Wimpy and the Queers

I saw the Queers play live once. It was at some tiny, dingy venue called Peabody’s that’s actually now a big, dingy venue. Things, I suppose don’t change. Anyway, standing outside, smoking a cigarette, my fourteen year old person was privy to mockery that would become a part of my experience in and around ‘the punk scene.’ The locale of this particular venue allowed the sidewalks to be choked with various grown up frat dudes and their skanky companions. Luckily for me, I was able to take a listen as some (pseudo) gentleman and his companion for the evening saw the marquee, assumed that band was comprised of some homosexual miscreants and then figured I was gay as a result of standing in front of the club. It wasn’t the first time I’d get called a fag, but it’s the only time I’d remember.

Regardless of how I understand the Queers, their music or their general import in the punk genre, their name has most likely prompted more conversations than necessary. But it does point to the general world view that these folks carried around with them over the last three decades. Beginning in the early ‘80s in New Hampshire of all places, the Queers cropped up for a few years and disbanded, leaving the group’s first singer, Wimpy, behind. Reconstituted a few years on and led by Joe Queer, the band reprised its adolescent fantasies with a renewed vigor. And by the end of the decade the Queers had compiled enough material to release its first full length – Grow Up – via the doomed Shakin’ Street imprint.

Finding a fan in Ben Weasel, the album would eventually be reissued through the west coast Lookout! Records. It was a fitting home for the band as the aesthetic that the East Bay imprint worked with was something akin to Ramones’ fandom. As time wore on and the Queers released numerous discs that each approximated the previous album, the band eventually got into a spat – over money and royalties apparently – with the Lookout! crew resulting in Asian Man records reissuing some of the north easterners’ music.

Arguably the most important, cobbled together release from the band, A Day Late and a Dollar Short, represents only the earliest incarnation of the Queers. The disc’s made up of thirty some odd tracks – most not passing the three minute mark – that cover everything from boredom to driving through New York and hate in a very general sense. There’s no great musical pay off, but what’s here is one of the better Ramones cops in the history of recorded music.

At the early date that these tracks were recorded the music isn’t as ‘polished’ as it would later become. But the inclusion of a different singer served to invigorate the band in a way completely separate than what Joe Queer would be able to muster on latter releases. This is more scummy than one might think given the poppy references that pepper this and every write up of the band, but that’s why it’s good – if not great.