Punk+Bear+Rock+Queer+Guru+Icon = Gary Floyd

INTRODUCTION:

In October of 1986, I had been living in San Francisco for almost three years. I was paying $295.00 a month for a little studio apartment next to a nursery school on Euclid Avenue, attending SF State -- finishing up the B.A. degree I had been nibbling away at for the past seven years -- and working as a parking lot attendant downtown for $13.00 an hour, which was really good money back then. I was really into the local music scene, hosting a weekly radio show at KUSF which enabled me to get into almost any gig I wanted to see for free, and DJ-ing a couple of nights a week at the Transfer bar in the Castro. I was fully “out” and my life as a young gay man in SF was pretty thrilling. Sure, the bath houses had closed down, and more and more skinny, sickly-looking men with purple blotches on their faces could be seen cruising the Castro. But the full enormity of the AIDS crisis hadn’t hit yet. At that time, although the early signs were evident in retrospect, we just hadn’t yet realized how bad it was going to get, so most of us kept on “playing” with youthful abandon. The HIV test came out in early 1986; I took it in July and tested negative. When I went back three months later for a follow-up, I tested positive. 26 years old, and I honestly never thought I’d live to see 30, such was the state of things then . . . Yet life did go on.

Early in 1987, while listening to KUSF, I heard a song called “Freight Train” by a SF band w/ the unusual name of Sister Double Happiness. The lyrics, belted out by a man with a BIG bluesy brawlin’ bawl, spoke directly to me and my fears as a newly-sero-converted HIV+ man: 

I wake up in the middle of the night
My skin’s like a block of ice
Hot sweat pouring out of me
I got the plague of the century

It’s like a freight rain
It’s like an airplane
It’s like a hurricane
Taking me away

I was good as I could be
My skin smooth as ivory
I swear to God I hardly messed around
That modern plague put me into the ground

It’s like a freight rain
It’s like an airplane
It’s like a hurricane
Taking me away

I call my mama. she said “Don’t come home.”
Mt friends shun me. I’m all alone
Before they touch me they put on gloves
C’mon people, I need some love

It’s like a freight rain
It’s like an airplane
It’s like a hurricane
Taking me away 

(Lyrics by Gary Floyd / Music by Ben Cohen) 


Turns out the band was playing later that week at the VIS Club, so I called the station and got myself put on the guest list.

When the band came to the stage, I was immediately struck by the lead singer, Gary Floyd. For one thing, he was really cute – or at least I thought so. Husky and hairy, just the way I like ‘em. (This is well before the “bear” phenomenon had started, mind you.) Another thing – This boy could sing! Also, it became clear to me by the end of the night – from his lyrics as well as his stage manners -- that he was gay and not at all reluctant about exploring queer themes in his music and stage show.

Thus, a fan was born. I pretty much became a SDH groupie that night, and since they played their hometown quite often, I was able to attend a LOT of their gigs. I managed to get backstage early on, flirted w/ Gary, and ended up “going home” with him one night after a gig. Our sexual dalliance eventually morphed into a friendship that continues to this day.

What I didn’t know about, in those early days of our friendship, was Gary’s colorful punk-rock past – and of course, I couldn’t know where our lives would take us in the future. For this project, I’ve decided to let Gary’s words (printed in blue) speak for themselves, as much as possible, so that you can get a sense of why I think Gary is an important figure in gay cultural history. 

OVERVIEW

Gary Floyd is San Francisco's own living, breathing punk rock icon, and deserves major credit, not just for being such a talented and prolific artist but for being an openly gay front person of a punk band in Texas in the late seventies/early Eighties. And this he boldly did as the powerhouse vocalist for legendary hardcore punk band The Dicks, a self-described “commie faggot” blues-derived, hardcore punk band who released their brilliant, rage-fueled first single, Dicks Hate the Police, which is now viewed as a timeless, punk classic. After The Dicks' demise, the tireless Gary Floyd, who has lived in San Francisco for the past 35 years, went on to form Sister Double Happiness, Black Kali Ma, The Gary Floyd Band, Hard Ride and currently the raw blues/country Gary Floyd and the Buddha Brothers. 
(Out, Loud and Proud . . .) 

