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Glen Meadmore Interview
by Vaginal Davis
"I am in my little big bedroom of my dingbat flat, interviewing 6'9" guitar godessa Glen Meadmore. Glen is originally from Winnipeg, Canada(Manitoba Land.) Did I forget to mention he's also a deranged lunatic? As the spawn of a native American mother and English rugby playing dad Ms. Meadmore migrated to Los Angeles in 1978. (living a few months at the legendary Canturbury) she returned to Canada when she couldn't find work here. After venturing to New York and London, she gave Los Angeles a second try in 1981, and we haven't been able to get rid of her. I first ran into her in the early 1980's at a Theoretical Party at the infamous One Way leather bar in Silverlake. Her performance piece consisted of sticking an entire roasting chicken up her bunghole to some electronic music. I told you she was a sick ticket. A few years later we formed the thrash metal unit Pedro, Muriel & Esther as a one-off performance project. Some of our opening acts during this period-Hole and Nirvana. Around the same time Glen put together her raucus Glen Meadmore Cunt-try Band. Glen Meadmore: We've had a busy day-to-day stuffing our faces with big thick pieces of meat. Vaginal Davis: Yes we had lunch downtown at the world famous Pantry. One of the oldest restaurants in Los Angeles, owned by our Mayor, Tricky Dick Riordan. The Pantry never closes, they've been serving large sizes of meaty meat since 1924. GM: Yeah, their T-room never closes. Ricky Castro the director of the movie we are both in Hustler White got hit by a speeding train yesterday. VD: (laughs) No he didn't, you exaggerate, he fell off of his bicycle on the Sunset Strip and a speeding lavender Miata stationwagon ran over his leg and now he's become an amputee like some of the male prostitute models he photographs. GM: Yeah that's what happened. Poor dear, he at Cedar Sinai Hospital on the 8th floor which is the celebrity ward. VD: (laughing hysterically now) The industry queen ward. Liz Taylor is across the hall from him, and Frank Sinatra is decomposing in the room right next to Ricky. Frankie baby has been dead for months, but his publicist refuses to make the announcement so the body is being preserved with formaldehyde and they have him propped up in bed. GM: It's not nice to laugh at other people's misfortune. VD: You're right darling as always. Ms. Meadmore the former drag queen beauty queen is always right. Lady, a lot of people want you to put those high heels back on and take your place right next to Jerri Hall, Beck, and other famous drag queen pretties in the drag queen hall of flaming. GM: Drag is dead. It's over. I stopped because straight women were getting enough promotion. I don't want to be responsible for promoting womanhood. VD: That's noble of you. GM: I'm on a mission to convert straight men to the dull gay lifestyle and I can only do that in the guise of a man. What's really repugnant to me is being attracted to straight men and not being able to have them. VD: You're a lot to handle whether you're in boy drag or girl drag. I agree though, drag is dead. I hate drag queens! GM: I may do drag again, just once for Crystal Cross so she can have a wet dream. VD: For those of you outside the Landy of Oz who aren't aware of the famous Crystal Cross. She is a legendary figurine. Honorary member of the Silverlake 40 - you know the same bald-headed boys you see everywhere. Cross was formerly in the band The Speed Queens and she was part of the First Family of Fuck (Club Fuck that is) and is a high master piercer with the Gauntlet Studio Empire and Mod Prim Directive. She also owns her own piercing salon Primeval Body which she sold to the Gauntlet for 4.5 billion dollars, making her the richest white lady in all the fairyland of Oz. She is also a big drag hag and though she's a tranny chaser now. Speaking of spirituality, I love how your music reflects yours. Gay Christian country punk is definitely a much needed new genre. I hate it when people at your shows think that you're joking. You're dead serious.BR> GM: Hopefully everything will come together with my next CD, "Hot, Horny & Born Again." VD: I love that song you wrote, "Never trust A Hustler." That one comes from experience. Your hustler boyfriend Monty stole and sold your guitar and amp-Marshall stax, and all your Joel Peter Witkin prints that you posed for and all your one-of-a-kind John Wayne Gacy paintings that feature you and Mr. G in very romantic coupling. GM: But I got everything back, and me and Monty are still living together as happy as lambs. VD: When you fell off of that turnip truck it gave you Alzheimer's disease. Seriously, you're a very forgiving lady. GM: So was Jesus. VD: Yes, Jesus was a incredibly forgiving lady. Now Glen, you've been a drag diva, a performance artist, rock star for nearly a quarter of a century. Where do you see your career going as we approach millennia shrugged? GM: Actually nowhere, I'm too much of a lazy bottom to take my career anyplace, and I've never been ambitious enough to promote myself, so