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Tally Brown: Warhol associate & LGBT cult figure does best Bowie cover EVER
05.22.2013
03:47 pm
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At the time of her greatest notoriety in the 1960s and 70s, Julliard-trained blues singer Tally Brown was a zaftig bohemian cabaret artist associated with NY’s underground art scene, Warhol’s Factory and a performer at Reno Sweeny’s and the Continental Baths. Brown’s social circle included the Living Theatre, Holly Woodlawn, Taylor Mead, Grace Jones and Diane Arbus.

Her obituary in the New York Times described her as:

“A short, stout singer with wild black hair, Ms. Brown was known for her intense, dramatic renditions of songs by Kurt Weill, the Rolling Stones and David Bowie.”

Intense and dramatic she certainly was! Tally Brown was also good friends with Divine and often mistaken for the infamous drag queen/actor.
 

 
If it wasn’t for her appearances in a few of Warhol’s films, the 1974 cult classic schlockfest, Silent Night, Bloody Night and German director Rosa von Praunheim’s 1979 documentary Tally Brown, New York she would probably be long forgotten, but in fact, since her death in 1989 (mostly due to the von Praunheim film) she’s become a bit of an LGBT cult figure. (Another obscure film that Brown was in, Wynn Chamberlain’s Brand X has been getting a second life in recent years)
 

Above, Mick Ronson behind Tally Brown as David Bowie looks on from left.

Here’s a link to Tally Brown’s rendition of Bowie’s “Lady Grinning Soul” with the lyrics changed to the first person.

In the clip below, from the opening of Tally Brown, New York, the aging diva sings Bowie’s “Heroes” as the camera very, very slowly creeps up close enough to see her face. This gets pretty amazing, so stay with it. Are these not the very best Bowie covers you have ever heard???
 

 
Thank you very kindly Spencer Kansa!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.22.2013
03:47 pm
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‘Bewitched’ for marriage equality: My Uncle is a Gay Warlock
05.21.2013
01:08 pm
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Damn, just when you thought you’ve seen all of ‘em, here it comes, hands down the best marriage equality meme EVER.

Whoever came up with this wonderfully droll Bewitched meets the “Red Equal Sign” gag deserves… something. I don’t know what that “something” is, but give me time to think about it. Something really good.

It’s a pity that Samantha Stevens can’t just wiggle her magic nose and bestow full civil rights upon our gay brothers and sisters. Even a witch has to get out there and make some noise for marriage equality!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Campy fun: Paul Lynde sings and dances to ‘Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown’

Via WOW Report

Posted by Tara McGinley
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05.21.2013
01:08 pm
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Vintage Quentin Crisp interview: ‘I am so old I can remember when Bette Davis was a nice girl’
05.17.2013
02:59 pm
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“Never keep up with the Joneses; drag them down to your level. It’s cheaper.”

You might think that arriving in NYC and checking into the Chelsea Hotel only to experience, in rapid succession, a fire, the murder of Nancy Spungen and a robbery that this would put you off the Big Apple, but this was not the case with Quentin Crisp, England’s “stately homo.”

After bringing his famed one-man show, An Evening With Quentin Crisp from London’s West End to the Off Broadway Player’s Theatre in 1978, Crisp relocated to New York City permanently in 1981. To hear Mr. Crisp tell it, after that, he never worked another day in his life, living off the kindness of strangers. That’s, of course, if you don’t count all of the movies he was in, all of the popular one-man shows he performed for adoring audiences, and the books, advice columns and film reviews that he wrote in the years until his death in 1999 at the age of 90.

Crisp famously made sure his phone number was listed (He’d always answer “Yes, Lord?” just in case) and would accept nearly every dinner invitation that came his way, with the understanding that the tab would be picked up. Mr. Crisp would basically do an up-close version of his 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. It was like sitting face to face with Mark Twain, in lavender eye shadow. Okay, maybe more like Oscar Wilde.

