La modelo Heather Bratton murió el pasado sábado en un accidente de autos luego de una sesión de fotos.
Con tan solo 19 años Heather ya había sido imagen de Chanel, Dior, Marc Jacobs, Prada, y estrella de la campaña de Balenciaga de esta temporada. En las imágenes, Heather para Vogue Italia. Una carrera brillante truncada por un accidente de tráfico una vez más. Así que, ya sabés: prestá atención, prestá atención.
domingo, 30 de julio de 2006
sábado, 29 de julio de 2006
Y un día te fuiste a comprar un CD... y te enteraste de que tenías dos hermanos hiperfamosos
Parece que los hermanitos Gallagher no están solos en el mundo. Sabemos que Noel y Liam tienen otro hermano varón más grande que ellos, Paul Gallagher, pero lo que ni los propios Gallagher sabían era que había una media hermana dando vueltas por el mundo. O mejor dicho, a unas pocas cuadras.
Emma Davis, de 32 años, nació luego de un affair de papá Tommy Gallagher con la mamá de Emma, June. Emma se enteró de la bomba cuando, justamente, compró uno de los discos de la banda de sus medio-hermanos, Oasis, (What´s The Story) Morning Glory, en 1996, y ahí fue cuando su madre decidió confesarle la verdad.
Desde entonces, Emma, que está casada y tiene dos hijos, se mantuvo en las sombras por temor a que piensen que era una oportunista, es decir, una cazafortunas. Su historia está bien probada por documentos de manutención que declaran que es la hija legítima del señor Gallagher, de quien tiene poco recuerdos.
Emma contó al News of the World que una sola vez en su vida estuvo a unos pasos de Liam mientras trabajaba como camarera de un lujoso hotel en el que el cantante y su esposa de entonces, Patsy Kensit, estaban hospedados.
Emma cree que ha llegado el momento de dar el gran y tan esperado paso. “Ha sido muy duro para mí, seguir sus vidas desde lejos”, confesó al periódico. Entre otras cosas dijo: “Quiero que Noel y Liam sepan que existo. Sin embargo, nunca fui lo suficientemente valiente como para hablar. Ellos eran demasiado famosos. Me preocupaba que pensaran que era una cazafortunas (…) También tenía miedo de que me rechazaran. Entonces me sentaba a verlos en Top Of The Pops, mientras las lágrimas caían por mis mejillas”.
Emma nació el 8 de agosto de 1973, en el mismo hospital de Manchester donde 11 meses antes había nacido Liam, su medio hermano, y creció a 5 cuadras de ellos. Su mamá había conocido a Tommy en la disco local.
Etiquetas:
Información,
Rockstars
Breakfast at Tiffany´s
LONDRES.- Uno de los modelos del elegante vestido negro de cóctel que la actriz Audrey Hepburn lució en 'Desayuno con diamantes', una de las películas más famosas de los años 60, saldrá a subasta el próximo 5 de diciembre.
Diseñado por Hubert de Givenchy, la pieza, con un valor estimado de 70.000 libras (en torno a 105.000 euros), pertenece actualmente al escritor francés Dominique Lapierre y su esposa, que destinarán lo que recauden a su ONG 'Ciudad de la Alegría' en la India.
Pero lo cierto es que para el recordado filme, Givenchy realizó varios ejemplares del famoso vestido de satén negro. Precisamente, el traje que poseía el propio diseñador pertenece al Museo del Traje de Madrid. El creador donó al museo éste y otros cinco modelos, junto con los bocetos originales. Los diseños se han expuesto por primera vez en el museo madrileño durante este mes.
Hepburn llevó el modelo durante su interpretación de la joven Holly Golightly en el clásico de 1961.
En la primera secuencia del filme, Hepburn, vestida con el elegante vestido negro, sale de un taxi en la Quinta Avenida de Nueva York, mira por la ventana de la joyería Tiffany's y se come el desayuno que saca de una bolsa de papel marrón.
