The long running pop-punk institution that is The Queers recently released one of the best back to basics, warts and all records of recent memory with “Back To The Basement” (Asian Man). Joe Queer recently talked to Dying Scene about the record, his thoughts on punk integrity and why it is important to support small scenes over larger festivals and tours.
To read the interview click here.
The Queers played a sugar-charged set of punk “hits” that got a psyched Monday night tour stop crowd loose as a goose, having a blast at The Basement in Kingston, NY. It was a very fun night that embodied what punk is all about. North East regional openers Honah Lee and The Hi-Five Revival provided support for The Queers and their great Wyoming based tour pals The Front (a seriously high energy, female-fronted group!). The show saw Joe and the boys fire through a rowdy Queers set that included “Back To The Basement” (which he jokingly said was “about this place!”), a potent cover of Black Flag’s “White Minority” and the classic “Ursula Finally Has Tits” – plus many other jet fast pop blasts. Like the art of Charles Burns, the Queers are always good for poking fun at the underbelly of society while staying relevant; gritty and real but with a great sense of humor.
After the sweaty show Joe Queer took some time to shoot the shit with me outside the venue.
Morgan Y. Evans (that’s me!): You still take out good bands and write honest songs and your shows stay real. You’re a great pop band. I think of a great “pop” band as your band or the Dickies. The songs are these nuggets of pure, distilled awesomeness. It’s honoring what catchy songwriting can be. I hear Nirvana on classic rock radio now and it trips me out. That’s fine, ‘cuz the music is older now, but…I look at popular music today and I wonder what are these kids today gonna have that sticks around twenty years from now?
Joe Queer: Right. Music is so throwaway now and it doesn’t have the heart and soul that the punk bands used to. A lot of bands do it to try and make a career out of it now. They try to make money off it and put money in front of their morals. They start fuckin’ up. It’s really not sincere like in the old days. Bands just did it. If you toured you’d lose money, but they lived it. Social D in the old days, Op Ivy, Angry Samoans, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Green Day, Screeching Weasel. They did it ‘cuz they had to. Nowadays you have bands with no talent like Good Charlotte who don’t even write their own songs. I knew the landscape was changing when the Warped Tour got big. I saw Good Charlotte get big and I thought, “These guys suck.” Then I knew we’d lost a lot of integrity in the scene.
MYE: You just reminded me of way back when the Bosstones played Lollapalooza and it was the same year as the Jesus Lizard. They sound completely different. The trombonist of the Bosstones came out and jammed with the Jesus Lizard on “The Associate”. People thought it was crazy they’d perform together because they were so different. “They aren’t the same genre!” This was mid-90’s and it’s only gotten worse since then. Maybe it’s because they respect each other’s work ethic, people?!
JQ: I grew up in New Hampshire in a small place like this. Time was you saw someone in a leather jacket and you pulled over and asked them if they were goin’ to the show. “You goin’ to Ramones? You goin’ to GG?”. Whatever, it wasn’t all factions. The greaser rock thing. The fuckin’ Ska thing. The fuckin’ Irish thing. The fuckin’ Cro-Mags no neck NYHC thing.
MYE: (laughing)
JQ: You know what I mean? It was all one thing. Then it splintered off. A lot of bands now pretend to be punks or political but the bottom line is they want to make money. It’s fun to make money and we do pretty good, but …you let the cards fall where they may. We never put money in front of our morals. That’s why we never ended up touring with Social D or NOFX or Bad Religion. I felt like too much of a sell-out! (laughing) I grew up on Black Flag and the DK’s and Flipper! I was that person who had their mouth open goin’ “Fuckin’ A! That was great!”. So I can’t do that Warped tour type stuff. I feel like a whore, like I’m trying to “make it in the Biz”. We try not to do that ‘cuz we just don’t want to. When you grow up on good bands and got to see them, a lot of kids nowadays got to only hear about them. Blondie. Ramones…we got to open for the Ramones. The Warped Tour people think they are punk but to me it’s what punk started against. Big stage, rock star bullshit, singers acting like they are in a metal band and taking themselves way too seriously. The Warped Tour reminds me of the jocks I hated in school. So we’d make more money? fuck it. I ain’t gonna whore out my pimply ass to try and sell more records to an audience I don’t like. I’d rather play in Kingston on a Monday night to forty kids. To me that’s way, way more punk than Warped tour! That’s where it’s at!