In the engaging 1985 interview below, Crisp promotes his then new book, Manners From Heaven, discusses British vs American manners, how he was badly bullied as a child, the secret to a happy (heterosexual) marriage, how to get off the phone politely and the main message of his work that: you alone are responsible for your own happiness in life.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.17.2013
02:59 pm
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Warhol Superstar and Beatnik poet, Taylor Mead RIP
05.09.2013
05:21 pm
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Sad to hear that Taylor Mead, underground movie star, Lower East Side fixture, bon vivant, Warhol Superstar, poet, feeder of stray cats, teller of funny stories and sweet and charming old guy died yesterday in Colorado at the ripe old age of 88.

A gay icon who was never in the closet, Mead was the subject of a documentary Excavating Taylor Mead, which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005. Mead had been in the news recently over his travails with his landlord.
 

Above, Marcel Duchamp, Ultra Violet and Taylor Mead, 1967
 
Below, Taylor Mead, Craig Vandenberg and Candy Darling in Anton Perich’s short film Candy and Daddy:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.09.2013
05:21 pm
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Animated GIF shows progress of marriage equality in the United States
05.09.2013
02:57 pm
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Apparently New Mexico has “no comment.”

Via BuzzFeed and Wicked Gay Blog

Posted by Tara McGinley
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05.09.2013
02:57 pm
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Watch straight people answer this question: ‘When did you choose to be straight?’
05.09.2013
12:33 pm
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Street interviews conducted by Travis Nuckolls and Chris Baker in Colorado, Springs where people were asked “When did you choose to be straight?”

It’s interesting to watch—you can tell by their expressions, naturally—how viscerally taken aback some of these folks are by the question.

 
h/t Brian Morales

Posted by Tara McGinley
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05.09.2013
12:33 pm
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‘In Bed With Joan Rivers’: a very candid interview with RuPaul
05.08.2013
12:38 pm
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RuPaul, 1979
 
As another series of RuPaul’s Drag Race draws to a close (with its highest viewers yet), RuPaul’s position as a titan of queer culture is cemented.

It can’t be easy being the best known drag queen in the world, and fans of Drag Race will be familiar, by now, with Ru’s very Zen way of handling the spotlight, as well as handling other people.

Which is why this candid interview with Joan Rivers is so very refreshing. Ru really spills the T, from his often-overlooked background as a punk rocker and a go-go dancer, to his long term relationship and its “open” status, his mother (who sounds great!), his make-up tips, and his musings on gay culture and its relationship with the mainstream, which makes for some of the most interesting, and insightful, conversation here. You also get to find out RuPaul’s real name, which may come as a bit of a surprise if you don’t already know.

Of course, Joan Rivers is no minnow in the sea of gay culture herself, so it shouldn’t be surprising that when these too get together it’s a real treat. Both are fountains of knowledge, both queer and straight, and to see them kiki with so much mutual admiration is great. There’s simply no way they couldn’t be fans of each others’ work, which probably explains the openness and ease of this interview.

RuPaul in bed with Joan Rivers really is worth a watch:
 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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05.08.2013
12:38 pm
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What A Performance!:  A celebration of the Heroes of British Camp Comedy!
05.07.2013
03:42 pm
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For a generation of gay British actors and performers, camp comedy was a way to promote queer culture, through media of television and radio, into the nation’s living rooms.

Up until homosexuality was decriminalized by an act of Parliament in 1967, being gay or, admitting to homosexual acts, was a crime punishable by imprisonment or chemical castration. The latter was used as sentence on the code-breaking genius and computer pioneer, Alan Turing—which gives an idea of the brutality and bigotry of Britain pre-1967.

But through the use of camp comedy, performers such as, Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howerd, Charles Hawtrey, John Inman and Larry Grayson, were able to subvert the horrendous, homophobic orthodoxy of their time.

For me, each of these men were revolutionary, and together with writers like Eric Sykes, Galton and Simpson, Marty Feldman and Barry Took, they were able to subtly change the public’s attitudes to sex and sexuality.

In her Notes on ‘Camp’, Susan Sontag describes camp as a means for promoting integration:

...Camp proposes a comic vision of the world. But not a bitter or polemical comedy. If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.

...The reason for the flourishing of the aristocratic posture among homosexuals also seems to parallel the Jewish case. For every sensibility is self-serving to the group that promotes it. Jewish liberalism is a gesture of self-legitimization. So is Camp taste, which definitely has something propagandistic about it. Needless to say, the propaganda operates in exactly the opposite direction. The Jews pinned their hopes for integrating into modern society on promoting the moral sense. Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense. Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.

