Queerness doesn’t just have fingerprints all over rock music – queerness is embedded into the very DNA of it. From pioneers such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Little Richard, to game-changer influencers like Janis Joplin, Fanny and David Bowie, queer creatives have helped drive popular music into bolder, more adventurous directions. Punk is no exception.
Not only did queer culture give punk culture its name, it helped guide its rebellious streak, its sense of otherness. All over the world, punk clubs and events would find shelter in gay venues, where advice on DIY outfits, chains and leather jackets, profane humour and two-fingers-up at authority were all to be found.
You want a place to feel at home in this world, you’ll have to carve it out yourself – that’s a bedrock of both cultures, and when the two collide, they can carve it up as well.
Courtney Barnett: Pedestrian At Best
Quite a talent, our Courtney. A lyricist you might easily rank alongside Billy Bragg or Paul Kelly, and man can she rock.
B52s: Rock Lobster
A long career of kitsch, camp and carnal delights to choose from, but have you given Rock Lobster a proper listen lately? Ricky Wilson covered both lead and bass guitar functions on an instrument that rarely held its full component of strings. RIP you talented thing.
Big Joanie: Way Out
From their gorgeous post-punk album Sistahs. Big Joanie are active in London’s DIY and black feminist spaces and launched the Stop Rainbow Racism campaign, combatting racism in LGBT venues.
Butthole Surfers: Who Was In My Room Last Night
King Coffey says when they try to play normal, it still comes out sounding fucked up. Thank god for that!
The Clash: The Right Profile
One of the longest songs on London Calling is devoted to a gay icon, Hollywood star Montgomery Clift. Dear Monty and his beautiful face deserve to be here.
Jayne County & the Electric Chairs: Wonder Woman
She fought in the Stonewall riots, has been present for every iteration of punk that’s happened since and is still going strong. Wonder Woman, indeed.
The Damned: Jet Boy Jet Girl
This entered the lives of legendary punks The Damned after Captain Sensible chose it as his first solo effort in ’78 and they’re still performing it forty-two years later to great delight.
Green Day: Coming Clean
Billy Joe Armstrong’s coming out, really, except that in the heat of the massive breakthrough album Dookie, most folks didn’t realise it at the time.
Hüsker Dü: Makes No Sense At All
In terms of influence, only The Ramones are a more important American punk band. Bob Mould still plays this in his solo shows, declaring it one of his favourite compositions.
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts: ACDC
A glam-tinged bouncer from one of our most enduring icons. Joan refused to be dismissed, refused to go away. Legend.
Kid Congo & the Pink Monkey Birds: La Araña
Kid Congo Powers’ CV is cooler than yours – sorry, but it’s true. The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, hell he was even president of The Ramones fan club when he was a kid!
Kids On TV: Breakdance Hunx
Canadian queercore has given the world plenty, including Fifth Column, Peaches and Lesbians On Ecstasy. There’s also a remix of this featuring none other than Boy George, but the original is spikier and trashier.
Pansy Division: Anthem
Few bands announce themselves with such a clear mission statement as the spearheads of ’90s queercore did with their first album, Undressed. Anthem closes the album in style.
Lou Reed: Kill Your Sons
Teenaged Lou Reed was institutionalised by his parents because of his “tendencies”, medicated and given electric shock treatment. That’s called Conversion Therapy these days and is -thankfully- being steadily banned. The pain was clearly still raw years later, even cutting through Reed’s own self-medicating.
Tom Robinson Band: 2468 Motorway
Glad To Be Gay is their classic, but TBR’s biggest success came with this anthemic stomper. Mainstream music fans in suburbs everywhere were belting it out in 1977, blissfully unaware the chorus was based on a marching chant from Gay Liberation protests.
Bec Sandridge: You’re A Fucking Joke
Aussie singer-songwriter Sandridge had a Pentecostal Christian upbringing and attended therapy with her mum after coming out as queer. The happy news is that they have a great relationship now
Schmekel: The Mohel Song
An all trans, Jewish band from the US with a song about foreskins. How many of us even considered that particular dilemma?
Pete Shelley: Homosapien
Pete and his band Buzzcocks gave us the most famous queer punk love song, Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve). He’d intended Homosapien for Buzzcocks, too, but ended up recording it himself in 1981. Miss you, Pete.
Tribe 8: Butch In The Streets
Snapped up by Jello Biafra for his Alternative Tentacles label, this is a track from Tribe 8’s first album, Fist City.
I’m a queer-punk writer from Melbourne, Australia whose stories, poetry and more have appeared in many local and international markets. My debut novel, ‘By the Currawong’s Call’, set in 1890s Australia is available through harpercollins.com.au I also won the Romance category at the 2018 Bisexual Book Awards in New York, I support Richmond F.C. and I like funny shit, animals and railing at the world!
Did you know that we are 100% DIY? We run our own game. No one dictates to us, and no one drives what we can or cannot put on our pages – and this is how we plan to continue!
