"What's wrong with wanting to get pissed on and fucked in the ass and bake cookies?"
The preciously named Kimberly Joy looks like cartoon voiced pop staress (and Pee Wee Herman's girlfriend, almost) EG Daily. Sounds like her too, with a pink, powdery voice that's almost a whisper, accented with friendly giggles, and only a tinge of her Brooklyn born and bred heritage. All of which belies her onstage persona, the fork tongued, demon screaming porno-punk priestess behind Dollhouse Salon. Although the band's name suggests the sort of sleazy needle glam that NYC is famous for, The Salon is actually deeply rooted in the hardcore punk scene, rubbing sweaty, tattooed shoulders with bands that preface their monikers with "Dis" and prefer backyard riots and 7" singles to the digital glitz of the 'music industry'. That's not to say that Kim herself is averse to success or glamour, it's just that she likes to keep her music honest. And she honestly wants to tear your head off, most of the time. Dollhouse Salon sounds like the Plasmatics, which is not as easy as you think. It takes conviction, after all, to sound completely unhinged, to strip rock and roll down to its barest essentials of lust, aggression and adrenaline, to communicate horror and panic through screeching, street fighting power chords, to growl with authority and ferocity through a baby doll voice. But conviction comes easy for Kim, as evidenced by her other creative endeavor, her fanzine, Pink. Pink is an incendiary document of Kim's fiercely defended belief system, her views on everything from phony rock and roll to abortion. Her take on the latter topic, in fact, caused one lefty punk to write that "Pink single-handedly set back the feminist movement 20 years", much to Kim's amusement. And then there's the toy collection, and the disco records. An enigma, this Kimberly Joy, beauty wrapped in barbed wire. Just before her birthday, (Halloween, appropriately enough), I tapped her vein for a glimpse into the Dollhouse.

Nobody Cried When Wendy O Died
Is Kimberly Joy a punk rocker? "Yeah. I guess there's no way around that. We don't look the part, try not to act the part. That's why people seem to think of us as more of a glam thing, I guess. But I'd have to say that we're a punk band. Everything's real, I don't even have any effects on my guitar when we play. It's really raw, it's really dirty, what you see is what you get, basically." Although the band has a loyal following, they still lurk on the fringes of New York hardcore scene. "We're virtually nowhere in the scale of things", Kim tells me, "but I feel like we've paid our dues." Her band is no stranger to the struggle. "Oh, yeah", she says, "we've had our share of disasters. We played at the Knitting Factory once. That's not a normal place that we would play, but it was a favor for a friend of ours. While we were playing the roof started leaking." The romantic allure of an onstage death by electrocution. "Yeah. That was actually pretty cool, now that I think about it." Dollhouse Salon may not be the biggest band in town, but they're probably the punkest, and that's got to count for something. Kim traces the band's history to its modest roots. "This goes back several years. Dollhouse Salon was created in my bedroom, about 10 years ago", she explains. "It was with an ex-boyfriend, we started it together. We both wanted the same things out of life." Revolution? Dope, guns, and fucking in the streets? "Superficial things at the time - fame, lots of money, everything that comes with it", she laughs. "It was always Dollhouse Salon, even when it was the two of us with guitars, and eventually we got more people, started playing out, all these little dives, playing for 5 people." I ask her about the glamour-baiting name she's hung onto all these years. "Well, that's kind of a weird story." I wouldn't expect anything less. "I was in California, on vacation, and this funny little commercial came on the tv. I don't know if they were puppets, or some kind of claymation thing, and it was the 'Dollhouse Salon'. I don't know what it was, a bunch of dolls...in a salon. I don't know why, but it just hit me, you know, 'That's it!" Inspiration from hazy, dubious sources tend to have profound shadows, and this was no exception. "It really goes along with what I do, because it's very deceiving. When people hear the name, they assume that the music is soft, and that I'm soft. And it's quite the opposite." Indeed. Although she blanches at the assertion, make no mistake - Kim is the queen of the Dollhouse. "The boss? I don't like to use those kind of terms, but if you want to get technical, I suppose." She laughs. "I write everything. Ok, I admit it, I'm the boss. I call the shots. The rest of the band has called me control freak at times." Kim's back-up players in the Salon are a revolving door of NYC punk vets. Currently, she tells me, "Ira Cogan's on bass, and Denis the Menace is on drums." Although Kim's slowly piecing together a Dollhouse Salon album, so far, recorded output has been sparse. "We're