From: NewLGVoice@aol.com Date: Sun, 14 Apr 1996 21:15:54 -0400 Subject: SUBMISSION: Hultberg on Gay Music A Submission From THE NEW LESBIAN AND GAY VOICE 1747 "S" Street, Northwest Washington, DC 20009 Telephone: (202) 483-1311 Facsimile: (202) 265-9737 Internet: NEWLGVOICE@AOL.COM 2005 words, Review of Gay Music by Jesse Hultberg ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This submission by the New Lesbian and Gay Voice is directed primarily to the lesbian and gay print media, as a means of distributing articles of possible interest to their readers. New Lesbian and Gay Voice prefers to distribute and communicate by Internet: It's cheaper and easier. Therefore, where practicable, please utilize our address for all communications, and, if you are aware of any lesbian or gay print media that has a e-mail address, please let us know. Distributions from New Lesbian and Gay Voice are made, so to speak, on the honor system. 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Our goal is to improve the already high quality and scope of the lesbian and gay press by providing unconventional articles and points of view that might otherwise not be available. 1 The musings of an American gay male pop musician The American music industry is a paradox. Of all the arts industries in this country, music pretends to be the most cutting edge. The voice of our youth: popular cultures witness to the winds of change. In fact, no other industry has re- packaged these concepts and sold them back to us as successfully than the music industry. With the recent and fast-growing presence of out queer boys and girls in pop music, history is being made. This is not a statement of self-importance. It's just a fact. In a few years or maybe sooner, you'll turn on the local radio station and hear a romantic love song from one man to another and not bat an eyelash. Until that time however there is this transitional period which is happening right now and to me (a gay male musician or should I say a male musician who happens to be gay) it's exciting and frustrating. Gay people are paradoxes too. We are republicans and radicals. We are and we are not 'just like heterosexuals'. We are Euro, African, Asian, Latino, physically challenged, male and female. Sometimes we are not even always gay. Let's play a game. Think of the first name that pops in your head that fits these criteria: openly gay, American male ( wearing mens clothes), pop/rock singer with lyrics that do more than just imply his orientation, signed to a major record label. Got one..? Who? Michael Stipe? He's bi, right? And what about the lyrics? Boy George? Sorry, he's English. RuPaul? Clothing, clothing. Morrisey!! ...shit, he's English too. Wait a minute, there's got to be one. Well....... there isn't. There is not even one who sings opera, disco or Broadway (unless you count Michael Feinstein) and those are the music genres gays are suppose to love so much. Hard to believe? End of game? No, actually it's just the beginning. By the time this goes to print (I'm such an optimist) there will probably be at least one. I know what your thinking. What's the big deal? Musicians should stand on their own musical merits regardless of sexual orientation. Who cares if you're gay, straight, black, white, bla, bla, bla? I agree, but..... why do we make big budget films with gay themes? Why are there gay books being made into television mini- series? Why are there high-profile gay dance companies and Broadway plays that leave no doubt to the subject at hand? If we don't care, why aren't there already famous American, gay male musicians who's lyrics use same-sex pronouns? It's because we do care. It means something. It implies the beginning of an end to exclusion. As a songwriter who does not skirt the issue, I would love sexual orientation to be a non-issue, but it's more complicated than I'm willing to be, pretending or obscuring I'm anything other than myself. Of course inclusion isn't always popular among those in the counter- culture. Today's anarchic pop music scene is a place where musicians balance a fine line between mainstream and rebellion. Always ready to exploit a lucrative market, the music industry is commercializing counter-culture with a glut of coma- producing product that renders a person's true nature' as irrelevant, so long as the packaging doesn't appear mainstream. If you don't believe me just turn on Alternative Nation on MTV. I think you'll get my drift. So why have none of the majors or major independents taken the plunge and backed an American male queer pop singer? The reasons are many-fold but there is one reason that rings truer than all the rest. Record companies are looking for artists who have big enough followings to produce a profit on their investment. A business concept