Hail Mary
>> The Hidden Cameras get candid about their gay folk church music

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“People sometimes call us Christian but that’s so far from true. I grew up exposed to the church, as most people are, and I just took some of that aesthetic. Why not accept what’s around you and go with it, and if you’re gay, why not use that?”

Joel Gibb never expected his self-styled, self-labelled “gay folk church music” to make waves outside the small Toronto art community it was born in, but rumours of balaclava-ed go-go boys dancing while a small army of both amateur and classically trained musicians play Belle & Sebastian-esque tunes with equally holy and homoerotic lyrics quickly got the music press’s panties in a twist.

It all started when Gibb left his four-track folk pop disc Ecce Homo with a friend, leading said buddy to book the then-bandless Gibb for an art gallery party. Rising to the challenge, Gibb hastily rounded up some friends and acquaintances to form the initial, skeletal Hidden Cameras, a group that’s since ballooned to 15, namely (here goes) Gibb, Bob Wiseman, Mike e.b., Owen Pallett, Mike Olsen, Gentleman Reg, Magali Meagher, Matias Rozenberg, Maggie MacDonald, Graham Hollings, Steve Kado, Justin Stayshyn and dancers Paul P. and Alex McClelland.

Playing gigs at porn theatres, churches, old-age homes and gay pride events, the expanding Cameras balanced morbid visuals with their sunshiny, dance-friendly “cult of wackiness and fun.”

“With every celebratory or positive thing, there’s always a negative thing, a memento mori,” says Gibb. “Our band’s about positivity but there needs to be a respect for the evil things, or the supposedly evil things. Evil is everywhere, it’s in your grandma, it’s in your birthday cake.”

Cool to be Christian

The Disease Show, the Bread and Shit Show, the Skulls Show and the Gay Ghosts Show are some of the endeavours undertaken by Gibb and his pranksters, who prepared respective hand-painted flyers, overhead projections, paper hangings and churchy felt banners for each theme (coming soon: the Gay Goth Show).

One flyer used an image also found on the back cover of Ecce Homo, the penis-cross-blade, a jarring juxtaposition that represents the ideology of the music. It’s fair to mention that Gibb, along with two or three other band members, has a U of T degree in semiotics, but he insists that his use of opposing images and themes is more about personal politics and natural duality than shock value and pandering to a bored music press.

“People vehemently reject these things, especially in high school. It’s not cool to be Christian, it’s not cool to be gay, it’s not cool to like folk music, and what’s born out of that is Marilyn Manson and the kind of youth culture that, in my mind, is just as twisted and fundamentalist as right-wing Christianity. I like talking about the so-called perversions of this world and I like the idea of merging these opposing things into one happy package. It’s silly how the church demonizes homosexuality while mainstream gay culture demonizes the church. That’s the last thing a hip gay guy wants to be associated with.

“I’m using gay themes as a metaphor for something larger. Gay culture sees itself as this fringe group but they’re not exempt, they’re not victims, they’re just a demographic now. If you flip through gay magazines, it’s all about hair removal and tanning and going to the gym, and that’s exactly what’s wrong with our culture,” says Gibb, who shared his feelings by playing blindfolded (the Blindfold Show!) with the Cameras at last year’s Pride celebration.
“It all comes down to the body, and we’re afraid of our bodies in huge, huge ways that we can’t even admit to. I just read that there were 1.6-million injections of Botox last year, and I’ve seen bus ads for it now and it really sickens me. That’s why we like to celebrate the body at our live shows. A couple of members in the band are special, they can either play an instrument or they can lead dances or make little speeches to convince people to cut loose with us. Dancing is an important aspect of the show.”

Communal tunage

Along with the dancers, the less musically trained members of the band have been afforded a place in the lineup due to some “wild energy” or other positive dynamic that contributes to Gibb’s Hidden Cameras community.

“The music’s not complicated, it’s so rooted in three-chord songs,” says Gibb. “There’s xylophone parts, tambourine, and basslines on the organ, which are very easy to play. And not every song is built up with 12 people, right, some songs only need six, so members can either sit out or just clap or dance, which they often do.”

Their fairly freeform parties also find the band members switching instruments, getting right into the audience and bringing the audience to them, a strategy usually discouraged at rock bar shows.

“Since these are music events put on and attended by people who really like music, it’s weird when people just stand there smoking. Just because it’s gay folk church music doesn’t mean that you can’t dance to it, because you can dance to it.” Despite his complaints, Gibb has reportedly had little trouble getting the famously cold, unmovable Toronto audiences shaking their thangs.

“If you have inhibitions, you’re not gonna encourage the audience to drop theirs, so when we play, we’re not so caught up being afraid of ourselves,” says Gibb, adding that his secret weapon just might be “the presence of male go-go dancers in their underwear, totally dancing.”

Taking their show out of Ontario for only the second time, the Cameras will visit Montreal for Exclaim magazine’s 10th anniversary gig before returning to London, Ont., to complete work on their album, produced by Two Minute Miracles member Andy McGuffin, who also recorded the Constantines and Royal City. Though the retardedly catchy songs on his CD-R-only Ecce Homo clearly get their musical and thematic points across, Gibb says that some of them are merely rough sketches to be reprised and expanded with the full band and proper studio on this next album. Having just quit his photocopy-store day job, Gibb is eager to make this, his first band, a long-term commitment.

“I know that it can seem gimmicky if people are beaten over the head with it, so I don’t know how long the band can last this way, but I’m very much into the idea of evolving,” he says, emphasizing that live show is and will always be the heart of the project.

“My fantasy is that two strangers meet at our show and become friends, or organize something, or just hook up and have sex, any kind of connection. Our culture has turned us into robots who don’t know how to think or feel and our society tries to prevent community action, so this is our community.” :

With Antibalas, Manitoba and the Model Children at Cabaret tonight, Thursday, April 4, 8pm, $15.50