Review + Photos: Pansy Division unites the crowd at Bottom of the Hill
Pansy Division (photo: Patric Carver) It’s been said that the goal of punk rock is to dissolve the barrier between stage and audience. On Friday, November 11, three bands came together at Bottom of the Hill to annihilate that border, leaving a frenzied gathering in the demolition’s wake. Openers The Pathogens tore into a long set of short, infectious songs that quickly resulted in a pit of slam-dancing, pogoing punks from a group of disenchanted-seeming young people milling about the bar. The antithesis of a Young Republicans meeting, the theme of the night seemed to be politics as personal. Flipping [...]
Get to know your local punk history with Frank Portman and more on Saturday
This Saturday night, get a healthy dose of punk history at the Night Light with Frank Portman and a host of other local punk legends. Portman will be reading excerpts from his new novel, King Dork Approximately, as well as performing new and classic Mr. T Experience songs, some of which we can assume is King Dork Revisited's theme song). First of all, I don't know of anyone who's written a soundtrack to their own novel, and I definitely don't know of anyone combing the two for a show Saturday night. Joining Portman will be Blag Dahlia of The Dwarves, [...]
Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band
As someone who found indie music through Bay Area punk rock, I'll always have a special place in my heart for the old Lookout bands like Pansy Division. The San Francisco queercore pioneers were the first all openly-gay rock band and wrote some uber-catchy, fun, and often funny, pop-punk over five albums between 1993 and 2003. Friday night at 8pm, ATA screens Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band, a documentary about the band's influential career. As the film's description says: Using original and archive footage and covering over fifteen years as a group, Pansy Division: Life in a [...]