CHILDHOOD ~ Pre-Austin

When I was a little kid in Arkansas, some people moved next door to us and I was a little third grader and they had this teenage son who was a weirdo, sort of beatnik guy and he had a huge picture of the Mona Lisa hanging in his room upside down and he was an artist and sort of different from the other kids in that town and he was a big influence on me. There were obviously some wild seeds in me and he was the water that made them come alive. Being gay... I always knew I was gay, although I always had little girlfriends and stuff. They were just like sisters to me to prevent any un-gay ways of acting. I tried to create some façade to hide that. A school that was pretty much newly integrated and seeing the same bigotry towards people of color and the same sort of nightmarish feeling that I was getting from these people and having to hide, because I wasn't open nor did I come out until I left school. Also, the radical sort of music in those days. All of those things gave me a feeling of being a little bit different and you start to cultivate your own ideas and sometimes maybe they become a little more radical when you feel sort of alone. I'm not trying to make myself seem pitiful or feel sorry for myself... they were miserable years in the fact that, at school, I was hated. I was popular as sort of a class clown but I suffered because I did really bad in school, I hated it but I also knew that something was happening that I was going to be all right. Sometimes, those feelings can produce a lot of positive things. You don't really know it, always, but I sort of had an inkling of it because I knew I'd get out, someday. 

I got drafted 1972. I'm 45 years old. But I had prepared myself from seeing people slaughtered and what I felt was a really unjust war against the North Vietnamese and the Vietnamese, in general. I'd developed a lot of very strong political ideas and I had signed up, when I registered for the draft, as a conscientious objector and I was accepted. So, when I got drafted, I had to do two years of alternative civilian work so I was placed in Houston. I moved to Houston in '72 and I worked as a janitor in a charity hospital, which was a job that they offered as alternative work. I worked there two years and that's where I came out and started doing lots of LSD -- which I don't do anymore nor have I for years -- but that's where all the things started happening that happen to young people when they move away from home. Then I moved to Austin. Suburban Voice . . .)

AUSTIN ~ Punk, The Dicks, Being a “Commie Fag” 

"Mommy, mommy, mommy..." bawled Gary Floyd to start The Dicks' classic 1980 single, Dicks Hate the Police, a warning that "you'd better stay out of my way... I've had a bad day." The Dicks had two incarnations -- the first, based in Austin, TX, featured Gary, guitarist Glen Taylor, bassist Buxf Parrott and drummer Pat Deason. The band moved to San Francisco in '82 but only Gary ended up making it a permanent move and he started a second version of The Dicks with guitarist Tim Carroll, bassist Sebastian Fuchs and drummer Lynn Perko. This lineup stuck until the band's breakup in '86 and Gary and Lynn moved on to the bluesier Sister Double Happiness. (Suburban Voice . . .)

Almost all the really good bands in Austin were either fronted by or had gay people in the band. People were pretty open about it then. It wasn't like people were trying to hide and the other thing about it was that people weren't really making a big deal about it. They weren't getting up and giving speeches for gay rights but they were just sort of being themselves and that was really wonderful. That's extremely refreshing. And after years of also not fitting into gay bars, because with mohawks and bleached hair and being fat was another thing that was very unaccepted -- all of those sort of mixed in together -- I really didn't like the queer bar scene. So Raul's [the primary venue for Austin’s late-70’s punk scene] fit all those things. It was really wonderful. Queers were really obvious in the scene and the people that weren't, if anybody didn't like it, we'd tell them we'd beat the shit out of them. Get a bunch of queers to beat your fuckin' ass. It usually never came to that. There was always a lot of mutual respect. (Suburban Voice . . .)

Mommy, mommy, mommy
Look at your son
You might have loved me
But now I got a gun
You better stay out of my way
I think I've had a bad day
I've had a bad day

Daddy, daddy, daddy
Proud of your son
Got himself a good job
Shoot niggers and Mexicans
I'll tell you one thing, it's true
You can't find justice, it'll find you
It'll find you

People tell policemen
They've met their match
Down in them desert sands
The Dicks won't catch
Dicks hates policemen, yes, it's true
You can't find justice, it'll find you
It'll find you

Mommy, mommy
Look at your son
You might have loved me
But now I got a gun
You better stay out of my way
I've had a bad day
Mommy, I've had a bad day (Lyrics by Gary Floyd / Music by Glen Taylor) 

The punk scene in Austin was really good in the fact that a lot of the best bands were fronted by queer men and they also happened to be sort of big queer men. So that was an advantage right there. And people wouldn't automatically mess with us cos we were sort of redneck queers in a way - redneck in the fact that we were big and we didn't really want to take any mess with anybody about it. And we were very lucky because the punk scene was very open minded there. And there was me and there was Biscuit from the Big Boys and (gay) others who were fronting these other bands. And I also had these three tough straight guys who were in the band with me and they gave me a lot of confidence. (laughs) I might be saying something a little different if I had three little rosebuds in the back of me. We were very lucky there and the frat-rats hated us a lot more for being punk than for being queer. (Out, Loud and Proud . . .)

