El Compadre on Sunset Boulevard is located near not one, but three Hollywood guitar shops. The restaurant is filled with rock 'n' roll types when Ginger Coyote, a true old-school punk with many big name connections, strolls in. A venerable P.T. Barnum in a tiara, Coyote's legacy dates back to her pioneering punk zine Punk Globe. For the past 14 years, she has been the mastermind behind White Trash Debutantes. The outlandish pop-culture musical extravaganza has found fans in high and low places, including most recently Kelly Osbourne. The cantina's noisy, but relaxed atmosphere was perfect for sipping margaritas and as she tells tales she has no pretense, laughing frequently and often bursting into song.

Poizen Ivy: You've said you went to high school just for driver's training so you could get away.

Ginger Coyote: Yeah. I grew up in Iowa. I graduated early and moved to San Francisco in the late '70s; the punk scene was flourishing. It was easy to get into clubs because they didn't check IDs that much, and after you'd been going in, they knew you and figured you were old enough. I was 16 and a half.

PI: You were a pioneer in punk zine culture. What inspired you?

GC: Search And Destroy was pretty much geared toward the art school crowd; very serious, not enough humor, so I decided to start Punk Globe. I knew that a lot of punk rockers liked soap operas, so it wasn't necessarily only punk bands that I interviewed. I got a lot of cool people involved; Jello Biafra was a record reviewer and people from the college radio station KUSF were writers.

PI: Is the goal of White Trash Debutantes simply to have fun?

GC: Our song Punk Rock Republican, in this day and age, is on the mark and needs to get played all the time. It's nice to be political with the impending war in Iraq, but most of the stuff is tongue-in-cheek. I know that The Ramones were big All My Children fans; they wrote a song called Daytime Dilemma about it, and our biggest trial and tribulation is whether Susan Lucci is going to win an Emmy award.

PI: I'm sure you've played some strange shows.

GC: We'd played up in San Francisco for the SPCA. We were helping adopt pets and got a letter of recommendation. That was an all-age thing and we didn't tone down the act that night (laughs). There were llamas, horses, donkeys... all sorts of pets. It was really fun.

CL: Do people find the band controversial?

GC: If anything, I think people are afraid of the show for younger kids because we sing songs like Dildos Are A Girl's Best Friend and If You Don't Wanna Fuck Me Baby, Fuck Off.

PI: What was it like to see Kelly's friend wearing your t-shirt on The Osbournes?

GC: It was a big shock. I had no idea that these 17-year-old girls were into the band. That made me feel good. It astounds me that so many people have heard of us.

An edited version of this interview ran as a Las Vegas CityLife City Pick on February 20th, 2003
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