G.B. Jones Interviewed in A Grrrl’s Two Sound Cents

June 30, 2022

A Conversation with G.B. Jones: The Foremother of Queercore & Riot Grrrl

By Isabel Corp

The Queercore movement did not originate in San Francisco, or in Oregon, but in a small apartment at Queen and Parliament in Toronto. In 1985, G.B. Jones and Bruce LaBruce created a queer punk zine called J.D.s, which stood for Juvenile Delinquents, James Dean, and J.D. Salinger. Fusing B-movie aesthetics with bootlicking fetishes and cheeky polemics, J.D.s was known for depicting a homo punk paradise where punk rock and queerness were not mutually exclusive, inspiring future queercore zines like S.C.A.B. (Society for the Annihilation of Breeders) and Fanorama, among others.

That same year, G.B. Jones’s all-female post-punk band Fifth Column released their debut LP, To Sir with Hate, which was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize and became so influential that it spawned entire movements, Queercore punk and Riot Grrrl among them. Kathleen Hanna considers herself one of Fifth Column’s most ardent champions, and fellow queercore pioneer Vaginal Davis called them “sirens, [ready to] call you out and destroy your ship.”

According to political science scholars Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz, “fifth columns” are groups known as “domestic actors who work to undermine the national interest, in cooperation with external rivals of the state.” And when we consider the fact that queer people have always been (and still are) treated as second-class citizens or viewed as “enemies of the state” by our oppressors, the band couldn’t have picked a more fitting name. Fifth Column’s raison d’être was to undermine the status quo at all costs.

This radical ethos has always been at the core of G.B. Jones’s work. As a unit, Fifth Column were brash and uncompromising to a point where punk communities, the music industry at large, and even fellow queer people feared them. In addition to music, Jones has used every artistic medium she could get her hands on to fight against the “assimilationist and bourgeoisie” gay mainstream, including Super 8 films, zines, and visual artwork like Tom Girls, a feminist lesbian take on Tom of Finland. She also starred in the 1991 feature film, No Skin off My Ass, which was reported to be Kurt Cobain’s favorite movie.

A Grrrl’s Two Sound Cents caught up with G.B. Jones to discuss her legacy in the art world, her most recent creative endeavors, and her reflections on the queercore pantheon and why it’s still relevant today.

How did you first get into playing music, and what kind of records did you have in heavy rotation?

I was always a music fan from a young age and was in the choir at school performing Canadian folk songs. I never had enough money to buy records when I was a little kid, but luckily my Uncle was very involved in the folk music community and was an A&R person, so he got lots of free records from the label which he’d bestow on us, so I listened to folk musicians like Peter, Paul, & Mary singing songs like “If I Had A Hammer” by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie, “500 Miles” by Hedy West, and all the protest songs of that time. That was really the foundation of my musical education. It all added up to the impression I had of a changing world that was out there somewhere if only I could find it. I got as far as my cousins’ basement which was the neighbourhood teen hangout, and we would watch the teen dance shows, practice our moves and read Teen Beat and 16 Magazine, which is where I first heard about The Cowsills, who I adored. At school I would hide in the library listening to all the electronic music LPs, like Switched On Bach and then go home and watch H.R. Pufnstuf and The Partridge Family. By the time I was 14 I finally had enough money to buy records and got the first Velvet Underground and Nico album that I listened to everyday, but every weekend I’d be at clubs featuring Soul music like Stevie Wonder, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes with Teddy Pendergrass, The Pointer Sisters, The Temptations, First Choice, The Four Tops, The Three Degrees, Creative Source, and Northern Soul like Babe Ruth from the UK, so that was an entirely new musical education.

In hindsight, it’s not suprising that all my friends were always hanging out listening to albums for hours when they weren’t at concerts or record shops. I started hanging out at the record store where my friend Wendy King worked. She was in a band with How’rd Pope and Peter Morgan called Bunny and the Lakers, and for one year we were all inseparable and I ended up becoming a Laker too. This was Peter’s project and it was an amalgamation of synth punk, lounge music, musique concrete and experimental sounds. Bunny and the Lakers released one album, Numbers, and played one “’live” show, which was really performance art with our taped songs. We’d hang out together, take polaroids, and listen to all the more experimental synth-based bands of the period. With Fifth Column, we would have little record parties after every practice, with everyone bringing the latest single, album or 8 track they’d discovered and we’d hang out together listening, reading the music press and discussing it all, everything from Throbbing Gristle to The Slits, to Nico, The Au Pairs, Lydia Lunch, to Henry Cow. Then, when the band were all living together, Caroline and I had soundtracks on the record player playing everyday. With Opera Arcana, our music of choice was the much maligned Adult Contemporary genre.

What was the creative process like (writing songs, recording, mastering, performing) for Fifth Column?

We were very fortunate to live in the city at a time when you could rent a house, a loft, a storefront, even a garage and be able to spend a lot of time writing and practising. That’s how we were able to develop our musical concepts in depth and with complexity. Sadly, these days it’s impossible to do that in a large city unless you have very rich parents, which is why I’m thinking that new musical ideas are going to be coming from small towns and rural areas in the future.

Nowadays musicians have access to recording equipment via their computers, so almost all music you hear is electronic. We played instruments, so we had to go to a studio. Recording and producing is a constant ongoing learning process; for Fifth Column, it was often frustrating because our musical ideas were outside the parameters of what was conventional at that time, and it was difficult to communicate them to sound people and producers. We had to acquire technical knowledge, understand the equipment and the studio process. I think the most exciting aspect were the discoveries in the studio that we couldn’t do live but that we could use to bring out hidden dimensions in our songs; overdubbing, unusual instruments, bringing in other musicians, sound effects, backwards vocals, subliminal messages, we tried so many different ideas and effects.

As far as performing, personally I have had a love/hate relationship to it, but no one is asking me to get up on a stage so there’s no need to worry about it!

What was the most fun part of getting to write and perform music?

There were so many aspects that encouraged us to keep going. Touring was hard work but to be able to meet so many people, play with fantastic musicians, and connect with different scenes across Canada and the USA was incredible and, I think, vital and energizing, it gave us the impetus to continue. Playing in clubs, bars, the theatres, basements, storefronts, and all-ages events across two countries while introducing audiences to really radical ideas and concepts was sometimes challenging – I mean, yes, fights broke out at different events, heckling and yelling was an on-going challenge, we were threatened, sneered at, and spit on but we knew we had to do it. There needed to be feminist queer women on stage playing music that people could see and hear; the most exciting thing for me was to watch the ripple effects of our playing, recording and touring slowly infiltrate the culture and see a new community emerge as a result.

[…]

To view the full interview visit A Grrrl’s Two Sound Cents

For more information about G.B. Jones please contact the gallery:

info@coopercolegallery.com

+1.416.531.8000

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement	1 year	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	1 year	This cookies is set by GDPR Cookie Consent WordPress Plugin. The cookie is used to remember the user consent for the cookies under the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	1 year	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	1 year	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	2 years	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gid	1 day	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.

Cookie	Duration	Description
IDE	1 year 24 days	Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
test_cookie	15 minutes	This cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	5 months 27 days	This cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website.

Cookie	Duration	Description
CONSENT	16 years 9 months 23 days 2 hours	No description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	1 year	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	1 year	No description
_gat_gtag_UA_135534658_1	1 minute	No description