Saturday Night at the Bookstore:

One of the Dicks’ most outrageous songs, and one of my favorites, is a song titled “Saturday Night at the Bookstore.” In it, Gary furiously berates a suburban married man he sees with his wife at a Safeway supermarket on Sunday morning, whose dick he had sucked the night before through a glory hole at the local adult bookstore, and who now won’t even acknowledge Gary’s presence. Gary end the song crooning “I’m in love with a glory hole . . .”

It was a very free, pre-AIDS time in the early Eighties. Most straight guys were getting blow jobs in video Stores, sneaking out from the wife and letting guys do what their wives wouldn't. Nobody thought much of it. But if you ever saw one of these creeps on the street, they acted like "Faggot, stop looking at me!" So, I wrote a little song about it. We never did it live until we started playing again a few years ago. It was a moment-in-time song. I still hum it sometimes.

Wayne: I'm especially fond of "Saturday Night At The Bookstore”. Though I may be a forty-something, married man of 20 years, I remember adult bookstores in the late 70s. They were amazing! And you're telephoning me from one?

Yes, yes! Nothing's changed! Nothing like an old glory hole to say "welcome home"! (Adams)

Gary on Divine and John Waters as an inspiration for some of his more feminine costumes from the Dicks era:

Any fat guy in drag was sort of Divine-ish. I loved to dress up back then, and the idea of making a punk crowd feel uneasy was always a wonderful way to spend the evening. The early John Waters movies from the 70's and early 80's were ground breaking and so fresh and new. Now he makes tired stuff, but I still love him. (Floyd)

Sister Double Happiness ~ Being a Bear From a 1991 review of SDH’s Heart and Mind LP: The ferocious rock-music disc would rank as one of the year's standouts even if Floyd weren't a self-pro-claimed "big fag? But he is, Blanche -- the first openly gay gutbucket hard-rock vocalist ever signed to a major label. He walks as fiercely as any queen and as ruggedly as a pitbull. His sexuality provides a perspective, but it is rarely the subject of his songs. The LP opener, "Bobby Shannon" is a queer but hardly gay blues tune about a dog devotee of the Indian monkey god Hanuman. But when Floyd turns a pained eye on the desperate state of the planet in "Ain't It a Shame," ozone depletion and police brutality are joined by the specter of a boy hungry for risky sex. With dread overtaking lust, Floyd warns, "Your kicks aren't safe. You leave it to fate. You got a dangerous machine." Floyd unleashes an entrancing vocal on "Exposed to You," a nearly unhinged plea to a youth who offers sex but won't return love . . . "Hey Kids" [is] a raging anthem about the costs of the closet. Floyd offers encouragement to "the kid whose light has been covered" and a warning to the businessman who has "waited so long to make the love you need" that "some private moment may come back.. .and be handed to you gently or else thrown in your face." The last verse offers love to a sick friend and rage that he's been denied the care he needs. "Hey Kids" is the first rock song about both outing and governmental inaction over AIDS. (Block) 

Hey kids in school
I'm talking to the ones whose light's been covered
Having to play by the rules
That some old man a thousand years ago discovered
Oh boy, but I wonder why
Why they're messing with you
In the very same way they messed with me
A long long time ago 
Hey Mr. Businessman
I see you every day in your pinstripe running
You never did understand that
When all those lies start burning
Oh boy you're gonna wonder why
Why you waited so long
To make the love you need
'Cause it should have been done
A long long time ago

Oh, in these days when my freedom is up for discussion
And you hold my future in your hands
Some private moment from your past
Might come back at you brother
And then the truth like poison
Will be handed to you gently
Or else thrown in your face

Hey friend of mine
I know you're sick
But with love you can recover
Oh, I wanna take you in my arms
And I'll yell out loud that I love you like a brother
Oh, boy, but I wonder why
Why they've waited so long to give you the care you need
'Cause it should have done
A long time ago

(Lyrics by Gary Floyd / Music by Ben Cohen)

I felt very akin to the bear movement because I never really liked gay bars, per se. I met this one guy who told me there was a bar in San Francisco called The Lone Star where big guys; more blue-collar, worker-type guys hung out. So I went there, and I befriended many people. and I got very involved with it, and I liked it a whole lot. My connection with it is, um, I look like one, I guess!

