JMG: Blog Year Ten
JoeMyGod@gmail.com
Gay culture, short stories, politics, and fabulous disco trivia.
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"An exciting range of shampoo and conditioner formulated especially for beards, but it's great for the hair on your head too!" - Bear Wash, a new product listed as "coming soon" on the XXL site. Does it also leave back hair soft and luxurious? Bear Wash, coming soon in exciting fragrances such as Musky Moonlight, Potato Salad Surprise, and Yesterday's Workout.
It looks like a battle is brewing between two of the nation's largest leather events, as SF's Folsom Street Fair, now in its 23rd year, has filed a petition to cancel the trademark of New York's Folsom Street East, about to celebrate its 10th year. I suppose there's no jurisdiction to revoke the trademark of Toronto's Folsom Fair North. (-via B.A.R.)
Tuesday night, I attended the 2nd Annual Images In Advertising Awards hosted by AOL at Time-Warner's swank headquarters above Central Park at Columbus Circle. Produced by the Commercial Closet Association, whose mission is to "educuate and influence the world of advertising to understand, respect and include LGBT references in advertising", it was a typically fun night of open bars, schmoozing and gift bags, but it was also an important marking of the continuing improvements being made in the way advertisers portray and reach out to the LGBT community, advances made in no small part due to the hard work of the Commerical Closet's founder and Executive Director Michael Wilke, whose Best Practices guidelines steer advertisers and agencies in the right direction.
Top Left: a gaggle of Gaygles, aka the Google team.
Troubled Diva, aka music journalist Mike Atkinson has a great piece in Slate called America, Meet The Eurovision Song Contest , in which he explains to us Yanks exactly how this year's event, hosted by Greece, went down. My English coworkers are always amazed at how utterly unknown Eurovision is in the U.S., other than as a footnote to die hard fans of ABBA (Sweden's winner in 1974) and Celine Dion (who somehow won representing Switzerland in 1988). Hey, anybody remember Bucks Fizz? Anyway, I hear talk that this year's winner might be Finland's Lordi, the charming gents pictured below. For a very detailed country by country breakdown of each act, visit Diva's homepage here. Now excuse me, I think that's Dana International on the other line.
If you are in NYC for Pride Week, I invite you to attend this year's Pride edition of WYSIWYG, the monthly queer bloggers showcase, where I will perform with a fun cast including haikuist/go-go boy/composer Joel Derfner, who totally upstaged me in last year's show with a song about sperm donation.Not to get all Gawker Stalker on you, but in the last couple of weeks I've seen the following celebrities hoofing it down Gotham's sidewalks: Frank Gifford, Jon Stewart, Jeff Goldblum, Jackie Mason, Jane Fonda, Moby, Harvey Keitel, Lorraine Bracco, Chris Carrabba (only recognized him because of his tats), Star Jones (who has a really weird neck) and (most importantly) Chris Meloni.
If listening to Ruth Brown's Lucky Lips doesn't immediately cheer you up to the point where your cubicle mates wonder where you found the crack....well, there's no hope for you. Download it here, then come back in 2:10 and tell me you aren't grinning from ear to ear.
"Did you know that Pat Robertson can leg-press 2000 pounds! How does he do it? Where does Pat find the time and energy to host a daily, national TV show, head a world-wide ministry, develop visionary scholars, while traveling the globe as a statesman? One of Pat's secrets to keeping his energy high and his vitality soaring is his age-defying protein shake. Pat developed a delicious, refreshing shake, filled with energy-producing nutrients." (- via CBN)
"Later I would think of America as one vast City of Night stretching gaudily from Times Square to Hollywood Boulevard--jukebox-winking, rock-n-roll-moaning: America at night fusing its darkcities into the unmistakable shape of loneliness." - John Rechy, City Of Night.
After some dismal weather over the last week, and even though it was 45 degrees outside when I got up this morning, half of my office decided to take our lunch to Bryant Park, which we decided is one of the definite luxuries of working in Midtown. Oh, but what did we do while we ate? READ BLOGS, of course!
Hustler Video releases The Da Vinci Load today. On Friday, PZP Video went gay-and-date with Tom Hanks, with their own The Da Vinci Load.
Stop by tonight's WYSIWYG as bloggers riff on the theme: Prom Trauma. A few months ago, Wizzy departed the venerated East Village performance space, P.S. 122, for the Bowery Poetry Club, located at Bowery & Bleecker. Doors open at 7:30, the show is at 8PM, and they've got a bar.
This kid pretty much nails my opinion on the end of Will & Grace. However, his commenters are having a field day ripping him apart.
Madonna opened her world tour, Confessions, in Los Angeles this weekend. You have to hand it to the old broad, she hasn't lost her touch (craving) for controversy. Now somebody hand me my nail gun.
