MAIN NAVIGATION
HOMEPAGE
BIOGRAPHY
WRITING
Transgender
Information
Christine
Personally
SECTION CONTENT
the memoir
photographs
youtubery
twitterage
TGirl blog
contact form
|
Christine explains her experience in the music business: "I struggled with describing myself as a 'pioneer' but before my band Glamazon (1995-2001) very few transsexual heavy metal musicians made it into working bands. Certainly, punk rock has had a few, and countless guys have played up androgyny or did drag onstage, but actual transsexual women in working heavy metal bands were unheard of. Given the masculine, "cock rock" aspect of metal, it's unsurprising few transwomen regularly performed live or released CDs. In that sense 'pioneer' is accurate. "It wasn't until I joined the US Air Force that I overcame my insecurity enough to learn guitar or dared to sing. By the time I had talent worthy of other muscians I had begun my transsexual transition, and my poor reception as a TS woman by other muscians and the public in general made me despair I'd never perform in a band. In 1986 I found three other rocker transwomen but our dreams of an all-transsexual rock band fell apart because we were all drug addicts. When I crippled my left hand during a PCP blackout in December of that year I wrote off ever being a musician. "I got clean and sober two years later, but as a left handed guitarist I was a shadow of my former self. In 1993 I met an unparallel female guitar player and we founded Glamazon. Having a transsexual lead singer and a female band leader made a rhythm section difficult to fill, but by February of 1995 we had played our first gig in San Francisco. The next year we recorded our first and only CD. "While our unique gender composition worked against us, the metal genre we favored had begun its decline years before we founded the band. Like most other bands we struggled to build an audience, and like many we became dispirited. As I approached my 44th birthday I finally admitted I had grown too old to balance the stressful hours of an indie rocker against my corporate day job. Thus I quit Glamazon at the end of 2001 and we went our separate ways. "I continue to play guitar and sing every day though, save for parties and one-off solo appearances, for the most part my only audience is my cats. I continue to use my band-acquired sound engineering skills and knowledge in my filmmaking projects and have played guitar on some of my film projects. My cofounder of Glamazon and I plan to work together on an untitled music project. Currently she does music scores and music consulting for me." |
|