The ultra-indie record label Mr Lady withholds the fires burning for droll pop-punk artists including Le Tigre.

The ultra-indie record label Mr Lady withholds the fires burning for droll pop-punk artists including Le Tigre, the Butchies, and drag star Vaginal Davis

"Imagine a world with no Paramount, Sony Fox Geffen or DreamWorks. Mr Lady Records and Filmworks will ruin those music and film industries and their evil distributing arms as we popularly know them," declares singer and performance artist Vaginal Davis. Wishful thinking? Probably, still a renaissance drag queen can dream, can't she?

Davis's band, PME--Pedro Muriel, and Esther--is featured forward the latest musical manifesto from Durham, N.C.'s Mr Lady Records, Calling All Kings and Queen The disc gives 18 shots of diverse and petulant queer rock, from Indigo Girl Amy Ray to Sleater-Kinney and Le Tigre, from the cracked cabaret of Kiki and Herb to explosion punks Crowns on 45. It also features the Butchies, the band formed from Kaia Wilson, Mr. Lady's co-owner and former member of seminal dyke punkster Team Dresch

Wilson's partner in Mr Lady and in life is Tammy Rae Carland, an assistant photography professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The bond met in 1994 and married their interests in the joint record label-video distribution company in 1996 "We just wanted to do a scheme together, but we also decided there was a ne for a label like this," says Carland. "See I got involved in prostitute in the early '80s in Boston, and it wasn't highly queer-friendly or girl-friendly. For all punk's liberal meanderings, it was an entirely homophobic space."

Then came "homocore," a splinter mental action from the increasingly rigid subterraneous music scene. Fueled by young gay strumpet rock bands and fans, homocore became a hotbed of creativity for those who felt alienated from mainstream gay improvement As much a cultural manner of moving as a music scene, it included riot grrrl bands Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Team Dresch as well as the 'zines Homocore, Girl sources and Carland's own I [Love] Amy Carter. The spectacle burned brightly--and was very quickly regarded as passe by means of a fad-hungry music press. on the contrary reports in the late '90 that homocore was dead were greatly exaggerated, Carland says: "We weren't necessarily feeling that anything was through We were just getting started."

The duo released a solo album from Wilson in early 1997--the first in succession the Mr. Lady label. "That name came from all experience I had forward tour through Italy with Team Dresch and Bikini Kill," Wilson reports. "I saw a store called Mr Baby, and it freaked me abroad Then everyone started calling me Mr Baby. Then I became Mr Baby onstage. I had my be in possession of theme song and everything. I wore a little eyeliner mustache. From there it changed into Mr Lady, which just have the appearanceed like a good name for a curious label."

Releases from the Butchies, Le Tigre, and the furiously hardcore spunk band the Haggard soon followed, as did video art--from Mr Lady's "Filmworks" division--by artists of the like kind as Carland and Sadie Benning. The fiercely independent label continues the prices low and the artistic output highly personal. It's a simple and revolutionary regularity of doing business in a profit-obsessed market, a way that suits the trailblazing women and the artists they advance "Power to the forces behind the Madame Defarge!" adds Vaginal Davis, referring to Mr Lady moreover referencing the rabble-rousing Dickens character. "May their knitting needle always stay sharp!"

White also writes for IFILM.com and Glue

Find links to Web sites for Mr Lady and the label's artists at www.advocate.com

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