Sister Double Happiness was the best band, as a unit, that I was in. And then The Gary Floyd Band, who've changed so much... there've been so many different people... the core was me, Danny Roman, and Jonathon Burnside. But the one unit that was really cohesive and I felt ties with was Sister Double Happiness, partly because of [drummer] Lynn Perko, who is, of course, in [Roddy Bottums' group] Imperial Teen now. She and I are like brother and sister, and we have been for so many years. I remember one time when we were doing really good in San Francisco. We were playing an acoustic show at the Great American Music Hall. This was during the days when I was really hanging out at the Lone Star a lot. Somebody came backstage. They looked sort of nervous and said, "I don't wanna get you upset, or anything, but there's about 30-40 bikers out there!" So I ran and looked out front, and it was everybody from the Lone Star! It was one of the best shows we ever did. It was really, really wonderful! So, whenever we'd play around, all the local bears would come, and usually somebody would come up and say. "We've heard of you." Then we'd either go fuck or become friends! Or sometimes both! 
WAYNE: Has it ever been important whether or not you have gay people in your bands?

GARY: (laughing) You know, there are so few queers who come to our shows, I don't need the competition! I'd like to get several really pretty girls so all the guys would hang out with them, then I could pick up - sort of "mop up" - the queers if they wanted. (seriously) You know, the only thing I've ever cared about is the musicianship. 
WAYNE: That's what I like about your songs. You don't deliberately force the gay issue. It either comes up, or it doesn't.

GARY: I've really tried to handle being gay in that very same way. Of course, everybody acts up a lot when they first come out, but there's a certain point that, to me, I don't see being gay as something unnatural or something bizarre. This is a real part of life. There've always been queers, and there always will be. 
WAYNE: What do you like most in a man?

GARY: A big fucking fat dick with a long-shootin' load! (laughs) I think I most admire a man who can accept me without trying to change me. And also the dick with the big load! 
WAYNE: A woman?

GARY: Sistership. Ninety-five percent of my best friends are women. I become their sister, and I'm very satisfied with that. I love that! (Adams) 
Floyd has long been a vocal advocate of gay rights, sometimes angrily so -- on "Where Do We Run," from Sister's 1993 album Uncut, he sang: "I knew some tough guys who went out to have some fun/ They got a gay guy tried to shoot him with a gun/ That gay guy struck back and cut the bastards' throats ... they are weak, weak and going down." The same attitude pervades Black Kali Ma's "Gotta Keep Movin' On," which Floyd wrote in tribute to James Byrd and Matthew Shepard.

"If you think [San Francisco] is bad, just leave for a while," he says. "You get out of here, there's a lot of fucking racist, homophobic shit going on, sexist crap that goes on that even would shock the most politically incorrect people in this city." Referring to Shepard, he says, "Even if he'd gone up to them and said, 'Can I suck your dick?' " -- and here, his voice rises an angry octave -- "you don't kill people for that." (Athitakis)

ART

Throughout his career, Gary's expressions reached beyond music into a fantastic series of mixed-media creations. Avoiding the term "artist," Gary does Art. His pieces forge a stressed synergy between overt sexuality, spiritual insistence, and subjective violence. The initial impression is extreme; but, the subtleties that follow leave the viewer lilting in a simpler truth. 


The medium, in Gary's words, "is what I can grab the quickest...pizza boxes, scotch tape, water colors, copied photos and diabetic test strips [...] What I save on psychiatric services, I spend on art supplies. I leave 90% of my personal crisis in the art, leaving the remaining 10% for me to carry myself." (Art of Gary Floyd )

ON BEING A “CELEBRITY”

I'm a big puss. I've gone up to people who were in bands that I liked and they were assholes, and do you know what that taught me? That I don't want to do that to people. I want to be as natural to people as I can. I'd rather get run over by a fucking truck and go straight to hell than be rude to people who were fans I'd really rather burn in the stinking turd of hell. Some guy wrote me on MySpace and said, 'That's so nice, you're talking back to me, and you write back, and you're not an asshole.' I just want to be myself. (Ala)

SPIRITUALITY

In the late '80s, Floyd tried to get away from music; soon after Sister Double Happiness released its first album in 1988, he broke up the band and pursued what he calls a “spiritual journey,” studying Indian religion and even contemplating joining a monastery, an idea he dismissed fairly quickly, though he routinely credits a spiritual adviser on his records.

