I've never had the slightest desire to go to a Sleazefest. With its image as a Southern-fried hillbilly haven of go-go dancers, loud rockabilly, wonton drunkenness and enormous breasts (what our own Greg Bower referred to as "Russ Meyersian iconography"), Chapel Hill's most-anticipated bacchanal always seemed too, well, sleazy.

I'm a feminist who believes that consenting adults who want to enjoy porn should have every right to do so. In my opinion, blaming porn for sexual assault isn't much better than blaming the victim because she was wearing a short skirt (both lines of thinking take responsibility for the assault away from the perpetrator and place it somewhere else).

Yet I'm bothered by the festival's ads, which often feature cartoons of naked women and sexy images of '50s-style pinups like Betty Page, Although she hardly reaches the same level of offensiveness as that infamous Hustler meatgrinder illustration, even fresh-faced Betty, who looks like she's having a blast when she's being spanked with a hairbrush, makes me uncomfortable.

Still, I've always been fascinated by the yearly fest because it forces me to evaluate how I feel about these very politically incorrect images. With this year's fest following closely on the heels of the very P.C. all-woman Lilith Fair (Sleazefest occurred Friday through Sunday, Aug. 1-3; Lilith was on Wednesday, July 30), 1 found myself pondering the similarities and differences between the two. That's when I decided it was time to actually go to Sleazefest and find out if it's really as sleazy as I've been led to believe.

Thankfully, it isn't.

Regardless of the black-eyed peas being served up next door at the Sleazy Spoon (a.k.a. the neighboring N.C. Sports Bar) or the G-string-clad strippers (male and female) rattling the bars of the go-go cage, Sleazefest is first and foremost about music.

"Sleazefest means different things to different people," says Dave Robertson, a Local 506 co-owner and one of the festival's masterminds. "Music is what it means to me" For his part, Robertson can't say enough good things about the bands, the folks at the N.C. Sports Bar, videographer Craig Zearfoss or anyone else involved with the festival. As an example of the festival's friendly atmosphere, he cites bands like the Spills, the Gotohells and Jack Black, all of whom played on Friday but stuck around to play spontaneous sets for free on Saturday.

"Dave is not getting rich off of this:'says Mike Benson, Sleazefest worker and official photographer. "This is more a gathering of friends. I hate to use the word 'tribal,' but that's kind of what it is.'

Even so, complaints of misogyny aren't new to the folks at Sleazefest.

"That was a complaint last year," Robertson admits. "That's why we confined most of the hardcore stuff to the second night and let the others be more relaxed.'

Says Benson: "Last year the problem was the amateurs, the ones who would take the stripping too far. If we're going to do this, we're going to do it within the confines of the law. This year the only amateur we had was Charlie [Speight of Pine State, who was gagged and led in on a leash by Rubbermaid singer Jessica Spangler], and he definitely pushed it to the limit. Actually, this year has been just as sleazy, especially with Southern Culture on the Skids, but it's not so much in a sexual way."

As the woman who led Speight in on a leash, Spangler herself is a bit impatient with the question of whether Sleazefest has become too sleazy.

"That's the whole point of the festival;' she says. "That's why it was started in the first place.' I should point out that Spangler's band, which features women on guitar and bass and a man on drums, could singlehandedly blow away all of the strumming pop-folkies on the Lilith tour.

"I never catch any of that [anti-sleaze sentiment] because I never read any of the reviews,"' she continues. "Everyone I talk to loves it'"

Could it be that sleaze is in the eye of the beholder? Videographer Craig Zearfoss tells the story of a friend who knew Ed Wood and once visited the late king of bad, sleazy movies (Plan 9 From Outer Space) who was showing his movies at a Baltimore theater. Though the marquee featured posters of scantily clad women, the movie itself had nothing to do with sex.

"It was just a lure to get people into the theater," Zearfoss says. Though he also admits that last year's festival featured too many strippers, he doesn't see much of a difference between the gender politics of Sleazefest and those of his workplace.

"You hear more of this kind of thing at IBM, only it's not as blatant. There it's hidden "

"I don't mind looking at naked women," Zearfoss says, perhaps unconsciously sum- ming up the thoughts of many at Sleazefest. "But I'd still be doing this if they weren't here."

Would the crowds who have made Lilith a phenomenally successful tour still participate if the people making the music were men?

It's difficult to know how many people wouldn't still patronize Sleazefest if the sleaze were cleaned up. When irony such as this is laid on so thickly, there's always the possibility that someone who sees nothing wrong with Hustler's meat grinder will appreciate Sleazefest on less-than-ironic terms.

http://www.sleazefest.com/sleaze97/independentreview.html