Boys Will be Girls

When I was a youngster, mired in the fucked-up cultural, social and economic atmosphere known as the early 1980s, I searched long and hard for solace away from the middle-class life I was stuck in. It’s not like I had anything to complain about besides complacency, but the sheer boredom of existence was enough to drive to me to more desperate ends.

I discovered punk rock.

Bands like The Sex Pistols and The Clash — and later Bad Brains, Circle Jerks and Bad Religion, among many others — offered me salvation in the form of screaming lyrics about anarchy roughly layered over simple chord structures and driving rhythms. The Sex Pistols started it all. On numbers like "Pretty Vacant" "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save The Queen," all stomped their boots and voiced opinions in defiant song, and spoke to my adolescent desire for independence and penchant for flipping the bird.

These days, I’m older and slightly more mature, but let’s face it: Chico can get a little bit slow. Not that there’s anything wrong with slow, but even entering into early middle age, there’s something appealing about lashing out from time to time, and nothing seems to fuel that desire like listening to that old music, so when I first stumbled onto the Transexpistols accidentally last Memorial Day at Duffy’s Tavern, I found myself feeling regaining some of that old fire.

Imagine my glee when I discovered that Transexpistols’ bass player Cynthia Vicious, a refugee from Los Angeles, now lives in Chico. I knew that, though Vicious is several hundred miles from the rest of the band — drummer Pauline "Stinky" Cook, guitarist Steffi Bones and vocalist Jonni Rotten — it wouldn’t stop the brash quartet from getting together and playing in Chico once in a while.

The group first started in, appropriately, Hollywood, where punk rock cover bands pack the streets along with the rats and "producers." But going the cross-dressing route was more than just a way to set themselves apart from the pack. Actually, according to Vicious, it was less than a way to do that.

"It was just a drunken thing. We were in a Sex Pistols tribute band called Pretty Vacant," explains Vicious. "One night coming home from the garage we just thought the name up and thought it would be cool to do it in drag. We didn’t have Stinky, our drummer, at that time; we had another drummer. It was just Steffi and Jonni and I, and there was no editor there, no voice of reason that was gonna say that we shouldn’t do that. So we did, and we lost the old drummer as a result. He wasn’t thrilled with the new format of the band. Once we went to the cross-dressing format, we played one show with our old drummer and he quit. So we ran one ad in the LA Weekly, which said ‘Transexpistols seeking drummer. Must love Sex Pistols. Must look good in a dress.’ We got one response, and it was Stinky. The message he left us said, ‘Hello. I love the Sex Pistols. I don’t look good in a dress. I look like a big ugly woman.’"

Not only was Stinky an obviously perfect new member for the band — seeing as how he was the only respondent to the ad — he introduced the band to a new market: our fair burg, Chico.

"He’s the only reason we came up here, because he’s from Chico," says Vicious, who marks this year’s Memorial Day concert as the first anniversary of the Transexpistols descent on Chico, and when Vicious’ life changed dramatically.

Rumor has it that the sneering bass player moved to Chico either against his free will, or even worse, to get married. Regardless of why, Vicious says the effect the separation has had on the band has been pretty minimal, besides the fact that they can’t get together much.

"We don’t play much anymore, probably just quarterly, but it’s the Sex Pistols, they only had one album," he says, laughing. "It’s like that Jimmy Buffet album, Songs You Know by Heart. I don’t know any of those by heart, but I know all of the Never Mind The Bollocks songs by heart."

As do most late-20- and 30-somethings who listened to punk rock growing up. But even the kids, the punk rock youth (21-and-over for the upcoming Memorial Day show, thank you very much) feel the music too. As if they need a reason to do what they’re doing, Vicious started to get surly when questioned as to the point of the whole affair

"What‘s the point?!" equal parts laughter and feigned aghast disbelief permeate the response. "It’s just a joke. It’s just fun. I think it’s the perfect combination of elements. You’ve got great music — anybody who doesn’t like the Sex Pistols just shouldn’t bother showin’ up — combined with the over-the-top theatrics and the cross-dressing. It lends kind of a glam element to the punk, which is kind of interesting."

Interesting for sure. Watching four grown, seemingly normal men — rumors say that one of them is even a lawyer — jump around the stage drunk, screaming and acting in a decidedly destructive manner, can be a disturbing thing to witness. And, as you might guess, the weirdest part is that they do it in drag. Well, The Sex Pistols were not a glam punk band. They were a drunken group of mediocre musicians who had more personality that a bus full of schizophrenics and built more cred than Thurston Moore in a button-up sweater and horn-rimmed glasses. But it’s not like they were completely bereft of an eye for the right look.

"They had their fashion consciousness," Vicious argues, then turns to his own band. "That’s why I like it: it’s the real aggressive music and we’re cross-dressing up there — high heels and garters."

"And as long as you bring it up, that’s my one main gripe about Chico: There’s not enough pornography in this town," he says flatly of his adopted residence, as I try to figure out exactly where the subject of porn came from. "There’re no adult bookstores, no strip bars — there’s the First Amendment, but it’s pretty far out of town and they don’t even serve beer. I talked to a lady in Marysville who had a lingerie and adult novelty store in Chico and they drove her out. I don’t get it. This is a college town and there’re lots of liberal people here and there’re tons of drunken sluts here."

Staying true to his punk rock and hedonistic roots, Vicious believes staunchly in the power of pornography, and sees the Puritanical movement to squelch his right to view explicit film, photos and other media as a terrible affront to his being.

"Getting all uppity about sex in this day and age is really stupid," he says, careful to add that this attitude hasn’t come from getting a hard time by people in surly audience. "Most people receive what we do pretty well. I haven’t really encountered anybody who’s really been down on it. Most everybody either seems to be just really confused by it or they really enjoy it. It’s interesting though, ‘cause there’re a lot of open mouths and wide eyes in the crowd lots of times. But nobody ever tries to attack us."

It’s been psychologically observed that heterosexual men who dress like women — say, for Halloween or some other festive occasion — often accentuate their manhood while they’re in drag. They let their beards grow, they speak in an extra deep voice — they do what they have to do so they don’t look just a little bit too good as a woman. The Transexpistols don’t have that particular problem.

"Well, we try our best," says Vicious with a chuckle of jocular frustration, "I just don’t know how well we pull it off."

You’d think a band whose mission together is play music by one of the most revered punk bands of all time while in drag would land the Transexpistols huge amounts of acclaim. I mean, it’s not everyday you see four grown men doing their best to look like women and thrash like gutter punks. Alas, each member of the group still has a day job to make ends meet. It’s not like they’re trying too hard to get some recognition, but attempts at fame are often undermined.

"We were trying to get on the Springer show," says Vicious, a bounce in his voice — the kind of bounce that lets you know something bad is coming next. "They invited me, but I couldn’t get anybody to go along with me. See, I had to come up with a pretty extravagant ploy to get them to actually invite me onto the show. I told them I was videotaping my wife and putting it on the Internet, and that I caught her in bed with the guitar player, but I couldn’t confront her because I had been secretly videotaping her. It was a pretty good, pretty intricate little plot, and the Springer show was very happy about and they wanted to fly me out to Chicago right away, but nobody would go along with it. It was a really bummer, a let-down."

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