Fifth Column

introduction

Considered experimental and radical, the iconic underground band Fifth Column played a critical role in Toronto's punk and post-punk music scenes. Active between 1981 and 2002, Fifth Column challenged Toronto’s cultural landscape.

As a landmark predecessor to the 1990s Riot Grrrl movement, which combined feminist consciousness, politics, and punk, Fifth Column used their music and voices as a platform for resistance in pushing back against society and its neo-conservatism.

All Women Are

A black and white photo of three women seated against a wall. The woman on the left hand side has her head down and is playing with a ribbon in her hair. The woman in the middle wears sunglasses and looks at the camera. The woman on the right has her arms crossed and resting on her knees.

Fifth Columns members: G.B. Jones, Caroline Azar, and Beverly Breckenridge.

Photo by Jena Von Brucker

All Women Are

Coming off the heels of Toronto’s punk scene, G.B. Jones was originally part of an experimental electronic band ‘Bunny and the Lakers’. When Jones joined a new band called Second Unit with Janet Martin and Kathleen Robertson, Caroline Azar auditioned to become their new member. They re-named the band Fifth Column.

Band Text

Fifth Column's founding members included G.B. Jones on vocals, drums, and guitar, Caroline Azar on vocals and organ, Kathleen Robertson on bass and back-up vocals, and Janet Martin on guitar and back-up vocals.

The name Fifth Column stems from a military term for a group of people who undermine a larger group from within. Its original meaning was not lost on the band. Fifth Column existed in between labels. Deemed too radical, too feminist, too experimental, or too queer, their music lived on the fringes.

Zines

Zine Culture

Zines, often small-circulation and do-it-yourself publications, became increasingly popular in the 1970s and 1980s, especially within the punk and post-punk music scene. G.B. Jones’ and Caroline Azar’s zine HIDE was the first to combine DIY, hand-crafted, self-published works of art with cassette tapes. These were treasure troves of information about bands, their music, and subculture as a means to support fellow bands and exchange correspondence. At that time, this information was not covered by mass media.

Caroline Azar, Kathleen Robertson, and friend Candy Parker launched HIDE as a cultural commentary. With a feminist approach, they poked at normative gay culture. G.B. Jones joined the group for HIDE’s second edition.

With the rise of male-dominated hardcore and homocore music, Jones coined the term ‘Queercore’ in her downtown Toronto apartment and started the zine JD’s with Bruce LaBruce. Her social and political vision was one of inclusion. Queercore drew upon the DIY spirit of zines and used art and music to address societal prejudices and discrimination against the LGBTQ2+ communities.

Black and white cover of a zine featuring a man standing on a roof with the words next to him written vertically “Hide”.

Cover image of HIDE 4, created by Caroline Azar and G.B. Jones; Cover concept, design, and lettering by G.B. Jones; HIDE included mix tapes featuring other punk bands they met while touring throughout Ontario.

Cover concept, design, and lettering by G.B. Jones. Courtesy of Alternative Toronto

A collage of images displayed in black and white, featuring a range of posters and flyers for Fifth Column and other bands. At the center are two women. The woman on the right is standing, slightly leaning backwards. The woman on the left bends over and holds onto the back of a jacket of another woman who is running away from the two women.

Candy Parker created the zine, Dr. Smith, about a fictional secret agent infiltrating the punk scene to expose the subversives. In this 1984 issue, Xeroxed images, photographs, flyers, and posters of Fifth Column are collaged together.

Dr. Smith, Issue 2, page 28, courtesy of The ArQuives

To Sir With Hate

Fifth Column released its debut full-length album, To Sir With Hate, in 1986. The album was unmistakable in its politics, with the motto “No More Oedipal Excuses” scrawled on one side of the album cover. To promote the new album, the band members gave newspaper interviews, but insisted they were quoted without surnames, to avoid giving their fathers any unearned credit.

Steeped in local politics, the album’s songs commented about real life events and injustices. The song “The Fairview Mall Story” spoke about the cruel outing of gay men in a nearby St. Catharine’s shopping mall washroom, caught in a surveillance sting. Sung as an act of empathy and catharsis, they took this horrific event and created a love song for people unsure of their sexuality.

We think of the songs on To Sir With Hate as adolescent protest songs.

Undeniable, we’re rather young, but it’s an exact natural record of where we were when we recorded it, an immediate response.
—Caroline Azar, The Globe and Mail interview, September 8, 1986

Super 8s

Many of Fifth Column’s concerts were accompanied with Super 8 films. G.B. Jones and Caroline Azar collaborated with experimental filmmaker John Porter to make the black and white series that Caroline coined as “Moving Wallpaper”. Porter projected Super 8 film loops on and above the band members dressed in white, intersecting their live shows with the films.

Two women on stage playing music in front of a painted backdrop. The left woman sings into a microphone and is sitting in front of a keyboard. The woman on the right plays a guitar.

Members of Fifth Column, Caroline Azar and Anita Smith, performing on stage.

Photo by Mark Leach

Like This

Watch: Like This

The band’s tradition of playing Super 8 films during their live performances transitioned into their music videos. This video, from their 1990 album All-Time Queen of the World, was co-directed by Bruce LaBruce, a photographer, writer, and director the band had worked with for years.

Watch the 1990 music video for “Like This”, a single from the band’s 1990 album "All-Time Queen of the World", co-directed by Canadian director Bruce LaBruce and Fifth Column band members. Please note: this third-party video does not provide closed captions.

