______________________ 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