En la fotografía que acompañó a la película, la actriz aparece con el vestido, guantes negros y adornada con perlas. Audrey Hepburn, considerada una de las actrices de Hollywood con más encanto, murió en 1993, a los 63 años.
Fuente: EFE
Diseñado por Hubert de Givenchy, la pieza, con un valor estimado de 70.000 libras (en torno a 105.000 euros), pertenece actualmente al escritor francés Dominique Lapierre y su esposa, que destinarán lo que recauden a su ONG 'Ciudad de la Alegría' en la India.
Pero lo cierto es que para el recordado filme, Givenchy realizó varios ejemplares del famoso vestido de satén negro. Precisamente, el traje que poseía el propio diseñador pertenece al Museo del Traje de Madrid. El creador donó al museo éste y otros cinco modelos, junto con los bocetos originales. Los diseños se han expuesto por primera vez en el museo madrileño durante este mes.
Hepburn llevó el modelo durante su interpretación de la joven Holly Golightly en el clásico de 1961.
En la primera secuencia del filme, Hepburn, vestida con el elegante vestido negro, sale de un taxi en la Quinta Avenida de Nueva York, mira por la ventana de la joyería Tiffany's y se come el desayuno que saca de una bolsa de papel marrón.
En la fotografía que acompañó a la película, la actriz aparece con el vestido, guantes negros y adornada con perlas. Audrey Hepburn, considerada una de las actrices de Hollywood con más encanto, murió en 1993, a los 63 años.
Fuente: EFE
Etiquetas:
Actrices,
Cine,
Diseñadores,
Hollywood,
Moda
miércoles, 26 de julio de 2006
¿Alguien se acuerda de estos jeans?
Elizabeth Hurley es la nueva modelo de jeans Jordache. La presidenta de Jordache Enterprises, Liz Berlinger declaró que la actriz, modelo, mujer de negocios y madre, representa todo lo que significa la marca. "La elegimos porque ella es una verdadera mujer moderna", señaló sin empacho la jefa.
Hurley representará a la marca de los años 70, en su versión vintage, así como en la nueva línea Legacy, que podrán conseguirse exclusivamente en los locales de Macy´s alrededor del mundo.
Hurley representará a la marca de los años 70, en su versión vintage, así como en la nueva línea Legacy, que podrán conseguirse exclusivamente en los locales de Macy´s alrededor del mundo.
Etiquetas:
Actrices,
Campañas,
Diseñadores,
Estilos de Vida,
Moda
viernes, 21 de julio de 2006
domingo, 16 de julio de 2006
sábado, 15 de julio de 2006
miércoles, 12 de julio de 2006
Para nostálgicos...vuelve Roxette 2
Bueno, sí, porque desde que publiqué sobre Roxette que no paro de recibir correo pidiéndome que averigüe algo más sobre la banda, aquí tienen. Encontré una entrevista a Per Gessle, el lado masculino del grupo sueco, que les puede interesar.
Parece que finalmente sale su disco solista, Son of a Plumber ("Hijo de un Plomero", qué título querido!!!), y que no ve la hora de salir a festejar los veinticinco años de la banda para, de esa manera, poder reunir fondos y así, ayudar a su padre, que después de todo parece que sigue perteneciendo a la clase trabajadora.
La entrevista pertenece al sitio 20minutos.es:
En su arrugado rostro se puede vislumbrar una exitosa carrera de 25 años en el mundo de la música y más de 70 millones de discos vendidos. Con un castellano muy flojo, Per Gessle habla ilusionado, pero con melancolía, de su nuevo trabajo en solitario, Son of a Plumber.
-Se sentirá muy solo en el escenario...
-Claro que sí, pero no puede ser de otra forma.
-Este año se cumple el 25 aniversario de Roxette, ¿qué tienen preparado?
-Estoy muy ilusionado con eso. Haremos conciertos y encuentros para celebrarlo.
-Podremos disfrutar de Marie Fredriksson, la otra componente del grupo...
-Ella tiene muchas ganas de salir al escenario. Ésa es su vida y lleva mucho tiempo sin poder hacerlo a causa de la enfermedad (tiene cáncer). Espero que se encuentre con fuerzas.
