Lesbians On Ecstasy sind Fruity Frankie on vocals, Jackie the Jackhammer on Octopad, Bernie Bankrupt on Laptop, Synthezizer and Sampler, und Veronique Mystique on Monsterbass, und kommen aus Montréal, Canada. Ihr Musikstil lässt sich mit ElectroPunkMetalDancefloor beschreiben, und ihr Konzept besteht darin, Stücke aus lesbischen Hymnen der 1970er, 80er und 90er Jahren in eigene, extrem tanzbare Stücke zu verwandeln.

Im Rahmen ihrer 1. Europatour konnte ich die grossartigen Lessies On X nach Bielefeld einladen. Das Konzert fand am 12.04.05 im AJZ Bielefeld statt, veranstaltet von/mit Ladyshake. An diesem Abend ist auch ein Interview mit Jackie, Bernie und Veronique entstanden:

[listen!: kleiner Konzertausschnitt, 1,12MB] introduction in english


Katharina: Please introduce yourself and what are you doing in the band.

Jackie: My name is Jackie the Jackhammer, and I play the Octopad.
Bernie: I`m Bernie Bankrupt and I play the Laptop, Synthezizer and the Sampler.
Veronique: And I`m Veronique Mystique and I play the bass.
Bernie: And we are missing our singer Fruity Frankie, because she`s sick.

Katharina: How did you come together and what`s the hole story about the
band?

Bernie: […] The band started as a bit of a concept. Me and Lynne were at a party, and there was this girl there who`s playing acoustic guitar and she sang the Melissa Etheridge Song "Like the way I do" and we were listening to it. Both of us just thought: Wow! Like: The lyrics in the song are a sort of intense and they would make an awesome dance song.
We liked the kind of style of it and went back and listened to the song and then just in the computer started making this remix, a sort of remake, or whatever of this song. And that`s what happening.
Some friends of us who organize a festival in Montréal called Les Htmlles: Maid in Cyberspace which is a festival devoted to women in technology. It happens every two years and it`s organized by artists from a centre called StudioXX and so for the first time ever as in this festival they were having a component of women`s electronic-music each night, kind of mimicking some of the media arts festival that happen in Berlin and some others are in Montréal where the reprensentation of women is so small. […] They knew that we have been a sort of working on this project and approached us and said: Would you be interested in performing? And so when we got that opportunity we were kind of said, like: Could we perform? How would we make this into a life-act? And it was at that point that we asked Jackie who we both knew and who is a drummer in different bands. Because we thought, if we`re gonna do live-electronic-music, we want it to be live, like we wanna have as much of a live-component as we can do. […] That was kind of how it started. And so for the first shows that we did it was just me and Lynne and Jackie. And then, after we`ve played a little bit, people got really excited about the band and kept us asking us to do more shows, and then we realized that maybe it could be something more than just this one, you know. I guess for the first time we did it with that it should be just one show. And then we were looking for a keyboard-player, because in the beginning I was doing kind of everything, and then we knew Veronique and we thought that, like, we were like: Wow, we can actually have bass instead of keyboard! It could be a similar kind of thing, it could be like another melodic element. and so we asked her to join, and… that`s been the whole story, and then it`s just gone for now.

Katharina: How long does the band exist?

Bernie: Our two years anniversary was in february. That`s been two years and a couple of month.

Katharina: Please describe your style of music.

Jackie: Basically, i mean, as a concept it`s taking music from various lesbian artists from the past 70ies, 80ies and 90ies, just taking bits of text and sometimes a melody-line or something and then making original music to that and it`s with the intent, I think, of it being dance-music. So it`s a sort of bringing these icons of the past, lesbian icons, and bringing them perhaps to a new generation of lesbian and kind of tie it to the communities. And I think that on the record and in live-performances there is a quite a variety of styles, from take like a drum`n bass take on Indigo Girls to, you know, a big kind of house and tech things, so, I guess it`s basically dance-music, but with a conception element. […]

Katharina: You told me that Jackie+Veronique have played in other rock/punkmetal -bands. Did all of you make music before?

Bernie: Yeah, I`ve been in a variety of different types of bands, and I have another project called Boyfriend, which is also an electronic music-project, but it`s more… it`s a duo and we travel around to different places and we do open studios and residences where we give workshops to young women who wanna learn to make electronic music. […]
And Lynne is a Dj. She came from a Dj background. […]

Katharina: Do you label yourself, do you wanna be labeled? As a queer band or lesbian band or other…?

