Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache: How Music Came Out

Product Information

There were odd singers who, in their own small way who continued to work such as Bruz Fletcher, but as he ran out of places to play, split up with his lover and, by now alcoholic, killed himself.

The lesbian scene was/is different. There's a much smaller (almost non -existent) club/bar scene, and look at the success of '70s 'Women's Music' (as the introspective folk-based genre became known), artists such as Cris Williamson, who sold half a million records of her debut album on the lesbian-identified, lesbian-staffed, US record label Olivia, while similar gay male singer-songwriters such as Michael Cohen and Steven Grossman sold pitifully in comparison. In 1980, Dexys Midnight Runners released a cover of the song as a B-side to their UK number one single " Geno". [8] You have stories of repression that range from a dramatic change in the lyrics of the 20th Century's most famous song to whole careers being 'blighted' by a musician's sexuality. What were some of the greatest instances? Whitburn, Joel (1996). Joel Whitburn's Top R&B Singles 1942–1995. Record Research. p.20. ISBN 0898201152.

The records released during those eras were all discoveries, and since I was zeroing in on the pioneers – those who were first to put their head above the parapet in their time – these artists were often undocumented at the time, and only in the internet age have diehard fans done a lot of research, which made my work that much easier. Their commercial success in the UK waned, as their style became predictable and less fashionable. [4] However, their early hits continued to be appreciated as Northern soul classics, as they espoused a more commercial pop-soul style similar in sound to that of early Tamla Motown, as opposed to the more funky progressive style favoured by contemporaries like Sly & the Family Stone and The Isley Brothers. [ citation needed]

It’s a comprehensive history of the queer pioneers of Popular Music. The story starts in the British music halls of the early 1900s and then the Weimar Cabaret and Harlem blues scenes of the 1920s, and unfurls across the decades, and musical genres, to the present day, with over 90 new interviews, to tell the story of how music came out. Whitburn, Joel (1982). Joel Whitburn's Bubbling Under the Hot 100 1959–1981. Record Research. p.14. ISBN 9780898200478. Aston claims Liberace performed for President Truman at the White House in 1950, but this is refuted by a Time magazine article ( “Did Liberace Do DC?”, 29 May 2013). It may be that Lee’s performance at the White House News Photographers Association annual dinner in 1949 led to some confusion (see this undated photograph); it was written up by AP (“President Hailed by Photographers,” Washington Post, 20 Mar 1949, M9).Aston’s section on classical composers of this period shows the fluidity of his subjects’ interests—musical (if not otherwise). The gamut of these composers, as diverse as Pauline Oliveros and John Cage to Samuel Barber and Benjamin Britten, might best be illustrated by Aaron Copland, who wrote everything from his anarchist anthem “Into the Streets May First” [10] Copland’s text is a poem by Alfred Hayes, who also wrote the words to “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night,” composed by Copland’s student Earl Robinson. See Robinson with Eric A. Gordon,… Continue reading Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring to his own brand of twelve-tone works. But where Britten’s homosexual themes were self-evident, Aston makes the case for a more nuanced Copland. An Introduction to the endlessly engaging punk-post-punk pioneers, for The Vinyl Factory - find the link on the feature post. Aston is a widely-published British music journalist and writer. His books include Pulp (MacMillan, 1985), Björkgraphy (Simon & Schuster, 1996), and Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD (The Friday Project/Haper Collins, 2013). ALGIERS - my 'Rising' feature on the Atlanta quartet Aligers is in the new MOJO (March edition), the one with Joy Division on the cover, With the 40th anniversary tour of Horses in full swing, I have interviewed Patti Smith, John Cale about producing Horses, and written a guide to all Smtih's albums for for MOJO's October 2015 issue. Unrelated to Horses, a 'How to Buy' guide to Cocteau Twins and interviews with rising Northern Irish singer-songwriter SOAK and Alice Cooper about his Hollywood Vampires project also have my name on it this month

Breakin’ Down The Walls Of Heartache"; "When Love Has Gone Away"; "Stoned Soul Picnic"; "I Wish It Would Rain"; "You Blew Your Cool & Lost Your Fool"; "You"; "People Got To Be Free"; "Girl From Harlem"; "Are You Ready For This"; "I Ain't Lyin’"; "Don't Let It In"; "Baby Make Your Own Sweet Music" a b William Bradley, Look Where He Brought Me From: From Darkness to Light, Trafford Publishing, 2011, p.16Aston’s first book was Pulp (1995), about the Britpop band by that name that reveled in fop (and, just as Rough Trade’s Scritti Politti had done with its single sleeves, one of which is pictured here, [2] It’s worth pointing out that in 1974, four years before Scritti Politti’s first single, John Lauritsen and David Thorstad published The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864–1935) under the… Continue reading “Babies”). The diaries marked the beginnings of gay liberation, not because Rorem made a special issue of his sexuality, but because he did not; rather, he wrote of his affairs frankly and unashamedly.

The answer is... I can't say for sure. Even for me, it took a long time for the idea to germinate. But I think it's something to do with the fact that popular music hasn't the same credence in queer culture as film, literature, poetry and theatre; when people think of 'gay popular music', it's disco/techno, chart pop, i.e shallow and throwaway, Kylie and boy bands, etc. Certainly, there's enough evidence that, traditionally, gay men (and I'm talking generally here) did not demand, or consume, music that mirrored the complexity of their emotions; they preferred the sound of liberation, escapism, etc, which tied in to their social pattern of clubs/bars. Aston moves on in Chapter 3 with much rich material and surprises. One particular drag venue in a city not even in the nation’s Top 40 is called by a writer “one of the first gay-positive communities in America, if not the first,” and so successful it took its act on the road. Aston, along with his cited historians, then skips ahead to the twelfth century CE, remarking that the revolution of that century’s polyphony itself “may have been written in a homosexual sub-culture,” at least at Notre Dame. Later in the chapter he quotes University of Virginia English professor Bruce Holsinger who posits “a constant link between polyphony and sodomy in the puritan tradition” after discussing how at least one music journalist perceives Schubert essentially to have outed himself through his Trout Quintet. That’s some substantial gaydar. To commemorate what would have been Bowie's 70th birthday, and the first anniversary of his death, I've written an Introduction to Bowie in ten records for The Vinyl Factory.Aston quotes the “Where the Boys Are”’s singer Connie Francis as calling it “the gay national anthem.” In 2006 John Grant covered the song with his band The Czars on the single Paint the Moon (2004) and the album Sorry I Made You Cry (2005). Copland’s text is a poem by Alfred Hayes, who also wrote the words to “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night,” composed by Copland’s student Earl Robinson. See Robinson with Eric A. Gordon, Ballad of an American: The Autobiography of Earl Robinson (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1998), 52, 67–68. Sometimes Aston’s history involves repression and silence. At other times, the closet door opens and songs and artists were able to reflect upon themselves and their world through the lens of sexual preference or gender diversity.