-¿Está mejor?
-Sí, parece que sí.
-¿Ha necesitado mucha fuerza para lanzarse en solitario?
-También está bien hacer cosas en solitario, tenía muchas ganas. Además, este disco no ha salido después de ninguna ruptura ni pelea porque Roxette nunca se separó. Marie tuvo que dejarlo por su enfermedad.
-Y ha aprovechado para regresar a las raíces...
-Sí, este álbum es el resultado de mezclar toda la música que me ha marcado. Es añejo, puro.
-¿Música en formato vinilo o en MP3?
-(Risas.) En vinilo, alguna, y otra, en MP3.
-¿Siempre mantiene esa calma o también se sale de sus casillas?
-(Risas.) A veces yo también me salgo de mis casillas.
-(Su compañera se ríe por detrás) ¿Es cierto lo que dice?
¡Que va! Es un buenazo y siempre guarda la calma.
Parece que finalmente sale su disco solista, Son of a Plumber ("Hijo de un Plomero", qué título querido!!!), y que no ve la hora de salir a festejar los veinticinco años de la banda para, de esa manera, poder reunir fondos y así, ayudar a su padre, que después de todo parece que sigue perteneciendo a la clase trabajadora.
La entrevista pertenece al sitio 20minutos.es:
En su arrugado rostro se puede vislumbrar una exitosa carrera de 25 años en el mundo de la música y más de 70 millones de discos vendidos. Con un castellano muy flojo, Per Gessle habla ilusionado, pero con melancolía, de su nuevo trabajo en solitario, Son of a Plumber.
-Se sentirá muy solo en el escenario...
-Claro que sí, pero no puede ser de otra forma.
-Este año se cumple el 25 aniversario de Roxette, ¿qué tienen preparado?
-Estoy muy ilusionado con eso. Haremos conciertos y encuentros para celebrarlo.
-Podremos disfrutar de Marie Fredriksson, la otra componente del grupo...
-Ella tiene muchas ganas de salir al escenario. Ésa es su vida y lleva mucho tiempo sin poder hacerlo a causa de la enfermedad (tiene cáncer). Espero que se encuentre con fuerzas.
-¿Está mejor?
-Sí, parece que sí.
-¿Ha necesitado mucha fuerza para lanzarse en solitario?
-También está bien hacer cosas en solitario, tenía muchas ganas. Además, este disco no ha salido después de ninguna ruptura ni pelea porque Roxette nunca se separó. Marie tuvo que dejarlo por su enfermedad.
-Y ha aprovechado para regresar a las raíces...
-Sí, este álbum es el resultado de mezclar toda la música que me ha marcado. Es añejo, puro.
-¿Música en formato vinilo o en MP3?
-(Risas.) En vinilo, alguna, y otra, en MP3.
-¿Siempre mantiene esa calma o también se sale de sus casillas?
-(Risas.) A veces yo también me salgo de mis casillas.
-(Su compañera se ríe por detrás) ¿Es cierto lo que dice?
¡Que va! Es un buenazo y siempre guarda la calma.
martes, 11 de julio de 2006
lunes, 10 de julio de 2006
domingo, 9 de julio de 2006
Walking contradiction
La Asociación de Diseñadores de Gaudí firmó un manifiesto días antes del comienzo de la Pasarela Barcelona comprometiéndose a crear un "código estético saludable" para contribuir a la prevención de la anorexia, bulimia y trastornos alimenticios. La Asociación de Diseñadores de Gaudí elaboró el documento en colaboración con la Associació contra la Anorèxia i la Bulímia.
El primer punto de este manifiesto firmado por los diseñadores que han participado en esta pasarela dice así: "No utilizar en sus desfiles modelos con un infrapeso severo con el fin de evitar la exhibición de personas enfermas".
Sin embargo, las modelos participantes de los desfiles parecen demostrar una cierta contradicción con los puntos acordados.
El segundo punto del manifiesto dice: "Mostrar en sus desfiles la diversidad corporal existente en nuestro país".
