G. B. Jones is a Canadian artist, filmmaker, musician, and publisher of zines, known for her vast contributions to both queer and punk media. She initially gained recognition for her work in the fanzine J.D.s, which she co founded and co-published with Bruce LaBruce. GB also co founded and performed with the experimental post-punk band Fifth Column who became mothers of feminist punk. She has directed several films, including The Troublemakers, The Yo-Yo Gang, and The Lollipop Generation. And Her artwork continues to be shown worldwide.
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For me, as a punk kid growing up in Southern Ontario in the 90s, GB’s influence loomed large - someone whose work literally changed the world as I knew it.
Kathleen Hanna said: Well if I can ever be of help to draw attention to G.B. Jones’s art-I mean she did so much for me in my twenties in terms of informing my identity as a writer and musician and performer, I really could never repay her. So the more people can learn about her, the happier I am.
Zine Queen Vaginal Davis insists: there wouldn’t be a riot grrl movement without Fifth Column
GB Jones invented the terms Homocore and Queercore in the 80s, kicking off the modern reclamation of the word Queer.
So when GB put out a book earlier this year called Witches, i thought yesssss - here’s my chance to chat with a punk icon.
The Zoom meeting was set, the coven gathered and GB’s laptop chose that night to bite the dust. No problem, we’ll figure it out...
Remember how last week we talked about Killing Joke, and the potential contained within destruction? Here’s great example. GB’s laptop bit the dust, but it just so happened that I was going to be in her home town, Toronto, the following weekend. So GB agreed to meet me in person! The interview you’re about to hear is as old school as it comes. GB and I found a quite corner in her local public library - you’ll hear room sounds, ambient noises as we talk in half whispers that I recorded live with a field recorder balanced on a pile of books.
After we finished recording, we went out for coffee and gabbed more about our lives. GB has offered to play xylophone on a track for my new band. I lamented how impossible it is to find Fifth Column on vinyl, and GB told me that a reissue is in the works, that she and Caroline could come on the pod together next spring as Fifth Column to dive deeper into feminist punk…
So we had a disaster - zoom call fail - but that disaster led to something so much more - GB and I formed a face to face human connection that I know will bear future fruit. This is anti anxiety medication. To know that things going wrong might be making way for something better.
I met up with GB at a public library, and we sat in this third space to talk about rebellion, making connections and building communities before the internet, the intersection of Witch Queer and Punk, self-fulfilling prophecy, adversity and courage.
Listen now, transcript below
Featured Music: Fifth Column, Detox Killer
TRANSCRIPT
GB Jones is a Canadian artist, filmmaker, musician, publisher of zines, known for her vast contributions to both queer and punk media. She initially gained recognition for her work in the Fanzine jds, which she co-founded and co-published with Bruce LaBruce.
GB also co-founded and performed with the experimental post-punk band fifth column, who became mothers of feminist punk. She has directed several films, including The Troublemakers, the Yo-Yo Gang, and the [00:01:00] Lollipop Generation, and her artwork continues to be shown worldwide. For me as a punk kid growing up in Southern Ontario in the nineties, GBS influenced loomed large.
Someone whose work literally changed the world as I knew it. Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill said, well, if I can ever be of help to draw attention to GB Jones' Art, I mean, she did so much for me in my twenties in terms of informing my identity as a writer and musician and performer. I really could never repay her.
So the more people can learn about her, the happier I am. End quote. Zine, queen Vaginal Davis, whom I've written about for the Missing Witches zine insists there wouldn't be a riot girl movement without fifth column. End quote, GB Jones invented the terms homo core and queer core [00:02:00] back in the eighties, kicking off the modern reclamation of the word queer.
So when GB put out a book earlier this year called Witches, I thought, yes, here's my chance to chat with a punk icon. The Zoom meeting was set. The Vern gathered and G B's laptop chose that night to bite the dust. No problem. I told her, we'll figure it out. Well, remember how last week we talked about killing joke?
The potential contained within destruction. Here's a great example, G B's laptop bit the dust, but it just so happened that I was going to be in her hometown, Toronto the following weekend. So GB agreed to meet me in person. The interviewer about to hear is as old school as it comes. GB and I found a quiet corner in her local public library.
You'll hear room [00:03:00] sounds. Ambient noises as we talk in half. Whispers that I recorded live with a field recorder balanced on a pile of books. After we finished recording, we went out for coffee and gabbed more about our lives. GB has offered to play xylophone on a track for my new band. I lamented how impossible it is to find fifth column on vinyl.
And GB told me that a reissue is in the works, that she and Caroline could come on the pod together next spring as fifth column to dive deeper into feminist punk. So we had a disaster zoom call fail, but that disaster led to something so much more. GB and I formed a face-to-face human connection that I know will bear future fruit.
This is anxiety medication. To know that things going wrong might be making way for [00:04:00] something better. Now let's ease our way into this library field recording as we're less than two weeks away from saw Wind with one of fifth columns, spookier Tunes. Detox killer.[00:05:00]
Please welcome to the Missing Ridges. Pantheon, GB Jones. Hi gb, how are you? Hi, thank.
