The Queers are an American punk rock band, formed in 1981 by Portsmouth, New Hampshire native Joseph “Joe” P. King along with Scott Gildersleeve, and John “Jack” Hayes. With the addition of Keith Hages joining on bass in 1983 the band started playing their first public performances. The revised line-up played a total of six live shows between 1983 and 1984. This earliest era of The Queers formation initially broke up in late 1984; however, Joe Queer re-formed the band with an all-new line-up in 1986. In 1990, after several more band line-up changes the band signed with Shakin' Street Records to release their debut album, Grow Up. The album earned the band notability within New England, but with the release of their next album, 1993's Love Songs for the Retarded, on Lookout! Records, their following grew.
The Lawrence Arms are an American punk rock band from Chicago, formed in 1999. They have released seven full-length albums and toured extensively.
Massimiliano Adelmo Giorgini is an American bassist and record producer who rose to fame when several of the bands he produced experienced huge gains in popularity during the pop-punk boom of the mid-'90s. Among these bands was Giorgini's own Squirtgun, which received minor MTV rotation and several soundtrack appearances in major films in the 1990s. Mass Giorgini is also a linguistics scholar specializing in forensic literary analysis and is the son of renowned Italian artist Aldo Giorgini.
How to Make Enemies and Irritate People is the seventh studio album by the Chicago-based punk rock band Screeching Weasel. Planned as the group's final album, it was released in August 1994 on CD, vinyl, and cassette through Lookout Records. Shortly before recording the album, bassist/backing vocalist Dan Vapid left the band and, as a result, Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt was recruited to play on the album.
Love Songs for the Retarded is the second studio album by the American punk rock band the Queers, released in 1993 by Lookout! Records. It was the first of five studio albums the band would record for Lookout!, and their first by the lineup of singer and guitarist "Joe Queer" King, bassist Chris "B-Face" Barnard, and drummer Hugh O'Neill. It was also their first collaboration with Screeching Weasel frontman Ben Weasel, who produced the album and co-wrote two of its songs, and the first of three Queers albums recorded at Sonic Iguana Studio in Lafayette, Indiana with audio engineer Mass Giorgini, who would continue to work with the band on and off for the next 14 years as a producer and engineer. Love Songs for the Retarded became the Queers' highest-selling album, with sales surpassing 100,000 copies.
Grow Up is the debut album by the American punk rock band the Queers. Recorded in multiple sessions between 1986 and 1988, with various band members and session musicians backing singer and guitarist Joe King, it was originally released as an LP record in 1990 by British label Shakin' Street Records. However, the label went out of business after only 1,000 copies were pressed. The Queers had more copies pressed themselves, continuing to list Shakin' Street as the record label, but when they failed to pay their bill the pressing plant destroyed all but approximately 160 copies, which the band released with a photocopied album cover.
Beat Off is the fourth studio album by the American punk rock band the Queers, released in 1994 by Lookout! Records. Recorded during a time when the Queers' usual drummer, Hugh O'Neill, was on a forced leave of absence from the band to deal with heroin addiction, it featured Screeching Weasel drummer Dan Panic and guitarist Dan Vapid added to the lineup. It was the third and final Queers album produced by Screeching Weasel singer Ben Weasel, who insisted on a no-frills punk sound for the album and removed Vapid's tracks from the final mix without his knowledge.
Move Back Home is the fifth studio album by the American punk rock band the Queers, released in May 1995 by Lookout! Records. The recording sessions were marred by the band members' drug problems, and many of the songs were written in the studio. Producer and Lookout! president Larry Livermore was so displeased with the result that he took his name off of the album, and several involved parties, including singer and guitarist Joe Queer, later regarded it as sub-par. After the Queers rescinded their master recordings from Lookout! in 2006, Move Back Home was reissued by Asian Man Records the following year, having been remixed and remastered by Queer and recording engineer Mass Giorgini and with the tracks from the Surf Goddess EP added.
A Day Late and a Dollar Short is a compilation album by the American punk rock band the Queers, released in January 1996 by Lookout! Records. It collects material recorded between 1982 and 1994, most of it with original member Wimpy Rutherford. It includes the band's first two EPs, 1982's Love Me and 1984's Kicked Out of the Webelos, several demo tracks recorded in 1991, 16 tracks recorded during a January 1993 reunion with Rutherford, and a complete set of early songs recorded live on radio station WFMU in 1994 with Rutherford on lead vocals.
