Nervous Gender is a punk band founded in Los Angeles, California in 1978 by Gerardo Velazquez, Edward Stapleton, Phranc and Michael Ochoa.
Their use of heavily distorted keyboards and synthesizers made them, along with The Screamers, one of the original innovators of what is today called "Synthpunk", although they could equally be considered an early industrial group. The group was confrontational and experimental.
Phranc's androgynous appearance was the embodiment of the group's name, garnered the band much press in zines such as Slash and, later, proving inspirational to founders of the Queercore movement. Despite their somewhat high profile, the groups' habit of provoking the audience, obscene material and harsh erotics guaranteed they would never gain commercial acceptance. At their first show in 1979, a benefit for the Women's Video Center, Phranc called the audience "pussies" and "dykes" when the band was requested to stop playing.
Read more about Nervous Gender: History, Members, Former Members, Discography
Famous quotes containing the words nervous and/or gender:
“After Stéphane Mallarmé, after Paul Verlaine, after Gustave Moreau, after Puvis de Chavannes, after our own verse, after all our subtle colour and nervous rhythm, after the faint mixed tints of Conder, what more is possible? After us the Savage God.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)