You for having me on this amazing podcast.
I'm so excited to be sitting down with you. It's wild to me. This is like one of those, you know, I've, I've interviewed some legends. I'm proud to say. Um, I don't know if you know Jinx Monsoon?
Yes.
Or, um, Fayette Hauser from the Coquettes.
Yes.
So obviously I have a thing for iconic redheads.
I haven't met either of those. People, but I've definitely heard of them. Yes. Icons of red headedness.
Um, so what do you want our listeners to know about you that they might not already know?
Well, that's such a hard question. [00:06:00] Um, I've tempted to say nothing, but that's not a good answer.
Um, I mean, maybe nothing is. Right answer because I know, I think, I think it was Bruce who said, um, Bruce, LA Bruce who said that you had this notion of like sometimes not showing up is cooler than showing up, you know, being a mystery and being that sort of elusive Sean to is as it was.
So if the answer to the question, what do you want our listeners to know about you is nothing, I think that that's very, very on brand for you.
Yeah, because sometimes I feel like people know too much about other people and it's like, I think I'd rather know less about certain people who are always in the media and always talking and you're just like, oh my God, please.
Like, you know, the president of the United States, please go away. Mm-hmm. Um, so there is something to be said for [00:07:00] not being constantly in the media all the time, I think. Yeah. So yeah, there's some things that you like to keep private and I think, you know, that's, that's valuable in this age of. Like Instagram and like posting every single thing about every part of your life.
It's like, don't these people want anything to be private in their lives? Like don't they wanna have in income intimacy? It's, it's strange to me.
I agree. I am, I'm kind of a very private person and I really don't get that compulsion to put my life Yeah. My, my breakfast or my whatever. My inner, my inner dialogue.
Nobody needs to hear that. Right. So before we like dive into again your legendary, iconic foundational history, um, I don't want to go too far before we talk about witches,
right?
So tell me about this, this book. [00:08:00] How did it come to be? What was the, what was the genesis of the idea?
Well, I started. Uh, drawing, which is in, uh, 2016.
Uh, the first drawing I did was, um, Joan Bennett in Superior.
Mm-hmm.
And I showed it to a gallery owner and he was like, no one wants to see pictures of old women. Ugh. And so instantly I thought,
that's what I'm going to do. That's all I'm going to do.
So that's what I. Spent the next few years doing, just drawing the, I ended up being witches of all different ages from like childhood to old age, but I just wanted to like start drawing these amazing women that I've been admiring for so long who, uh, you know, um, I don't think a vast majority of people.
Were all necessarily familiar with.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, I also lamented the state of art in the kind of pagan [00:09:00] community.
Mm-hmm.
I was really tired of like, say, going on Pinterest or whatever. And every representation of witches are like 21-year-old models in a pointy hat. And I'm just like beautiful
long manicured nails.
Yeah.
Everything perfect. And it's just like, these aren't real people. I, I don't even know if they're real witches. I mean, they could be, but mm-hmm. Not every witch is 21. It looks like a model. Yeah. So I, I just thought there needs to be room and, and also like, not all pagan art has to be like cute elf people with pointy ears and like mm-hmm.
You know, there's a lot of art from that. Uh, like when you think of, um, I'm just trying to think of his name now. A fair Oh
yes.
And his amazing. Work and how that doesn't seem to like resonate in the Pagan community as much as I think it should, because that's like, to [00:10:00] me really incredible, exciting artwork.
Yes. That represents, you know, what our, I imagine I'd like to think of our culture is being
I agree in the Pagan world. I agree completely. You know, there seems to be this like, um, it's gotta look Celtic or it's gotta look folk. Or it's gotta look soft, like you say. And to me, I'm into the punks, I'm into, you know, GB Jones, Genesis P, or Austin's like you talked about.
You know, these are to me, Brian Geen and William s Burrows. These are like the punks of magic. Right. That's what I'm into. Yeah.
Yeah. And like, you know, my friend, uh, Scott, Evan is incredible pagan work and you know, I don't think it's so, um, yeah, it just, the state of pagan art was causing me no end of consternation.
So I thought there's gotta be [00:11:00] some remedy to this. There's gotta be some alternative. And that was part of the reason I did it as well. So those two. Kind of in, and just my general interest in capturing this, this panorama, which is Yeah, a Pantheon. Actually,
I think of it as, yeah, that's how we describe who we feature on the Missing Images podcast as well.
Like we are creating a new side of deities for ourselves out of real people.
Right. You know, deities
are great, but I want to know what real people did. 'cause if GB Jones can do it, then maybe I can do it too. Right? Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Or Maya. Darren or, or you know, choose your, choose your artwork. Maya Darin.
There's another amazing artist. Yeah. Yeah. And the work of like Rosalie Norton and, and Mar Marjorie Cameron and um, Vale Meyers. Like, you just don't see that work in the pagan world. And that's what I think the work that we would be nice to see more of. Mm-hmm. Rather than cute elfs. Nothing against [00:12:00] that because No, we love
cute.
