The Troublemakers

G. B. Jones is a Canadian artist, filmmaker, musician, and publisher of zines based in Toronto, Canada. Her drawings have been featured at galleries around the world, and her films screened at numerous film festivals, both in Canada and abroad. Her most recent collaboration has been with Opera Arcana, featuring Minus Smile of Kids on TV.

In the early 1980s Jones joined her first band, the experimental industrial synth punk group, Bunny & the Lakers. Led by songwriter Peter Morgan and including Howard Pope, the band released one limited edition LP called Numbers, which has since become a collector’s item. The trio performed live only once in Toronto.

From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, Jones performed with the experimental post-punk band Fifth Column, playing drums, guitar and background vocals, and was one of the co-founders of the group. The band’s first album, To Sir With Hate was released in 1985. The same year saw the release of the influential fanzine J.D.s, which Jones founded and co-published with Bruce LaBruce, the initials ‘J.D.s’ standing for Juvenile Delinquents. Among other things, the editors wrote a manifesto for the punk publication Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll and, at the end of the decade, released a cassette tape entitled J.D.s Top Ten Tape, which featured bands from the U.S.A., Canada, New Zealand, and the UK.

Jones has directed and appeared in a number of underground films. In 1990, the two J.D.s editors held J.D.s movie nights in London, Toronto, Montreal, Buffalo, New York and San Francisco, showing their no budget films made on Super 8 mm film. The Troublemakers premiered at this time and proved influential, although rarely screened afterwards till the mid 2000s. In 1991, she starred in the feature filmNo Skin Off My Ass by Bruce LaBruce, which has been said by Gus Van Sant to be Kurt Cobain’s favourite movie ⁴. To date, her own films have all been made on Super 8. Her best known work from this period is perhaps The Yo-Yo Gang, released in 1992, a 30-minute exploitation movie about girl gangs. The film stars a number of well-known musicians, including Fifth Column members Caroline Azar and Beverly Breckenridge.

The group went on to release three singles and two more albums. All-Time Queen Of The World was released in 1990 and a video for the song “Like This” was produced. Their last album, 36-C, contained perhaps their best-known and most controversial song, “All Women Are Bitches”. Released prior to the album as a single by K Records in 1992, “All Women Are Bitches” was reviewed by Everett True and chosen “Single of the Week” by the UK paper Melody Maker. Along with the “36-C” album, the band released two more singles and also appeared on a number of compilation albums and film soundtracks. —wikipedia