MYE: Yeah, man. We had a great time tonight!
JQ: We’re from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We’d have Swingin Utters come through on a Tuesday for 50 people. We’d be like,“Fuck, man. Let’s go! Support the scene.”
MYE: Tonight’s event was very cool because it was great to see people out and excited on a Monday. People are such wimps! It’s a great show! Who cares what day of the week it is! But it was still a good turnout.
JQ: Yeah, Monday’s are tough. Everybody’s got shit to do. In some ways the punk scene is pretty vibrant with underground bands. I have a studio and usually work with underground bands. That’s where the bands have such a feel for music! They wanna do it. They aren’t like these gay emo bands who wanna be like the next Fall Out Boy or something. It seems so phony. Time was bands had immediacy and they were livin’ it, baby!
MYE: Take it or leave it. It’s not hiding it with a press release.
JQ: We toured with some NY Dolls wanna be bands.
MYE: I love Sylvain, man.
JQ: No, no, no…don’t get me wrong. The REAL Dolls are great! But these bands nowadays…they worry about what they look like first and they aren’t worried about the songs. The songs are the most important but to them they are way down here. They wanna walk around and look like they are on dope. Take it from me, a real junkie…if you are on drugs you are trying to hide it! You ain’t running around trying to act cool if you’re on junk ‘cuz it ain’t cool.
MYE: What do you feel for the kids who go along with their peers? They might not be so fake but it is all that is around them? This insincere mall punk with no bearings?
JQ: It’s a sign of the times, man. You’re right. I think a lot of these kids need to dig deeper than the second Green Day album. Do your homework. Don’t get into Ramones and CBGB’s because it is a clothing line! Find out what it was about. When you grow up on a Black Flag, you don’t buy into the bullshit. Bands now start believing their own bullshit. Maybe some of them believe their shtick but mostly it’s crap. Don’t tell me who to vote for. We’ve all got a brain. Punk taught me how to think for myself. It’s so conceited. Kids wanna go to shows to jump around and get laid. It’s so un-genuine. You’ve got Screeching Weasel or Mr. T Experience or Green Day or the Bosstones…we knew them back in the day. They were gonna do the same things that got them famous whether they got famous or not. Out of all those pop punk bands like Blink and Sum 41 down to Fall Out Boy…Green Day was the one great one. I think they deserved it. Same with Seattle. Nirvana was the great one. Mudhoney too, actually.
MYE: Yeah, Mudhoney fuckin’ rules. I’m glad you said that. So I wanted to ask you about the new record. Our venue is called The Basement so we were advertising “Back To The Basement…for the 1st time”! Since this is the first time you played here it was apropos.
JQ: Well, me and Dave were thinking of the early days of punk and how we’d record real fast because we didn’t have any money. The whole punk scene has been hijacked by engineers who want to make everything radio friendly. Everything is perfect. It’s the standards you’d see for Shakira. We don’t care if the take speeds up or guitar tuning sours as long as it gets the energy and is a cool take. That’s what I go for. I try not to do those radio friendly things. Black Flag and Flipper would hit bad notes. Nobody cares! So on the new album we laughed our asses off. ‘Psychedelic Mindfuck’ speeds up. It’s fun and aggressive. We slammed it out. I like it. It’s not the pop punk thing but we can do that again later. I am really happy with this record.
MYE: It’s one of my favorite records you’ve done. Can I ask you about why you chose the Front to bring out as a replacement when Banner Pilot dropped off the tour?
JQ: They’re friends. Our now ex-booking agent books a lot of bands and would put people we don’t know on our tours. It kind of uses us as a stepping-stone, it seems to us. We didn’t even know those guys, then they dropped off…thank God. What we’ve always done for years is try and take out lesser-known bands. The Front never gets to go out much so I immediately got them. We’ve taken out the Nobodies and The Independents back in the day. There are so many great bands flying under the radar. It’s all about that DIY spirit. That’s how I grew up with Screeching Weasel and Rancid. That’s how I learned to tour. The Front are from Casper, Wyoming and always feed you! They’re a great, great band.
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Live pics by C3 Photography (Catharina Christiana)