A home for homocore - Brief Article

The ultra-indie record label Mr. Lady keeps the fires burning for queer pop-punk artists including Le Tigre, the Butchies, and drag star Vaginal Davis

"Imagine a world with no Paramount, Sony, Fox, Geffen, or DreamWorks. Mr. Lady Records and Filmworks will destroy those music and film industries and their evil distributing arms as we currently know them," declares singer and performance artist Vaginal Davis. Wishful thinking? Probably, but a renaissance drag queen can dream, can't she?

Davis's band, PME--Pedro, Muriel, and Esther--is featured on the latest musical manifesto from Durham, N.C.'s Mr. Lady Records, Calling All Kings and Queens. The disc offers 18 shots of diverse and perverse queer rock, from Indigo Girl Amy Ray to Sleater-Kinney and Le Tigre, from the cracked cabaret of Kiki and Herb to pop punks Crowns on 45. It also features the Butchies, the band formed by Kaia Wilson, Mr. Lady's co-owner and former member of seminal dyke punksters Team Dresch.

Wilson's partner in Mr. Lady and in life is Tammy Rae Carland, an assistant photography professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The couple met in 1994 and married their interests in the joint record label-video distribution company in 1996. "We just wanted to do a project together, but we also decided there was a need for a label like this," says Carland. "See, I got involved in punk in the early '80s in Boston, and it wasn't very queer-friendly or girl-friendly. For all punk's liberal meanderings, it was an entirely homophobic space."

Then came "homocore," a splinter movement from the increasingly rigid underground music scene. Fueled by young gay punk rock bands and fans, homocore became a hotbed of creativity for those who felt alienated from mainstream gay culture. As much a cultural movement as a music scene, it included riot grrrl bands Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Team Dresch as well as the 'zines Homocore, Girl Germs, and Carland's own I [Love] Amy Carter. The scene burned brightly--and was very quickly regarded as passe by a fad-hungry music press. But reports in the late '90s that homocore was dead were greatly exaggerated, Carland says: "We weren't necessarily feeling that anything was over. We were just getting started."

The duo released a solo album from Wilson in early 1997--the first on the Mr. Lady label. "That name came from all experience I had on tour through Italy with Team Dresch and Bikini Kill," Wilson reports. "I saw a store called Mr. Baby, and it freaked me out. Then everyone started calling me Mr. Baby. Then I became Mr. Baby onstage. I had my own theme song and everything. I wore a little eyeliner mustache. From there it changed into Mr. Lady, which just seemed like a good name for a queer label."

Releases from the Butchies, Le Tigre, and the furiously hardcore punk band the Haggard soon followed, as did video art--from Mr. Lady's "Filmworks" division--by artists such as Carland and Sadie Benning. The fiercely independent label keeps the prices low and the artistic output highly personal. It's a simple and revolutionary method of doing business in a profit-obsessed market, a method that suits the trailblazing women and the artists they promote. "Power to the forces behind the Madame Defarge!" adds Vaginal Davis, referring to Mr. Lady but referencing the rabble-rousing Dickens character. "May their knitting needles always stay sharp!"

White also writes for IFILM.com and Glue.

Find links to Web sites for Mr. Lady and the label's artists at www.advocate.com

COPYRIGHT 2001 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group