Meet G.B. Jones, the spark who turned punk’s noise into a movement with bite. From Toronto basements to international art spaces, her work pulled queer desire into the frame and refused to blink. This is the name behind the scenes that changed the scene.
The facts land fast. In 1985, G.B. Jones co-launched the zine J.D.s with Bruce LaBruce in Toronto, a seedbed for what would be called queercore and a direct line to bands, filmmakers and zinemakers across cities worldwide (Source: Curran Nault, “Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution”, 2018). She co-founded the band Fifth Column, released albums between 1985 and 1994, and directed cult films including “The Yo-Yo Gang” in 1992 and “The Lollipop Generation” in 2008. Click validated.
G.B. Jones and the birth of queercore: J.D.s, Toronto, 1985
Here is the hinge moment. J.D.s began circulating in 1985, mixing sharp writing, photocollage and a blunt message to punk: queer lives were not a sideshow, they were the show. By the late 1980s, the zine’s manifestos and tape comps stitched a cross border network that first used the term “homocore” before the community widely adopted “queercore” in the early 1990s (Source: Curran Nault, 2018).
The method was simple and fast. Print it, mail it, screen it, play it. J.D.s published scene reports, put out “J.D.s Gay Video” programs, and seeded gigs that connected readers to bands and venues far outside mainstream media. The point landed because the tools were in everyone’s hands.
The result shows up on the timeline. 1985 for the zine’s launch, early 1990s for its peak cultural reach, and a sustained afterlife through reprints, archives and academic studies that map how a low cost publication reshaped music and film circuits (Source: University of Chicago Press catalog, 2018). Right.
Fifth Column and the sound of dissent
Before the galleries, there was the band. G.B. Jones co-founded Fifth Column in Toronto in 1981 with Caroline Azar, crafting a jagged, art forward sound that pushed against the city’s punk orthodoxy. The group released “To Sir With Hate” in 1985, “All-Time Queen Of The World” in 1990, then “36 C” in 1994, each record widening the political and sonic space for women and queer artists in independent music (Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Fifth Column”).
Numbers tell part of the story. Three albums across nine years, plus singles and compilation cuts that circulated through tape trading scenes. The band produced videos and collaborative shorts that bled into the film work Jones would steer later, forming a practice that was not siloed by medium.
A frequent misconception erases the logistics. This was not a major label pipeline. It ran on tiny budgets, borrowed cameras and volunteer crews. That ethic defined the sound and the visuals, and it carried into her gallery drawings known as “Tom Girls”, a series that flipped muscle art codes to center unruly girls with agency (Source: Artforum profile, 2011).
Underground cinema and the lasting blueprint
The move to film kept the same direct hit. “The Yo-Yo Gang” arrived in 1992, a punchy short about girl gangs staking out turf with style and menace. Then came the long haul. “The Lollipop Generation” premiered in 2008 after a production stretch that began in the mid 1990s, shot incrementally with friends and underground performers across Toronto and beyond (Source: Inside Out Toronto program notes, 2008).
This timeline matters because it documents a distribution reality. Many screenings happened at festivals, microcinemas and club nights rather than multiplexes. Inside Out Toronto programmed the feature in 2008, drawing audiences that tracked the film’s underground passage and the performers’ evolving scenes over more than a decade (Source: Inside Out Toronto, 2008).
Curators later connected the dots between drawings, music and film, presenting Jones’s work in exhibitions that treated queercore not as a subchapter but as a method for making culture public under constraint. The throughline stays clear. Multiple media. Small means. Big effect.
Looking for a way in without getting lost in the discography or zine archives
- Start with the 1985 album “To Sir With Hate” by Fifth Column for the earliest recorded DNA (Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia).
- Read about J.D.s in Curran Nault’s 2018 history “Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution” for dates and context.
- Watch “The Lollipop Generation” via festival or archive listings to see how the film extends the zine and band tactics on screen (Source: Inside Out Toronto, 2008).
A quick note on influence. The queercore label sometimes flattens difference across cities and eras, yet Jones’s role is documented with concrete milestones: 1985 for J.D.s, 1981 to 1994 for Fifth Column’s releases, and 1992 plus 2008 for the two signature films cited above. That chronology anchors the claims without mythmaking (Sources: Curran Nault, The Canadian Encyclopedia, Inside Out Toronto).
What still blocks access is availability. Many zines sit in special collections, several videos circulate only via retrospectives or artist programs, and music rights vary by territory. The fix is practical rather than romantic. Check university archives that hold queer print culture, search festival catalogs that retain listings for underground features, and use discography databases to match pressings with the correct year. It is slow, but the map is definately there.