31 songs from the queer Xerox revolution
Tales and tunes from the queer zines that continue to shape a movement
For the past couple of years, I’ve been hosting lost and found, my radio show on Refuge Worldwide. Each episode is an excuse to dig into stories, movements, and archives left out of the mainstream. This latest episode is dedicated to music found in queer zines. Below is the full tracklist, each song in conversation with the zine that brought it to me.
You can hit play and listen along as you read:
“Eight Page Zine” by Brian Huntress (2024, US)
I began with a simple question: has anyone ever written a song about making zines? That led me to Brian Huntress’ “Eight Page Zine”, a lil gem that captures the DIY zine magic of cutting, folding, and gluing your thoughts into something physical and real. It made me wonder: why aren’t there more songs about zines? If you know of any, tell me.
“Wigstock Theme” by John Kelly as Joni Mitchell (1987, US)
via Evil #2 (1992, US)
As I started venturing into my personal zine collection, I revisited Evil #2, a 1992 zine published by Yale Alexander, featuring an interview with Bobcat Goldthwait, movie reviews and several pages dedicated to wig reviews and their owners. The introduction page mentioned Wigstock, the iconic drag festival founded by Lady Bunny in 1984 and held annually on Labor Day in Manhattan’s East Village.
Fast forward to this spring: I visited Nan Goldin’s This Will Not End Well at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie. Her slideshows were backed by a stunning selection of music and displayed beautiful portraits of queer and trans people, including some Wigstock performers. I sat through one of the slideshows again just to catch the music credits. That’s how I discovered the name John Kelly. His performance as Joni Mitchell of the “Wigstock theme” felt like a perfect sonic tribute to Evil #2.
“Lola” by The Kinks (1970, UK)
via Drag Queens Magazine #1 (1971, US)
A couple of weeks ago, as I was getting lost browsing the Digital Transgender Archive, I found Drag Queens Magazine #1. This wonderful publication by Lee G. Brewster from 1971 features stunning photo reports from different drag balls, mentions of the Stonewall riots, reports of drag queens forming picket lines at the premiere of a Broadway show, a review of The Christine Jorgensen Story, and much more. (Pssst! I’m planning to distribute restored copies of Drag Queens #1 soon—stay tuned!). But most importantly, in the Gay News section, the editor wrote:
Latest hit record: Lola… ‘a drag’!
“I’m not dumb, but I can’t understand. She walked like a woman but talked like a man.”
The above are lyrics to a new hit song, now being played over the air and sung by a well-known rock group THE KINKS. We couldn’t quite believe our ears at first, but upon listening closer to the lyrics we heard:
“ GIRLS WILL BE BOYS, AND BOYS WILL BE GIRLS. It’s a mixed up world and a shook up world. ‘Cept for my LOLA.”
The closing lines go: “I know I am not the world’s most passionate guy. I know what I am and I pray I’m a man and so is my LOLA.”
Lola is a drag queen!
“Dream Baby Dream” by Angel Corpus Christi (1985, US)
“Sour grass” by Tiger Trap (1998, US)
“Lost Woman song” by Ani DiFranco (1992, US)
via the music reviews section of Quim #5 (1994, UK)
The next three songs were all featured in Quim #5, a UK-based lesbian art, sex, and culture magazine "For Dykes of All Sexual Persuasions" published in 1994. Quim’s editorial stance was defiantly anti-censorship and radically pro-sex, with most of its content submitted by volunteer contributors. It featured articles, creative writing, art, and photography covering topics including fantasies, orgasm, masturbation, safe sex, sex toys and sadomasochism. Their music reviews section led me to Angel Corpus Christi’s fetishist dream of a cover of “Dream Baby Dream”, bouncy bop Tiger Trap’s “Sour Grass”, and bisexual folk anthem Ani DiFranco’s “Lost Woman Song”.
