E-Mail This Article to a Friend Used to it Queercore Blitz East hits town BY KURT B. REIGHLEY

The queers are here. And the American public has gotten used to it. From TV shows like The L Word and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to queues of same-sex couples waiting for marriage licenses, media visibility for gays and lesbians continues to escalate.

But whither the voices from the fringes of the community, the outsider dykes, fags, and trannies, to whom the thumping dance music of Queer As Folk’s Club Babylon sounds as pleasant as a dentist drill? This Friday night, they’re at the Milky Way Lounge for the kickoff of Queercore Blitz East, a five-city Northeast tour that’s showcasing locals the Kitty Kill and Secret Cock as well as Davies vs. Dresch, the new Portland (Oregon) ensemble featuring long-time queercore advocate Donna Dresch (Team Dresch).

"I wanted to experience a truly inclusive, all-queer punk-rock event encompassing musicians who identify as dykes, fags, queers, trans, and everything in between," explains organizer Anna Jacobson-Leong. The 34-year-old New Yorker had enjoyed participating in the long-running Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and various regional Ladyfest events, but she dreamed of a forum encompassing boys as well as girls and focused on harder sounds. "Then it dawned on me that there hasn’t been any sort of traveling queercore road show, ever." She’s right. There have been long-running queer-punk (also known as "homocore") nights in Chicago, Minneapolis, and New York, as well as the Homo A Gogo festival in Olympia, Washington. But never a package tour.

The seven bands featured on the rotating Blitz bill span a broad range. BoySkout started out in 2001 with a sound similar to Sleater-Kinney’s, but on their debut full-length, School of Etiquette (Alive), the San Francisco quartet’s music has morphed into brooding, danceable grooves in step with the Rapture and Interpol. New York threesome the Dead Betties ply pared-down hardcore with arty edges. NYC post-punk quartet Triple Crème intertwine twin guitars with melodic bass lines. The Kitty Kill continue to refine their mix of pop hooks and distorted guitar licks. Secret Cock overhaul classic rock clichés. And Gina Young + the Bent recall the confrontational stance of quintessential riot grrrls Bikini Kill.

For veteran queer-punk devotees, the big draw is Davies vs. Dresch, Donna Dresch’s first high-profile project since the dissolution of Team Dresch, key proponents of the original queercore and riot grrrl movements of the early ’90s. Dresch also published the fanzine Chainsaw, which along with Homocore and San Francisco’s Outpunk record label helped disseminate the word about queer-punk bands and like-minded artists including Bruce La Bruce and GB Jones. In recent years, the guitarist has kept a low profile, concentrating on her label, Chainsaw, whose catalogue includes releases by Sleater-Kinney, the Need, and Tracy + the Plastics.

Dresch says she had no reservations about unveiling her brand new group, which also features singer/guitarist Kristina Davies (Tara Jane O’Neil) and drummer Caitlin Love, on an all-gay package tour. "It is right up my alley. But I didn’t really think about it [the implications] at all, apart from going, ‘That sounds really fun.’ "

In the early days of queercore, underground artists Tribe 8, God Is My Co-Pilot, Vaginal Davis, and the Mukilteo Fairies caused a stir in both the punk and the gay communities by making sexuality a key component in their lyrics, stage shows, and packaging. But 10 years after Green Day tapped San Francisco’s infamous Pansy Division as tour support, Dresch wonders whether being queer-identified is still essential to emerging gay musicians. "I think that a lot of people don’t think about it any more, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. For my bandmates, it’s not really on their list of things they need to be. It seems like a lot of bands right now don’t want to be known as a queer band but just a band that plays good music. Younger people think there’s a lot of queer visibility already, and it’s not as necessary as it used to feel like. It used to feel very necessary."

It still is, insists the Kitty Kill’s Sandrine Merhy. That’s why her band signed on to play not only Queercore Blitz East but also this year’s Boston Youth Pride on May 15 (at a venue yet to be announced). Growing up closeted at an all-girls Catholic school, Merhy says, she never heard about the original wave of queercore until she went off to college. "I got into Team Dresch after they broke up. Had I been exposed to queer punk when I was a teenager, it would have made my high-school days a lot easier."

Queercore Blitz East, with Davies vs. Dresch, the Kitty Kill, Triple Crème, BoySkout, the Dead Betties, and Secret Cock, comes to the Milky Way Lounge, 403-405 Centre Street in Jamaica Plain this Friday, April 16; call (617) 524-3740. The tour continues on to Pearl Street, 10 Pearl Street in Northampton, this Saturday, April 17; call (800) THE-TICK.