Elves, but they're not the only thing in the world. Exactly. Um, before we move on, since this is a podcast, so it's audio. Hi listeners. Um, can you like, just kind of describe your art style for the people who can't see it right now?
Oh, okay. So this I can consider like punk rock witchcraft. Yes. Uh, basically it's, it's a bit raw.
It's a bit, uh, looser. I, like, I've been, um, trying to explain to people the process and it's very nebulous, so it might, but I, I just sit down with like a, a lot of different portraits of the people I'm drawing and I just kind of sit with them for a while and try to like, I dunno what you call it, get in touch.
Uh. Establish some kind of link. Yeah. Channel
them
kind of, and I kind of wait for them to tell me what to draw, if that makes [00:13:00] any kind of sense. It does to me. Yeah. I just, and it has to be really spontaneous and it has to just like be, I can't think about it. Like I, I don't want to like plan it all out. It has to be a spontaneous kind of,
I don't know what you call it, outburst almost. Mm-hmm.
That's very punk rock too, right? Yeah.
Yeah. It's intuitive. That's what it is. Yes. Yes. It's intuitive and emotional, and a lot of the other work I've done is very controlled and
technical. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm just gonna read a little something, and this was written by Caroline Azar, did I pronounce that right?
Azar. Azar.
And she's the lead singer of fifth. Column. Yes, of course. Um,
I should have said lead singer of fifth column. Carolyn Caroline Azar
and songwriter and organ player.
Um, obviously you two are still good friends and she's, um, she's writing about you here and she wrote her, [00:14:00] her being GB Jones message to a young generation of misfits.
Is that they belong to a timeless tradition of sacred rebellion and to those who came before them, a reminder of their duty to illuminate the path. So I want to know, first of all, can you talk to me as long as possible about this notion of sacred. Rebellion.
Well, you know, I think all the witches in the book, the real witches are, um, have encountered and as far back as we can remember, the history of witches, it's about encountering adversity and yet continuing onward despite that. Rosalie Norton, for instance, she had her. First art exhibition and the police came and, you know, took four of the drawings and declared them obscene.
Mm-hmm. Civil leak. Had her [00:15:00] landlord, um, tell her that if you admit that you are or denounce witchcraft, I'll, I'll let you live in the building, otherwise I'm tearing up your lease. And she ended up having to move to the states, uh, valley Myers. Left France, uh, where she'd been living for a few years, um, to visit someone in Vienna.
She tried to come back from the country and they said, we're not admitting you into the country anymore. You're undesirable.
Undesirable. Yeah.
And so she went to Italy and, but you see it didn't, you have to, uh, not let those kind of. Forces to feed you. And I think that's the rebellion right there. Just existing keeping going, not giving up, not submitting to their authority.
Mm-hmm. And, uh, accepting their condemnation. Does that make sense?
It does. [00:16:00] And then how do we. Make sure that our rebellions are sacred.
Well, yeah.
I don't know if I have an answer for that. To tell you the truth, Amy, I don't know if I can figure that out.
Um, I guess maybe I can give you my answer. Sure. Especially as. It relates to you. I believe that all creativity is connected to spirit and is sacred, but literally all CR acts of creation and creativity are sacred. So for you, art making is that sacred rebellion, right? Yes. Music making, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes, definitely. Uh. It's within the art, within the [00:17:00] process of making the art, within the process of making the music. Caroline, I always used to say like fifth column would get together. We'd be practicing, we'd played like one song like for an hour, and it would become like a trance. Yes. That we would just be enveloped in and you know, this kind of collective spirit would rise out of it and become a whole.
Or do the individual parts because we entered this trance state and like let ourselves succumb to like becoming one almost. Yes. If that makes any sense. It does.
You keep asking, does that make sense? And I'm sitting here like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean, it makes perfect sense to me again, like we're witches, you know, we can, we make magic, right?
We don't wait for magic. Right. We start a band. Yeah. Yeah. Music becomes part of our practice or part of our trance or part of our Germanic journey, or whatever that might be. Yeah, [00:18:00] it's true. And what about this part, um, your duty to illuminate the path? Tell me about your duty to illuminate the path for.
Say younger people?
Well,
if, if, if I go back to like, say, uh, when I was a teenager and I met lots of kids downtown, I was going downtown a lot. I've met a lot of street kids. I felt like
if I could see a, you know, when I developed queer court, for instance, when I could see a way that would make
it possible for people to connect through like the vehicle of a zine or the vehicle of a band. For all these queer kids who didn't have that kind of community. [00:19:00] You know, I felt kind of a responsibility to go ahead and do it. So, um, you know, at the time people were horrified. Uh, you know, Bruce has written in an article about how some of his friends were saying you shouldn't have anything to do with her.
You know,
is it just like misogyny in the gay community? I'm sorry. There was so much mis, I think things were more
like academics. Oh. Who thought he was ruining his career? Got it. And I think like at that time, a lot of people thought, oh my God, they're, they're ruining their careers. Like at that time, this is pre Ellen, pre Joan Jack coming out.