“Get up, Get Up” by The Younger Lovers (2013, US)
“Denim Boys” by Hard Place (2004, US)
“Slug” by Lipstick Pickups (Early 2000s, US)
“Help” by The 5,6,7,8’s (199X’s, Japan)
via Fag School Issue #1 (2000 - US)
Then came Fag School #1, a zine published by Brontez Purnell in 2000 that I can only describe as a masterpiece of punk smut, handwritten messiness, and cultural critique. It includes interviews with The Husbands and Alison Wolfe (Bratmobile), an erotic roman-photo-style practice room story titled young’n’hung, as well as book, music & cruising spot reviews, all scribbled in ballpoint. Fag School #1 led me to a string of tracks: “Get Up Get Up (Love Makes My Heart Beat Faster)” by Brontez Purnell himself, under his project The Younger Lovers, Hard Place’s “Denim Boys” (about whom Courtney Love reportedly had opinions), Lipstick Pickups’ bubblegum pop hit “Slug”, and The 5,6,7,8’s iconic "Help":
“They played Brontez’s house and used his room as a dressing room and I kept walking in on ‘em making their hair so enormous. Too bad his bed was covered in dildos and gay porno. I am pretty into them!! They are famous.”
As I mentioned on air, if you’ve seen the movie Kill Bill, you’ve already seen The 5,6,7,8’s in action. Oh and while I’m gushing over Brontez Purnell’s work, I recommend getting your hands on a copy of 100 Boyfriends, an absolute must-read I first heard being read by a daddy butch at a local faery gathering.
“Trust a boy (don’t)” by wifey (2025,US)
“Sun & Moon” by Liquids (2016, US)
via Diddley Squat #1 (2017, US)
Revisiting Brontez’s handwritten zine reminded me of Cherlyn Autumn Straub, the artist behind Diddley Squat. She gave me a copy when we met in Seattle in 2017 at Wheels of Fortune—the longest-running global gathering of non-traditional skateboarders. Her song “Trust a Boy (Don’t)” made it onto this episode, alongside Liquids’ “Sun & Moon”, which she listed under her Top 10 as one of her favorite bands to listen to very loud in her bedroom.
“Like a Dog” by Stiff Love (2018, US)
“Skin” by Leslie Winer (1996, US)
via Unapologetic: The Journal of Irresponsible Gender (1992, US)
Some bands I found indirectly, through zines like Unapologetic: The Journal of Irresponsible Gender, published in 1992 by Anne Tagonist, featuring a report from an anarchist women's gathering, poetry, a Male-2-Butch article by Kylie Paintain and a presentation of the band Bitch Hips, which I have desperately tried to track down for the show but failed to. So instead, I tried to track down bands Anne Tagonist played in, and Stiff Love seems to be one of them! So here we are bopping to the sound of “Like a Dog”. Unapologetic also included a hilarious and cutting review of Camille Paglia’s cameo in Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman (1996), leading me to the sensual “Skin” by Leslie Winer, whose truly hypnotic’s voice soundtracked the movie.
“World’s Greatest Haircut” by Kaia (2002, US)
via Catfood in my sock! (1998, Australia)
Catfood in my sock!, published in 1998 in Australia, featured band interviews and mentions of Rock’n’Roll High School, a Melbourne music festival from the 90s that would have seen a lot of the first Australian Riot Grrrl bands perform! It also included a long conversation with a band called Healthy, which I still haven’t managed to find anything about online. If you know anything, please write me. Kaia is also mentioned in the zine, so I chose to include “World’s Greatest Haircut”, a sweet nostalgia ballad that reminds me of Elliott Smith.
Sidenote: Girls Rock! Australia, a national network of girls rock camps happening across Australia is the grandchild of Rock’n’Roll High School.
While browsing through the zine collection of the Feminist Archive FFBIZ in Berlin, I found Muchacha #10 is an actual fanzine dedicated to honoring and celebrating the life, influence and music of artist Selena Quintanilla-Pérez:
“For the Latin@/Chican@ community, Selena’s musical legacy is so powerful that she has not only served as the soundtrack of many childhood memories, but continues to live on and inspired both older fans and newer generations of fans 20 years after her death. Her impact on our communities only continues to grow and strengthen in new and imaginative ways.”
Muchacha Fanzine is a radically intersectional and decolonial Native Xicana Feminist publication founded in 2011. Influenced by DIY and punk rock feminism, Daisy Salinas began Muchacha Fanzine as a feminist punk zine and over the course of the past decade has grown into a larger, submission-based compilation of work by marginalized voices from around the world.