El tercer punto: "Promover la unidad de las tallas en los diferentes interlocutores con el fin de que se homogenicen y se definan de manera precisa los talles".
El cuarto punto: "Velar para que cada una de las tallas de sus diseños respete las medidas de cintura y cadera correspondientes".
El quinto punto del manifiesto: "Velar para que de sus diseños se puedan distribuir todo tipo de tallas, especialmente las más frecuentes en nuestro país (España): de la 38 a la 46".
Fuente: 20minutos.es
El primer punto de este manifiesto firmado por los diseñadores que han participado en esta pasarela dice así: "No utilizar en sus desfiles modelos con un infrapeso severo con el fin de evitar la exhibición de personas enfermas".
Sin embargo, las modelos participantes de los desfiles parecen demostrar una cierta contradicción con los puntos acordados.
El segundo punto del manifiesto dice: "Mostrar en sus desfiles la diversidad corporal existente en nuestro país".
El tercer punto: "Promover la unidad de las tallas en los diferentes interlocutores con el fin de que se homogenicen y se definan de manera precisa los talles".
El cuarto punto: "Velar para que cada una de las tallas de sus diseños respete las medidas de cintura y cadera correspondientes".
El quinto punto del manifiesto: "Velar para que de sus diseños se puedan distribuir todo tipo de tallas, especialmente las más frecuentes en nuestro país (España): de la 38 a la 46".
Fuente: 20minutos.es
Etiquetas:
Diseñadores,
Moda,
Modelos,
Salud
viernes, 7 de julio de 2006
jueves, 6 de julio de 2006
martes, 4 de julio de 2006
Este loco, loco mundo
Antojetos:
-YouTube resucita una serie rechazada por las grandes cadenas de EE.UU. Ahora quieren verla de nuevo.
Absurdo:
-Giselle Bundchen se siente vieja para ligar. Está considerada como una de las top models más atractivas del mundo, sale con un surfero impresionante y conquistó a Leo di Caprio, y sin embargo, a los 25 años se queja de que los hombres no la miran como antes. "No será que ya no soy tan guapa. No sé. Puede que comiencen a notárseme los años. Cuando me quito las gafas de sol ya se nota que tengo 25".
Calavera, chilla:
-Hija de alcalde de Talca le ruega a su padre: "¡No cierres el pub!". Universitaria no se resigna a perder su lugar favorito para carretear, el Balmaceda. "Fue injusto", reclama.
-YouTube resucita una serie rechazada por las grandes cadenas de EE.UU. Ahora quieren verla de nuevo.
Absurdo:
-Giselle Bundchen se siente vieja para ligar. Está considerada como una de las top models más atractivas del mundo, sale con un surfero impresionante y conquistó a Leo di Caprio, y sin embargo, a los 25 años se queja de que los hombres no la miran como antes. "No será que ya no soy tan guapa. No sé. Puede que comiencen a notárseme los años. Cuando me quito las gafas de sol ya se nota que tengo 25".
Calavera, chilla:
-Hija de alcalde de Talca le ruega a su padre: "¡No cierres el pub!". Universitaria no se resigna a perder su lugar favorito para carretear, el Balmaceda. "Fue injusto", reclama.
Etiquetas:
Estilos de Vida,
Moda,
Modelos,
TV,
Variedades
From the Closet to the Charts: Queer Noises 1961-1978
'Wilder, madder, gayer than a Beatle's hairdo'
It was the love that dare not sing its name - or was it? Beyond Bowie and Frankie, there's a whole secret history of gay pop, reports Alexis Petridis. The Guardian. 04-07-06.
The year 1966 is known as rock's annus mirabilis. It was the year the right musicians found the right technology and the right drugs to catapult pop into hitherto unimagined realms of invention and sophistication: the year of the Beatles' Revolver, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. But the most astonishing record of 1966 did not emanate from the unbounded imagination of Brian Wilson, or from an Abbey Road studio wreathed in pot smoke. Instead, it was the work of hapless instrumental combo the Tornados.
