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Inside Quentin Crisp’s apartment
11.15.2010
05:26 pm
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Photo of Quentin Crisp by Martin Fishman

Wise. witty and wonderful, England’s “stately homo,” Quentin Crisp was a familiar—and always delightful—figure seen frequently around New York’s East Village during the latter part of the author’s life (1981-1999). Crisp famously made sure his phone number was listed and would accept nearly every dinner invitation that came his way, with the understanding that the tab would be picked up and Mr. Crisp would basically do an up-close version of his famous one-man show. On two occasions I dined with Mr. Crisp at the Odessa Diner on Avenue A and these are memories that I will always treasure.

For the majority of his life, Crisp lived in two small apartments. One, a bedsit in London where he lived for 41 years and steadfastly refused to clean, and one on Third St. in Manhattan that I doubt was ever cleaned, either. (In his autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant, Crisp quipped. “After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.” He says the line about 2 minutes in).
 

 
The London apartment can be seen in the above clip from Denis Mitchell’s fascinating 1970 Granada TV documentary, and visitors to the MIX Festival in NYC this past weekend could see a recreation of Crisp’s small New York flat, lovingly recreated by Philip Ward, curator of The Quentin Crisp Archives. More photos at Butt Magazine’s website.
 
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Via World of Wonder

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.15.2010
05:26 pm
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Jon Savage Compilation Spotlights Early California Punk Scene
11.11.2010
12:58 am
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Acclaimed British journalist and punk historian Jon Savage has curated Black Hole: Californian Punk 1977-1980, a unique and revealing compilation of the Golden State’s hugely diverse pre-thrash punk scene that gets released November 15th.

That seems strange on the surface. Strange that it’s both taken this long into the 21st-century American punk revival and reissue era for such a quality collection to emerge, and that it’s taken an Englishman rather than a Californian to do it. But this particular Englishman is more than qualified. As noted in his recent interview in the Quietus, Savage hepped up to the scene while on the West Coast in 1978 as a journalist for Sounds magazine, hanging with the likes of the Screamers and the Avengers and confirming to himself and others that the UK didn’t own punk.

Savage’s inclusion of both Northern and Southern Cali bands like the Bags, the Alley Cats, the Weirdos, Black Randy & the Metro Squad, and the Dils makes Black Hole most resemble the compilations released by the legendary short-lived L.A.-based Dangerhouse label run by Pat “Rand” Garrett and David Brown from 1978 to 1980. But Savage augments those with a range of others, from superstars like the Dead Kennedys to second-tiers like Crime, Middle Class and the Sleepers, and on to important obscurities like the two-single-releasing Aurora Pushups.

One of Savage’s rationales surrounding the comp, on which he expounds in Quietus, proves striking:

I don’t like hardcore. It’s too ‘boy’ for me. I was into the idea of punk being made for and by outsiders. And that meant outsiders of every hue, and that meant weird boys, hopeless boys, strong women, and gay men and women. As soon as it starts to get a machismo, and this happened in UK punk, too – I’m out of there.

Black Hole will join Penelope Spheeris’s classic late-‘70s documentary The Decline of Western Civilization as primary documents of a rough and energetic multi-city underground music scene—one that reflected the social dysfunction of the state in political schizophrenia with the world’s eighth-biggest economy.

Here’s the title track by the Urinals. This is Cali.
 

 
Get: Black Hole (Californian Punk 1977-1980) [CD]

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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11.11.2010
12:58 am
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Divine performs in front of stunned punks in Manchester, England, 1983
11.05.2010
01:39 am
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Divine sings “The Name Game.”

Divine gives it her all at The Hacienda in Manchester, 1983. The audience appears to be totally clueless - joyless division. Where the FOK is Happy Mondays?

Divine was punk before punk. A shit-eating Diva that could have devoured the entire Sex Pistols for breakfast.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.05.2010
01:39 am
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John Waters and Divine interview from 1975
11.04.2010
12:25 am
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R. Couri Hay talks with Divine, John Waters, Mink Stole and David Lochary at Anton Perich Studio, formerly ‘The Factory’, in 1975. This must be a promo outing for Female Trouble. The video quality leaves a lot to be desired, but this is 58 minutes of pop culture history and well-worth watching. Waters is amusing as always, Divine looks Garboesque, and it’s rare to see see David Lochary and Mink Stole being interviewed. Rich kid R. Couri Hay was a contributor to Warhol’s Interview magazine and gossip columnist for The National Inquirer in the mid-to-late 1970’s.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.04.2010
12:25 am
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Oral Roberts’ grandson makes particularly moving ‘It Gets Better’ video
11.02.2010
12:56 pm
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The grandson of Oral Roberts breaks the silence about his family’s history in a new “It Gets Better” video. This is simply beautiful:

Randy Robert Potts, the grandson of vehemently homophobic religious leader Oral Roberts, is the latest member of the community to throw in his testimony that life gets better for gay people. In his poignant and haunting video, Potts tells the story of his uncle, Oral Roberts’ eldest son Ronald David Roberts, who was rejected by his family and Evangelical culture after coming out as gay while in high school. “Uncle Ronnie” took his own life in 1982.

