To The Max

Hunx has dreams. “I want to go to Japan. I want to go to Australia. I wanna have a TV show. I want to be in celebrity magazines,” says Seth Bogart, the Californian hairdresser-turned-punk-showman who performs as his flamboyant alter-ego. While you can't rule out the latter – he does, these days, live in Los Angeles, giving him proximity to paparazzi – we can confirm the first three; Bogart is at work on an Internet TV show called Hollywood Nailz, and is due to depart for his first-ever Australian tour in January.

Hunx has dreams for that, too; his voyage down under giving him more wishes to hope for. “I wanna see a kangaroo's boner,” Bogart laughs. “I wanna meet some hot Australian men. I wanna go to the beach. I wanna have another summer!”

So goes an interview with the 33-year-old, who begins it by asking if we can do the interview by Skype so he can see if your scribe is “hot” or not. It's an interview that features Bogart waxing lyrical about the formative experience of watching Home Alone as a kid – “I dreamed about having sex with Macaulay Culkin. And I thought being an entertainer was the only possible way I could get to do it” – then pouring water on the former-child-star's current state: “He's a heroin addict and he looks like shit.”

Bogart gave birth to Hunx in the early-'00s, when he was invited to join the queer-core party-pop band Gravy Train!!!! as a 'gay back-up dancer' to a band born as an all-girl outfit. When Gravy Train!!!! went on hiatus in 2008, Bogart founded Hunx & His Punx as a garage-rock party band, and went out on tour with Nobunny and Jay Reatard. He found acclaim for his wild, risqué live-shows, which were filled with nudity and debauchery; and grew only more so with the rise of offsider Shannon Shaw (of Shannon & The Clams) as a co-provocateur.

The first Hunx & His Punx LP collected early 7” cuts, in 2010, as the brilliantly-titled Gay Singles, which was then followed by the first 'proper' album, the girl-group-influenced Too Young To Be In Love, in 2009. But while his recordings showed Bogart's yen for melody (see: Teardrops On My Telephone, Dream On (Little Dreamer), My Boyfriend's Coming Back), his reputation has always persisted as live showman foremost. And he has the stories to prove it.

“One time in Texas, I played a Mexican restaurant, and my ex-boyfriend Alex was in it, and we sort of, like, accidentally exposed ourselves, and then they called the cops,” Bogart recalls, at one point. “Because there was, like, families eating. We ran away!”

Has he found that audiences in foreign countries have been more accepting than Deep South crowds? “I honestly felt that people in Europe would get it more, because they'd be more perverted,” Bogart says. “And while they're definitely like that in France, you go to places like Germany and they seem more grossed out or something. In Paris, the crowd completely tore off all of my clothes. They literally grabbed me off stage and pulled me into the audience, took my microphone, then just tore all my clothes off. I was literally left with nothing. I just had to stop the show, because there was nowhere to go from that point. I was kind of, like, horrified. After the show I was complaining about it to this guy, and he actually said to me, 'Well, you asked for it'. I was like, 'What the fuck?!' I felt like I was Courtney Love or something.”

Yet, in the middle of hearing all these stories, the distinction between Bogart as the person telling them and Hunx as the character starring in them becomes clearer; his on-stage persona being essentially different to how he is by day. And yet, those lines grew blurrier early in 2012, when Bogart issued his first 'solo' album as Hunx, Hairdresser Blues, in which the raw garage-pop songs came laced with sad, bruised lyrics.

“A lot of people seemed to think it was just another party record,” Bogart offers. “To me, it was anything but. Honestly, I was really super-depressed for a long time when I made the record, and the only thing that made me feel better was writing songs. I was, like, almost suicidal. A lot of things had just happened: a friend of mine [Jay Reatard] had just died, I'd just moved, I was really poor, I was in a horrible relationship. It just felt like nothing was going that good with my life.

“Depression is just in my blood,” continues Bogart. “It's something I've dealt with ever since I was a teen. For, like, the last 15 years, since my dad died. It's just been a constant part of my life, and it's only in the last year that I feel like it's lifted, because [I] got a lot of help with it. I feel like it's kind of over, which feels really good. I've taken charge of my life. I've realised that it doesn't have to be like that, it doesn't have to be so hard.”

This lifting of depression has, Bogart thinks, ushered in a “productive” stage; making “everything about [his] artistic life clearer”. This productivity is powering an array of projects; including making that TV show he's long dreamed-of, Hollywood Nailz. “We don't like have tons of money, so it isn't perfect, but I really love it,” he enthuses. “It feels like being more of an entertainer than ever before. Like, I'm not just making it for me, I'm making it for other people. I really want to make them laugh! We've just done the one episode so far, but hopefully someone will give us some money to make more... It does feel weird, when you come from a punk background, to be waiting for someone else to give you some money. But I really want to make this bigger and better than anything I've done before.”

Bogart is also hard at work on two albums: a new Hunx & His Punx album called Street Punk, and a “more pop” second solo LP. He's also working on his dance project, H.U.N.X., which debuted with the memorable single, I Vant To Suck Your Cock, finding Bogart offering fellatio dressed in full vampire outfit. “I'm not usually one for dressing up for Halloween – I dress up constantly throughout the year – but I did play a [Halloween] show in LA as my gay vampire character,” Bogart says. “We did that song, and then we did some covers; we covered Hole, and The Germs, and Miley Cyrus. But I forgot my fangs! I was a sloppy, shitty vampire; I just got way too drunk. I also forgot my Courtney Love wig.”

I Vant To Suck Your Cock is the vehicle for another of Bogart's dreams: making a perennial party-song, to be played at wild 31 October shindigs forevermore. “On the Internet it was a hit, but I don't know if anyone actually played it at Halloween parties,” he says. “I want people to play it at Halloween parties, like every year. I want it to be like The Monster Mash, just this standard on Halloween playlists. And then I'm going to do a Christmas single next year.”

Thursday 17 January - Sydney Festival, The Famous Spiegeltent, Sydney NSW
Saturday 19 January - Sugar Mountain Festival, Melbourne VIC
Sunday 20 January - The Tote, Melbourne VIC
Friday 25 January - The Zoo, Fortitude Valley QLD