always in and out of the studio, always working on something new. I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to that stuff. Which is maybe why out of every thirty songs we do, I like about one of them." She is shopping a head spinning teeth grinding demo, though. "It's totally DIY stuff", she says, "stuff that we've recorded at studios over the past few years that I burn myself, making little packages for people. Lately there's been three tracks that I've been sending out, that I really like. It's actually out on a label, a really tiny one, but it's legitimate." The cd is a triple speed shredder, full of venom, bluster, and rabid finger pointing. And the first line of "Skreem' is "Fuck me, Jesus!" Not for the faint hearted, obviously. I suggest that Dollhouse Salon may be some twisted form of protest music. "I think it's protest music", she agrees, "but nobody really pays attention to the lyrics, so they don't know it. I don't even think my band mates really get it. I think I purposely write like that, where there's different levels. There's something on the surface, for people that just want to bang their heads, and you go deeper, and there's a strong message there. People just see the cute girl onstage screaming her head off, but there's more if you're a deep thinker." She explains her songwriting process. "I talk about things that are going on in the world, the madness. A lot of my songs are autobiographical, things that I've gone through. There's a lot of anger in the lyrics. I'm not really an angry person anymore, but at the time a lot of the songs were written, I was." Aggression, at least in the aesthetic sense, comes naturally to her. "That's just what comes out of me when I sit down to write a song, or I'm on stage, I just want to scream. Even if they're beautiful lyrics, even if it's a ballad, I just want to play it hard and fast, and scream them out. So people get the wrong idea, they just see what's on the surface, but that's cool", she says. "To me. I'd rather have 100 hardcore Dollhouse Salon fans than thousands of people that are like, 'whatever'. I'll stick with the hundred people that really get it. She is quick to point out, though, that even the least political punker can still spend some time in the Salon. "It's about fun, it's not about money, or my stupid message, it's about having a good time."

She Flies on Strange Wings
Kimberly Joy was disaffected way before it became trendy. "I don't know if I was a rock chick in high school, but I was definitely different", she tells me. "A freak. People sensed that about me, that I was different, even back in elementary school. Even now, I don't fit in with the punk rockers, and I don't fit in with the norm, so wherever I am, people can't really figure me out." I ask her if she'd always tried to be the center of attention. "I did. And I was extremely shy, so it took a lot, it still does. These days, sometimes we play infront of a hundred people, and sometimes I still feel like throwing up before we go on. But once I'm up there, there's no place that I feel more comfortable, more like myself." Ironically, despite a lifestyle filled with public temper tantrums, talking to Kim requires your rapt attention, because she speaks so softly. Not what you'd expect from a New York native. In fact, it would be stretch to say that she's got an accent at all. "It was a conscious effort", she explains. "I think I still had the accent in high school. I mean, I went with what was going on. At that age, you're a really shallow thinker, no matter how smart you are, you still want to follow the crowd, even if you don't want to. It's just the best thing to do. But after high school, I just said 'fuck this', and dropped the accent." It turns out there is another reason why she speaks in such soothing tones. Like most rockers, Kim has a day job. Hardly the one you'd expect, though. "I'm a pre-school teacher", she tells me, with obvious pride. I ask her how she chose the occupation. "I choose to work with children instead of 'adults', if that's what you want to call them, because I think it's easier to communicate with kids. They speak the truth, there's no phoniness with them, and if you're going to spend 5 days a week, 8 hours a day with someone, why not be happy?" Although the punks are more tolerant of her tattoos then the soccer moms, Kim's happy with her dual existence, even if it does confound the hipsters. "It's funny, because people that see me on the scene can't see me teaching small children, and people at work, they can't possibly imagine what my life is like outside of school. All they know is that I'm in a rock band. They have no idea." But which one is the real Kim? The velvet voiced pre-school teacher, or the trench mouthed volume tigress? "Sometimes I think that maybe the real me is the one that's up on stage, and the other 23 hours a day, I'm just playing a part. When you're at work, or you're just walking down the street, and you can't be completely who you want to be, well, that's kind of like playing a role."

