The San Francisco queercore band, whose debut album was released 30 years ago, even convinced another LGBTQ+ rock pioneer, Rob Halford, to come out.
When singer/guitarist Jon Ginoli and bassist Chris Freeman of pioneering San Francisco queercore band Pansy Division burst onto the scene with their debut album, Undressed, in 1993, there was absolutely nothing else like them. One of the very first openly gay rock bands, they formed in 1991 right in the middle of the AIDS crisis, and almost literally laughed in the face of tragedy with their sophomoric but ultimately unifying and healing humor. Their NSFW songs — imagine, say, a gay Blink-182 —over the years have included “Bill & Ted's Homosexual Adventure,” “Touch My Joe Camel,” “The C***sucker Club,” “That’s So Gay” “Dick of Death,” “Blame the Bible,” and a riotous cover of Prince’s “Jack U Off” and Weird Al-style Nirvana spoof brilliantly titled “Smells Like Queer Spirit.”Smells like queer spirit: How '90s punks Pansy Division blazed a trail as one of rock's first openly gay bands
"We loved rock music before we even realized we were gay," says frontman Jon Ginoli. "It seemed like there were a lot of people waiting for something like us to happen."