Surf Goddess is an EP by the American punk rock band the Queers, released in February 1995 by Lookout! Records. It marked the return of longtime drummer Hugh O'Neill to the band, after a forced leave of absence to deal with heroin addiction. Former Screeching Weasel member Dan Vapid, who had been a member of the Queers in 1994, played on the EP as a guest guitarist. Surf Goddess was the result of band leader Joe King and Lookout! head Larry Livermore being dissatisfied with the production techniques on the band's prior album, 1994's Beat Off, which producer Ben Weasel had insisted on keeping basic. King and Livermore wanted to incorporate overdubbing and other effects which Livermore felt were essential to the Queers' sound. In addition to the title track, which was co-written by Weasel, and the Queers original "Quit Talkin'", the EP includes cover versions of Tommy James and the Shondells's "Mirage" and the Undertones' "Get Over You".
Don't Back Down is the sixth studio album by the American punk rock band the Queers, released in August 1996 by Lookout! Records. The band and Lookout! president Larry Livermore, who served as executive producer, sought to balance the sounds of the Ramones and the Beach Boys, and enlisted the help of former Queers guitarist JJ Rassler and Cub singer Lisa Marr. The album's title track is a cover version of the Beach Boys song of the same name; it also features covers of the Hondells' "Little Sidewalk Surfer Girl" and Hawaiian punk band the Catalogs' "Another Girl". The album produced the band's first music videos, for "Punk Rock Girls" and "Don't Back Down".
Punk Rock Confidential is the sixth full-length album by pop punk band The Queers and their first album released on Hopeless Records.
Later Days and Better Lays is a compilation album by the American punk rock band the Queers, released in March 1999 by Lookout! Records. It combines a 14-song demo tape from 1991 with some demos recorded in the lead-up to their 1996 album Don't Back Down, as well as some outtakes from that album's recording sessions. The compilation fulfilled the band's contractual obligations to Lookout!, following seven years and four studio albums on the label. They moved on to Hopeless Records, but would return to Lookout! for the Today EP (2001) and album Pleasant Screams (2002) before parting ways with the label again.
AJJ is an American folk punk band from Phoenix, Arizona, originally formed in 2004 as Andrew Jackson Jihad. Their lyrics handle themes of shyness, poverty, humanity, religion, addiction, existentialism, and politics. Singer/guitarist Sean Bonnette and bassist Ben Gallaty co-founded the band, and have remained its only constant members throughout. The band has released eight studio albums to date, with their most recent, Disposable Everything, having been released on 26 May 2023.
Smoking Popes, a Chicago-based pop punk band, has released six studio albums, two live albums, two compilation albums, six EPs, five singles, one video album, and four music videos.
Live at Some Prick's House is an EP by the American punk rock bands the Queers and the Pink Lincolns, released in 1994 by independent record label Just Add Water Records. A split release, it includes five songs recorded by the Queers during a June 1991 performance on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's campus radio station WMBR, and three songs performed by the Pink Lincolns on Halloween 1993 at the Sombre Reptile in Atlanta, including a cover version of Bikini Kill's "Suck My Left One".
The Wonder Years is an American rock band from Lansdale, Pennsylvania, formed in July 2005. The band currently consists of Dan "Soupy" Campbell, Casey Cavaliere, Matt Brasch, Josh Martin, Nick Steinborn and Mike Kennedy. They have released seven full-length albums, two EPs, and several splits/compilations. The group is currently signed to Hopeless Records. Their name originates from a paper that Campbell read that was written by one of his after-school educators titled "The Wonder Years."
Geoff Palmer, also known by the stage name Geoff Useless, is an American musician from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, now living in Madison, Wisconsin. He played bass and provided backing vocals for The Queers straight out of high school, and played guitar and did lead vocals for The Guts and The Nobodys.
Suck This is the second live album by the American punk rock band the Queers, released in 1995 by independent record label Clearview Records. It was recorded live in the studio at the Jam Room in Columbia, South Carolina and released as a single-sided picture disc, and reissued on compact disc in 1998. It was the band's only live album recorded during the period when Screeching Weasel members Dan Vapid and Dan Panic were also in the Queers.
Between 1993 and 2000, a series of Ramones covers albums were released by Selfless Records, an independent record label based in Garland, Texas specializing in punk rock, on which bands influenced by seminal punk group the Ramones performed cover versions of entire Ramones albums. Under the Selfless label, Screeching Weasel, the Queers, and the Vindictives respectively covered the first three Ramones albums: Ramones (1976), Rocket to Russia (1977), and Leave Home (1977). Selfless then became Clearview Records and continued the series, with Boris the Sprinkler, the Parasites, the Mr. T Experience, the Beatnik Termites, and the McRackins respectively covering End of the Century (1980), It's Alive (1979), Road to Ruin (1978), Pleasant Dreams (1981), and Too Tough to Die (1984).