I'll probably wind up in the gutter. VD: Honey, you don't promote yourself at all. GM: On occassion, I'll call people and tell them when I'm performing. VD: Sweetie you're a guitar goddess. You're my personal guitar guru. More people should be aware of you're genius. The music industry is an evil business, but we have to fornicate with Babylon the Great if we want to have a semblance of a career. I know as a christian wo-man myself, you don't approve of that evil harpy of a harlot, but you must lie down with her-the woman of Babylon, and her painted face and shimmering 77 veils. You must lieth with the wo-man the same way you lieth downeth with a man, thou thusly, with a pittance and a proverbial bucket. I think that's written in Psalms 49:15. GM: I think that's what it says. VD: You have to be more aggressive with your career. GM: I don't know It's just too tacky. VD: I understand darling...Next week we're finishing filming "Homosexual is Criminal" one of the songs from our Pedro, Muriel & Esther CD The White to be Angry. In this film version of our song you play a spree killer. GM: You wrote the part for me. VD: I had to utilize that Gacy glare in your eyes. In this no budget film version of our Steve Albini produced album you play a killer as re-enacted on an episode of America's Most Wanted as directed by Clive Barker. GM: I can't wait to film my scenes. Are we still shooting in an actual dungeon? VD: My friend Mistress Ilsa Strix has graciously consented to let us film all day in her beautiful homo-moderne dungeon in Los Feliz. She lives right between Madonna and Danny DeVito. GM: No Way! VD: Yeah, it's a celebrity- laden block. Lily Tomlin lives on her street and Nicholas Cage and Patricia Arquette. Anthony Edwards, the balding guy from that TV show ER, just bought a house on the street too. Speaking of ER how's your sex life been with your big dick hustler boyfriend Monty? GM: Oh he occasionally gives me a mercy fuck when he's around, aound that is and can get an erection. He divides his sextime between me and Sharon Gault. VD: For the uninformed, Sharon gault aka: Mama Make-up artist to the stars. She's best known as the girl in Madonna's Truth or Dare rock-u-mentary who was slipped a mickey in a niteclub in NYC and raped. When word got back about the incident to Madonna she laughs on camera and apologizes then laughs some more. GM: Well Sharon is a bit of tragicomic figure. VD: Well she's a lonely pathetic make-up star and you're a lonely pathetic rock-n-roll star. GM: Monty has been the inspiration for a lot of my music lately. Especially the darker sides to my tunes. VD: That new song "After Dark," there's a bit of Monty in that. GM: Well a little, but it's actually referencing the cruisy area where all the trolls take their desperality on Venice Beach. VD: Your songs are very forlorn like my favorite Irving Berlin song from his early tin pan alley days, "Better Luck Next Time." Your fans don't realize what a consummate artist you are. Besides being a gifted singer/songwriter you've written some of the most hilarious short stories I've ever read, and your simple pencil drawings are amaaaazing! Oh god I used the new gay word. GM: Thank you, I guess that was a compliment. VD: No one realizes what a perfectionist you are. When you first came to LA you were doing these performances that were way ahead of anything that was being done at the time. Your sense of visuals. You designed your own costumes back then, before your relationship with Jim Van Tyne. You did a different performance piece every week of those days at the Limbo Lounge. GM: Those were fun times. VD: Unforgettable. Some of that stuff was documented by the experimental filmmakers John Aes-Nihil and Rafael Santorella. Even your detractors that thought your talent was negligible at best, had to give you credit for the work you put out at the Limbo Lounge on a weekly basis. LA will never see the likes of those days again. GM: I did manage to create a few Cecille B. DeMille spectacles. VD: Your Glen Meadmore Cunt-try Band carries on in the traditions you set with your performance artwork. There are not that many interesting bands out on the LA scene. What you do works on so many levels. I could see your music being accepted into the mainstream. Hey if there is a place in the mainstream for k.d. lang who began as a performance artist, why not you. Well, you're not a careerist dyke like k.d. Hmmmm what does the Oracle at Delphi see in your future? GM: I don't know what she sees. For all I know my future could be very bleak. VD: Indeed...Your voice when you sing, has melancholy timbre a bitter sweet quality. GM: Accent on the bitter. VD: Don Pyle of Shadowy Men, on a Shadowy Planet and Phonocomb fame is a huge fan of yours, and that guy doesn't like anybody. He's quite the music snob. I read an article in Mojo where he praised you to the hilt. He said that your CD Boned is his alltime fav, and he even mentioned the PME EP we did together Haute Sexy D. GM: Wow! Don doesn't hand out the compliments. VD: Yeah you Canadians hate everything and everyone. GM: I don't really relate to