“I figured if I joined a monastery I'd probably end up being a pretty bad monk. Miserable me, you know, fucking fag sitting around a monastery pissed off at everyone. There were times that I didn't feel like being a part of the [music] scene anymore, but that's not a choice that I make. I actually accept it now: I'm always going to be doing music. I tried to quit music a few times. I tried to say that I'm not going to do any more bands now, but I figured out that's not really a choice now.” (Athitakis) 


"For a long time, I was really giving no attention to the spiritual side of my life. Like, nothing at all. And then it started coming to me really strong. And it wasn't like, go to the first Baptist church, it came in the way of a vacancy. I thought, this is like a spiritual vacancy, and I had been a real spiritual kid. I was raised Baptist, and my parents said one day, 'We don't want to go to church anymore, but we want you to go if you want to, and we're take you, and we'll come and get you.' And that changed, I became Catholic, which freaked my mom out a little bit. But they took me to church, and then the war in Vietnam started raging when I was 15, and I got very political, very left. And I ignored all the spiritual stuff for some time. But then I started getting really hungry for it. When the Dicks were on tour one time, I had some books about Buddhism, and I studied that a lot, kept moving, and I found another path, sort of a hippie path, and I got very into the Hindu path of mother worship, the different mother goddesses. Kali is my chosen mother. I see her terrifying side, but I also see her loving side. I started studying that, and I even quit Sister Double Happiness for a year to join a monastery. I studied, for a year and thought, okay, I'm really not going to be a monk anytime soon. 

And I got Sister Double Happiness back together. So yeah, a big mother thing. A BIG mother thing. And Kali is all those mother references. She'll slap you down, she'll pick you up. That's part of the whole trip, you have to look through it. It's all there, whether it's a hurricane down south, or it's a big gold palace up north. They're all part of it and if you get too attached to either one you're gonna freak out later on. You have to look at what's going one, deal with it, and keep your whole inner thing going on. And none of it's easy. I get rid of a lot of anxiety, and what could be called depression by singing. (Ala) 

I still think there should be a little more equality in the economy but I got much more into a spiritual life for awhile. I'm not talking about crystals or moonbeams. I studied a lot of old Hindu scriptures and actually went to a monastery and studied that for a year. I quit Sister Double Happiness and just studied and met some really non-dogmatic, wonderful spiritual teachers whose philosophy was, if there is a heaven, atheists who just do good for no reason are more likely to be in heaven than Christians that do good to go to heaven. It's a very good philosophy, I think. Just do what's right. Not hurting people and that also softened and took away a lot of my hard edged political drive. It didn't blind me or make me apathetic but it opened up a whole new part of my life and I'm really happy that it did. I'm not a Christian but, at the same time, I probably like Jesus better now that I'm not a Christian than I ever liked him when I was. (Suburban Voice . . .)

Wayne: Thank you so much for the interview, my friend! That wasn't too painful, now, was it?

GARY: No, my ass doesn't even hurt! (Adams)

Works Cited

Adams, J. S., Wayne Ingle & Kevin John. “Musical Bearings.” American Bear #13 Aug./Sept. 1997. (Accessed online 2 March 2009.) 

Ala, Tuula. “Interview with Gary Floyd.” SF Burning. (Accessed online 2 March 2009.) 

Art of Gary Floyd. (Accessed online 2 March 2009.) 

Athitakis, Mark. “Another Crossroads: Former Sister Double Happiness Frontman Gary Floyd Re-Confronts His (and America's) Musical Roots” SF Weekly, March 03, 1999. (Accessed online 2 March 2009.)

Block, Adam. “Floyd's Vocals Suggest He Had Kitty Wells for a Baby-Sitter.” The Advocate. 12 November 1991. (Accessed online 2 March 2009.) 

Floyd, Gary. Personal interview. 27 February 2009.

“Out, Loud, and Proud, Long Before It Was Hip to be Queer.” Amoeblog (Accessed online 2 March 2009.) 

“Suburban Voice Interviews Gary Floyd.” Operation Phoenix Records. (Printed in Suburban Voice #41, 1998.) (Accessed online 2 March 2009.)