Like there were no public figures except for experimental filmmakers like the Jock Smith. And Warhol and, um,
who else can I think of? Well, you have before said that the, the history of experimental cinema [00:20:00] is a history of queer cinema.
Yes.
Do you wanna elaborate on that a bit? I, so,
I mean, from the very beginning, so many of the filmmakers were queers.
Yeah. Um, James Bowden, um, I'm not gonna remember all the
names right now. That's okay. Greg Rocky, John Waters. We could, those are more recent people, but
obviously James Batten started in the 1940s. Mm-hmm. Kenneth Anger started in the 1940s. Anger. Yes. Yeah. And so, um, there was an amazing experimental film theater in Toronto called the.
The funnel. And we, I, I constantly went every single weekend to see films and I thought, well, it's like queer people can exist in the experimental film world. Why can't they exist in the music world, in the, you know, zine world? It just doesn't make any sense that we would have to pretend and hide and just to be able to have a music career.
And because it didn't make any sense to me, I just went ahead and did [00:21:00] it. Regardless of the consequences. I just kind of didn't care at that point.
Do you feel like that was an act of courage or just you didn't even think about it? You just, this is what I want to do and I'm gonna go,
I more thought that I needed to do it.
Yes. Like in the sense of having a certain responsibility. Once the idea occurred to me, I thought, I kind of have to follow through with this.
There's
no kind of turning back when you realize a potential. I think like I could see the potential in this, this idea like, 'cause there's already been a few zines and I'd already kind of formed a little bit of a network with different kind of anarchists scenes and like other kinds of punk scenes.
And pop people were doing kind of pop culture scenes and um, they touch on gay things, queer things. But, um, when I could see the potential for this kind [00:22:00] of networking to evolve, I just felt like I had to go forward with it. Yeah. And um,
like it was scarier not to do it Yeah. Than to do it. Yeah. And
I think the same thing is true with fifth column.
Like we had this cassette scene and we started like, really, like every time we'd go to a town, we'd play with different bands. We'd always try to play with other, um, bands with women in them. And so it became really interesting to kind of like put out cassette tapes that featured all bands with women.
And it, we began to form these networks of women in different cities in Montreal, in London, Ontario, and just like a SF were in Colorado. And, uh, that made life. When you have that kind of a network, it just makes life so much easier. Mm-hmm. And, uh, it helps, I think it helps, uh, a culture to evolve. [00:23:00]
Mm-hmm.
You know, um, I told you that I'm staying with my sister. I'm here in Toronto. I don't live here, so I'm staying with my sister. And she had been going through old boxes and then pulled out all of these letters. Letters that I had written her and things I had sent her through the post and I, we were talking about what a lost art that is.
But back when you were creating these networks, that was the only, we didn't have the internet. Oh, no. Yeah. So you were putting things in the post. You were. Putting posters on a wall and hoping that somebody would see it. Yeah. Yeah. How, how hard was that? Or did you didn't, we hadn't even conceived of the internet, so it didn't, you know, we didn't know that it could even be easier.
Right.
Um, I wrote. Thousands and thousands of letters I'd be writing every single day. I wrote letters, um, to a huge network of people by the end of jd. Um, you know, all across North America or [00:24:00] in the UK and some other countries, um, Italy,
I can't remember all the
different countries at this point. Um, but yeah, it, it was kind of insane at, at a certain point.
Not, I was, it was kind of overwhelming because I couldn't keep up with the letters that kept coming in. '
cause yeah, people would, all of these letters that you sent out Oh yeah. You would get responses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we would dec young listeners, I'll tell you, we would decorate the envelopes. We would show stuff inside.
It was a real art form.
Yes, it was
correspondence art.
Yes. It really, it was very similar to the correspondence art that had started in the fifties and, you know, people would be sending posters and postcards and doing stamping. I sometimes would do drawings on, um, letters and decorates and lots of different thoughts.
And so it was a [00:25:00] real art form. It's true. Which is kind of lost now in it's kind of sad. I think so too.
I mean, I still love to send stuff through the post, you know? But again, I'm a woman of a certain age, so that, that's what I'm kind of used to. And I don't, I don't want to lose the, I don't get Christmas cards anymore.
Nobody sends Christmas. Any, any cards anymore, but I do. Yeah.
I wanted to last year, but the mail strike was on, so I couldn't,
and now they're having another one. I know. So I might just, I mean, it's like early October now. Maybe I'll send them out now and hope for the best. I wanna talk about, there's this, like, for me anyway, this amazing point of intersection between punk and queer and witch, and I think you sort of exist at that intersection.
Like what have you found there? What have you seen? There. What, what do you think about the sort of overlapping ethos of witch and queer and punk?[00:26:00]
That's a really good question. Thank you. Um, I wrote it myself,
and I haven't. Thought about that before and it's something I, I should think about in my own life, I have not had those different aspects all meet up until they're sort of
compartmentalized. Yeah. Up until this book. Until this book. Yeah.
Yeah. But of course there have been lots of queer people involved in, in the occult world and in witchcraft real life.