anything out there right now. VD: Well we have to sharpen our penis sucking skills and chow down on David Geffen's peter so he will put out our records, because it's rediculous that we make records on these small indie labels and no one can find our music. GM: I don't know how involved David Geffen is in the record business. VD: You're right, he spends all his time and energy buying hot bubble-butt male prostitutes. I hear he goes through ten a week. GM: Him and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Barry Diller, Alan Carr and Sylvester Stallone. VD: They spend a combined $40,000 a month on hustlers. I've got to start making more money so I can buy me a juicy male prostitute-amputee. GM: I'd like to buy the porn star Mike Branson. I want him to sit on my face. Can that be off the record? VD: You wouldn't want to eat out his hole? GM: No comment. VD: You met your idol John McLaughlin at the House of Blues recently. How was that experience? GM: Sweet. He laughed when I told him my music was gay, christian, country punk. He said that's quite a soup. VD: You're quite a soup Ms. Meadmore --split "pee" soup. Only god who art in the heavens could love you. GM: If God could love a cocksucking sinner like me, just think what he could do for you." |
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L.A. Weekly The Inner Mounting Flame Glen Meadmore saddles up by Vaginal Davis
WEEKLY: Your new album, Hot, Horny & Born Again, is pure genius. GLEN MEADMORE: Thank you. I was cursed to be born again. I like to think of myself as a spiritual being. I keep hope in a loving god, the Jesus of my childhood days. A Jesus like the one in the movie Ben-Hur. Which Ben-Hur film? The silent-film version, or the Gore Vidal/William Wyler epic that has homosexy overtones? The Heston flick -- it's a very gay Jesus. Too bad Chuck had to turn NRA to compensate. My grandmother is a cool Christian. She's old-school, high-waisted, Bible-thumping, but she doesn't believe that homosexuality is a sin. She's in her 90s and asked me if I had a hot boyfriend. Too bad you're pathetic and alone. You're never alone as long as you have Jesus. I guess Jesus is your boyfriend. Well, Jesus is cute. He's my muse. I can hear his subtle influence on your songs "Glory Hole," "Let Me Turn You Out" and "Blow You." "Blow You" is actually one of the first songs I ever wrote. I wrote it by playing my guitar out of tune. I like your thought-provoking ditty "Yonder Over There." The music goes from rambunctious exultation to introspective hymn. Very old-style country, like the Carter Family. I get my inspiration from Appalachian folk music, but I add loud, salty, textured guitars. It's fractured, sped-up bluegrass, sort of. When I first heard country music, I hated it. I thought it was boring. My Indian grandmother -- my Kookum -- was listening to Charley Pride, and she took me to see Jim Reeves when I was 4 years old. That had a big influence on me. Your record has an ethereal quality. I love your sense of whimsy and experimentation. I started out in bar bands back in Canada. I was even in hippie-folk and prog-rock bands. The punk and performance-art stuff came later. I was doing intuitive, organic performances and being outlandish. Tell me about that legendary chicken-head performance. Oh, I just stuck a chicken head up my butt, and it came out in a mudslide on someone in the audience. What kind of reaction did you get? No reaction, really. You could have heard a pin drop. Your usual high standard. I like it when an audience doesn't know what to expect . . . when they question my sanity. I hate to break it to you, but I don't think there's any question -- you're insane! That John Wayne Gacy glare of yours is worse than the Gacy original cover art on your CD. I love this new genre you've created, of gay Christian country punk. It was inevitable with the way the world is today. You're a minor prophet for the new millennium. So Bodhi Tree. There's a lot to be learned from you, dear. Yes, gays and Christians learning together.I remember when you did a show at the Gay Rodeo years ago. Very few people got it, because your music wasn't . . . Slow and emotional. Yeah, the guy singing Randy Travis covers got a better response. The average music listener is programmed to respond to pure formula. That's why I'll never be embraced by a mainstream gay or straight so-called alternative audience. I like ferocious guitar attacks. John McLaughlin, he had a very violent way of playing leads. I do a cover of his song "Devotion." I liked his early-'70s Visions of the Emerald Beyond period when he was more jazz-rock. I'm also inspired by James Williamson, the guitar player on the Raw Power album. He had a great, messy, direct style. Getting back to McLaughlin, I'm sure most people are surprised he's an influence. He's one of my idols. When we met recently, he was very nice and encouraging. I told him my music is gay Christian country punk, and he said that was quite a soup. You're quite a soup, Ms. Meadmore -- split-pea soup. --L.A. Weekly, 12/25/98 |
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