I discovered Pansy Division when I was in my late teens, had only recently come out of the closet and was experiencing gay culture for the first time. My immediate reaction to nearly all things Gay was utter annoyance: I’m a poor dancer, my clothes don’t match (indeed, not even my socks match on any given day), I hate nearly all parades on principle, feel that Pride is not a virtue but an over-reaching cover-up for Shame, and the sound of repetitive techno beats and vocals makes me want to stab a chop stick in each ear, sit down and bleed, bleed, bleed.

It wasn’t long before I was fed up and came to the realization that being queer didn’t mean one’s life had to revolve around that constructed culture. Along came Pansy Division with a homo aesthetic like none before it (or since, to my knowledge). Their songs were rough, raw and guitar heavy, like your neighbor’s garage band, only their songs weren’t about angry suburban plebian whining or vague innuendo about hetero love. No, the Pansy boys rocked it all for and about the cock.

I don’t mean that the songs were gay rather than straight. I mean that they were so gay that male tsetse flies who swarmed too near the speakers at the Division’s outdoor shows were likely to stop all that flying business and start an insectoid circle jerk. Pansy Divisions songs were and are raunchy and in-your-face. It’s not “I love to make love to my beautiful boyfriend,” so much as:


“You sure know how to please, let me give those buns a squeeze; what fine cakes, what fine batter, any minute now I’m gonna splatter all over your groovy underwear.”

There were other bands at the time that most people, at least most observant people, assumed were gay: Erasure, the Pet Shop Boys and the like, but none of them were officially out and even if they had been, their approach to music was more about the beat, synth and an airy, lilting sort of beauty. Pansy Division wasn’t having any of it. They were out from the get-go and were the exact antithesis of shy about it. Sure, they could have gotten on stage and said “Hey, we’re gay, so please be okay with that!” but instead, they said “We like sucking dick, fucking up the ass and rock. Hang on to your buttplugs, kids, ‘cuz we’re gonna wail.”

Their name is the perfect dichotomy of bubblegum stereotype and badassery: “Pansy,” being the quintessential put-down dolled out to effeminate boys, used as a pun on the phrase “Panzer Division,” a legion of German troops, outfitted with Armored Fighting Vehicles. In short: These guys like it up the butt, but they’re no wimps. This is hot, fast, crunchy, aggressive music, inspired by real-deal punk, 60s pop and the pioneers of outsider rock & roll.

It’s really amazing that Pansy Division found any success at all, unwanted by most rock fans due to all their plethora of big dick songs and raucous choruses about bondage games, and disdained by queers, who were intimidated or turned off by their shrieking guitar riffs and Ginoli’s screaming, throaty-nasal vocals. They were an unlikely story, but to those of us homos who had Incredible Hulks inside instead of Judy Garlands, they were a godsend. I don’t like mincing words and I loved that Pansy Division, unlike their queer peers, were not only out of the closet, but were loud, rude and hilarious about it.

They toured with better-known staples of the industry like Green Day (lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong reportedly threatened homophobic audiences who were rude to the Pansies with cancellation of his band’s set)

One would think that album after album of songs about big cocks, condoms, buttfucking and alienation would get old quickly, but the band kept the material inexplicably funny fresh through five albums: Undressed, Deflowered, Pile Up, Wish I’d Taken Pictures and More Lovin’ From Our Oven.

It’s hard to be anything but impressed that a band of buggers could pump out so many rockin’ tunes with variations on the gay sex theme without becoming a stale novelty act, but that’s precisely what they did, right up to their 1998 release, Absurd Pop Song Romance wherein the band took a new, more adroit approach that kept a peppering of their standard lasciviousness that fans had come to expect, but also incorporated more political issues and anthropological examinations. Their original audience had been comprised of scads of high school teens and now that those teens had grown up, the Pansy boys allowed the music to grow up with them, to ardently sleek results. Absurd Pop Song Romance is a watermark for the maturity of Division as a force in outré rock.

They continued to progress with Total Entertainment!, a collection of funky, winking, grittily fun tunes, many of which became instant classics for yours truly. I’m still agog and appreciative that these lyrics were committed to paper, performed and recorded:

“It takes three people to do it right. You need a guy on your left and a guy on your right. Get a rhythm going, get a rhythm going, yeah! I’m alpine skiing and it ain’t snowing, it ain’t snowing, yeah! You don’t need no winter, you don’t need no cold, just get your hands around two poles, move ‘em up and down in a steady motion. Get you higher than any drink or drug or potion.”

Pansy Division’s latest album is currently in the works, expected to hit shelves later this year, but in the interim, they are being featured in a documentary entitled Pansy Division: Life In A Gay Rock Band and is scheduled to play at the 14th Annual Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, as well as other venues (more info is available at the film’s official site). You can watch a trailer of the film, here:



And here’s a Texas performance of “He Whipped My Ass In Tennis, Then I Fucked His Ass In Bed”:



But on to the free tunes, right? As always, that’s what you want. Here ya go, ya cheap-os:

The band has been kind enough to post dozens of free tracks for you to download. Album tracks as well as live performances and some rare outtakes and b-sides are at your disposal. If that doesn’t whet your queercore whistle enough, there are more from the band’s label, Alternative Tentacles (what a fuck-awesome name, eh?).

You can purchase their albums directly from their label, or from Amazon.

Do it.

Because I told you to.

And because they’ve more than earned your paltry coin, motherfuckers.

I’m eagerly anticipating countless more years of erudite raunch from the reigning fairy kings of rock, and I’m hoping if you’re not already into them, you check them out. While they may be especially loved by myself and my non-pussy queer peers, I’ve found that straight guys tend to get the biggest kick out of their unusual mix of pop, punk, rock and novelty in tandem with refreshingly blatant and clever lyrics. Give them a listen, yo.

M-A