View Transcript

[Intro Music]

♪Like This

It begins again

Like This

It begins again

Like This

Start at the end again

It's where the clocks are all wrong

It's where you stayed away too long

It's where the clocks are all wrong

It's where you stayed away too long

It's where the Bride tells the Groom,

"You ruined my wedding",

And the Landlord is dead.

Like This

It begins again

Like This

It can never end

Like This

It begins again

Like This

It can never end♪

[Music]

Lyrics by GB Jones

She Said Boom

Torontonians might know the local music store, She Said Boom. Located on the west side of Toronto, the store took its name from the lyric and the song "She Said, 'Boom'" from Fifth Column's 1990 album All-Time Queen of the World.

Essentially, "She said boom" are three simple words that, for us, mean being responsible for your own pocket-sized revolution, and that one's exasperation with what is false can be said aloud: "I say boom, you say boom, she said boom!"
—Caroline Azar, The Media Co-op, 2013

The song is about a young boy confused by his girlfriend's independence, "My girlfriend bombs monuments and I just don't know what to do!!"

Bombing referred to tagging an object or building with spray paint, a common practice in graffiti. Band member G.B. Jones was an active graffiti artist while a member of Fifth Column.

A colour photo of a brick wall with the words “Fifth Columnists evade tragedy” written on it in spray paint. — Band member G.B. Jones used public art, such as graffiti, throughout Toronto to promote Fifth Column's themes of feminism and independence.
Art and photo by G.B. Jones

Fifth Column fleshes out

Fifth Column fleshes out a punk attitude with a diverse musical range...pop songs with 60s-girl-group vocals that recall the Shangri-Las, interspersed with dreamy, offbeat harmonies reminiscent of Tracey Thorn's pre-Everything but the Girl work with Marine Girls.
— Chris Dickinson, "Punk filtered through queer", Chicago Reader (January 7, 1993)

Donna

Watch: Donna

Featured on Fifth Column’s 36C album, “Donna” was named for American punk rocker, Donna Dresch, founder and guitarist of the punk band Team Dresch. Dresch appeared in G.B. Jones's 1992 film The Yo-Yo Gang. Dresch was also an occasional member of Fifth Column, playing on two tours and recorded several tracks on 36C, which was released in 1994.

Watch the 1994 video for “Donna” by Fifth Column. The video also features several photos of the song’s namesake, punk rocker Donna Dresch. Directed by Friday Myers; Written by Caroline Azar. Please note: this third-party video does not provide closed captions.

View Transcript

[intro music]

Lately life's been a blast

Everybody's burnin' flags

There's a talk show called

Man To Man

My brother's stealin' software again

Sure wish you'd move to town

Donna

I must get her to visit the north

Donna's a girl who's full of worth

She can do everything at once

And write postcards

So much fun

The crowd will fall in love with you

Donna

She has played in so many bands

Jumps up and down

Slaps her hands on the bass guitar

But she live very far very far

Move to town

Donna

[music]

Lyrics by Caroline Azar

Riot Grrrl Influencers

Fifth Column’s unique blend of feminism, punk, and politics spread far beyond Toronto to influence the underground punk scene known as the Riot Grrrl movement.

Bands such as Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Sleater-Kinney echoed the themes of feminism and the need for political activism heard and seen in Fifth Column’s work.

Riot Grrrl bands also embraced Fifth Column’s use of zines and DIY aesthetics.

[Fifth Column] was this legendary group of women. We’d seen the movies, read the zines, totally obsessed. They came to town and were absolutely lovely.

I just remember thinking, ‘Why are we the ones who get all the attention? They’re such a better band than we are.’
—Kathleen Hanna, Lead Singer of Bikini Kill, 2012

Riot Grrrl Zines

A black and white zine cover with the words riot grrrl written in cursive. Dated July 1991

Riot Grrrl no. 1, Molly Neuman and Allison Wolfe, July 1991, courtesy of Fales Library NYU / Feminist Press

A flyer with black ink on a red background in alternating bold and non-bold font.

Flyer by Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, courtesy of Fales Library NYU / Feminist Press

Fifth Column Film

Watch: A Fifth Column Film

In 2012, the award-winning documentary celebrating the history and legacy of Fifth Column debuted at Toronto’s Hot Docs Film Festival. Directed by Kevin Hegge, She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column explored how the band was an important influence in both music and queer subculture throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Watch the trailer for Kevin Hegge’s "She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column", a documentary highlighting Fifth Column’s enduring influence on punk culture and music. Please note: this third-party video does not provide closed captions.

View Transcript

It wouldn’t have been the right girl movement without Fifth Column. Sabotage subversion and a struggle for power. Any word you can use to describe me that you think is bad is good. There was a lot of animosity towards them. There was a lot of hostility towards them I think.

And she called it the sound of music falling apart. I mean the punk world was really straight and the gay world was really lame. The girls in Toronto just had this view that was larger.

But when you deal with people that have explosive personalities and they're creative of course there's gonna be conflict. So then there was just this huge fight that some of the punk kids got really upset that there was queer content in the movies. The real world kind of sucks but the world we created didn't suck.

Well you know I don't think there wouldn't there were many structures that were left standing if we had our way.

Fifth Column Today

Today, G.B. Jones is known for her Super 8 experimental films, the seminal Queerpunk zine JD's, and as a prolific artist with her liberated and empowered Tom Girls drawings. G.B. Jones' work continues to be recognized; she currently performs in Opera Arcana with Minus Smile.

Caroline Azar is an independent director and playwright who practices Guerrilla Comedy. In 2018-2019, Caroline led a theatrical series of interactive walking tours "St. Peon of The People" and "St. Peon of Parkdale."

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