From the glam-punk of Handbag to the ultra-mp Steve Elg, award-wng gay mic historian Darryl W Bullock picks out ep cuts to play at this year’s Pri celebratns
Contents:
DEPRSN IS KILLG GAY MEN
Gay men experience more prsn and suici, but help is available. * gay depression songs *
In the 1920s and early ’30s, Prohibn’s end gave way to the “Pansy Craze”: baret drag performanc that brought gay nightlife to the mass and rried their athetics to mastream mil theater. In the mid-’30s, at the edge of the Great Deprsn, moral backlash—sometim disguised as enomic nservatism but ually explic s bigotry—shut down many of the clubs and formally crimalized gay sex at a sle that had never before been seen. Jazz n’t be imaged whout the ntributns of giants like Billy Strayhorn (of De Ellgton’s band), who was openly gay, and, later, Cecil Taylor, who found that three-letter word was too limg.
The ’70s brought glam and dis, genr play, and explicly queer nightlife back to the mastream; we n’t fet that ’s great gay pop in, Elton John, and s great bisexual on, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. Lang, the Indigo Girls), all the way to today, a moment that young pop star Hayley Kiyoko teasgly refers to as “#20gayteen.
Their first gay kiss was junr high, wh someone wearg a matchg flannel, while listeng to Peter Murphy's "Deep" on shared Sport Walkman headphon. ” The Brish sger-songwrer’s track employs his exuberant sexualy, a hard-htg beat and expertly crafted melodi to make this one of the sexit songs about gay romance recent memory.