so simple it eluded even me. They like artists who have done a lot of audience building or one that fits a tried and true formula so that guess-work (i.e. money spending) is minimized. The 'coming out' of lesbian superstars like kd lang and Mellissa Ethridge certainly helped. Not only did they continue to sell albums but they even won Grammies. RuPaul's rapid rise may have catered to the mainstream's penchant for drag but it also ushered in our first openly gay American man with a hit on his hands. My guess is we'll be seeing Ru more and more in men's clothes. Although the events in recent years have had their impact, we all know that nothing exists without a history. The last twenty years has seen a number of lesbian and gay-identified musicians who carved out a niche for themselves and consequently helped establish the ones we know of today. To put things in perspective here is a sketchy timeline of the ones that were significant to me. It is utterly incomplete and of course our music history is older than twenty years but hey, I'm not that old. The first same-gender story I heard in a song was in 1976: Sweet Woman by Cris Williamson (a woman) from The Changer and the Changed (Olivia Records, 1975). Out of Oakland California, Olivia Records was the homebase of the mythic and much maligned (mostly by gay people themselves) lesbian folk scene. While the Olivia coterie did not lure me away from my Joni Mitchell and Patti Smith albums, I'll never forget the impact that song had on me. Still a sensitive teenage boy wading through a blurry sexuality, I can only imagine the effect it had on adult lesbians of that era. Ironically, two years earlier, Steven Grossman's Caravan Tonight on Mercury Records was the first American major label release by an openly gay man. A completely out album with a Randy Newmanish, Tom Waitsy sound. This record didn't reach me until 1993, years after his death. Just after that, we all witnessed the phenomenon called The Village People. Worthy of a college dissertation in gay studies, their kooky success still manages to fascinate me in regards to gay identity. Did those thousands of record-buying, hustle-dancing kids know they were queer or not? I didn't and my gut feeling says they didn't either. In that sense the Village People do not really qualify as openly gay. But lyrically and stylistically they were and still are the best reflection of 70s urban gay male culture and should not be excluded from this timeline. Before the end of the decade we heard The Tom Robinson Band. Hailing from England, Robinson at first appeared to be the gay punkish rock star that non disco-listening queers were waiting for with his brooding song Glad To Be Gay. But he drifted into obscurity with subsequent albums that were perhaps too brooding for the American public. There were others in the 70s as well that didn't reach my suburban environment although I vaguely remember a poppy disco tune called Everybody In L.A. Is Gay or something like that. For the next decade, most music by gay men came from England or at least it seemed that way from my vantage point. Exceptions were Romanovsky and Phillips, Michael Callen and the Flirtations whose independent albums went directly to gay book stores vis a vis the woman's music scene, which by that time had already become a thriving niche market, spawning a not-for-profit distributor called Ladyslipper (whose catalogue is still the best way to get some insight into the independent gay music world even now, especially for women). With little radio play or music industry support these artists were unable to reach a large audience. Phranc represented the quintessential punk/folk singer breaking the pattern of the lesbian folk stereotype. She managed to garner a lot of attention and a contract at Island Records but the British Invasion superseded all of them with major label support and the advent of video. Bronski Beat broke the ice first with Smalltown Boy and then came Erasure. Both Jimmy Sommerville and Andy Bell admitting their gayness and actually selling it was certainly a change in approach. England had already given us David Bowie and Elton John whose bisexuality was admitted, even if it was pretended or over-exaggerated. but there was something more identifiable for me in the new crop. Morrisey, Pet Shop Boys, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Culture Club also sold gayness but they were cagier about it. A sort of eighties Dirk Bogard, Village People and Liberace. Boy George's latest release Cheapness and Beauty has a lot more to say. The 90s may appear like a renaissance in gay outness for musicians. But that's just something I call 'gay ghetto syndrome'. When a neighborhood sprouts a few boutiques and cafes that are gay-owned, it's referred to as a gay ghetto. We