Bernie: It`s a good question, I feel like…
Jackie: All of the above.
Bernie: All of the above… i think that it`s different things to different people and I think that`s whats sort of interesting , obviously we are lesbians [laughs] which is of sort not really true. Because the use of the word lesbian in the title is…
Nicole: …a joke ?
Bernie: Well, a joke is a strong word. I would say it`s multifacetted because I think that ironically, like before starting this project, I don`t know of lesbian as a word that any of us would have used to describe ourselves. […]
I think we`re more of a queer band, I think that the title "queer" is always been more comfortable for me and for all of us. But I think also it`s important that we are women, making music.

Katharina: What does "labeling you as a queer band" mean?

Jackie: Well, I think, maybe some a little bit of what we trying to do is we don`t like to play necessarily to just an audience of lesbians. We like everybody to come and see us playing: trans and straight men, gay men… I mean it`s that sort of inclusivity that I think the word "queer" encompasses. I think the word "queer" defines more of how, of who we would like our audience to be.

Katharina: What is your opinion about criticism of the use of the word "lesbian" in your bandname: It is kind of "oldfashioned" and "not necessary" to use it, because it shouldn`t matter whether you are lesbian or straight or…?

Jackie: What we were talking about before that our concept is very much that we were taking lesbian music and put it into dance-music, so it`s almost lesbians on ecstsy, it`s very litteral,
Bernie: The lesbians are not necessarily us.
Veronique: Yeah.
Jackie: What I mean, it`s the music.
Bernie: The lesbians, it`s not necessarily us, the lesbians are…
Jackie: It`s Melisa Etheridge, and then we put them all… on ecstasy
Bernie: I find that critique… we have have heard this obviously… I find it so boring, a kind of makes me laugh, because I think when people say that i`m like… it`s not like we just have a rock band and we`re singing about whatever and it`s not like… what`s the word… objective. The part of the lesbian, it´s like the heart of the concept. And some people are like: Why do they have to be off about being lesbians! It`s like… well…
Jackie: And I think this is also potentially people who don`t understand what we`re doing, because they have no connection to the lesbian community, and they can`t even make a connection between, like: Oh they doing a K.D. Lang and a Melissa Etheridge, they can`t even get to that on that level. […]
And also, if people come to see our performances and listen to the album, they hopefully will get the sense of humour involved, I mean it`s, … doing a take on the very sincere, the image of the sincere lesbian, you know, serious. If you come and see us perform, there`s obviously a sense of humour and a sense of irony about it and if you just see us as a dance-band and you don`t get another level to it, that`s fine, we`re fun dance-band to go see live too, you know. There is just different levels you can go to, but I mean, I think the sense of humour is really something that people often miss if they don`t come and see us.

Katharina: I saw the button "support lesbian divorce" on your website. Would you please explain it?

Bernie: It`s specific to Canada, because, you know, in Canada they have passed gay marriage recently, but it`s a legal situation, is, that a lot of people fight to get gay marriage passed but presently there is no gay divorce. Because it`s just another step in the legal process, so if you get married as a gay couple and you wanna get divorced right now you can`t. You have to change the constitution to include lesbian and gay marriage, but then you also have to change it again to include divorce, and nobody has done that, so there was a lesbian couple who wanna to get divorced and so it`s kind of little bit anti-gay marriage thing, it`s just funny cause in Canada now like, you keep get married, but you can`t get divorced.
Jackie: If you wanna get married you gotta stay married! …

Katharina: I would like to know how much importance the band has in your life at the moment. Does it take you much time and space?

Veronique: It`s pretty much taking over in our lifes.
Bernie: It depends on the time in year like for sure we put out our album in October, end of October,[on Alien8 recordings] and we all made a commitment that we would make ourselves available the tour and do shows for like 6 months, so for the last 6 months it´s been pretty full time, yeah, but we all still have jobs and lifes that we`re ignoring by now.

Janine: What sort of jobs?

Bernie: I do webdesign.
Jackie: I do soundesign and music for soundtracks.
Veronique: Well, I quit my job, so I don`t have a job.
Bernie: And Lynne is a sound recordist for documentary film.
Jackie: So we`re relatively flexible with jobs. They have to be at this point.

Katharina: In which way is your "private life" included into making music? Can you or do you want to distinguish between private-life and "life as musicians"?