By 1966, the Tornados' moment of glory - with 1962 number one Telstar - had long passed; they hadn't had a hit in three years and every original member had departed. The single they released that year, Is That a Ship I Hear?, was their last. Tucked away on its B-side, the track Do You Come Here Often? attracted no attention, which was probably just as well. A year before the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, the Tornados' producer, Joe Meek, had taken it upon himself to record and release Britain's first explicitly gay rock song, apparently undaunted by his own conviction for cottaging in 1963.
here had been vague intimations of homosexuality in a few 1960s rock records, not least the Beatles' You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, but Do You Come Here Often? was something else entirely. Opening with a dementedly perky organ instrumental, it's topped off with two male voices, seemingly recorded in the toilet of a gay club, trading camp badinage: "I'll see you down the 'Dilly!" "Not if I see you first, you won't." Quite what the Tornados made of their pill-maddened producer's latest wheeze, let alone anyone who heard the song in 1966, is an intriguing question - but four decades on, it still sounds remarkable.
"It's almost like a hidden track, because you've got these two minutes of instrumental music, you're thinking, 'OK, and?' Then suddenly it happens," enthuses author and journalist Jon Savage, who spent 20 years trying to track down a copy of the single. "I think Joe Meek wanted to get a slice of gay life on to a record. Nobody bought it. It was completely hidden, but it was still released on EMI."
Best known for his celebrated punk history, England's Dreaming, Savage has recently developed a sideline in compiling acclaimed CDs of forgotten music, most notably Meridian 1970, which sought to disprove the theory that said year was a musical wasteland. His latest collection, on which Do You Come Here Often? is just one of a string of revelations, comes with the self-explanatory title From the Closet to the Charts: Queer Noises 1961-1978.
Even by Savage's standards, this is an extraordinary album. There are a sprinkling of well-known tracks, including the Kinks' oblique 1965 hit See My Friend and Sylvester's out-and-proud disco anthem You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), which provides the collection's crescendo and cut-off point. Mostly, though, it's concerned with exposing the secret gay history of rock and pop.
Among the revelations uncovered by Savage are a lesbian-themed glam-blues 1973 single by Polly Perkins, best known as a star of short-lived BBC soap Eldorado, and the vicious early 1960s drag queen Jose, whose albums appear to have been sold to a straight audience as risque adult party accoutrements ("These naughty subjects are tickling America's funnybone!" cries one sleeve, promising "a fantastically funny insight into the lives of 'those fellows'"). Among various early 1970s gay singer-songwriters is Peter Grudzien, purveyor of "overtly gay country music". Then there's LA rent-boy punk Black Randy, who seems to have come to the conclusion that the Ramones' famous paean to male prostitution, 53rd and 3rd, was too demure for its own good. "Schools and factories make me sick," he snarls. "I'd rather stand here and sell my dick."
Not everything on the compilation is a lost masterpiece. "If you've never heard any of this stuff, it's probably with good reason," chuckles Savage. And yet, it is, by turns, fascinating, touching, funny and startling - and occasionally you find yourself listening with your jaw hanging open.
The latter is certainly true of the track that started Savage collecting gay records 15 years ago. Released in 1967 in a crude handmade sleeve, Kay, Why? by the Brothers Butch features a string of double-entendres about lubricant jelly over a sub-Beatles backing track. "A friend gave me a copy. I wasn't aware that stuff like that existed," Savage says. "You think: why did somebody pay somebody to go into a studio and do this? I can only assume that by 1967, there was a firmly established, very limited market for explicit gay records. Presumably they would have been advertised in the back of early gay magazines or in gay shops or gay clubs. It wasn't made with any hope of great sales, so it's very direct."
A similar sense of mystery surrounds Queer Noises' other big revelation - that, in the mid-1960s, California had a gay record label, Camp, which advertised its wares as: "Wilder, madder, gayer than a Beatle's hairdo!" Not even queermusicheritage.com has been able to uncover who was behind the label's 10 pseudonymous singles and two albums, but Camp was certainly ahead of its time. A decade before the Village People, The Shower Song (I'm So Wet) revealed precisely what "hanging out with all the boys" at the YMCA might entail.
