ON THE WRONG SIDE OF POLITE
Ahead of their upcoming San Diego performance, we catch up with Synthpunk progenitors Nervous Gender Reloaded to discuss their storied career, from the early days to the present-day reincarnation, along with all the chaos in between.
1. Take us back to LA in the late 70s. What was the landscape like for a young punk? Was there an existing scene at that time that catered to more experimental music?
I was a long-haired glam rocker when Luton spit me out onto the streets of Los Angeles, entrenched in Van der Graaf Generator, Hawkwind, and David Bowie. The first time I heard the Screamers and the Germs, I cut my hair, ripped my clothes, and didn’t look back. The Masque, Al’s Bar, the Atomic Cafe, and Random Studios became my regular haunts, and that’s where the more experimental stuff lived.
2. Nervous Gender has gone through many lineups across the decades. What’s the through-line, the creative DNA that’s carried from the earliest days into Nervous Gender Reloaded, and what made now the right moment for this incarnation?
Nervous Gender has had a perpetually volatile lineup throughout the years. The first incarnation was Gerardo Velasquez, Phranc, Edward Stapleton, and Michael Ochoa, with Phranc leaving about six months in. Paul Roessler joined in the early days, along with Don Bolles, and later Sven Pfeiffer. Later incarnations with all the lads from Wall of Voodoo (Wall of Gender) pushed the sound into a different world while keeping the same drive. Through all of it, the band was fueled by an intensely confrontational interest against everything held sacred by society, and that seeded the creative core. Today that ethos remains, informed by all the years between.
As for why now: in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the economy was in decline, social conservatism was on the rise, and trust in authority was eroding. When I met Matt Comeione in 2017, we started out revisiting the past, rerecording the Nervous Gender catalogue. The economy was recovering from the bank collapse, but the resurgence of socially conservative viewpoints and the rising attacks on the LGBT+ community paralleled the context of ’79–’81. We asked ourselves: why aren’t we doing anything new? We still want to attack their idols, their false prophets.
And after seven days and seven nights, Reloaded rose from the abyss.
Sven Pfeiffer
3. From the start, Nervous Gender helped define what came to be called synthpunk by pairing synthesizers with punk aggression. Reloaded has expanded that palette considerably, pulling in avant-garde classical, world music, even Gregorian chant. How is the sonic vocabulary evolving, and what’s driving that expansion now? Anything on Milking the Borg you’d point listeners to first?
The Screamers originally opened the door to synthesizers as part of the punk vocabulary. The nature of analogue gear opened the door to the realm of microtonal deviations from the Western European scale, and that discordant charm is what enhanced the discomfort of the original Nervous Gender.
When reworking “Gangs of Whores” from the live recording at the Scream, I noticed the resemblance to gamelan music in its tonal palette, something we emphasized in the newer recording. We also developed the tempo change between sections into a metric modulation. In some ways, the relationship to avant-garde classical and world music was already present in the original work but never emphasized. Both Edward and I have had a long-standing interest in this music, and rather than suppress it, we’ve brought it to the foreground.
From Milking the Borg, “Kyrie/Mantra” incorporates a chant from a Mantra Machine. Overlaid on that are melodic snippets of the Dies Irae, with the lyrics taken directly from an English translation of the Dies Irae. The Kyrie chant itself is quoted in its natural form in the middle.
Nothing is sacred. Appropriate everything.
Photo: @bumdogtorres
4. The Anti Club was a legendary early home for the band. Where does Nervous Gender Reloaded feel at home now, what kinds of venues, scenes, or audiences feel like the right context for the current work?
The Anti Club was one of the few clubs that allowed Nervous Gender to return. At the time, we even offended the punk audiences, so it truly became home. Even Fear used to ask us to play after them, so we wouldn’t scare off their audience.
Today, we’ve only been banned by Footsie’s. A few years back we were invited to perform at Church of Fun, a DIY performance space with an undisclosed address. The crowd was familiar with the legacy work and open to the new, and much younger as well. That show pulled us into an entirely new network of bands and venues: The Void, The Handbag Factory, Slipper Clutch, Monte Bar, and The Old Towne Pub in Pasadena.
5. This show with Kommunity FK has a personal history embedded in it. Edward and Patrik Mata go back to working together at Poseur on Melrose in 1980, and that friendship has carried all the way to your current collaboration as Gender-FK. Can you talk about that long arc, and what Gender-FK is now?
