Queer Time: Girls in the Nose Reunion

Last week I attended a 60th birthday celebration for my friend Joanna Labow, percussionist and one of several singer/songwriters for the groundbreaking lesbian rock band Girls in the Nose, which reunited for the occasion. Nose co-founder Kay Turner will also turn 60 this year. But--as Joanna noted in a song that she wrote for her party--this is not a version of old ladydom that you hear about in mainstream culture. These sexagenarians are still making music with their buddies, still eviscerating sexism and heterosexism with their lyrics, and still getting down (and taking it off) with the notorious Girls in the Nose dancers.

In her thought-provoking book In a Queer Time and Place, Judith Halberstam theorizes queerness as an alternative way of using time--one that departs from bourgeois heterosexual itineraries of reproduction and inheritance. One of the great attractions of queerness, Halberstam argues, is that it opens up "imaginative life schedules," which do not dictate that we abandon our youthful subcultures, take our place in the generational transmission of goods and morals, or devote ourselves to practices of longevity.

Check out this video: Come and Die

Girls in the Nose was founded in 1987 by Turner (featured in the video above) and Gretchen Phillips (of that other germinal lesbian rock band, 2 Nice Girls). The band describes their sound as "the B-52s meet Iggy Pop and sing about lesbian feminism," but this ain't the Iggy of "Lust for Life"--more like Funhouse, if you know what I mean: sexier, edgier. At their height they rocked Michigyn, Lesbapalooza, and the 1993 March on Washington, to name just a few venues.

To speak in terms of autobiographical time, Girls in the Nose's heyday was a little before my own (delayed) queer coming of age. The reunion show was the first chance I'd ever had to see them play live, and I felt so grateful for the creativity and indomitable spirit of dyke culture. Knowing these women has opened a treasure chest of "imaginative life schedules" that my bio family could never have bequeathed to me.

There was talk of a Girls in the Nose reunion tour at Joanna's party. In the expansive logic of queer time, there's no mandatory retirement age for lesbian rockers. Check them out on MySpace and let them know how much the world needs this version of what 60 looks and sounds like.