After coming out five years ago, Potts began writing a letter to his deceased Uncle Ronnie – “a letter meant for me, for my uncle, and friends I have who are still closeted, terrified their family will reject them.” “My uncle and I were both raised in a world dominated by Evangelicals who taught, and still teach, that the fires of Hell await all gay men and women,” Potts explains. “…While the Evangelical community might not pull the trigger when one of their gay members commits suicide, they often provide the ammunition.”

This is so awesome and yet there are still assholes on YouTube giving it a thumbs down…

Via Just Out
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.02.2010
12:56 pm
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Christian Hero: Megachurch pastor Jim Swilley comes out
10.30.2010
09:54 pm
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Georgia megapastor Jim Swilley has come out as a gay man to help turn the tide against the recent spate of tragic gay teen “bullycides.” What a wonderful and incredible thing for this man to do. Via Queerty:

Swilley, who created the Church In The Now some 25 years ago, is a divorced father of four. But he’s known he’s gay since he was a boy, says the Rockdale County man of the cloth, and even his wife Debye — whom he divorced earlier this year — knew when they got married (!). The couple kept it a secret for more than two decades, but Jim says Debye recently pushed him to share his story.

The pastor made the announcement to his congregation two weeks ago (yes, it takes time for some stories to trickle), with his family in the audience and decided to come out now after witnessing the rash of gay youths killing themselves. One Internet forum poster says that unlike Atlanta’s Long (whom Swilley won’t speak about), Swilley has not used the pulpit to denigrate gays: “For those of you familiar with Church In the Now, while never discussing his own sexuality, you know that Swilley has always preached a message of inclusion, love and abundance for all God’s children. Bishop Swilley has been asked to step down as Bishop, but will remain as Pastor.” (That last part we haven’t confirmed.)

If there’s a mass exodus from his church, Swilley says he wouldn’t be able to survive it, but would certainly pick up and start again. “God has always spoken through me,” he tells his followers, saying the calling has been with him since birth. His parents tell him stories of him preaching as a toddler in diapers; he doesn’t remember that time.

“Those of you who are people of color. How do you like it when a white person says, ‘What is the deal? What are you so unhappy about? You’ve got a black president already, isn’t racism over?’ Doesn’t that make you want to say, ‘Thank you but you really have no idea what you’re talking about.’ … It’s very easy for people who have never experienced something … to have opinions about it.”

Below, video of the recent sermon where Pastor Twilley tells his congregation that he is a gay.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.30.2010
09:54 pm
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Straight talk on gay marriage: The FCKH8 campaign
10.16.2010
11:15 am
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Strangely, despite the spectacle of under-18s cursing on camera, this lovely spot and campaign by political activist and nonprofit marketing consultant Luke “Sissyfag” Montgomery hasn’t made the outrage rounds on Fox after being posted 11 days ago.

Give it time, I guess. Meanwhile, Luke’s tactical approach here has come under a bit of discussion in some of the comments. But I’d think it’s immaterial since at this point it seems the play now is NOT to convert California voters since the issue of gay marriage is going to the Supreme Court, right?
 

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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10.16.2010
11:15 am
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America is a bottomless pit of idiots: Meet Bradlee Dean (and hear Michele Bachmann pray for him!)

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There’s a must-read piece about Christian rocker and gay-bashing minister, Bradlee Dean posted at The Awl. Dean is a member of the group, Junkyard Messiah, a Christian Constitutionalist radio host and the founder of “You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International,” an anti-homosexual “ministry” who have been allowed to take their hateful bullshit into 330 classrooms around the country.

This guy even wrote a book called My War (ring any bells?) and has had his “ministry” not only endorsed, but prayed for, by Rep. Michele Bachmann, one of the dumbest people ever to hold national elected office in this country. Listen here:
 

 
My War is also the title of a documentary film about YCRBUCHI and Dean, which will be premiering Thursday, October 21, in Plymouth, Minnesota.

Here’s one excerpt from piece, where the author, Abe Sauer, asks The Awl’s readers if they can tell the difference between Dean’s supposedly Christian utterings and things Hitler said. Betcha can’t tell them apart. Think about the 330 classrooms full of impressionable children being spoon-fed this garbage by someone they might perceive as an authority figure. No, of course there would be no connection between the propagation of such quasi-fascist garbage and the recent wave of gay bullying and suicides:

It’s understandable that the Bradlee-Adolf comparison might be dismissed as a lark, a Godwin’s Nazi Law meta-enablement.

