re not alone if you’re wondering what exactly that album title means. When weekly Now Tortmto inter viewed Gibb last spring, he explained: "The most relevant metaphor to me is the smells, the things that happen to your body that you’re not supposed to talk about.... There’s a huge distancing in the way mainstream culture talks about sex. 1 think things should be addressed in a really candid and innocent and real way, without irony. Like Welcome our neighbors to the north The Hidden Cameras to describing some sort of Nocturnal on Nov. 29 moment of intimacy without the rooftops, hut you can also expect them to taking it all hack at the end of the song.” Now their irony-free “gay church folk" tackle issues affecting the queer community. sound (a turn of phrase penned by Gibb) is What better way to bum off those turning on audiences beyond their hometown tryptophan-stuffed fat cells? The show’s on a of Toronto. And on Nov. 29 at the surrepti Saturday night, December is closing in on us, tiously swank Nocturnal, Portland gets our fair st) thank your lucky stars: The Hidden Cameras share. Anything might happen. Expect your are here to fill our hearts (and pants) with loosened pelvis to fly free, or maybe your eye song. Now all we have to do is show up balls will roll blissfully into the back of your rested— and ready to fly high. J H skull. Who knows, you might even jump on stage and join in the bawdy bacchanalia. The Queer-fronted hand The Divided opens for T he Hidden Cameras are known to transform audi H idden C ameras 8 p.m. Nov. 29 at NiKtumal, ence members from witnesses into participants. 1800 E. Burnside St. Tickets are $7 at the door. Gibb and his troupe will no doubt shout their love of Gixl and Man and Matter from COR I TARATOOT is a Portland free-lance writer. I It's All Relative, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. And weren’t we all wishing Italian stud-boy Rocco from The Restaurant took it like a man? Well, kids, wean yourself from the television and disccfdown to the giddy beats of Junior Senior. A Danish duo riding big homo-waves, Junior Senior (appearing Nov. 21 at Seattle’s Crocixlile Cafe) mixes dance-aholic sonic cocktails equal parts New Wave, hip-hop, Motown and electroclash. “Move Your Feet,” the first single from D-D-Dim’t Stop the Beat, spent nine weeks on the Top 10 U.K. singles chart. It’s (Jff the Wall- era Michael Jackson disco contagion, and now the U.S. press is eating it up, too: Regis and Kelly, Carson Daly, Sharon Osbourne, E!, Jimmy Kimmel, MTV, glossy music mags. But let’s admit it: The music lands sec ondary to the easy dish. Y’know, Junior is straight (and skinny). Senior is gay (and, um, plump). Favorite band as kids? Wham! Most Americans probably have no idea where Danish people live and don’t really care— but man do we need to dance. To know everything you need to know about Junior Senior’s music, just listen to Track 4, “Chicks and Dicks.” The two trade lines (“R-b-boys I’m handsome and tall/G-g-girls I’m nasty and small” ) over hand claps and a monstrous drum kick. Attempt to resist the happy pull, and you’re missing out on some serious Saturday night shenanigans. Dig out the disco ball, the fog machine, those hazy memories of rafter swing ing and line dancing. Succumb! —C T T otal E ntertainm ent ! Pansy Division • Alternative Tentacles ho wouldn’t at least leant to like Pansy Division? The San Fran cisco foursome are a queer band whose album Total Entertainment! is their seventh release with an independent punk label. They’re earnestly committed to their vision and have exposed a great many people of all sexualities to an enthusiastic and explicit cele- W hration of the intricacies of boy-hoy sex. So why have my feelings about them only ever ranged from indifferent to insulted? It’s simple: While I have to acknowledge that they’re proba bly doing something culturally positive, the music itself is unequivocally terrible. The Pansy Division catalog mostly consists of leering, joyless novelty songs like “Bill and Ted’s Homosexual Adventure" and “Beercan Boy”— the latter being a reference to penile dimensions— barked out by undeservedly self-satisfied singer/lyricLst Jon Ginoli. When gay singer/musician Rixldy Bottom of the great queer band Imperial Teen discussed Pansy Division in a 1994 Rolling Stone article, he likened them to Warrant, a band mainly known for their dumb, single-minded objectifi cation (of women, in their case). The compari son was hardly a compliment, but it was accu rate. Imagine "Weird A l" Yankovic singing about gay male sex in a tone mimicking those testosterone-overdosing, straight-hoy metal bands of the '80s, all sung over a fairly anony mous punk clatter, and you’ll know what Pansy Division sounds like. I’m happy to report that ToUil Entertain ment! contains a higher-than-ever proportion of tolerable tunes to cringe-worthy ones. This is no thanks to Ginoli, whose offerings include the very ill-advised synth-romp "N o Protec tion," which combines the over-imitated vocoder of Cher’s "Believe” with a lyric that seems to encapsulate an after-schix>l special about barebacking, and “ I Whipped His Ass in Tennis (Then He Fucked My Ass in Bed),” which has all of the cheesiness hut none of the hotness the title might lead you to expect. On the other hand, “When He Com es Home,” “Spiral" and “ First Betrayal,” all written and sung by hassist/singer Chris Freeman, are catchy power pop with straightforward, emotively vocalized lyrics, a combination that pleasantly recalls Weezcr or The Smoking Popes. A potential Freeman solo career is a more realistic cause for optimism than any hope that Pansy Division might someday find even a shred of the inspira tion, wit or defiance they’ve always been so strangely and thor- ixighly lacking. So I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for that. —Christopher McQi4atn jH