Mm-hmm. And why do you think that is? Forever? Yeah. Um. Because it's, uh, more accept. It's not, you know, it's not the, uh, it's outside of the realm of Judeo-Christian, like, um, morality. Yes. Which is not really a morality, but, um, what, what? Dogma. Dogma, thank you. Which makes it [00:27:00] possible to embrace different kinds of, um, living experiences and, uh.
Sexualities gender expressions that just are not accepted in the so-called conventional norms of society. And, um,
yeah, from, I, I, I think so. Like, okay. You know, my friend Scott Levi, he's been working in that area for quite a long time, where he has been able to meld the two together mm-hmm. In a really successful way. And, uh, you know, I'm sure there's other people too that I've know of. It's just me personally, I haven't been able to do that really.
Until now. Until now. Until now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I have been involved in lots of different, uh, kind of pagan enter. Eyes and, and [00:28:00] it's just that the people that followed my work scenes and art weren't, didn't cross over into that world really. So I have to kind of make an effort to make them all meet in one place.
And
what, what does your Pagan practice look like? I mean. I, again, have been following you for many years, so I know about the queer part and I know about the, the punk part, but what I didn't know about was the witch part. Right? So what, what does your practice of magic or witchcraft or paganism look like?
Gee,
do you dance naked under the moon? No,
I don't dance anymore because
Right. I'll
be a, I'll be a rack. Um. You know, I, I've gone through many incarnations of different kinds of practices in my life. Like when I was young, I was, you know, uh, in the church [00:29:00] choir and singing is a great spiritual activity. I think I agree a hundred percent that she kind of transcends whatever ideology is being trying to impose on it.
So that was, um, where I found. Something of value in the church. I didn't find much else of value in the mm-hmm. Church. I mean, although I have to say at the time when I was young, my model was for Christianity were the, um, priests and ministers who were marching with Martin Luther King. Yes. And people involved in the civil rights, um, struggle and protest in Vietnam because I come from like, so ancient far back history, ancient history back in the
19 hundreds.
So at least I have models that weren't, like, that's not to say that pretty soon the world became aware of all the horrors going on in the church and what they're, they'd been responsible for. [00:30:00] Um, but because I was so religious and I was young, the first thing I encountered that kind of, um, helped me break away from that was I became friends with, um, people from the process church when I was young.
And so that's a whole different, um. They have a whole different Pantheon, which is, includes Christianity, but also includes, you could say satanism, but it's actually based in psychology. So it's not a literal representation. Mm-hmm. Like they're not actually satanists. Mm-hmm. It's an archetype. It is an archetype.
Yeah. So it helps, but it helped me move beyond the limited ideas of Christianity. Yes. That I've been born into basically. And then. From there, I think I just, uh, started exploring doing tons of research. 'cause this is, uh, has been an interest of mine for such a long time. I've [00:31:00] been like researching, um, the history of kind of the Celtic people and their religious expressions as.
Limited, uh, the amount of knowledge as is available to us, unfortunately, because there's no written records really, except in the Welsh kind of, um, and so much was destroyed. So much was destroyed by the Christian. Mm-hmm. And, uh, so I know this is say strange to some of your listeners, but I ended up joining, um, the last remaining Satanic grotto.
In, um, Victoria, bc. BC mm-hmm. Uh, that was aligned with the Church of Satan, although I wasn't ever a member of the Church of Satan, and it was a real, see, I've just gone, we'd just gone through the Satanic panic of the nineties. And I was kind of like, you know, I wanna find out what's really going on. So [00:32:00] I thought, I'm, I'm going to like, explore and find out what these and the people I knew that were involved were all just amazing.
We had a group of people that were incredibly diverse. The leader was First Nations, is Scottish. Another woman was Haitian and Scottish, and there were two people that were Eastern European. So they brought that kind of, um, pagan culture into the group. And all we did was research our Pagan backgrounds and like kind of compare notes and talk to each other about that.
So I found it kind of amazing. But then the group folded in
as groups do. Yes, as they do.
And so then I just. Uh, continued my own, um, research and readings. Um, 'cause I didn't, I don't think I ever was aware that there might be covens, like in Toronto or even [00:33:00] Ontario. Mm-hmm. That, uh, were, um, operative. Mm-hmm.
At that time until I heard about your group, that's the first time I've really heard about a group.
I mean, secrets, secrecy by necessity kind of, right? That's true. Yeah. Yeah. And that's another sort of overlap, the queer community is that you, it's not necessarily safe to go out into the street and say, this is who I am, this is what I'm doing.
I was just thinking about that today. That's so true. We have to lead really circumscribed, circumscribed, careful existences because like I said, with Rosalie Norton and Civil Lee and Ally Myers, there's always this kind of, you know, um, backlash against either your sexuality or your religious practices or your spiritual practices that, uh.
Sorry, I [00:34:00] lost my train. We don't believe in trains of thought around here. We're all but bumper cars of thought just bounce off one another. I like that idea. Another, but I was, I was talking to a friend of mine recently who lives in the United States and you know, they're basically planning like the American Inquisition.
I know. And so I was saying to her like, it's never been safe to be a witch. But I think we forgot that for about 20 years. Yeah. And now we're being forced to remember. It's not necessarily safe to be, I mean, insert any word in their anarchist or queer or which or different in any way.