I met Patrik working at Poseur on Melrose. I’d been in Nervous Gender for about three years at that point, and Patrik was just starting Kommunity FK. We worked together for a few years, played some shows together, and kept in touch over the years. We’ve always been transfixed by Patrik’s voice, with its similarity to Peter Hammill’s.
When Nervous Gender Reloaded started performing live regularly, we had a few Zoom calls about collaborating, and the Gender-FK project was born. We’ve completed about four songs together, sending mixes back and forth between LA and New Mexico, where Patrik is based. The EP should be out soon. Patrik pulls the sound in another direction, somewhere in the space between deathrock and synthpunk (und DaDa ist auch dabei).
Poseur on Melrose
6. Given that this show is in San Diego, for the unsuspecting reader, can you share the story of the now infamous 1979 SD show?
Back in 1979, we got a random phone call from someone we didn’t know inviting us to perform in San Diego. We brought another band from Hollywood to open for us at what we thought was going to be the Lion’s Club, but turned out to be some bar in downtown San Diego. Although some of us enjoyed a night of debauchery in the local porn stores, the gig itself was a room full of unsuspecting local patrons, completely unprepared for what was about to ensue.
After sizing up the audience, we determined it was highly unlikely we’d make it past the opening band. To resolve this, we opted to have both bands perform their sets concurrently, ensuring we both got to play. The locals were absolutely horrified, and the waitresses were frantically collecting money to pay us to stop.
This was one of our highest-paying gigs.
Photo: @karin_lindberg_freda
7. Back in the original Nervous Gender days, the band ran with a particular constellation of LA artists and provocateurs. Who are the fellow travelers now, the artists Reloaded feels kinship with, shares bills with, or finds itself orbiting in the current underground?
In the early days we performed with people like Johanna Went and Monitor, though we weren’t always the easiest stage-mates.
Today we feel at home performing with peers like Roman’s Weirdos, Gitane Demone & Paul Roessler, and Los Microwaves, but also with the new generation: N8NOFACE, ICBM, Diesel Dudes, Period Bomb, Blotchouts, Soiled Doilies, and Super Violate. Our drummer Ian Bain plays in both ICBM and Period Bomb, and the new generation of bands has been an inspiration to us. This show kicks off a series of dates with Kommunity FK.
And we’re proud to be part of the incestuous musical cesspool
8. As an originating synthpunk band watching the sound evolve, are there current or emerging artists you’d say are carrying that synthpunk energy forward? And given this bill with Kommunity FK, do you see overlapping territory between the synthpunk and goth/deathrock undergrounds, then and now?
Diesel Dudes bring a high-energy performance at punk tempos, informed by intense noise. Their shows are acts of frenzied acrobatics with masks. N8NOFACE brings the Screamers’ hysterical synth patterns with a street culture shift. Super Violate brings in more diverse underlying rhythms along with aspects of no wave and noise.
As for Kommunity FK, we have a kinship with Patrik aligned by a shared interest in DaDa and musical exploration. There’s a deeper parallel between Nervous Gender and the goth/deathrock tradition too. Catholic imagery runs through both, and so does the disdain for it.
And the latest incarnation isn’t opposed to slowing the tempos down to revel in the abyss.
9. Nervous Gender Reloaded is carrying real momentum right now. What’s on the horizon, new releases, collaborations like the unreleased work with Michael Intriere, or new directions like the live visual system you’ve been developing?
We’re currently waiting for the release of a 12″ 45 RPM split with Puss, a NY/Sacramento-based experimental no wave and avant art rock group formed in 2010. The split will be released through Hate Mail Records and includes “Angelus,” a new 8-minute song we’ll be performing in San Diego. The title is taken from the hypocrisy associated with the Angelus bells in Ireland.
We’re also hoping to release the Gender-FK EP later this year, though that hasn’t been finalized yet. And we’re planning a summer mini-tour with Kommunity FK in Northern California. Details to be posted soon.
We’ve been working on a live video system as well, for venues that support it. It’s a work in progress that we plan to open-source for anyone who wants to build on it.
Nervous Gender Reloaded
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Written By Javi Nunez
Javi Nunez is a contributor to Modern Wav covering goth, darkwave, industrial music, underground nightlife, synthpunk, post-punk, and alternative culture throughout San Diego, Los Angeles, and Southern California.
Related Topics
Goth • Darkwave • Industrial • Synthpunk • Deathrock • EBM • Post-Punk • Underground Music • Alternative Nightlife • San Diego • Los Angeles • Southern California • Nervous Gender Reloaded • Kommunity FK
