The Queers

The Queers have supplied rapid, raucous, and irreverent punk since the early 1980s, sustaining their image as beer-soaked adolescents long after reaching middle age. Their recordings stand out for stripped-down pogo rhythms and intentionally juvenile lyrics that celebrate poor taste, sometimes crossing into sexist or homophobic territory. The band crystallized its signature approach on 1993’s Love Songs for the Retarded, attained maximum velocity with 1996’s Don’t Back Down and 2002’s Pleasant Screams, and highlighted its influences on the all-covers album Reverberation in 2021.

Formed in 1982, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire group moved unevenly through the rest of that decade, issuing occasional singles and compilation appearances that Lookout later gathered on A Day Late and a Dollar Short. Prior to cutting their debut studio album Grow Up, the Queers stabilized around singer/guitarist Joe King/Queer, drummer Hugh O’Neill, and bassist B-Face. Grow Up appeared on the small English imprint Shakin’ Street, which folded after pressing only 1,000 copies. Screeching Weasel frontman Ben Weasel persuaded Lookout owner Larry Livermore to sign the Queers, resulting in the 1993 Lookout release of the Weasel-produced Love Songs for the Retarded. That album was followed by an annual sequence of bubblegum punk records running from 1994’s Beat Off through the 1996 masterpiece Don’t Back Down, which stands as the finest late-’70s-era Ramones album the Ramones themselves never made.

Following an extended struggle with brain cancer, O’Neill died on January 21, 1999; Later Days and Better Lays, issued that spring, collected previously unreleased Queers material cut during his time in the band. B-Face departed soon afterward, and after moving to Hopeless Records the Queers cycled through multiple lineups with King as the sole constant member. Beyond the Valley…, released in 2000, became the first studio album after O’Neill’s death and, appropriately, proved somewhat darker than the group’s earlier catalog. A run of further releases appeared in the early 2000s, among them the Today EP, Live in West Hollywood, and Pleasant Screams. A split with the Manges surfaced in 2003, while the career-spanning Summer Hits, Vol. 1 arrived the following autumn. Captured live across two nights at Bernie's Distillery in Columbus, Ohio, the aptly titled Weekend at Bernie's emerged in May 2006, documenting King alongside Teen Idols bassist Philip Hill and drummer Dave Trevino.

Also in 2006, Asian Man Records launched a series of remixed and remastered reissues of the band’s classic albums, beginning with 1993’s Love Songs for the Retarded. In February 2007 Asian Man issued Munki Brain, the Queers’ first collection of new songs since 2002, while the DVD The Queers Are Here marked the group’s 25th year of immaturity with abundant live footage, interviews, and videos. Reissues continued throughout 2007. In 2010 the Queers delivered their eleventh studio album, Back to the Basement. The following year saw the split 7" Alive with Killtime on Gonna Puke Records, succeeded by 2013’s Ole Maestro, a 38-song live set captured in Madrid, Spain, in 2009. In 2015 the trio issued a limited-edition re-recording of Beyond the Valley… titled Beyond the Valley Revisited. Another split 7", The Queers Regret Making a Record with Bassamp and Dano, appeared in 2017. 2021 yielded two new albums: the characteristically irreverent originals set The Queers Save the World and the first full-length covers collection Reverberation, which applied the band’s stamp to songs by the Sonics, the Monkees, Jan & Dean, the Who, the Troggs, and the Queers themselves.