Returning the Screw

Weird, I’m going to see The Queers tonight and while going over some old discs I came across an old article I wrote on them for Earshot back in 1998. I thought I would share:

The Queers: Everything’s OK
by Keith Powell

Joe Queer is feeling pretty good these days. His band, The Queers, has a new line-up, a new CD (“Punk Rock Confidential” – that hit the streets on Oct. 6), and they’re on a new label. So before things get too crazy, Queer is taking off to spend a week working on his brother’s fishing boat.

“We’re leaving at 2 a.m. tomorrow morning,” said Queer from his New Hampshire home. “We’re going 200 miles out into the Atlantic ocean.”

A fishing boat job, huh? So I guess the Queers isn’t the money-making machine the kids think it is.

“Nah,” he replied, “We’re not like NOFX or anything. We don’t charge as much at the door. I mean, I don’t really have to work, but it’s good money and it’s something to do besides music.”

Indeed, with all that has been going on with the Queers in the past year, a break before it all starts up again might be worthwhile.

Things began to get eventful when Queer fired long-time bandmates B-Face and Hugh. “We weren’t getting along,” he said. “And it got to the point where I couldn’t stand being there – and it was my fuckin’ band! Kids have given me shit because of it but they only know the Queers from [1993's] ‘Love Songs For the Retarded’ on and they don’t realize how many people have been in the band. It’s always been that way.”

In fact, the history of the Queers reads almost like a who’s who of the ’90s punk rock scene. Members of Screeching Weasel, Squirtgun, and more recently, Jon Cougar Concentration Camp have filled various slots in the band. “There’s always someone who can’t do it, they can’t tour or whatever, so I have to get someone else,” he said.
“If kids have a problem with that then they can go watch B-Face play in the Groovie Ghoulies – but then they weren’t into the Queers to begin with.”

Beyond lineup changes, the Queers left their influential label, Lookout!, for the much smaller Hopeless Records. “I called Lookout! and they didn’t seem all that excited about keeping us,” Queer said. “So I called their bluff and phoned them two days later and left the label. We’re still going to put out a compilation of stuff that we have lying around to fulfill our contract, but Hopeless seem real excited to have us.”

What people don’t realize, said Queer, is that he writes and arranges all the songs himself. Others have contributed in the past 16 years, but the Queers are very much a one-man show. And the band has been nothing if not prolific, releasing an album (or two) every year, putting out countless singles, and making “Rocket To Russia”, a song-by-song re-creation of the classic Ramones album. And throw in countless road trips and tours and you have one of the more popular punk bands playing today.

Despite all that hard work, no one is more surprised about how far the Queers have come than Joe Queer himself.

“I told the other guys that we should be bagging groceries somewhere, not playing in a band getting to see the world,” Queer said.