"It's quite an explicit slice of early 1960s gay life," says Savage. "They put out a song called Down on the River Drive, about a guy going cruising and getting arrested by a plain-clothes cop. Someone must have been convinced that there were enough gay people with enough money to buy this stuff."
Camp's releases went unnoticed by the wider world, but a decade later, things had changed: fuelled by David Bowie's "I'm gay" interview in the Melody Maker, glam rock was the sound of pop finally coming out. But Savage's album largely eschews glam in favour of a more obscure early 1970s musical development, in which straight black soul artists began giving hearty endorsement to the gay lifestyle in song. Harrison Kennedy of Chairmen of the Board weighs in with the cheery Closet Queen, while, on Ain't Nobody Straight in LA, the post-Smokey Robinson Miracles inform the listener that "most everyone is AC-DC", then elect to spend the evening in a gay bar, on the grounds that "some of the finest women are in gay bars". "Hey, but dig, how you know they women?" protests a troubled Miracle. "Gay people are nice people too, man!" avers one of his bandmates sternly. That seems to settle it: off they go, for an evening with "those fellows".
If you were being cynical, you might suggest that Kennedy and the Miracles had taken note of the burgeoning demand for black music from the nascent, primarily gay disco scene and made a pragmatic decision to court their new audience. Savage isn't convinced. "The Miracles were just telling it how they saw it," he says. "You wouldn't get a major R&B act recording that now, would you? Things have actually gone back from the 1970s. The point of this album is that it's about the struggle of gay people to get out of the closet, out of the ghetto into the mainstream, and they successfully did that on their terms with Sylvester. Gay people won freedoms, but they're very fragile freedoms."
He has a point. A few years after Sylvester's triumph, explicitly gay music - Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Bronski Beat, the muscle-bound thud of high-energy dance music - was accepted into the British charts in a way that Joe Meek or the shadowy figures behind the Brothers Butch and Camp Records could never have anticipated. Twenty years on, Radio 1's breakfast show presenter is using the word "gay" as an insult.
"Lad culture has been a disaster for pop music," says Savage. "That definition of a heterosexual man - beer and football, Nick Hornby - is so restrictive. It's important that pop musicians play around with gender and sexual divergence. The fact that it's gone back to Oasis from the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger being very camp, is just pathetic, it's a complete failure. People are scared of nonconformity in music, so this album is a less-than-fragrant reminder of a time when pop music was less sanitised than it is now.
"A friend of mine said, 'Fucking hell Jon, I thought it was going to be quite tasteful, but there's some real horrors on here.' I said, 'Yes, it's time to unleash the beast.'"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Más sobre Glam Rock: Then and Now, by Brian Knight
A biased history of UK Glam Rock
Beginner's guide to glam rock, by Matt O'Leary
It was the love that dare not sing its name - or was it? Beyond Bowie and Frankie, there's a whole secret history of gay pop, reports Alexis Petridis. The Guardian. 04-07-06.
The year 1966 is known as rock's annus mirabilis. It was the year the right musicians found the right technology and the right drugs to catapult pop into hitherto unimagined realms of invention and sophistication: the year of the Beatles' Revolver, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. But the most astonishing record of 1966 did not emanate from the unbounded imagination of Brian Wilson, or from an Abbey Road studio wreathed in pot smoke. Instead, it was the work of hapless instrumental combo the Tornados.
By 1966, the Tornados' moment of glory - with 1962 number one Telstar - had long passed; they hadn't had a hit in three years and every original member had departed. The single they released that year, Is That a Ship I Hear?, was their last. Tucked away on its B-side, the track Do You Come Here Often? attracted no attention, which was probably just as well. A year before the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, the Tornados' producer, Joe Meek, had taken it upon himself to record and release Britain's first explicitly gay rock song, apparently undaunted by his own conviction for cottaging in 1963.
here had been vague intimations of homosexuality in a few 1960s rock records, not least the Beatles' You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, but Do You Come Here Often? was something else entirely. Opening with a dementedly perky organ instrumental, it's topped off with two male voices, seemingly recorded in the toilet of a gay club, trading camp badinage: "I'll see you down the 'Dilly!" "Not if I see you first, you won't." Quite what the Tornados made of their pill-maddened producer's latest wheeze, let alone anyone who heard the song in 1966, is an intriguing question - but four decades on, it still sounds remarkable.