Yeah,
so that has been, again, I'm almost 50, so I have almost 50 years of world perceptions, and it's been terrifying and fascinating to see this new backlash that I thought we were past.
I know, I feel like there was this moment where it seemed. Like, we were just all gonna [00:35:00] love each other and everything was gonna be great. And then, right. No, no, no, no. The pendulum swung. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Do you think it's gonna swing back as far as it swung before
it could?
Mm-hmm.
Um, because they're, wow.
Because right wing projects and fashionist projects are doomed to failure. Their very nature is, you know, an aesthetic of failure. I think.
Please say more. Uh,
you know, I think it's a psychological, it's also a psychological, um,
what's the
right word?
I mean, fascists are people that have a certain psychological makeup that is, uh, [00:36:00] very cynical, very, uh, destructive, very, uh, negative. Mm-hmm. And I think in a way they have a death wish.
Yes. It's a death cult.
Yeah. So that in inevitably it has to end up burning down in floor. Because that's kind of inside themselves.
That's what they want. Yes. It's kind of like the self-loathing needs the destruction to happen and they're just waiting for someone to like take them down. 'cause they can't do it themselves. They're cowardly people. If they had any strength, they'd go to therapy and get help, right? Yeah. Or you know, do some reading if I know what the world's actually like, so.
I do think there's hope always because people like that are, are, failure is, uh, baked into the whole project. Mm-hmm. [00:37:00]
Listeners, fascists are bound to bail. I want it to. Talk about what I believe to be one of you or you and Bruce's, I guess, um, or you and Bruce in fifth column, or you and your gang of troublemakers, one of your greatest acts of magic.
And you've talked about this in interviews, Kathleen Hannah has, um, Bruce, obviously, that y'all just kind of pretended there was this massive rad homo punk scene in Toronto, right? Came this like self-fulfilling prophecy and that to me is like so much the core of magic, like imagine it and watch it manifest.
Yeah. Can you, can you talk about that again, that genesis of pretending willing of. Thing into existence.
Yeah. Um, you know, there was a very small group of people, we mostly worked at the same restaurant, which was called Just [00:38:00] Desserts, jds. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, part of our, our little prank was that we were calling our fans the same initiatives as this restaurant thinking.
Like people will encounter our zine somewhere and then they'll come into the rest and go, oh my God, these people are all pornographers looking at this restaurant. So we put, put, uh, all of our friends that worked at the restaurant on the cover and, uh, created this kind of mystique that like, and there were really like three bands at that time.
There was fifth column, there was a SF, which is Leslie, uh, ma and Tracy Thomas's band in Colorado. And, um, the guy, one of the guys from, um, homo core zine, a de, he had a band called Comrades in Arms. So literally there were three bands at that time. Actually a few more that I didn't know about until we did the tape.
There was the apostles in, uh, the UK and there was Robert Omelet in la [00:39:00] And so, and then all the other people on the tape kind of did special projects just for the tape. But out of those few select people, you know, just by putting them in and including them with. Like other stuff that we dig up on the internet, you know, old pictures of Kenneth Anger movies and like just combining all this stuff.
It did create, uh, because we kind of married our present and. Or hoped for future With the past, it gave a sense of a, a continuation that seemed, kind of made it seem inevitable. Mm-hmm. So it's like Kenneth Anger, Warhol, you know, who else do we have? I'm just trying to think.
I can't re I, it's been so long I can't remember. It's. [00:40:00] But you get the idea. It's like discontinuation from the past that makes the future seem inevitable. Yes. And it's kind of like a working right. Kind of like, we're going to guide you into thinking this way and, oh, sorry. That's okay. And, uh, and, uh, lead you into a present.
That will be more, sorry,
I, that's, yeah. A present that will be more period. Yeah, I all that for sure. Okay. Um, I am sort of, I mean, unsurprisingly, maybe kind of, oh,
no more than the sum of its parts.
There we go.
Go. That's what I need. That's the
idiom we were looking at. Sorry. No, no worries at all. We're, we're two human beings sitting in a corner in a library having this conversation.
We, we, um, [00:41:00] are just experiencing the. This moment and not trying to understand it, I would be perfect. I reject perfection. Okay. A hundred percent. I completely reject it. And um, I think that we would be healthier if we all allowed ourselves to reject perfection. That's true. But I, I am like obsessed with zines and again, in the internet age.
People are still making paper zines, and I think that's fantastic.
Yeah.
Um, what I want you to do is finish this sentence for me. Okay. And whether you want to talk about, quote unquote back then in the olden days of the 19 hundreds or currently in the internet age. Finish the sentence. Zines are potent political tools because.
Oh, that's a good,
because mouse media [00:42:00] and, and, um,
you know, the status quo culture is so, um.
Predominantly exists in a, in visual medium, and the literary world is so ignored at this point that it's almost like a fertile ground. I. For, um,
introduction of whatever subversive and transgressive ideas. Mm-hmm. We want to get out there through the, through the medium of print. Mm-hmm. I think I was talking to somebody the other day and wondering like, are we moving into a, a, a period of time where we're liter post lit? Literary.