"I knew I would have to lie for the rest of my life - and I knew I was capable of it. The knowledge gave me a feeling of terrible power." - former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey, writing in his new book The Confession, which comes out on ReganBooks this fall. Hilariously, Amazon is currently offering a special deal if you order both McGreevey's book and the DVD of Brokeback Mountain. Someone at Amazon has a great sense of humor.
The disco orchestra was a phenomenon of the very earliest years of disco. In the pre-synth and early-synth days, often producers of disco records would engage the talents of entire symphony orchestras, picking and choosing which particular elements best lent themselves to a particular track. Sweeping romantic strings, sassy horns, percolating timpani, whatever, the orchestra members were usually quite glad to have the session work, something that the rock era had largely disposed of.
Helmed by Barry White, this 40-piece orchestra was originally created in 1972 to provide backing for White's girl group trio, Love Unlimited, which whom the orchestra had a smash hit in Walking In The Rain With The One I Love . In 1974, with White conducting and producing, the orchestra released its first single, the instrumental Love's Theme, which was a #1 hit on the Billboard Pop Singles chart. Love Unlimited Orchestra had several other hit singles, including Satin Soul and My Sweet Summer Suite. Despite the prominent wacka-wacka guitar sound, then used in every blaxploitation soundtrack, which I generally loathed, Love's Theme remains my all-time favorite disco orchestra track. Trivia note: Jazz saxophonist Kenny G was a member of the Love Unlimited Orchestra.
Also created in 1972, the Salsoul Orchestra, which won Billboard's Top Disco Orchestra award in '75, '76, and '77, provided the backing for a virtual who's who of early disco artists, including Loleatta Holloway, Claudja Barry, First Choice and Charo (!). New York's Salsoul Orchestra had a monster hit with Magic Bird Of Fire, their stunning reworking of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. Included among their many other hits are Tangerine and (Ooh I Love It) Love Break, which is credited by many as being the track to which vogueing first began. For me though, Magic Bird will always be my favorite. Those ominous strings! The terrifying horns! Definitely one of the spookiest disco tracks of all time.
Spring Rain was the sole disco hit for Argentine composer, producer and pianist Bebu Silvetti. I suppose this track might be considered a little cheesy today, especially with the female chorus going "ah ah ah ah", but I adore this song and I'd bet any gay man in his 40's probably feels the same way. Silvetti went on to produce just about every major star in the Latin music world, including Placido Domingo and Luis Miguel.
You probably never would have predicted that a reworking of Louis Prima's instrumental big band hit from the 40's, Sing, Sing, Sing, could be turned into a hit dance record, especially one that would get a room full of hundreds of gay men jumping up and down. But kids, when DJ Bob Miro would throw this sucker on at Fort Lauderdale's Backstreet t-dance, you'da thunk the roof was gonna blow off the joint. You haven't lived until you've watch drunken drag queens and bodybuilders trying to disco-Charleston to Sing, Sing, Sing. Trivia: Luther Vandross and Cissy Houston (Whitney's mom) were session vocalists on the other tracks on this album. More trivia: Charlie Calello arranged and produced Odyssey's Native New Yorker.
In the mid-70's, every other TV theme song was being turned into a hit record. Welcome Back Kotter, Happy Days, Rockford Files, and many more shows' theme songs hit the Billboard Top Forty. But my personal favorite, of course, was disco orchestra Rhythm Heritage's blistering Theme From S.W.A.T. I would only watch the first few minutes of S.W.A.T., just to catch the opening theme, then I would slam the channel over to Mary Tyler Moore, who had a catchy, but non-disco theme song. Such a queer, I know. Trivia: Ray Parker Jr. (Ghostbusters!) played with Rhythm Heritage.
Mike Theodore Orchestra's The Bull is one of the most prized 12" singles on the collectors market. The album it came from, Cosmic Wind, yielded a number of hits, most notably the title track and Moon Trek. In 1979 he had another fairly big hit, High On Mad Mountain. I loved The Bull because of the way it made the Spanish guys go crazy on the dancefloor. "Watch out! Here comes the bull! Ole!" Trivia: Mike Theodore was also behind the 1976 disco smash Devil's Gun, by C.J. & Company.
Oh man, if you hated disco, you really hated Two Hot For Love. Really long, over 15 minutes, jazzy and loaded with orgiastic groaning, Two Hot For Love was some serious late night, almost-closing time, choose your bed-partner stuff. "The night is growing longer, my love is growing stronger, we're two hot for love." Side One of Two Hot For Love was usually played all the way through, all 15 minutes, which included the tracks Foreplay, Excitement, Climax and Resolution, which were beat mixed on the LP, as was common on many disco records that year. I loved Two Hot For Love for its sexy hotness and that unforgettable jazzy flute line. THP stood for Three Hats Productions. THP later dropped the "orchestra" from their name and had a successful follow-up called Tender Is The Night.