So take the below selection of Bradlee Dean and Adolf Hitler quotes and try to correctly attribute them:

1) It’s time for everyone in this country to return to God and engage in His battles to take back the land that was entrusted to us.
2) We want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess.
3) It’s time to turn back to the One who gave us this blessed nation.
4) We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit.
5) It is plain to see that the judgments of God are upon our country.
6) How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.
7) Government is to be the force of law, ruling in the positive, by bringing a negative to crime. The whole purpose of government is to maintain peace in the land with righteous judgment.
8) My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers,
9) As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.
10) Christian men and women, in this fight for right you are fighting for your nation, for your liberties, your happiness, and your peace; for unless Christ and His commandments are maintained, these will most certainly be destroyed
11) I felt condemned at every step that I took, and at times, I would even try to ignore my own conscience because it was so overwhelming.
12) In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders.
13) The Jews, who heard and rejected Christ, were destroyed by Titus, and Vespasian his father.
14) They play the victim when they are, in fact, the predator.
15) All at once the Jew also becomes liberal and begins to rave about the necessary progress of mankind.
16) In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections.
17) They know homosexuality is an abomination.

1 Dean; 2 Hitler; 3 Dean; 4 Hitler; 5 Dean; 6 Hitler; 7 Dean; 8 Hitler; 9 Hitler; 10 Dean; 11 Dean; 12 Hitler; 13 Dean; 14 Dean; 15 Hitler; 16 Hitler; 17 Dean

This doesn’t mean Bradlee Dean is just like Hitler. That impossible. Hitler didn’t have children. Dean has three.

Here’s a particularly ridiculous YCRBUCHI video featuring Dean’s radio compadre, Jake McMillian. Quoting Abe Sauer, writing at The Awl again: Take Hitler’s comment on Jews as criminals and his reasoning that “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord” and compare it to the following You Can Run But You Can’t Hide Ministry video reasoning on homosexuals.
 

 
Note that this dufus never lets anyone else get a word in edgewise, even when they are seen talking on camera! McMillian doesn’t have much of a career on-camera ahead of him, does he?

Read all of ‘My War’: Bradlee Dean’s Popular Struggle Against Those Criminal, Child-Molesting Gays (The Awl)

You can also follow Bradlee Dean’s “antics” at The Dump Bachmann Blog

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.15.2010
01:10 pm
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From the world’s queerest record label: ‘Homer The Happy Little Homo’
10.13.2010
09:17 pm
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A strange little ditty from an even stranger record company. Homer The Happy Little Homo was released on Camp Records sometime in the early 1960’s. Here’s a brief history of this obscure novelty label:

Almost nothing is known about the mysterious 60’s record label Camp Records. They released an album and 10 45 rpm records of gay parody songs, most done with effeminate voices. I believe they were issued in the early 60’s, as they all appeared in an ad in the gay magazine Vagabond, dated 1965. The address on the album record jacket was PO Box 3213, Hollywood, California, and it credited all selections to Different Music Co, Hollywood.
   The artists singing most of the songs were uncredited, or with names obviously made up, like Byrd E. Bath and B. Bubba, but one name stands out, Rodney Dangerfield. That name credited on one of the songs, and possibly another. This would have been very early in Dangerfield’s career, as his website bio says he decided to devote his career to comedy at age 40, which would have been in 1961. But I don’t think it was the comedian we know; just a prop name used for the release. Dangerfield disclaims any knowledge of it.
   A second album released on the label was called “Mad About the Boy.” It was filled with mostly well-known Broadway and cabaret songs that were originally sung by women. This album kept the pronouns intact, making them very gay. They were done in lounge style, without a campy approach…in other words, done “straight.” The liner notes state: ‘The primary reason for doing this album was to prove that good songs could and should be sung by everyone. Gender should not be the determining factor as to who should sing what.’ The notes later say that the male soloist and other artists on the album are well-known ‘Hollywood, TV, and screen personalities’ but ‘we are not at liberty to reveal true names.’ I have no idea if all this is true, or simply hype. The album probably came out in 1964 or 1965, as it pictures on the back all the previous releases of the label. And it is also advertised in the 1965 issue of Vagabond (see more, below), so I believe it was the last record they released.
JD Doyle

The video features some record sleeves from Camp.
 

 
Thanks to Queer Music Heritage.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.13.2010
09:17 pm
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Happy National Coming Out Day, 2010!
10.11.2010
06:11 pm
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Today is National Coming Out Day, so here is an appropriate music video to help get the party started right, Diana Ross performing. what else, “I’m Coming Out” at the Inglewood Auditorium in 1981. Congratulations to everyone who had the courage to come out to their friends and family today, it probably wasn’t easy, but it’s going to get better.
 

 
Via Shakesville

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.11.2010
06:11 pm
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