Post literary?
Ooh.
Like, are people gonna be able to [00:43:00] read in the future? Like now they talk into their phones. They don't type and I, you know, they're gonna get AI to write all their essays for them when they come to school. Mm-hmm. Because will they be able to write? I, I think that we're, but at the same time, I think we are entering a really exciting period where I have so many.
Friends and acquaintances who have little, um, publishing houses like heretic house, like midnight Mass. I have another friend Dee, who has, um, their own, um, publishing enterprise for science fiction. Um, you know, there's, there's pilot press in the uk, uh, Richard Porter. What amazing queer stuff. Uh, and, um, I, I, I almost see that as being the new, you know, independent record label.
Yes. Of the nineties. Yes. And now it's like the independent publishing [00:44:00] house. Yes. And they're putting on all the new ideas. And all the new, um, artists and writers and I think it's actually really like just to veer away from the past, I think what's happening right now. But that's really exciting. And zine makers as well.
People are still doing zines and journals and I think. That's really kind of where the, um, alternative underground culture is right now in that space.
Yeah. A lot of people talk about how the internet has sort of demolished almost like a, a mainstream idea because we're not all watching the same show at the same time.
We're not all reading the story, the same story at the same time. Do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing?
Because there are some, I mean, there are some benefits to a monoculture, right? Yeah. That we have all of these shared experiences, but [00:45:00] even just saying the term monoculture kind of leaves a bad taste in my mood.
I know, I know. And was there really ever a mono. Culture because a different culture exists in the US and it did in England, and it did in India, then it did in Japan.
So there was never really a monoculture. It was just very specific to different physical locations. Mm-hmm. So that's kind of what's interesting about the internet. It opens up the possibilities to go beyond border. And I think that's part of the thing that people were really excited about the inter internet in, in the early days.
There's a lot of, of, obviously a lot of the speculation and promise of the early, um, people working in the internet have not come to pass. Mm-hmm. Call. And we ended up with something. Kind of much worse. And I think in a lot of ways internet has destroyed, the underground, things can't be underground anymore.
Mm-hmm. [00:46:00] But the only, I think the place that they can be underground is in the literary world. Yes. Because it can't be posted onto the internet. You can't post, well, you could post a whole book, but the people that look at the internet all the time are not gonna read it. Mm-hmm. Right. So I, and, and there's such a beauty and pleasure in having.
A piece of paper in your hands and be able to look at the images and read, not staring at a screen, and you keep it in your home. I mean, the Internet's in your home, but it's not, once you turn it off, it's not there anymore. You can't turn off a book and it just. Fear. And I think, uh, that's, yeah, that's, I think in the literary world and the publishing world, that's where there's so much potential right now.
Um, this is a quote from you that I think is a good follow up. Uh oh. There's a phenomenal. In mainstream media where they can make [00:47:00] a lot of money outta marginalized people, different subcultures. They just kind of suck them up, use them for what they're worth and toss them out and say that trend's finished.
Can you talk about this, this vampirism of, of marginalized people and their work and their culture?
Oh yeah. I mean that's, uh, I feel like. That's been my experience. Yeah. Going through different kinds of, you know, the queer scene was trendy for like, you know, a couple of years and it was on MTV and uh, and then the next trend came along and that, and then, you know, and the grunge scene was popular for a couple of years.
That's gone. And so it's just all about capitalism's. Desperate need for novelty to, you know, [00:48:00] um, convince people, well, here's a new product that you haven't had before that you are really gonna want to buy. And now that you've got it, you need to move on to the next thing that you'll really need to want to buy.
So really it's just a trap. It's a con for, you know, that is inevitable in a consumer culture and you have to, I think as a creator, kind of be aware of that. And I. I mean, you can kind of make use of it in a sense, because you might need to, to make a living, which is totally valid. I think we can't be like, you know, I've been through so many periods like where people were like absolute, like the punk culture, like, you know, never pumpkin often.
Mm-hmm. You know, you can't do this and you can't do that. There's all these rules and, and I just. Totally reject that because in the end people have to make a living and you know, [00:49:00] it's it. It's easy to be a white male. A white cis male who says you are not
in just 15, 15
editor's note. This is the only cut I made to the interview because at this point the loudspeaker announcing that the library was closing came on so loudly that it shook us in our seats, and I didn't want to subject you to that. Needless to say. We lost our train of thought. We ended up in a bumper car.
Let's go back. Where were we?
Wow, that was loud.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think I was just talking about consumer culture.
Yeah. What's new and what's new. Yeah. And then what's garbage and what's next?
The creation of the illusion of novelty. Yeah. I think,
yeah. Yeah. I have to ask, obviously the library's gonna close soon, and I don't want to miss.
Say on this, but I have to talk to you about fifth column. I mean, when I was coming up [00:50:00] again, I was born in 77, so in like, I started high school in like 91, and at that time we had to make girl bands because the boys didn't want us in their bands. We weren't allowed to. I, I have actually heard the phrase more than I care to recall, no caulk, no rock.
