Out Artists on the Rise
Team Gina’s expressive brand of rap combines their shared experience as children of the ’80s, and their love of all things pop.
The Seattle-based duo of Gina Genius, 27, and Gina Bling, 26, audaciously sample Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” simultaneously referencing My Little Pony, and themes from the queer rights movement.
“We’re synthesizing all the elements of pop culture that we grew up with and mashing them up to create something new,” Genius. “We’re also trying to bring a perspective that’s kind of utopian—we want to represent the perfect queer paradise that doesn’t exist yet, that maybe exists at our shows.” Components? “Well, there’d be really great outfits,” muses Genius, giggling. “And really great dance moves.”
While Gina Bling is a Seattle-born former “musical theatre junkie,” Genius, who hails from D.C. via Brooklyn, is a former folk singer. The beat-heavy duo, who met in 2006 at a Scream Club show, sport matching attire (think booty shorts, wristbands) when they break it down every first Friday at Seattle’s Wild Rose bar. Their debut CD, gina gina revolution, was released this year by Crunks Not Dead and Don’t Stop Believin’ Records.
The two giggly femmes, who just finished touring with MondoHomo Dirty South, share one other love: butch girls. Hence these memorable lyrics from their Sir Mix-sampled track “Butch/Femme”: “I like butch girls and I cannot lie/You other femmes can’t deny/When a butch walks in all the femmes wanna fuss/’Cause it’s like one of them and thirty of us.”
For more on Team Gina, visit myspace.com/teamgina. –Melody Wells
Hip-hoppers to country crooners, this year’s up-and-comers are here, queer and ready to entertain
Sarah Greenwood of GSX
When Sarah Greenwood steps onstage, the audience pays attention. She holds her guitar with ferocious confidence, her wide-set stance and aggressive stage-presence mirroring the greatest of rock ‘n’ roll legends. In tight jeans and well-worn motorcycle boots, Greenwood holds her own in a genre of music dominated by men.
The Swiss-born Greenwood is the guitar-shredding front woman of the New York hard rock band, GSX, and she leads the band with tough, honest lyrics, sung with soulful grit. She describes the music of GSX as the “Pretenders, Joan Jett, early Hole, meets Soundgarden, AC/DC and Queens of the Stone Age.”
Greenwood started playing rock music in high school, moving from piano to electric guitar. From an early age she knew there was something different about her, and was grateful for musicians like Joan Jett and Culture Club, “I wasn’t in an environment where there were a lot of gay references. But a lot of the out artists I gravitated towards were gender benders,” remembers Greenwood. She believes that being an out musician has created opportunities for her because of the camaraderie she feels with other gay people in the music industry.
The band’s first full-length album Manifest received glowing reviews from the hard rock community. GSX has begun work on their sophomore album, and while she enjoys the recording process, Greenwood wants her gay and straight fans alike to know that it’s all about them. “The audience makes the performance, the energy we get from them…if it weren’t for the audience it wouldn’t be much of a show.”
Look for Sarah and GSX at myspace.com/GSX. –SH
