Prince covers Led Zep Whole Lotta Love. Why not? He and Husker Du were local bands playing the same clubs in early 80's

Prince and Husker du both were local bands in the Minneapolis. In the early '80's . They played the same clubs and both were part of the post punk , rock scene with Du the rock,guitar driven yang to Prince's mash up of funk and Sly riding guitar riffs in a very yin expansive way. Bob Mold secretly loved dance music and Prince knew the best of Brit rock.both excelled at putting as bedrock the beats and riffs that shock the body and extended an invitation to anyone to join the party regardless of labeling. So it should be no surprise. That Prince would cover Led Zep and Mold would secretly be be making dance mix playlist for for his Walkman on the road..... give a watch ... It really is THAT good...,made me think of Nona Hendryx   (Ronnie Drayton guitar) and the Black Rock Coalition turfing out  Thanks for reminding me Tim Holmes 

KAY TURNER accomplishes the impossible and puts QUEER THEORY to song .. brilliantly .. Here Ann Cvetkovich ground breaking book Depression: A Public Feeling gets bluegrass beat !

Meanwhile the indomitable Kay Turner put out a tribal call : "Queer Theory academics let's "SIng Out Louise" and put out theory to song" .. it was a sold out night at Joe's pub ... and this song based on Ann Cvetkovich ground breaking book Depression: A Public Feeling. on theory and depression. What do you do when you lose something you are passionate about .. be it love interest, . an animal or politics .. Leave it to Turner to find a way to put country/western /bluegrass passion and rhythm into the Lavender Tower's lofty brain games .. more to follow

Reality Check " Lets widen the lens and talk about real change : what is mnext? The REAL question is: IS IT TIME FOR A NATIONAL THIRD PARTY not dependent on the two party system.

REALITY CHECK : In the interest of being realistic

A new, better groomed and manufactured Trump wilL not mask nor obscure the bully instinct that will continue to jump out and terrorizes ore group of people or another.

No, Clinton is not the answer. Her glossed over with feminist sheen of actual practice that reveals her war hawk, pro Israeli administration practice , her romance at a price with wall street bankers and hedge fund cowboys can not be masked by insincere words that contradict her actual political practice history .

The REAL question is: IS IT TIME FOR A NATIONAL THIRD PARTY not dependent on the two party system.

Registered Democrats make up 26% of the voters .. Republicans 24%. The rest of potential voters are unaligned. What if Bernie Sanders doesn't win the nomination and opps out of endorsing Clinton as did Zephyr Teachout after running a surprisingly strong primary race lost to Governor Cuomo In New York State. Teachout did not endorse anyone and let her supporters make their own choices .

Yes the Green Party is a choice ...but is it with its fractured chapters and aging bourgeois hippies base actually attractive to the millennials and disenfranchised seniors who are supporting Sanders ?

Questions to think about as we move forward,

I continue to support Bernie Sanders and call on all like minded people to not give up or into the manipulative call for unity.

Remember we outnumber both parties and need to continue to assert our values within and outside the established political parties/

Anyone want to join me for COFFEE to discuss our political options in this critical period in US history ?

I raise these questions in the interest of an informed and not simply emotional reaction. What do we do next is an important question for all of us regardless of which "side" we are on . I have by intention mixed up the people tagged to supporters of the major candidates

Please be respectful and please do let me know your thoughts

Toshi honors her mom the legendary Bernice Reagon Johnson who puts in a rare appearance at the Schomburg Library

Toshi  Reagon has curated this year's  Schomburg Women in Jazz series . .Closing night she honored her mother the legendary musician and scholar Bernice Reagon Johnson by inviting BRJ to sit in and sing the songs she had written .. a very very very special evening of music .. I closed my eyes and brought Sweet Honey in the Rock and  Michael Callen into the room. Callen recorded an album  (LEGACY) of incredible music as he was dying of AIDS( and it included "They are falling" ...which is sung in this concert .. as an AIDS anthem.. I am grateful to Sonja who  invited me to join  her and the two Lisas for this memorable concert please share,, I was all hte way back in the room .. a perfect place to hear the music ,,,but not the best place to shoot from .. but the music trunos the limitations of the zoom.

How the iconic PETER HUJAR COME OUT image is stripped of its political meaning and used without context .. by a museum with good intentions

It is sad to see the misuse of a photo by the Leslie Lohman museum.

