Against Me! - New Wave

Ted Haggard seems to have lost a lot of followers

unfamiliar w/ band, but looks like he was a cute boy so pourin' one out.

Hate to admit it, but this was sort of my first thought too.

and how was Ted Haggard's music career going pre-outing?

That photo of Tom and his wife is cuet.

How's Ricky Martin these days?

― i love the large auns pictures! (Phil D.), Thursday, May 10, 2012 7:25 AM Bookmark

his album last year debuted at #3, so quite alright

my co-columnist at the voice actually wrote something pretty informative recently about how no out gay artist has never had a #1 album in the US: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/05/adam_lambert_gay_pop_star.php

stop dividing the LBGT community by preferring Rufus Wainwright's music, ship!

interesting piece (i'm not finished with it yet) but that little factoid kinda says more about how charts are weird than about homophobia in the record-buying public imho

lol alfred

for ex:

On the male side, Boy George's self-declared status as America's favorite drag queen (about as far as a pop star could go publicly in 1984), didn't hurt Culture Club at all on the Hot 100, where they scored six Top 10 hits including a No. 1 ("Karma Chameleon"). But despite selling four million U.S. copies, 1983's Colour by Numbers spent a frustrating six weeks at No. 2, a reflection mainly of its misfortune at being released within the same year as Michael Jackson's Thriller.

xp

yeah i'm not saying that stat in and of itself is a huge thing, nor does CM's column to be fair, but i was surprised to hear that Elton's string of #1s ended almost immediately after he came out, had no idea.

yeah there's no question CBN would've been a #1 album otherwise

this is kind of a silly tangent as to whether it's brave commercially of a punk rock singer to come out as transgender. it's just brave of a person, i don't care if you're "used to it" or not.

which, frankly, strikes me as really bizarre. I mean, I have that record and it's pretty good but it is so strange that something that goofily arty and day-glo and obviously gay was such a huge success. it's a very odd combination of styles - calypso/reggae, R&B croon, synthpop - delivered in neonized sub-Harlequinade drag queen package ... just, why did this appeal to huge swathes of America? did it tie into some club med fantasy people liked to indulge in or something?

xp

The timing of Elton's fall made for irresistible speculation, but I wonder if the slow change in the pop climate had something to do with it too: the Hot 100 was moving towards disco and disco-inflected pop in 1976 and 1977, and Blue Moves was out of step[/i] (it doesn't explain the debacles of the disco-inflected A Single Man or the Thom Bell-produced Victim of Love, of course). My other question is how fast word traveled about Elton's RS admissions. How many kids and boomers read RS in the late seventies? Was the subject discussed on "Nightline" or something?

There's also the quality of the music. Elton had recorded spotty albums but few of the albums b/w 1976 and 1982 boasted one memorable single. He admits to being burned out at the time and it shows. His imperial period, to quote the Pet Shop Boys, had ended.

which, frankly, strikes me as really bizarre. I mean, I have that record and it's pretty good but it is so strange that something that goofily arty and day-glo and obviously gay was such a huge success. it's a very odd combination of styles - calypso/reggae, R&B croon, synthpop - delivered in neonized sub-Harlequinade drag queen package ... just, why did this appeal to huge swathes of America? did it tie into some club med fantasy people liked to indulge in or something?

These images and tropes signified as "New Wave" and played exceptionally well on MTV. Also, the songs were damn good and fully deserved hits.

it's like the amorphous sexuality of UK glam transferring over to America a decade late (see also Prince, MJ etc).

xp

yeah I'm not knocking the material on CBN. some of it is beyond silly but there are def hooks there.

Speaking as a guy who didn't have MTV until the late nineties, I heard Culture Club hits beside Men at Work, Matthew Wilder, and Lionel Richie and didn't notice anything amiss; they all played with "island" rhythms.

maybe disco's success had dislodged America's sexual mores enough to allow less traditionally gendered artists to come through via New Wave

xp

ahhh Matthew Wilder

maybe disco's success had dislodged America's sexual mores enough to allow less traditionally gendered artists to come through via New Wave

MTV.

suddenly English nancy boys in pirate makeup singing over glam chords and disco bass lines were acceptable

yeah, Haircut 100 was huge on MTV (speaking of vaguely tropical)

How's Ricky Martin these days?

― i love the large auns pictures! (Phil D.), Thursday, May 10, 2012 7:25 AM Bookmark

his album last year debuted at #3, so quite alright

― The Reverend, Thursday, May 10, 2012 2:26 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, well I guess I got PWNED,

ha, i thought that was a genuine question

he is rich enough that he is playing CHE in EVITA on BROADWAY

lol

the role of Evita was taken

What a weird piece, that VV-thing. Because my god, how many gay artists have had huge singles in America, number one or otherwise? What kind of strange standard is the elusive number one album? And certainly there have been acts so flamboyant that I'd surmise their heterosexuality made no difference to homophobes. Like, were there homophobic Prince fans who were all, yeah, he sings high and dresses in black panties, teases with "am I straight or gay?" but he's totally not gay, so he's OK?

Did Judas Priest fans turn their back in the band when Rob Halford came out?

he is rich enough that he is playing CHE in EVITA on BROADWAY

― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Thursday, May 10, 2012 3:49 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, May 10, 2012 4:00 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the role of Evita was taken

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, May 10, 2012 4:04 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

o_O

Did Judas Priest fans turn their back in the band when Rob Halford came out?

Halford came out well past their commercial peak. And then left the band (I forget which came first, this was around the same time...?) He's an interesting case tho. Certainly now it's no problem, they're rightly revered as "metal gods".

I was about to make Shakey's joke tbh

What kind of strange standard is the elusive number one album?

I think CM is approaching it as a matter of trivia more than anything.

I dont think there's any way to link an artist's gayness with their chart success, especially using whatever strange science is at work in that piece. If anything it seems like a lot ("a lot") of artists, at least "rock" artists, come out when their career has already slowed or faltered, which definitely imparts the illusion of failure.

What about Bowie? He came out early in his career -- he go tit out of the way, so to speak. It certainly caused American critics to view him with suspicion for years.. Not only is he a chameleon, but he's queer.

Bowie's one of the only cases I can think of where a straight guy tried to pass himself off as gay AS A CAREER MOVE

Brandon Flowers, in his luckless way, has tried.

What about Pete Townshend? What about Brett "I'm gay but I've never had a gay experience" Anderson?

Certainly the Depeche Mode guys, hetero though they may be, didn't exactly make an effort to macho themselves up.

Cross-genre here, but Jean Claude van Damme was always open about courting gay fans.

didn't duran duran brag about letting guys suck them off because they got bored with women doing it? or is this a sixth-hand bit of rumor/mythmongering

It is now!

I heard that Duran Duran used to brag about letting guys suck them off.

I saw an EMP talk once about how back in the day Elton despised Bowie because the latter was this straight guy playing gay and critics were eating it up while Elton was stuck in the closet and not getting anywhere near the plaudits. Supposedly "Bennie and the Jets" was a lyrical dart aimed at Bowie.

would LOVE to read bitchy Elton attacking Bowie

Not sure critics ate it up in America. The tone of many of his reviews was suspcious.

Bowie's failure to break America early in his career is pretty legendary

altho don't think I've read much criticism of him from the time, apart from Bangs'