Jackie: That depends on how busy we are, I guess.
Bernie: It`s a big part, because it`s part… it`s sort of a thing that I really like to read about the band is like. We`re part of a community and our community is part of a context, it`s like we live in Montréal and in Montréal there is like certain things: There is like a big electronic music scene and there`s no women. And there is a big gay party scene, there is a kind of a small lesbian party scene but you know, like, we play…
Jackie: There`s a big rock scene, too.
Bernie: A big rock scene, yeah. And like we play for sure like parties that we would go to, like we play at, we`re trying like, the band definitely is part of that community, we play at events, we play at benefits, we play shows that we want, we play in spaces that are outside of like the village gay scene, we play in other places to bring different communities together, we always play mixed shows, you know we definitely have used the band as an opportunity to kind of build more of the community that we wanna see. And so it`s like the band also becomes a space like when you`re performing like it becomes. And then we have the fortunate opportunity to create that space how we wanna see it, you know.

Katharina: Are you part of a network and/or community of queers or musicians or whatever?

Veronique: Well, we have worked with this sort of arts group in New York called LTTR, and that was sort of an important thing for us when we went down there. They were the first people to invite us to play in the States and we got there and it was totally awesome, it`s a big group of people. We have also been involved in the Bookmobile. It`s a kind of like a touring library in the States and in Canda.
Jackie: We make friends with a lot of people, with a lot of bands, they are going to the Homo A Gogo -festival in Olympia, it was great because there was a lot of bands.
Nicole: That was last year.
Veronique: Last summer.
Bernie: We played with the King Cobra live.
Jackie: King Cobras, Scream Club,
Bernie: Kids on TV.
A band we`ve played with a lot…
obviously Le Tigre, but that`s a different kind of thing…
Veronique: Different level.

Katharina: Why a different level?

Veronique: `cause this are big shows like, we`re more used to be sort of grassroot. […]
Bernie: In Canada this is the type of show we always play, but Le Tigre it`s like big…
Veronique: Huge venues.
Bernie: You know, so for us it`s interesting experience, but it`s very outside of what are we consider our regular community to be.
Veronique: So that`s why we booked all these shows in Europe because we were, we started booking shows on our own and then we got some shows with Le Tigre and then it was important for us to book other shows outside of these big shows. `cause when you play big shows you don`t get to meet people personally. It`s always very cold in a way. […]

Katharina: What are your experiences in kind of male-dominated/straight spaces?

Bernie: It`s always surprising, you know. The technicians…, it`s always men, who are the technicians, and…
Jackie: Except tonight!
Bernie: Except tonight, which is wonderful and a special treat.
Jackie: Yeah, very special treat.
Bernie: But you know that can go from here to there in terms of good to bad, like it`s not to say that all male technicians are bad, it`s just to say that all technicians are bad, no! That`s not true… [laughs]
Veronique: What are you saying Bernie! […]
Bernie: We recently played at that event in Montréal which was like an "Award Show" and we`ve been nominated for a couple of awards and we were the only women invited to play, like, it was crazy, it was just fucking crazy, all night long from the time we got there until the time we went on stage there had not been a woman on stage, except for maybe one presenting an award, not a woman working there, like…
Jackie: You could sort of sense from the stage man that he was quite uncomfortable with dealing with women.
Bernie: And we`ve brought a choir.
Jackie: We`ve brought a 15 women-choir with us! [laughs]
Bernie: Just to piss everyone off, `cause we also wanted to play with the choir. The presence of women was so minimal and so we brought all these people and then we ended up just totally taking over and at the end of the night. The reaction to us was so positive and everyone was like: "I didn`t know what to think but you were so fun, you guys were so great". People were so kind but in the beginning I felt just like everyone like looking down their noses at us. […]

Katharina: Can you please describe the concept of your "ascii-screening"?

Veronique: That`s pretty much visual, that`s also a sort of promoting linux as a free operating system.
Bernie: It is sort of come to us like from the very first "women in technology festival" that we play that, that friends of us had built the system and it`s an opportunity that we have kind of open the door, say, that something you can do with free software and this is a way again to sort of look at ways that women interact with technology, and it looks really cool and it`s fun to have, but it`s also for us, it´s kind of a door that we can open, for to ask question: How does it work? What is it? Where do you get it? You know?

Thank you!!! Auch an Nicole, Janine + Doro!
Bandbilder von: Erica Beckman, Danny Fowler [ausser Nr.1-3]

Kontakt: trashlady (at) gmx.net, http://sites.knup.de/kcproduction/