Background: 

the photo was taken in October of 1969. It is taken from a shoot that was arranged to provide an image for a recruitment poster the Come Out cell of the Gay Liberation Front wanted to make. My lover at the time was Peter Hujar. I asked him if he would do the shoot . He agreed. It was announced at the weekly general meeting of GLF for three weeks that we were taking a picture for GLF's recruitment poster. The location that Peter chose was Wooster Street in little Italy aka now SoHo. I announced at the meeting that it was to be shot on the second Sat of October.Anyone who would show up at 10 AM would be in the photo. It was Peter's idea to have a photo taken of people running in the street. On the day of the photo shoot the people that you see in the photo showed up as well as some others including a gay man of color Ron Ballard. Ron later told me when he rounded the corner to enter Wooster Street, he saw a group of us gathered together He told me that he saw his grandmother's face in front of him. He was not out to her. He said he also realize that he was working in the New York City public schools system; That he could very well lose his job if anyone saw this photo so he turned around and went home. It was my first lesson in understanding dual oppression. A series of shots were turned them over to the come out collective. A very typical deep GLF discussion took place within the cell about what the language on the poster would be.It was decided :

  It would say on the top, COME OUT and at the bottom JOIN THE SISTERS AND BROTHERS OF THE GAY LIBERATION FRONT. I don't think that most young people today realize for people to be out running down the street proclaiming their same sex love and affection fused with erotic pleasure was both dangerous and very courageous,. This group represented the end of the closet and assimilation politics that the homophile movement represented ,,GLF was not single issue and had gender parity in its organizing. We wanted to build a revolution for all people with Out lesbians and gays participating equally. . It was to be our version of the Black Panther party recruitment poster. That Leslie Lohman would appropriate a political photo, strip it of its essential meaning is very sad to me. I am sure it was well intended. Sad is how queer academia fails so often to correctly identify the critical symbols of our liberation struggle. The man in the striped shirt is not John D’emilio, one of my favorite historians, It is Stephen E Dansky. Dansky joined GLF in August of 1969 and joined the Trotskyist Red Butterfly cell. Also in RB were historian and author John Lauritzen, John Knoebel (who later worked for years in the Advocate business office) and John O'Brien. Dansky was active in GLF for about four months and left to join the Effeminists a group founded by the poet Kenneth Pitchford, a gay man married to leading feminist Robin Morgan. The Effeminists denounced the men in GLF as sexist and misogynist . Dansky soon after left active political life and became a psychologist . After his retired Dansky decide to record GLF's radical history. Unfortunately one of the things he did was claim that the GLF photo shoot took place in what is now called Chelsea and publish a series of articles based on his flawed research. When I brought to his attention that Peter had been my lover and I had set up the shoot and knew where it took place, he insisted although he could not remember the location that his research convinced him it was in Chelsea.It was frustrating having him be so dismissive of the actual historical fact., He told me I had made it up . Other than that nightmare experience, Dansky has made a valuable contribution to recording lost history . He did video record interviews with a group he selected to tell of their personal experiences of GLF and/or the first year of Gay and Lesbian liberation. I am grateful he did those interviews. Nicos Diaman , an original member of GLF who lives in SF also has done filmed interviews. He attempted to make a documentary.But could not raise sufficient money to complete it . But these archival materials have been preserved for a future historian, When Yale acquired my archives it contained the original mechanicals of the Come Out Poster. Among the brave and courageous people in this emblematic photo are : Bob Bland (rip), Earl Galvin (rip) John Erdman,jim fouratt,  Lyn Farley , Judy ? Fran Winant (one of the original subjects in Martin Duberman “STONEWALL” who he dropped when she refused to sign off unless he took out his psychological judgements of her out. He refused, she didn't sign and the book in my view lost the voice of a lesbian there at the very beginning. Duberman quickly recruited Carla Jay who had joined about the same time as Steven Dansky} Carl Miller, Dan Smith and Michael Yarr. I believe Lois Hart was standing next to her lover Suzanne but cut out for composition reasons from the photo There remain five women whose names at the moment I can't pull up but I am sure others will add.

Leslie Lohman should have never detached this image from its history and purpose.

Jim fouratt March 29, 2016

Like · Reply · 3 mins · Edited

Write a comment...

OK I will bite the bullet: REALITY CHECK locker rooms and bathroom use: this is a more complicated issue.....

OK I will bite the bullet: REALITY CHECK locker rooms and bathroom use: this is a more complicated issue. Let's start by acknowledging the truth : biological women have been hit upon and sexually harassed by individuals self identified as "trans" in bathrooms identified as "Ladies(!) room" . Please do your research before making sweeping definitive statement. It certainly is not the norm. NOT the norm but has and will happen. Steroids and hormones affect individuals differently . As does self-medication (street) opposed to health care provided dosages. Also natural vs synthetic ... dumbing down complicated issue to politically correct position helps no one and does not build common ground based on mutual respect and safety . . The bathroom use issue is quite different from the locker room issue in my view. . I will admit I worry about a self-identified trans-man in a male locker room. I remember well being mocked , ridiculed and sometimes beaten up for being a "fag" in such environments. Note: when I ran Danceteria all my bathrooms were gender neutral. Some were single use and some large enough to become social scenes themselves. and that was 30 years ago ... a stall is a stal is a stall ... and no I do not support homophobic and transphobic laws .. I do support this kind of bathroom and would like to hear more input from people who use locker rooms and not just activists and lawyers .