Yes, I’m featuring a straight band on the QMH Blog…:) I just
found out about the video by the Washington DC band Bye June, and it’s creative
and wonderful. The band consists of lead singer/songwriter Gil Kline, drummer
Gunner Sledgeski and Daniel McGreal on bass, and they bill themselves as a “socially
conscious band.”
The song is called “Shades of Purple,” and Kline told
Pinkpaper.com about its inspiration: “I
wrote this song because my cousin is in 10 year relationship and he can't marry
his partner. They are so in love, and it angers me that politicians try to tell
other people who to love and spend their life with.” So the video uses “Swan
Pride” as a metaphor for the fight for marriage equality. Besides being
musically solid, the video features shadowography from Sati Achath, whose work
has been featured on TV, on “America’s Got Talent.”
In the early 1970’s Madeline Davis was beginning her long
history of gay & lesbian activism and music. She is credited with writing
and recording the first explicitly Gay Liberation song. The song is called
"Stonewall Nation." It was written after she participated in her
first gay march in Albany, NY, in June of 1971. And she got to sing it at her
second gay pride march, and for years she sang it at many pride venues. She
related to me that during those early years it was often heard at the Oscar
Wilde Bookstore in Greenwich Village during Pride month. As I have interviewed
Madeline before the song starts you’ll hear a short clip of her talking about
writing it.
She wasn't just singing during those years. She was one
of the early members of the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, joining
just a few months after its start in Buffalo in 1970. She was president of that
chapter in 1972 and was very active in various capacities until if finally
folded in the late 1980’s.
One of her biggest accomplishments was in 1972 when she
was elected as the first openly lesbian delegate to a major national political
convention. It was of course the Democratic convention that nominated McGovern,
and Jim Foster from San Francisco was first gay male delegate, elected that
same year. Also in 1972 she co-formulated and taught the first course on and
entitled Lesbianism, at a major US university, State University of New York, in
Buffalo.
In 1993 she co-authored, with Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy,
the book "Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold," the history of the
lesbian community in Buffalo from 1935 to 1965. It was the first history of a
working class gay community and the book won a Lammy award for Best Lesbian
Studies, and several other national prizes.
And, here's another interesting sidelight. In 1995, she
was chosen poster girl for a tattoo show held by an arts theater center. The
poster made of her was not only a big hit, and was stolen as soon as any were
put up, but it was chosen best color poster of the year by an industry
association and won a gold medal. She gave me permission to share the photo
with you, and it's quite a revealing and surprising one.
And, this is cool, there is also a clip on Youtube of Madeline singing the song and talking about it, from 2009, at the 11th International Transgender Day of Remembrance, in Buffalo
In this blog I love to honor songs of our GLBT history,
and in this case the song itself is doing the honoring, and I think it does is
exquisitely. The song “History Remembers” is the title track from a 1997 album
by John Whitley-Gibson and Peter Saxe. John expertly handles the vocals and
Peter wrote all the music and lyrics.
It’s another one of those songs that really, to my mind,
needed to be on Youtube, and as it wasn’t, I got the permission of John and
Peter to create an homage video to it. I chose to use images from our GLBT
history.
Another very poignant song from the album is “Special
Rights,” but I am especially pleased that Peter Saxe uploaded a video for the
song “Ernie & Bert (Living Together)”
In a past life John appeared as a member of the a cappela
group Sons & Lovers, releasing a self-titled CD in 1994, and the group,
with minor personnel changes, became Mystery Date, which released the CD “Sweet
Sixteen” in 2001. In 2000 John and Paul Bisaccia released the album “Simply
Gershwin.”
John doesn’t appear to have a music site at the present,
but I’ll give his current one, along with Peter’s site. And the CD can be found
on Amazon.com.
The song “Glory Glory,” recorded by Leah Zicari in 1990, was
one of our early anthems, and has been used in the past as the opening theme songs for
several GLBT radio shows. Finding the song, even just to listen to, at this
point would be quite difficult, as it was only released on a cassette single
(perhaps for demo or radio purposes) and it appeared on Leah Zicari’s full
length cassette tape, “Wouldn’t That Be Fun?” So, I got Leah’s permission to
create a Youtube video for it, and used as the intro to it an interview clip of
her describing the inspiration for the song.
While you will not likely find the cassette album, I do
recommend you check out Leah’s two CDs, both I think excellent: “Hard Road,”
from 2001, and “Pretty on Thursday,” from 2003.
Fans of oldies but goodies radio will likely remember the
huge #1 hit Jimmy Dean had with “Big Bad John,” in 1961. Such a song was ripe
for parody and those that did went directly for the opposite of the big
super-butch John. They came up, mostly in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, with over
a dozen stereotypical and homophobic parodies, and the most popular name in the
title was Bruce.