Oh my God. Right.
That's, and so I want to know like, it is, it is. But that, that's how I grew up, you know? And so we did make girl bands and we did just like find a girl who played the drums and find a girl who, and, and gather in basements, you know? And I want to know like. Obviously it was a choice to make fifth column, you know, women.
Um, but did you have that, did you not even get rejected by male punks because you were like, we're not interested in playing with you. We want to play together. What was your experience of forming a quote unquote girl band like.
Okay, so I had [00:51:00] been in a band earlier called BUN the Lakers. Mm-hmm. And most of the people in the band were queer.
And it was like, this is the early days of punk queer, you know, there was way more queer people involved in the whole thing. Although it was discreet, it wasn't, people were out, they weren't like hiding in a closet. It's just like, that wasn't necessarily what the content of the music was about. Although in Bun Lakers, it kind of was so.
And so that, and that band broke up and I was looking for another band and my friend, you know, 'cause I really missed playing music. And my friend Jack Brown said, well I know these two women who want to start a band. Do you wanna go over and talk to them? So I did. And they were really exciting and they had amazing ideas.
And um, and so it was just kind of a fortunate circumstance mm-hmm. That I ended up with them. But of course I wouldn't have joined unless I [00:52:00] believed in what they were doing. And you know, they were both feminists and that was an integral part of like what the whole approach to the band would be. And so I think.
And with bun, the Lakers, it was a very conceptual band. Like our ideas were like, we're going to change the idea of what a band is supposed to be. So when I started playing with that band, I was actually doing all the visuals. I was taking pictures, and I wasn't playing any instruments at first. And our idea a band was.
That you could take pictures and be a member of the band. So I think at that time, everyone was really considering like, what is a band? And does it have to be this? Does it have to be that? So I, I think because the two women I went to meet had a more conceptual idea of like, we wanna have a feminist band, we want to be all women, we want to talk about these kind of things, topics that are relevant to our experiences.
That's kind of. [00:53:00] If I, I, I don't think I would've tried to join a band with just men because they didn't have any kind of conceptual basis. They was like, we just wanna rock, or we're punks. It's like that wasn't really of any interest.
No. To me, if it's not conceptual art, it's, to me, it's like it's just decoration.
Yeah. Or if it doesn't have any purpose. Like fifth column had a very strong idea of our purpose was to like network with other women to like try to create a scene where women were welcome and we knew that we wouldn't be included in the larger scene. Because as you're saying, they would just weren't interested.
No cop nor rock. Right? Or they looked at us and said, well, they're just trying to get boyfriends
because they didn't know us. Well, listen, you can't see my eyes rolling, but trust me.
You know, so we were subject to that kind of, you know, dismissal constantly. Mm-hmm. In those days. But that didn't really [00:54:00] mean that much to us because we were more intent on forming our own scene.
Yes. That would be like, you know, a place for us to, to live and work in. And, uh, it was like surrounded with like other feminist. Women with queer people, with gender variant people and like just like a whole network of people that was life sustaining for us.
Always. My final question,
very much like a cove.
Yes, yes. Very much like a cove.
I think a girl band is a coven, whether they self-identify that way or not. Yes. So my final question before we get kicked outta here are all women bitches.
Um, no, but it's a kind of a,
I think what we were trying to do with that song was like, throw it back in their face. Absolutely. And I think [00:55:00] a lot of guys, when they heard that were like. Oh my God. Like they've said that.
Mm-hmm.
And we wanted to kind of confront them with the knowledge that we know what you're saying about us. Yes.
Right. That's what it was. Yeah.
And you were instructed not to play the song when you played live on much music. Which listeners is like the Toronto MTV, Canadian MTV. Right. Um, but you played it anyway. Yeah. And then you were never on much music ever again. No. Any regrets?
Uh, no. Yeah, I don't think so.
I don't think so either,
because, uh, censorship doesn't really help anyone.
Mm-hmm. Censorship doesn't help anyone.
No.
Any parting words?
It doesn't help the people it's supposed to protect.
Yes. Yes. Censorship doesn't help the people. It's supposed to protect that. That's the end of that sentence, for sure. Anything else you want our listeners to know? Other, other than. Go out right now and [00:56:00] buy witches by GB Jones, presented by Heretic House and midnight mass.
What are your closing words to the missing witches? Calvin, we're closing at 10 minutes.
Oh, thank you. Um, oh my God. Now I have to think of,
now you have to think of something so brilliant. I know.
Exactly. Uh. Support your local coven.
Yes. Good. Perfect. Bless fucking me. Thank you so much for sitting down your feet.
Oh, you're welcome. Thank you so much for
having me on the show. I have to say like we're face to face and you're so beautiful. It's distracting. So sorry if I got distracted by your, let's go get some coffee or whatever you want. Drink.[00:57:00]
If you wanna support the Missing Witches project, join the Cove and come hang out with us. Or by our books, new Moon Magic and Missing Witches, and our deck of Oracles The Missing Witches Deck of Oracles. Find everything you need to know@missingwitches.com.
