NEW MEANIES

Rip It Up, Issue 177, 1 April 1992, Page 12

NEW MEANIES

The beast that gave birth to Queen Meanie Puss first raised it's ugly head five years ago in the deep southern seaside town of Port Chalmers.

Rachel Shearer, Stella Corkery amd Michael (Dead C) Moriey banged around on broken equipment and called themselves Angelhead. Then they moved to Auckland. Debbie Hindin started playing bass, Michael moved back to the Port and guitarist Dieneke Jansen joined to complete a line-up that, for the last three years, has called itself Queen Meanie Puss. Starting out with the simple aim of making music to please themselves, they've ended up impressing some of the best independent labels here and in America. Flying Nun has just released their debut 7" EP The Beauty of Dogs (an ironic take on

the derogatory term men use for women they don't find sexually attractive). Last year, Queen Meanie Puss appeared on the Xpressway / Drag City 7" compilation of 12 one -minute songs I Hear The Devil Calling. Now the group is working on songs to be released by hep Philadelphia label Siltbreeze while 60 copies of their Flying Nun EP are already winging their way to a San Fransisco record shop. The 7" format is designed to appeal to the tiny, but fanatical American collector market, people whose aural apparatus is tuned to pick up on the strange, challenging frequencies of a band like Queen Meanie Puss.

Not that their music is all that inaccessible. It's just that the playing style is low-tech and deceptively low-key: guitar, bass, drums prowl around the vocals of Rachel and Dieneke. The effect is menacing, ominous, dark, disturbing, the words are hard to decipher until a bloody phrase jolts up out of the miasma (Stella and Rachel are horror movie fans). The record sleeve hints at what's in store — "sinister" is one word Stella used to describe the effect of their sexual imagery. So what sort of music are they trying to make?

STELLA: "Something beautiful and horrifying." RACHEL: "Beauty on the edge of terror, something that makes you feel, moves you in one way or another. That's the ideal, that's what ►

► we're working towards. It's not always realised but at our best that's what we do." DIENEKE: "It's fairly intuitive." The band writes collectively, someone will start playing a riff that the others can expand on. Rachel writes most of the lyrics and Dieneke writes some too. About what? RACHEL: "In the last year or two one of the issues I've been looking at is sexuality. I was doing some work with that group the Strokettes, just looking at different aspects of sexuality, fear of issues of sexuality." What kind of issues? "Tension, desire, anger, archetypes and sexual stereotypes. Some of it's just really subconscious. If you took it word for word it doesn't make a helluva lot of sense, but the words evoke feelings or a mood. Perhaps more of the dark, menacing aspect of sexuality. But I find at the moment I'm sort of going off that subject because that's something creatively I've been stuck on for the last couple of years and I'm moving into a new stage of life and the focus of the lyrics is changing." Dieneke's songs are more straight-up political. As in the song

'Contracts' in which she takes the perspective of an anti-unionist in order to express her disgust at the way people stand by and let hard-won worker's rights get

legislated against. I am gently rebuked for comparing her singing style to Patti Smith's mono-tone recitation on the song 'Land', when I could have just as easily nominated any number of male singers as an influence. Point taken. Dieneke also wrote the words to 'Ego' on the up-coming Freak The Sheep Volume //which the rest of the band

describe enthusiastically as "a real doozy!" What's that about? DIENEKE: "The desirability for a particular artistic temperament that gives you credibility in the art world. Basically being an arrogant arsehole and you're not allowed to care or be sensitive." Except about yourself.

"And it's something that seems to pertain to the male gender. I think that's why to a large degree women have been excluded from artistic circles this century, it's because by nature and so-called tradition we're more caring and nuturing.“ Although living up to your

gender's reputation for being caring and nuturing can be a burden. DIENEKE: "I'm not saying all women are caring, but arrogance is a quality people often admire in

artistic males." RACHEL: "Whereas often if a woman acts like that she's

'superbitch'." I guess the members of Queen Meanie Puss haven't got time to let their artistic temperaments get the better of them. Debbie and Dieneke are mothers and all of them are involved in other creative

endeavours. Rachel in film and

video, Dieneke paints and teaches full time, Debbie and Stella make clothes. When I ask them if they're ever tempted to rock out, Stella says they haven't got time to get lost in a jam for an hour. If Debbie's booked one hour of child care they've got to do three songs intensively and then everyone splits. Are you trying to consciously steer away from rock cliches in your music?

DIENEKE: "You might put something into a formula and you think no, that's just so boring. It's perhaps due to that that you might

find something slightly different. It's do with a personal satisfaction. We don't have a real desire to create the newest thing or anything." RACHEL: "What sounds good to us we follow through." Your press release calls your music heavy, but I'd say it was more scary —with a spare touch — it's not like full-on drumming or Black Sabbath guitar riffs. STELLA: "That's do with ability, really." DIENEKE: "The less you know, the better you are probably. I think that part of our uniqueness is possibly a lack of having learnt all the cliches and formulas, it's to our advantage."

How important is the concept of originality in your music? DIENEKE: "Ifs something to do with a personal expression rather than a desire to stand out from the rest. Originality to me has an implication that you want to set

yourself apart from everybody else. I don't think that's my drive anyway. I think my drive is to express myself and that everybody has something to express." As four women on stage you must be aware that ifs not just your music

thafs going to get scrutinised. Do you consciously play down your image in live performance?

DIENEKE: "I never wear a dress on stage and also I would make sure no-one can see my tits either." DEBBIE: "Yes, I looked very provocative six months' pregnant!" Queen Meanie Puss will be using slides and films in their up-coming EP release party gig at the Boardwalk (Sunday, 26 April) of what, they

won't say, but Rachel says they want to take the focus away from themselves. But lefs face it, one of the primary motivations for people forming rock bands is to get looked at.

DEBBIE: "Especially men." RACHEL: "We're not young rockers." DIENEKE: "I think there's a certain amount of ego going on in terms of wanting people to perhaps pay attention to you in some way, but perhaps look at you' is the not quite the right word. Listen, for sure, a desire to have someone really listen to me playing... I damn well want people's attention, but I don't want them scrutinising the way I look, ifs got nothing to do with creativity."

So do you feel pressure being on a high-profile label like Flying Nun to become as well known as some of your peers?

STELLA: "Ifs different for us because of the 7" format that was chosen, ifs quite hard to sell that

format and they're actually angling at the overseas market. I think

Festival are having a bit of a problem distributing 7-inches in this country so Flying Nun are having some special shelves made up to put in record shops. I think we're a completely different side of Flying Nun."

DIENEKE: "I think ifs introductory. Roger's tried to hold onto the ideals of Flying Nun and he does this by having the bigger bands paying for new ideas and I guess the new ideas that come out are limited, but we just happen to be one of the ones at the moment."

So, listen out for Queen Meanie Puss: quietly powerful, evoking moods with pieces of words, using their music to create and resolve tensions—political, personal, sexual. Definitely destined fortheir own shelf in a brash world.

DONNA YUZWALK