“Feminist Politics” & “I’m Queen” by Le Butcherettes (2008, Mexico)
“The Get Up” by Teri Gender Bender (2022, US)
“Maldito” by Jessy Bulbo (2007, Mexico)
via Muchacha #5 (2013, US)
FFBIZ’s collection also hosts the fifth issue of Muchacha, featuring community testimonials, interviews and an extensive music review section mentioning influential latinx Riot Grrrl musicians such as Jessy Bulbo, Alice Bag, Ana Tijoux and founder of Le Butcherettes, Teri Gender Bender:
“Gender Bender formed the punk rock band Le Butcherettes in 2007 with her ex drummer, Auryn Jolene, in Guadalajara. Their vision was to use the stage as a platform to resist negative female stereotypes. Gender Bender used props like raw meat to represent how some men treat women like meat […]”
As a bridge between the Riot Grrrl movement from then and its influences until now, I’ve decided to include Teri Gender Bender’s most recent solo project with the song “The Get Up”.
Mexico’s Riot Grrrl pioneer and former bassist and singer in punk garage band Las Ultrasonicas Jessy Bulbo is also mentioned. I came across her music about 8 years ago while looking around for Riot Grrrl bands outside of North America and she’s definitely high on my own Top 10 list.
“Mindreader” by Peach Kelli Pop (2017, Canada)
via Saint Soupeur #1 (2012, France)
Some artists you discover on your own, and some get handed to you by friends who just know. Saint Soupeur #1 was published in 2012 in Bordeaux by my friend Arthur Brière, back when he couldn’t keep his band conspiracies to himself any longer. He started a zine and began interviewing local and international acts, casually telling us who we should all be listening to. One of them was Peach Kelli Pop. I’ve been calling her the Bubblegum Power Pop queen for a couple of years now, but Arthur was already on it and had it printed over a decade ago.
“Double Dare Ya” by Bikini Kill (1991,US)
via Why is the zine so important within the feminist punk subculture? by Harriet Alana (2015, UK)
It’s hard to talk about zine music without mentioning Bikini Kill, Kathleen Hanna and the Riot Grrrl movement. My friend Harriet Alana dived into it in her zine-essay on feminist punk and DIY publishing.
There’s this story I love about the movement: to avoid being co-opted, Riot Grrrls mostly dodged interviews the mainstream news—but when they did speak with big media, they exaggerated the scene’s reach, claiming chapters in places where none existed yet. The result? People went looking for them, and when they didn’t find any, they started their own. That’s how it spread. I even recently found a zine from the Riot Grrrl chapter in Belgium at the Lesbian Archive Spinnboden in Berlin.
At its core, Riot Grrrl was about carving out space for women in punk, pushing back against toxic masculinity, and announced itself as against girl on girl hate, which brings me to Bikini Kill’s iconic “Double Dare Ya”.
“Your love” by Les Butchies (2004, US)
via Not Sorry #1 (2006, US)
Another zine I kept coming back to while working on this show was Not Sorry #1, published by Jenny in 2006. It takes a sharp, personal look at the Riot Grrrl movement—celebrating it, while also calling out its blind spots. Jenny writes about fatphobia, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival’s exclusionary policies, and the ways parts of the scene lacked intersectionality. There’s this line I underlined immediately:
"Hey grrrls, how do we expect there to be a grrrl-revolution, when we can't even get past our own grrrl-hate?"
The zine reads like a love letter and a breakup all at once—huge admiration for Kathleen Hanna, followed by the kind of reflection that pushes things forward. That’s the kind of energy I feel in Les Butchies’ “Your Love”—sapphic drama, and emotional urgency, so it had to be part of the set.
“I Wanna Kiss a Drag Queen” by Punx’n’Kweens (2024, Germany)
via Punx’n’Kweens, Summer of Love (2025, Germany)
This one’s from my own (almost released) zine—a photo report from the Punx’n’Kweens show at Neue Zukunft on August 7th. If you’ve never been, Punx’n’Kweens is a wild, queer punk cabaret featuring a rotating crew of legends: Nancy Nutter, Bleach, Mad Kate, Anita Drink, Rosa Peligrosa, Pull Out Boy, Tom Stom, Turbobiiitch, Bláthin, Levita, Rouge-Ah, Texas Terri, Roc Roc It, Fleshpiece, Caratoes, Fibi Eyewalker… and that’s not even the full list. If you missed the Summer of Love edition, don’t worry. This zine captures the chaos, sweat, eyeliner, and glitter, and comes with its own soundtrack, starting with “I Wanna Kiss a Drag Queen”.
