R.I.P. Tina Turner

You were a force, Tina. Thank you for the music, the energy, and the joie de vivre. Rest in peace.

https://www.tinaturnerofficial.com/

Now It's Time For You To Meet Yves Tumor

Now it's time for you to meet experimental pop performer Yves Tumor (the nom de musique of Sean Bowie). I am quite impressed by their sensibility, and entranced by their arrangement of sound and presentation.

This first song "Jackie" is a new release as of June 2021.

"Noid" and its video are spot on for our times.

Sister mother, brother father
Have you, have you looked outside?
I'm scared for my life
They don't trust us
I'm not part of the killing spree
A symptom, born loser, statistic

And "Lifetime" is...well, amazing. Phillip Sherburne, music journalist for Pitchfork had this to say about the track:

"Yves Tumor’s music has often resembled musique concrète as it massages rhythmic loops, samples, and scraps of found sound into suggestive forms, foggy as nightmares, with a distinctively narrative undercurrent. But on a new string of singles including 'Noid,' 'Licking an Orchid,' and now 'Lifetime,' what was previously lo-fi snaps vividly into focus.

The percussion is crisper, the vocals pushed prominently to the fore. At its murkiest, Tumor’s work always had a vaguely gothic cast, heavy as cobwebs sagging in the humidity, but on 'Lifetime,' Tumor’s suddenly channeling the hi-def stadium goth of the Cure’s 'Disintegration,' layering close-harmonized vocals over bright streaks of synth, piano, and drums. Those rolling drum fills are a lot of what gives the song its force: The ethereal background voices of the chorus, bruised by nostalgia—'I miss the good old days back in Biscayne/And I miss my brothers'—sound like they want to disappear into pure atmosphere, but the drums keep things grounded and immediate, relentless as heavy blows. There’s real anger here, real desire, real desperation—a surfeit of emotion that spills over the edges of Tumor’s tightly controlled arrangements and carries the music to a place it’s never taken us before. It’s a thrilling development from an artist who seems to be rapidly evolving, on a song-to-song basis, before our very ears."

https://yves-tumor.com/

LGBT History Month 2020: George Edgerly Harris III

"On October 21, 1967, around 35,000 anti-war marchers rallied to the Pentagon. The protestors were confronted by hundreds of soldiers with their bayonets pointing towards the crowd.

A young hippie gay man stepped out of the crowd with a bunch of carnations in his left hand. As he walked towards the soldiers, the situation grew even tenser. He walked along the file of soldiers and began placing the flowers into the barrels of their gun with his right hand.

'The turtleneck sweater-wearing protester came out of nowhere and it took me years to find out who he was … his name was Harris.' — Bernie Boston, the photographer

The Pulitzer prize-winning photo of this incident, taken by Bernie Boston, is actually of George Edgerly Harris III better known by his stage name Hibiscus.

Hibiscus was a member of the San Francisco based gay liberation theatre troupe the Cockettes.

How history forgot George Edgerly Harris III

It is interesting to see how another gay man was written out of history. Thanks to Pepsi’s advertisement where the iconic ‘Flower Power’ moment was reenacted with a celebrity so many times that we always misremember the person in the photo as being a woman.

‘Flower power’ became a peace slogan during the years of passive resistance towards the Vietnam war. The movement spread nation-wide and the use of props like flowers was meant to reduce the fear, anger, and threat of these protests.

Later life and death

Hibiscus belonged to an acting family and had performed in NY downtown theaters. After founding the Cockettes, he moved to San Francisco and embraced the drag lifestyle.

Hibiscus always wanted the Cockettes performances to be free and there was another faction in the group who wanted to get paid for the work. Following differences, Hibiscus separated from the group, and the final show before the group disbanded happened in 1972.

Hibiscus died of AIDS in 1982 — at that time, AIDS was still referred to as GRID which stood for Gay-Related Immuno-Deficiency. Perhaps the greatest legacy Hibiscus left behind was that of peace, love, and a free-spirited gypsy."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus_(entertainer)

https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/how-history-forgot-another-gay-hero-f3ceb06c15ec