Rocking in the queer world

Ballad of a benefit CD, ‘Milkshake’

by Mark Mardon.

Somewhere in the middle of being interviewed, while kicking back on a couch in his drummer’s North Beach living room, drinking beer, laughing, and feeling good, Moon trent (sic), lead singer of the rock band Brown-Star and co-owner of timmi-kat ReCoRDS, drops a bombshell.

Brown-Star, with Moon trent (right) photo by: Marc Geller

It doesn’t seem like one at first, the way trent slips the news in casually, as though it’s just another of the countless crazy things that have happened to him since diving into the music biz nine years ago while attending Modesto Junior College. It’s as if every day a record distributor goes belly up, unable to pay its debts and leaving the producer of an indie album high and dry. No doubt it happens all the time; the recording industry is brutal. But here’s a producer, trent, to whom it’s actually happening, and he’s almost giggling. It’s like he’s shell-shocked. The way trent describes it, Cargo Records America - the outfit in Chicago he picked to distribute 500 copies of Milkshake, a compilation CD he and his lover and business partner, David Cole, produced to benefit queer studies programs at San Francisco’s Harvey Milk Institute - is poised to declare bankruptcy. Having already shipped Milkshake to CD outlets nationwide, Cargo likely will close shop without returning timmi-kat a plug nickel. “We put it in 15 stores ourselves,” says trent of the remaining 500 Milkshake CDs (a thousand total were produced), “but it’s very difficult doing it that way.” Many copies also sold via the Internet, from Websites maintained by Brown-Star and another band, Red House Painters, booth of which have single tracks on the album. With Milkshake costing timmi-kat about $3,000 to produce and publicize, then half the potential proceeds apparently going down the drain, trent holds little hope of being able to donate much, if anything, to the Harvey Milk Institute, which is the album’s ostensible reason for existing.

Goals of Milk

Milkshake grew directly out of trent and Cole’s respect for the institution Jonathan Katz and a host of volunteers, plus a dedicated staff of one (the irrepressible Kevin Schaub), have been building since 1994. The album’s liner notes include a summary of the Harvey Milk Institute’s mission, which is to offer community education “to fulfill goals of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk [who] through tireless coalition building, campaigning, and good humor...successfully integrated people and politics across diverse boundaries to educate, empower, and defeat bigotry.” That noble cause, plus trent’s outgoing personality and the partners’ aggressiveness in finding recording artists talented enough to help fledgling timmi-kat ReCoRDS sprout wings and take off, led a slew of prominent local, national, and international recording artists to donate tracks for the album. The result is a boon for those into good old-fashioned rock’n’roll with a queer edge, as distinct from “queercore,” which is rock by and about queers. In all, 15 bands are featured on Milkshake, most of them local and relatively unknown, but some of national and international stature (“It was just dumb luck getting Chumbawamba before they got big,” beams trent of the band that headlined this year’s San Francisco Gay Pride Celebration at Civic Center). Only a few of them broadly advertise their queerness, such as local heroes Pansy Division, British wonders Chumbawamba, dyke folkster Phranc, and glamsters Blue Period. Even those bands with strong queer followings, including Blue Period and trent’s own Brown-Star, elude clear definitions, comprised as they are of gay, bi, transgender, and straight musicians in various combinations. Of course, being in a band named Brown-Star, named for a certain puckering portion of the human anatomy, does carry with it a certain queer cachet. Milkshake turns out to be a strong collection, representing a wide range of styles, including the simplest, rawest, six-chord grunge rock of Brown-Star’s own “A Bee’s Dream,” which dips its stick into queer sexuality and comes up with this classic line: “I can feel it getting longer, I can feel it getting thick. It’s an obvious reaction, but it almost makes you sick.” Beyond that headbanger, the album sports everything from the catchy folk-pop of Phranc’s “The Ballad of the Dumb Hairdresser” to the bluesy ballad “Midnight on the Bay” by Red House Painters, the hard-hitting punk rock of Pansy Division’s “Expiration Date,” the up-beat funk of !Tang’s “How do you take it?”, the retro, vaguely Bowiesque glam-rock of Blue Period’s “Monster,” the entrancing Gothic dirge of Omewenne’s “Violet Morning,” and the a cappella, Gaelic-influenced marching anthem “Homophobia” by Chumbawamba. In addition, Extra Fancy, 7th Betty, 100 Watt Smile, Simon Stinger, Spackle, Knife in Water, and Perch all add unadulterated rock songs to the album, making Milkshake a worthy sampler for those inclined to thrash to many different drummers.

Squander squad?

Given the worthiness of the album and the cause it’s intended to advance, letting a bankrupt corporation squander the proceeds seems not just unfair, but criminal. So it is that a give-and-take ensues between the Bay Area Reporter and Cargo Records America . When asked whether Cargo Records America is, in fact, going bankrupt , a representative of the company, Gubby, replies that indeed “the situation is very bad,” that the owner, Eric Goodis, “owes a lot of money,” and that the business “is going to close its doors.” However, with regard to the Milkshake album, which Gubby says he brought in “not knowing where the company would be in three or four months,” he wanted to assure trent, Cole, and everyone else that the people at Cargo “recognize what this CD is.” and that Goodis will personally guarantee that timmi-kat receives all the proceeds due from the album sales. “That’s great news,” says trent after hearing the news from Gubby. All trent has to do now is send along invoices, something Gubby claims trent never did, which is why he never got reimbursed. “I sent them hand-written itemized lists,” counters trent. “I thought those were invoices.” Paperwork aside, trent is relieved that Cargo has got the message that the queers of San Francisco would have a hissy fit if their very own rock album were scuttled by outsiders. The local rock bands on Milkshake need the boost the album gives them, says trent: “If you’re not from New York or L.A., nobody takes you seriously.” With Milkshake nominated for “Album of the Year” at the Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards ( GLAMA) to be held in New York City in March 1999, some of our local LGBTQ rockers may soon be earning more respect from far afield.