"It's almost like a hidden track, because you've got these two minutes of instrumental music, you're thinking, 'OK, and?' Then suddenly it happens," enthuses author and journalist Jon Savage, who spent 20 years trying to track down a copy of the single. "I think Joe Meek wanted to get a slice of gay life on to a record. Nobody bought it. It was completely hidden, but it was still released on EMI."
Best known for his celebrated punk history, England's Dreaming, Savage has recently developed a sideline in compiling acclaimed CDs of forgotten music, most notably Meridian 1970, which sought to disprove the theory that said year was a musical wasteland. His latest collection, on which Do You Come Here Often? is just one of a string of revelations, comes with the self-explanatory title From the Closet to the Charts: Queer Noises 1961-1978.
Even by Savage's standards, this is an extraordinary album. There are a sprinkling of well-known tracks, including the Kinks' oblique 1965 hit See My Friend and Sylvester's out-and-proud disco anthem You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), which provides the collection's crescendo and cut-off point. Mostly, though, it's concerned with exposing the secret gay history of rock and pop.
Among the revelations uncovered by Savage are a lesbian-themed glam-blues 1973 single by Polly Perkins, best known as a star of short-lived BBC soap Eldorado, and the vicious early 1960s drag queen Jose, whose albums appear to have been sold to a straight audience as risque adult party accoutrements ("These naughty subjects are tickling America's funnybone!" cries one sleeve, promising "a fantastically funny insight into the lives of 'those fellows'"). Among various early 1970s gay singer-songwriters is Peter Grudzien, purveyor of "overtly gay country music". Then there's LA rent-boy punk Black Randy, who seems to have come to the conclusion that the Ramones' famous paean to male prostitution, 53rd and 3rd, was too demure for its own good. "Schools and factories make me sick," he snarls. "I'd rather stand here and sell my dick."
Not everything on the compilation is a lost masterpiece. "If you've never heard any of this stuff, it's probably with good reason," chuckles Savage. And yet, it is, by turns, fascinating, touching, funny and startling - and occasionally you find yourself listening with your jaw hanging open.
The latter is certainly true of the track that started Savage collecting gay records 15 years ago. Released in 1967 in a crude handmade sleeve, Kay, Why? by the Brothers Butch features a string of double-entendres about lubricant jelly over a sub-Beatles backing track. "A friend gave me a copy. I wasn't aware that stuff like that existed," Savage says. "You think: why did somebody pay somebody to go into a studio and do this? I can only assume that by 1967, there was a firmly established, very limited market for explicit gay records. Presumably they would have been advertised in the back of early gay magazines or in gay shops or gay clubs. It wasn't made with any hope of great sales, so it's very direct."
A similar sense of mystery surrounds Queer Noises' other big revelation - that, in the mid-1960s, California had a gay record label, Camp, which advertised its wares as: "Wilder, madder, gayer than a Beatle's hairdo!" Not even queermusicheritage.com has been able to uncover who was behind the label's 10 pseudonymous singles and two albums, but Camp was certainly ahead of its time. A decade before the Village People, The Shower Song (I'm So Wet) revealed precisely what "hanging out with all the boys" at the YMCA might entail.
"It's quite an explicit slice of early 1960s gay life," says Savage. "They put out a song called Down on the River Drive, about a guy going cruising and getting arrested by a plain-clothes cop. Someone must have been convinced that there were enough gay people with enough money to buy this stuff."