are either invisible or taking over with no inbetween. A renaissance may be occurring but it's definitely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Ironically, the music industry validates us (lesbians and gays) by not treating us as a unified market. Music is not furniture. It cannot be sold to a wildly diverse community with clever, inclusive advertising or making nice-nice with gay employees. What we've seen instead is the industry dabbling around for the elusive gay market. For about two years there have been one compilation CD after another with names like Knock Out or Outspoken. They are backed by major labels such as Atlantic and Sire and arrive free with a subscription to Out Magazine. These CDs usually contain songs by mostly heterosexual bands that music execs are hoping gay people will like. The impression you're left with is the industry lurking about trying to pin us down. It was on one of these compilations that I first noticed Jill Sobule (I kissed A Girl) and The Lemonheads (Big Gay Heart). Apparently, openly gay lyrics are a marketing dream as long as they come from e hetero-identified artist. More recently, there have been independent compilations with actual queers such as Outloud, This Way Out, A Love Worth Fighting For (I guess the word out is no longer in), and Free (I appear on this one). Some of them are good, some of them are not, but at least it's an attempt by the artists to build their followings which will eventually make the difference when the majors come calling. And they will. Atlantic Records has already created a "gay marketing division". Which could mean anything from marketing Bette Midler albums to actually signing a gay band. In October of 95, New York's OutMusic organizers, who do an annual festival of gay music, hosted it's first Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards (the GLAMAS) at the glamorous Supper Club. What started out as a vague concept snowballed in just a few months into a high-profile event involving known celebrities such as Harvey Fierstein and Me Shell N'degAocelo. What the awards ceremony will eventually be is unknown. What I do know is that there is not one gay musician out there who doesn't feel the buzz. In some ways it pits us against each other as though we are afraid there won't be enough room to support all of our music (notice how I haven't named many current musicians). This feeling is compounded when the industry tries to sell our music to each other just because we're queer and not to straight folks as well. Any gay recording artist will tell you how hard it is to sell a rock album to an opera lover or a folk album to a disco bunny. Visibility tends to highlight our differences and in the slow slide to assimilation, things are getting messy. Hey, maybe there's a song in that? Frankly, I'm excited by the future and the possibility of an out-gay presence in pop music even if it makes us a little humdrum (I don't think it will). I'm excited because I don't think your sexual orientation is enough reason to feel yourself special or to be left out (damn, there's that word again). In the meantime I'm forced to consider myself special and I continue writing songs and putting out my little CDs on my little indy label just like the rest of us. Jesse Hultberg copyright 1996 Biographical Material In the 80s, Jesse Hultberg along with David Wojnarowicz (the visual artist who wrote Close To The Knives and Tongues Of Flame), led the coolest art-pop band in New York. With the release of "No Motive" on Point Blank Records, the group, 3 Teens Kill 4, secured itself a place in East Village history. Jesse went on performing with the Fingerlakes Trio (a comic "chamber music" ensemble that played only disco and pop songs from the 70s). Their career climaxed when they appeared in the American Playhouse film " Longtime Companion" singing the Village People classic Y.M.C.A.. Hultberg also appeared in the Wigstock documentary as Peter, Paul & a Big Mary. The scene was cut due to refusal of permission to use the song Puf The Magic Dragon which Hultberg had changed to Poof The Magic Drag Queen. After an extended hiatus in France, Jesse returned to New York and in 1994/95 released his eponymously titled debut solo album and created Wild Monk Records. Billboard Magazine gave Hultberg's version of "If I Can't Have You"a critics choice review declaring it as one of the Top Ten singles of 1995. The song "Constant Thing (I Was Raised A Straight Boy) from the Album Jesse Hultberg was used as the closing theme on Party Talk, the nationally syndicated gay cable show. To hear a song from "Jesse Hultberg" call the Ladyslipper listen line at 919-644-1942 selection number for Jesse Hultberg is 0183. To contact Wild Monk Records call 212-631-4286 or e-mail Wildmonk@aol.com.