decidedlyodd

After work, I headed home to try to make some dinner before leaving for another film festival screening. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to finish making the split pea soup and threw together some frozen pasta from Trader Joe’s at the last minute.

The screening was at Northwest Film Forum at 7:30 for Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band. I’ve been really looking forward to this film ever since I read about it on the main Pansy Division website a while back. The film was interesting and informative, but the audience laughed a lot too. It seemed very well received, especially for a crowd which for the most part seemed to not know much about Pansy Division.

In general, the film was what I expected it to be–a documentary about a specific band over the years. However, the film was extremely nostalgic for me. It reminded me quite a lot of my college years spent in the Bay Area (more specifically East Bay) music scene. For those who don’t know, I volunteered at KALX for almost 4 years and 924 Gilman Street for probably about the same amount of time. At the radio station, I had several shows over the years, was the director of special events (i.e., live music performances) for 2 years (I think), served on the PRC (program review committee–the group of people that awarded 1 year shows to DJs) and I was become a DJ trainer right as I was leaving. At Gilman, I started out doing random door volunteer work (stamp hands, take money, sell membership cards, etc.). Eventually, I got into doing sound there. There was a reasonable amount of competition to do sound at popular shows, so I usually just did unpopular shows (so many straight edge hardcore shows).

Pansy Division had been a part of this whole music scene. However, because I was there during a time when they were on somewhat of a hiatus, I rarely saw the connections that were shown clearly in the film. Namely, I found it really surprising to watch a documentary where people I personally know were interviewed even though I didn’t expect this at all. The film contained a lot of interview footage of Jesse Luscious. I never knew he was so connected to Pansy Division, but I had served on the PRC with him and of course interacted with at Gilman many times. Likewise, seeing Larry Livermore (who may or may not still read my blog) be interviewed was also a blast from the past.

Jon and Chris from the band were in the audience and did a Q&A afterward. There was an afterparty for the film at Purr. This was incredibly ironic because not 10 minutes earlier, the guys in the band had been talking about how they never felt like they fit in at pretentious, loud gay bars. Purr is without a doubt, the bar most like this in Seattle. They actually shut off the music and let Pansy Division do a short acoustic set. I don’t think most people in the bar knew what was going on, but that was fine. It allowed those of us who were interested to stand close enough to see the performance.

From there, Ken, Dr. Jeff, Ben and I went to Chop Suey for Trannyshack. The show was entertaining, but I also met some guy on the dancefloor and ended up talking to him until the place was about to close.

It was one of the best Friday night’s out I’ve had in a long time!