#120: Boom tch boom tch boom tch boom
Pride Month Barbie; GayC/DC; Proprietary Energy Faggots; Bussy Kween Power Trip
Pride Month Barbie
In 2022, Mattel released a Barbie modeled after transgender actor Laverne Cox as part of its Tribute Collection (celebrating “visionaries whose incredible contributions have helped shape and impact culture”). While Mattel conspicuously avoids the word “transgender” on its website—noting only that Cox is a “prominent LGBTQ+ advocate”—it still feels like dispatch from a distant, more optimistic time. Had Mattel done it in 2026, it’d probably get investigated by the U.S. government, or at least shitposted on the White House X account with A.I. slop.
Pride Month Barbie also formed in 2022, though the L.A. art-pop duo doesn’t cite Cox’s doll as inspiration. According to an interview, they’re more inspired by…the Lindsay Lohan song “Rumors”? Scoff if you will, but it has 38 million plays on Spotify, where half a million people tune into Lohan’s music every month. Now we know Pride Month Barbie are two of them!
Tyler Holmes and Josephine Shetty came together after working on their solo projects, which tended to be more experimental and low-key. Holmes told Them that PMB channels their need “to do something really gay and faggoty,” though 2024’s All the Girls in the Room Say ‘Sorry’ has a serrated edge that belies the description.
Or, as Holmes put it, “I want clangs and car crashes, but also bubblegum and sugar.” And now they have a title for their second full-length.
GayC/DC
What do you do when your queer Go-Go’s tribute, the Gay Gays, calls it quits? You switch genres and start a new tribute band with an A+ pun for a name. That’s the origin story of GayC/DC, which is exactly what you think it is. “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” → “Dirty Dudes Done Dirt Cheap.” “Bad Boy Boogie” → “Gay Boy Boogie.” “TNT” → “PNP.”1 “Girls Got Rhythm” → “Dads Got Rhythm.” “Big Balls” → “Big Balls.”
The group is the brainchild of Chris Freeman, bassist and co-founder of queer-punk icons Pansy Division.2 Freeman describes GayC/DC as neither tribute nor cover band. “I would say we’re more of a refresh,” he told KJZZ.3 Hence the altered song titles and adjusted lyrics, like “knocking me out with those hairy-ass thighs.” HAWT.
“We wanted to bring more opportunities for gay people to listen to something that’s different than boom tch boom tch boom tch boom. I just get tired of that. And I grew up on rock, so.”
Coincidentally, I live a block from the boom-tch-boom-tch-boom-tch-booming heart of Chicago’s Boystown. It could use some GayC/DC.
Proprietary Energy Faggots
There’s no winning with this name. First, a slur4 is always a tough sell, even as an act of reclamation. Second, “proprietary” is five syllables, and no one knows how to spell it—including the Broadway in Brooklyn, which billed the group as “Propriety” Energy Faggots. Third, once you’ve laboriously repeated and spelled it for someone, you’ll be asked what it means. And what will you say? That you’re gay and drink NOS?5
All of that probably explains why the group eventually settled on something simpler and uninteresting: Faggot Band. Even then, they couldn’t make it work, judging by the verb tense in their Bandcamp bio:
Formed in November 2023, Faggot Band was a 4-piece band channeling the experiences of second puberty, political activism, and kink into dance-punk/post-punk inspired jams.
They leave behind a handful of singles and a couple of live recordings, like Live at the Pie Shop in DC, 8/29/24. Bandcamp member sophie is a supporter:
I was at this show and the singer asked the crowd if anyone else is into being a dog and I'm the only one who cheered :/
Bussy Kween Power Trip
Chicago’s Bussy Kween Power Trip described their 2025 debut, Coming With the Strap, as an album “about who we are,” then listed the multitudes they contain: “Black queer punks, musicians, baddies, bottoms who top, tops who bottom, fucking weebs, millennials who used their dial-up connections for evil.”
That’s a lot to unpack before even getting into their name. Original members B, K, and PT matched words to their initials to get their band name: bussy, kween, power trip.
The last one, you understand. Kween, you can figure out. Bussy, you may wonder about. That’s a portmanteau of “boy” and “pussy,” a.k.a. the anus. “Thank you to our families who are about to learn what ‘bussy’ means,” say the liner notes for Coming With the Strap.
If they’re flummoxed by “bussy,” they won’t find respite in the album’s 13 songs. Constructed with only bass guitar, drums, and K’s spoken/shrieked vocals, they’re confrontational and sarcastic, definitely not the music that’ll pack the dance floor at your next Shower Night. Though maybe “Long March to Climate Death” could be a commentary on wasting water?
I’m more drawn to “Internet Graveyard,” which tells the story of a young girl being forced offline by her parents, with deadly consequences.
My sweet baby rat
My pumpkin pie
My little hairless cat
You have to stop being so online
Sound advice.
POST-SCRIPTS
Here’s hoping #120 has actually reached you without being blocked by spam filters. Lots of red-flag words in this one.
“AC/DC” is old slang for bisexual, which I know thanks to my mom. I’ve never heard anyone else use it that way. Etymonline says it dates back to 1940—the year she was born. Wait, did my mom start that?
Chicago readers will appreciate Bussy Kween Power Trip’s “Rahm Emanuel Diss Track.”
Party-n-play, “the practice of consuming drugs to enhance sexual activity,” according to Wikipedia. I could not feel like a bigger square.
Hall of Fame name. A play on the Nazis’ notorious panzer divisions mixed with a derogatory word for gay? 🤌
I will NOT allow you to judge me for reading this as “K-JIZZ,” given the context.
The same people gleefully re-embracing “retard” right now are probably dying to bring this one back too.
“16 OZ. CAN OF KICK ASS.”
I think the first time I heard it used that way was in that sample on “Where It’s At” by Beck: “What about those who swing both ways? AC-DCs?"