Camp's releases went unnoticed by the wider world, but a decade later, things had changed: fuelled by David Bowie's "I'm gay" interview in the Melody Maker, glam rock was the sound of pop finally coming out. But Savage's album largely eschews glam in favour of a more obscure early 1970s musical development, in which straight black soul artists began giving hearty endorsement to the gay lifestyle in song. Harrison Kennedy of Chairmen of the Board weighs in with the cheery Closet Queen, while, on Ain't Nobody Straight in LA, the post-Smokey Robinson Miracles inform the listener that "most everyone is AC-DC", then elect to spend the evening in a gay bar, on the grounds that "some of the finest women are in gay bars". "Hey, but dig, how you know they women?" protests a troubled Miracle. "Gay people are nice people too, man!" avers one of his bandmates sternly. That seems to settle it: off they go, for an evening with "those fellows".
If you were being cynical, you might suggest that Kennedy and the Miracles had taken note of the burgeoning demand for black music from the nascent, primarily gay disco scene and made a pragmatic decision to court their new audience. Savage isn't convinced. "The Miracles were just telling it how they saw it," he says. "You wouldn't get a major R&B act recording that now, would you? Things have actually gone back from the 1970s. The point of this album is that it's about the struggle of gay people to get out of the closet, out of the ghetto into the mainstream, and they successfully did that on their terms with Sylvester. Gay people won freedoms, but they're very fragile freedoms."
He has a point. A few years after Sylvester's triumph, explicitly gay music - Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Bronski Beat, the muscle-bound thud of high-energy dance music - was accepted into the British charts in a way that Joe Meek or the shadowy figures behind the Brothers Butch and Camp Records could never have anticipated. Twenty years on, Radio 1's breakfast show presenter is using the word "gay" as an insult.
"Lad culture has been a disaster for pop music," says Savage. "That definition of a heterosexual man - beer and football, Nick Hornby - is so restrictive. It's important that pop musicians play around with gender and sexual divergence. The fact that it's gone back to Oasis from the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger being very camp, is just pathetic, it's a complete failure. People are scared of nonconformity in music, so this album is a less-than-fragrant reminder of a time when pop music was less sanitised than it is now.
"A friend of mine said, 'Fucking hell Jon, I thought it was going to be quite tasteful, but there's some real horrors on here.' I said, 'Yes, it's time to unleash the beast.'"
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Más sobre Glam Rock: Then and Now, by Brian Knight
A biased history of UK Glam Rock
Beginner's guide to glam rock, by Matt O'Leary
lunes, 3 de julio de 2006
(Mi) Canción de la Semana
I hear my needle hit the groove
And spiral through another day
I hear my song begin to say
Kiss me where the sun dont shine
The past was yours
But the futures mine
You're all out of time
I don't feel too steady on my feet
I feel hollow I feel weak
Passion fruit and holy bread
Fill my guts and ease my head
Through the early morning sun
I can see her here she comes
She bangs the drums
Have you seen her have you heard
The way she plays there are no words
To describe the way I feel
How could it ever come to pass
Shell be the first shell be the last
To describe the way I feel
The way I feel
Have you seen her have you heard
The way she plays there are no words
To describe the way I feel
And spiral through another day
I hear my song begin to say
Kiss me where the sun dont shine
The past was yours
But the futures mine
You're all out of time
I don't feel too steady on my feet
I feel hollow I feel weak
Passion fruit and holy bread
Fill my guts and ease my head
Through the early morning sun
I can see her here she comes
She bangs the drums
Have you seen her have you heard
The way she plays there are no words
To describe the way I feel
How could it ever come to pass
Shell be the first shell be the last
To describe the way I feel
The way I feel
Have you seen her have you heard
The way she plays there are no words
To describe the way I feel
How could it ever come to pass
Shell be the first shell be the last
To describe the way I feel
The way I feel
Have you seen her have you heard
The way she plays there are no words
To describe the way I feel
How could it ever come to pass
Shell be the first shell be the last
To describe the way I feel
The way I feel
Shell be the first shell be the last
To describe the way I feel
The way I feel
Have you seen her have you heard
The way she plays there are no words
To describe the way I feel
How could it ever come to pass
Shell be the first shell be the last
To describe the way I feel
The way I feel
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