“I Can't Promise” by Ché-SHIZU (1984, Japan)
via Bored Teenagers published by Motoyoshino (2022, Japan)
Found this one through Bored Teenagers, a beautiful zine compiled by Motoyoshino—an archive of Japanese punk flyers and zine covers from the late 80s. Most of the bands featured are loud, fast, and chaotic (in the best way), but then I stumbled on Ché-SHIZU’s “I Can’t Promise”, and knew I had found something very special. This band is dreamy, strange, and totally unlike anything else in the zine. A real gem.
“Queens (Make the World Go Round)” by Vaginal Davis and Robespierre (2014, US)
via Evil Taco (Date unknown, US)
Another essential icon to the queer zine history—we owe a lot to Vaginal Davis. Too gay for the punks, too punk for the gays, Vaginal Davis is a trail blazer for many of us. I had the pleasure of meeting her at the opening of her exhibition Fabelhaftes Produkt at Gropius Bau this spring. This large scale exhibition retraces the different layers of her work and invites the visitors to take a piece of her work home with them. Who else but Vaginal Davis would insist that a copy machine would be available for anyone to get copies of her extensive zine collection. A true fuck you to the art institutions that seal art behind glass doors and a testament to her unwavering dedication to the punk and DIY ethos. On opening night, she signed my reprint of my unauthorized copy of Evil Taco, An Unauthorized biography by Vaginal Davis and I thought it essential to share her music, as much as I think it's essential for you to visit her show before it closes on September 14th.
“Langit Na Naman” by Hotdog (1979, Philippines)
via OPM (2025, UK),
At Glasgow Zine Fest this year, my partner picked up a copy of OPM (Original Pinoy Music) published by Pita Santos and printed at Caterpillar Press. It’s a mini guide retracing the different eras of Filipino music, including the Manila Sound and that’s where I found Hotdog’s “Langit Na Naman”.
“The Manila sound was a popular era of music that emerged during the 1970s, which introduced the disco-funk aesthetic to the Philippine music scene. Many songs were written in Tagalog and English (Taglish), influenced by American singer-songwriters.[…]”
“Get Paid” by Rythm King and Her Friends (2002, Germany)
via Clitrocket #4 (2005, Italy)
Clitrocket #4 was a queer punk zine published by Veruska Outlaw in Italy in 2005. It features a beautiful cover pic by Del LaGrace Volcano, movie review of Venus Boyz (2002), event reviews, cut and paste collages and band interviews, including an interview with then Berlin-based Rythm King and Her friends. Influenced by the likes of The B-52’s and Kleenex, they write:
“At the time there weren’t many women doing electronics stuff, so we just invented our own style.”
“Champagne Taste” by Eartha Kitt (1965, US)
via Demure Butchness (1992, US)
Demure Butchness was a magazine for men published in 1992 in the US featuring a queer quiz titled “Are you a fag?”, lists of cool and hot people, a beautiful Madonna collage as well as a review of a drag happening at the Casablanca Show Lounge in Minneapolis where a drag queen lip-synced to Eartha Kitt’s iconic “Champagne Taste”.
“Sweetie” by Le Tigre (2013, US)
I closed the episode with “Sweetie” by Le Tigre, a song from the Calling All Kings & Queens compilation by Mr. Lady. It felt like a full-circle moment—a nod to riot grrrl, queer punk, and the people who made it possible.
So here’s the thing: these songs aren’t just soundtracks—they’re living archives. Echoes of revolutions in basement bars, political manifestos scrawled in gel pen, heartbreaks, revelations, protests, dreams. This episode was my attempt to map the movement into a bigger picture and to illustrate the legacy of DIY publishing and queer musicians within the community.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. This show and article took a lot of time and care, but I’m so happy you took the time to read it. I hope it reminds you, too, that underground culture—queer, punk, drag, DIY—isn’t some nostalgic past. It’s still here. In bedrooms, basements, back rooms. In zines, in songs and in the noise between.
And if you feel moved to support this work, you can tip me here or subscribe. But mostly, send me your zine finds, your songs, your memories.
Let’s keep creating. Let’s keep archiving. Let’s keep printing.
parfait, bisous