Making Enemies is Good
"Pink is just as controversial as Dollhouse Salon is", Kim says of her fanzine, and it's true. Every issue is packed with her heat-seeking philosophies, many of which have sparked heated debate amongst her readers. "I have a lot to say about things, like the government, Aids, or whatever, and people say they're offended by it, but they're still reading it, so they must be enjoying it, or at least they think I'm telling the truth." Pink's controversy, she says, is all part of the plan. "I write about a lot of racy stuff. It seems to be my mission to either turn people on or piss people off, and so far I've been pretty good at it." I ask her which reaction she prefers. "If I had to choose, than turning people on. But as long as I get a rush out of people, that's all I care about, to have something happen." Another part of Kim's grand scheme is her website, www.dollhousesalon.com, the domain of all things Joy-ous. As equally confounding and enlightening as any of her other projects, it's a good place to get hopelessly, blissfully lost in, a rabbit hole of archaic knowledge, twisted humor, and bizarre sex. And although it does, in fact, feature nude photos of Kim, as well as a few water-sports and bestiality pictures, it's nothing like you'd expect. "Plus, it's pretty", Kim points out. "Would you rather go on a website and see a bunch of guts and skulls, or would you rather see beautiful women?" Of course all this flagrant nakedness is bound to attract the porn hounds. "Yeah, people e-mail me, wanting my panties, or they tell me what they want to do to me", she admits. "But that's cool, I don't think it takes away from anything. I think it's cool to show your femininity, and if it's "Oh, she's got nice tits", well, there's a price to everything. I'm not selling myself like that, but if it's how people react, then what's wrong with that?" Besides, even if it did bother her, she could just scream about it at the next show. "I address people like that in the songs all the time", Kim says, "but they're not even aware of it." Dollhouse live is where Kim really pops the lid off of things. All the way off. "Sometimes I offer a free t-shirt to the first guy that gets on stage and shows his cock, and somebody always does it", she laughs.
"I have a tendency to be a gutter mouth, but people expect that. People that have seen me before know what they're in for. But that's cool, because that's my way of venting, whether it's from anger, or just because I'm looking out at a crowd of stupid drunk people. Whatever it is, I can just get up there and scream. 'Fuck you, you bunch of losers!' and they love it, they really love it. Sometimes, it'll be a week later, and someone will stop me in the street and say, 'Hey, I saw your last show, and it was really cool the way you told me to fuck off." Whether berating a toxic crowd of sweaty punks, or dancing around her room to the Bee Gees ("Saturday Night fever is my favorite records", she admits), Kimberly Joy does it her way, free from convention or contrivance. "I do what comes naturally to me, I'm not a phony in the least bit, and I see a lot of that out there, even in the punk scene, where it's supposed to be the real thing, you know, the real truth", she tells me. "But the more I hang around the scene, the more I see that that's not the truth at all. There's a lot of followers and wannabees." Some of which contend that pretty school teachers can't possibly be trench slugging, death or glory punks. "At least I get attention that way. Some people might say, 'Well, she's not a real punk rocker', but who cares? As long as I get a rise out of people, then that's cool, then I've done my job. If they didn't care at all, then they'd just walk away." And that, citizens, is about as punk fucking rock as you can get.