Camp may have been a weapon for education and change, but it wasn’t the sole preserve of gay men. Comedians such as Dick Emery, presenters like Bruce Forsyth, actresses like the Late Wendy Richard and Lesley Joseph, and most importantly writers (in particular Marty Feldman and Barry Took, who created the inimitable Julian and Sandy for Round the Horne) helped promote camp comics as innuendo-laden revolutionaries.

What A Performance is a wonderful romp through the lives and careers of some of Britain’s best known and best loved Kings of Camp: Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howard, Larry Grayson, John Inman, Julian Clary, Lilly Savage and Kenny Everett. The documentary contains contributions from Matthew Kelly, Lesley Joseph, Clive James, Harry Enfield, Chris Tarrant, Jonathon Ross, Barry Took, Wendy Richard and Cleo Rocos.
 

 
With thanks to Mark Dylan Sieber
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.07.2013
03:42 pm
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Growing Up John Waters
05.03.2013
07:25 pm
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Rock and Roll taught John Waters how to annoy his parents, but it was the nuns from his local church, who inadvertently encouraged his interest in cheap, exploitation films:

‘The first thing I can remember rebelling about really, was when I was about 8-years-old and every Sunday we’d go to church. Once a year they’d read us this pledge that we had to take for the Legion of Decency, which was the Catholic Church rating the movies—what you could see and what you couldn’t—and the condemned ones were the ones they’d tell us you’d go to Hell if you saw these movies.

Well, I remember refusing to do this pledge and my mother was kind of shocked, but I was just a child, and she didn’t make a big deal out of it. And on Sundays, the nuns would read us this list, with this voice like the Devil, and you know, seeing this nun stand there saying, “Love Is My Profession, Mom and Dad, The Naked Night.” I thought “What are these movies?” I’d never heard of them—they didn’t play at my neighborhood, believe me—but I would go and see them, or read about them, and clip the little list and keep a record of all these condemned movies.  The Mom and Dad poster is hanging right in my hall—it’s still that much of an influence. But it made me want to see these movies I’d never, ever heard of. So, in fact they encouraged me, [the nuns] encouraged my interest, without ever knowing it completely.’

Growing Up With John Waters is a fabulous Channel 4 documentary from 1993, where the notorious director of Pink Flamingos, Multiple Maniacs, Female Trouble and Hairspray talks about the childhood events that shaped his life.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.03.2013
07:25 pm
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Pat Robertson: What’s so bigoted about calling Jason Collins an ‘abomination’?


 
The nation’s crazy Christian uncle-in-chief, Pat Robertson took to the airwaves of the 700 Club yesterday to defend the ESPN contributor who said that Jason Collins was “walking in open rebellion to God” for coming out of the closet in a widely praised Sports Illustrated column earlier this week.

ESPN’s Chris Broussard shared his doubts that an NBA player could be both openly gay and a Christian:

“If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality, whatever it maybe, I believe that’s walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ. So I would not characterize that person as a Christian because I don’t think the bible would characterize them as a Christian.”

Why, that’s mighty Christian of you, Chris!

Yesterday, Robertson declared his agreement with Broussard, who he described as “somebody who’s brave enough to say it”:

“Somehow we’ve said if it’s heterosexual fornication, it’s bad; if it’s homosexual fornication — that used to be called an abomination in the Bible — now it’s a protected civil right. And so somebody that says that that kind of conduct is sinful is now being pilloried in the press. He’s telling the truth! This is what the Bible says!”

Robertson went on to call out “these media types” critical of Broussard’s comments, saying that they had chosen “a lifestyle that takes them outside the protection of God.”

“You can’t tell them if they want to go to hell or heaven, that’s their business. But don’t tell somebody that he can’t speak specifically about what the Christian faith says about certain conduct. There isn’t anything bigoted about that.”

No, no, Of course not, Pat. Just keep talking, you’re doing the Lord’s work with each and every batshit crazy utterance that passes through your thin lips, really you are…
 

 

 
Via Raw Story

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.01.2013
01:03 pm
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