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A home for homocore.


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 Vaginal Davis (b. February 20, 1969) is a drag queen, performance artist, painter, independent curator, composer, and writer. Davis's name is an homage to the radical black feminist Angela Davis.  

"Imagine a world with no Paramount, Sony, Fox, Geffen, or DreamWorks. Mr. Lady Records Mr. Lady Records (or Mr. Lady Records and Video) was a San Francisco based lesbian-feminist independent record label and video art distributor, which became defunct in 2004.  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 wishful thinking Psychology Dereitic thought that a thing or event should have a specified outcome ? Probably, but a renaissance drag queen drag queen Female impersonator, gynemimetic Sexology A ♂ with ♀ affect–often 'overplayed'; a ♂ homosexual and ♀ wannabe, with ♂ genitalia; DQs may take hormones to ↑ breasts, and thus are hormonally, but not surgically  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 Amy Elizabeth Ray (born April 12, 1964 in Decatur, Georgia, U.S.)[1], is a singer-songwriter and member of the Indigo Girls. Ray grew up in Decatur, and went on to begin college at Vanderbilt University.  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 Team Dresch is a queercore band who performed and recorded in the 1990s and made a significant impression on that movement, as well as on the independent music scene. In the 2000s the band reformed and continue to perform. .

Wilson's partner in Mr. Lady and in life is Tammy Rae Carland, an assistant photography professor at the University of North Carolina North Carolina, state in the SE United States. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean (E), South Carolina and Georgia (S), Tennessee (W), and Virginia (N). Facts and Figures


Area, 52,586 sq mi (136,198 sq km). Pop.
, 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 hotbed, low, glass-covered frame structure for starting tender plants. It differs from a cold frame only in that the soil is heated—either artificially as by underground electric wiring or steampipes, or naturally with partially fermented stable manure, which  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 pas·sé  
adj.
1. No longer current or in fashion; out-of-date.

2. Past the prime; faded or aged.



[French, past participle of passer, to pass, from Old French; see
 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 trail·blaz·ing  
adj.
Suggestive of one that blazes a trail; setting out in a promising new direction; pioneering or innovative: trailblazing research; a trailblazing new technique. 
 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.
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2001, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Article Details
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Author:White, Dave
Publication:The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)
Article Type:Brief Article
Geographic Code:1USA
Date:Jun 19, 2001
Words:585
Previous Article:The Wild Man.
Next Article:Let me hear an amen.
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