Below, Jimmy Dean's original hit
On This Pageof my website I’ve collected all I could
find, and you can hear clips of them all. And I was quite pleased a couple of
years ago when Randy Sparks, of the New Christy Minstrels, emailed me that he
wrote the first “Big Bruce” parody, but it was quickly stolen. He shares the
whole story on my webpage.
Steve Greenberg had the most successful parody, with his
45 rpm record making the Billboard charts at #97, in 1969. It’s a well-known
parody and I think it got a lot more radio play than the chart position
indicates. Someone put the song on Youtube so I can share that with you here.
I found the lyrics online (below) and trivia nuts might
be interested to know that Greenberg recorded it twice and in the other one Bruce,
instead of coming from New Orleans, came “from Abilene, where he had a social
group called the Lone Star Queens.” It’s curious Greenberg would make that
change.
And another video is also on Youtube, by country
artist/comedian Ben Colder, and his version was of "Big Sweet John."
Ignoring the current age of Youtube video parodies, I think this song holds the record for most gay parody recordings actually commercially released.
Sometimes it takes just one song to make you a fan. And I am
just nuts over Chris Salvatore’s song “Broke Another Heart.” I've already played it several times on OutRadio. It’s from his 2010
EP “Dirty Love,” though the title track may have gotten more attention. Another
stand out track from that EP, at least to me, is “It’s You (the La La Song).”
If his name sounds familiar, he starred in the last two “Eating
Out” movies: “All You Can Eat” and “Drama Camp,” with another installment being
filmed. And he’s easy to find on google; if you do an image seach about half of
the photos are shirtless, no complaints here, he’s stunning.
But, back to the music. Since 2006 he’s released one
full-length album, three digital EPs and two digital singles. One of those
singles is the power ballad “It Gets Better,” prompted by the campaign of that
name. And you can also find on Youtube a slew of nice covers. Here's his Video Channel.
Oh, and he did a
fun duet video for the holidays with Mister Chase on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
There’s lots to listen to, look at and watch with Chris Salvatore.
Ah, the only video I found for "Broke Another Heart" is subtitled in Italian
Okay, how many of you knew there was a secret gay
language in England in the 50s and 60s. Raise your hands. Hmm, not too many. It
was a slang language called polari, sometimes polare. In those days gay men
used it as a form of protection and secrecy. Outsiders would not be able to
tell what you were talking about, and it also had a humorous and campy element.
It was derived from a variety of sources, such as Italian words, rhyming slang,
and back slang, which was saying a word as if it were spelled backwards.
Theatre people and also gay men in the Merchant Marines also contributed
various words. There were probably about 500 polari terms, and they included
words for types of people, occupations, body parts, clothing, and sexual acts,
and they were ideal for gossip.
I have a couple of examples to introduce you to Polari.
In the late 60s there was a very popular radio comedy show on the BBC with
characters named Julian and Sandy. They used a lot of polari words and most of
the sketches had the word "bona" in the title, "bona" meant
"nice." It seemed in each sketch they had a different occupation. In
this one, from 1965, they were interior decorators.
But here perhaps is a better example of polari, in the
form of a song by English drag performer Lee Sutton, from a 1971 album by her
called "Drag For Camp Followers." The song is called "Bona
Eke," which means, as you'll find out, "nice face." After her
song she gives a translation, but I'll warn you that she wasn't on the up and
up with it, as a couple of the harmless translations she gives are not at all
what the naughty meanings convey. But the audience went right along.
She was always billed as “Lee Sutton, A Near Miss."
Polari fell out of use for two main reasons. I mentioned
above the radio series Julian & Sandy had in the late 1960’s. Well, that
series was so popular that the general public learned many of the polari words,
so some of the mystery of the language was erased.
Off the rails I was and Off the rails I was happy to stay GET OUT OF MY WAY On the rack I was Easy meat, and a reasonably good buy A reasonably good buy
The Piccadilly palare Was just silly slang Between me and the boys in my gang "So Bona to Vada. OH YOU Your lovely eek and Your lovely riah"
We plied an ancient trade Where we threw all life's Instructions away Exchanging lies and digs (my way) Cause in a belted coat Oh, I secretly knew That I hadn't a clue
(No, no. No, no, no. You can't get there that way. Follow me...)
The Piccadilly palare Was just silly slang Between me and the boys in my gang Exchanging palare You wouldn't understand Good sons like you NEVER DO.
So why do you smile When you think about Earl's Court ? But you cry when you think of all The battles you've fought (and lost) ? It may all end tomorrow Or it could go on forever In which case I'm doomed It could go on forever In which case I'm doomed
**********************************
Update: One of my Facebook friends in London, Rupert Smith, tells me Polari is still used to some extent...I think that's bona.
