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Guitar Survivor
Atlantan Kristen Hall’s
music career is on the way up
her in Delaware, however, she was excited to talk about her steadily climbing career. Her current
Windham Hill recording, “Fact & Fiction,” came out in June of this year, and she goes back into
the recording studio in December to make another recording with Windham Hill.
Hall has been performing in Atlanta clubs for four years. Her first recording, “Real Life
Stuff,” was done independently with the help of friends Dede Vogt and Emily Saliers.
“It was recorded in a friend’s living room,” she recalls. Though she intended the recording to
simply sell enough to help pay for her first CD, it did better than planned. “It sold so many that we
just turned it into a CD and left it alone,” she says. “Fact & Fiction” was originally recorded on
Amy Ray’s label, Daemon Records, a year before the Windham Hill recording came out.
Before starting her music career, Hall’s job experiences were less successful. For about three
years, she worked as a photographer for the Metropolitan Gayzette, an early gay and lesbian
publication in Atlanta.
“I was 18 years old,” she remembers. “I was still in my wearing-dresses stage of my life. All
the guys there thought it was a scream that this 18-year-old girl in a dress wanted to work at their
magazine.”
CONTINUES^ 0 X PAGE 28
If you haven’t seen
Kristen Hall on the local
music calendar recently, it’s
because she’s been out of
town, touring the East Coast.
After catching up with
about announcing who they arc. Their music has been described
as “pop-punk.” Ginoli lists influences that range from the Ramoncs
and the Buzzcocks to The Fall and early Dylan.
Ginoli is joined by Chris Freeman on bass and back-up
vocals and David Ward, the “bisexual drummer.” Their debut
album is “Undressed," and was released in spring 1993. Across
the album cover lies a beautiful young naked boy, and inside
notes include instructions on how to put on a condom. They also
have three 45s out: “Smells Like Queer Spirit,” “Touch My Joe
Camel,” about the subliminal effects of cigarette advertising, and
“Bill and Ted’s Homosexual Adventure.” (The latter tunc is the
title track of a video that will be showing during the Atlanta Gay
and Lesbian Film Festival, Nov. 12-21).
Though their lyrics arc more sexually explicit than their song
titles, the sex comes with a sense of humor, as in “Bunnies”: / got
the carrot, you got the sticklYou start to nibble, I start to Held And
we get our bodies all hot and sweaty and runny/Then we fuck like
bunnies.
Bom in Peoria, Ill., Ginoli “managed to escape.” )Vhilc
living in Champaign, Ill., he was a member of a band called The
Outnumbered. He moved to Los Angeles, but “again managed to
escape.” Settling in San Francisco, he found the perfect place to
start the band he always wanted to hear.
After their debut at a Queer Nation benefit in San Francisco,
Pansy Division has played at San Francisco’s Lesbian/Gay Pride
Day two years running. They also played at the 1993 March on
Washington. Currently the band is doing a nationwide three-
week tour that will bring them all the way across to the East
Coast and back home to San Francisco.
Catch them while they’re in Atlanta, but don’t bring Mom.
DEBBIE FRAKER
Judy Garland
they ain’t
San Francisco’s Pansy Division
describes itself as a “pro-sex, pro-safe
sex, all-queer rock ’n roll band”
Looking for new music from a queer perspective? Or maybe
you’re looking for something to heat you up as the nights turn
chilly? You’re in for a treat. Pansy Division is coming to Atlanta
to play at the Dark Horse Tavern on Oct. 20.
Pansy Division, based in San Francisco, calls itself a “pro
sex, pro-safe sex, all-queer rock ‘n roll band,” and gay sex is
what they arc about. Lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Jon
Ginoli founded the band in 1991, inspired by hearing Two Nice
Girls perform “The Queer Song.” He wondered “why aren’t
guys doing stuff like this.” So he did. The band is an attempt to
break out of the stereotype that all gay music is show tunes and
disco.
Barry Walters, in The Advocate, says, “Pansy Division is
designed to horrify your parents, alienate Judy Garland fans,
bore disco fans and unite fag rockers.”
With songs like “Fern in a Black Leather Jacket,” “The
Cocksucker Club,” “Surrender Your Clothing,” “Boyfriend
Wanted” and “Homo Christmas,” Pansy Division pulls no punches
KUT11 LK1TMAN