Donna Summer: Our Love

There's been some strange comfort in how much coverage there's been about Donna Summer and her death since yesterday.
And, for someone who was rarely taken seriously by critics in her 70s heyday, much of it pleasingly placing her as a pivotal figure in popular music.
(Though I've lost count of how many tributes I've heard from Paul Gambaccini...)
Just about every story and obit said she was very popular with The Gays, and then mentioned the controversy over that alleged "Aids is God's punishment" comment.
I think it's sad how this myth, and it is a myth, became such a big part of her story - it would look odd if an obituary didn't mention it - and despite her endless refutations and a high profile libel case.
The two best articles I've read by twelve inches or more both came from The Guardian.
Here's a beautiful piece by Alex Needham on her game-changing records and the power of her music; "charged with feelings of liberation, a pre-Aids world of pansexual freedom and adventure... her best records still pulsate with that spirit, the lifeforce of pop itself."
And here's Paul Flynn on Donna Summer as the "the accidental gay icon".
(I read it soon after it went online and many of the readers' comments brought up that Aids comment, often assuming it was true. Grrr...).
I know what Paul means, and agree - though I don't think it was completely accidental.
Interviewing Giorgio Moroder some years ago he told me during the Casablanca days rather a lot of the people they worked with were gay.
Casablanca's rarely given credit as a gay-friendly and pioneering gay-savvy label.
Giorgio told me he was too naive to notice they'd queered up the sleeve of his Nights In White Satin album, by adding a K to the title, and getting Giorgio shot for the cover photo in what looks like a gay sauna surrounded by some... knights in white satin.
KISS may have built Casablanca's city on Rock 'n' Roll, but their manager, Bill Aucoin, was gay - and I bet it was him who told those four nice Jewish boys to turn up the camp to 11.
As for Casablanca's other really big act, Village People, what need I say?
Though yes, they were often coded - and their bizarro film, Can't Stop The Music (often blamed for bankrupting the label) had them playing themselves laughably straight.
Casablanca also put out two of Disco's boldest singles, The Ritchie Family's Cruising The Streets and Skatt Brothers' Walk The Night.
And then there was Patrick Juvet and Paul Jabara - the latter wrote No More Tears (Enough Is Enough and It's Raining Men - and they signed Dusty and ruddy Cher!
But anyway I'm wibbling away.
As I said, these are two great pieces.
Donna Summer deserved writing about her as good as these.

Update: There's more! Jon Savage and Ewan Pearson on How I Feel Love Changed Pop. Wow.

Equity: The Tangled Webs We Weave

'When Antony Sher started acting with the pioneering Gay Sweatshop theatre company in the 70s, he managed to stay in the closet. "I look back and blush," he said. "We all agreed to do it on the basis that it was stated that not all the performers were gay so you didn't know who was and who wasn't.
"Then, in the mid-80s, when I did the British premiere of Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy I still wasn't out. I was doing press interviews about this great gay play that I felt so strongly about for a specific reason and I wasn't saying it – it was an astonishing waste of energy. But that's the kind of tangle you get into if you're not out."

Alex Needham talks to Antony Sher in The Guardian on the start of a new campaign by Equity - I Won't Pretend - to support actors who come out. 
This has evolved out of a survey by the actors' union that suggested many are still closeted in their professional lives.
That so few leading actors are out seems far more farcical and tragic than the media obsession with gay footballers. 
The article concludes with a suitably Wildean paradox from Sher;
"When you see any great performer, you sort of see into that person's soul. Your sexuality is profoundly a part of who you are. I think it's very difficult to really reveal yourself in that exquisite way if you're trying to hide part of yourself."

Update: Sher and the boyfriend Greg Doran do How We Met in The Independent On Sunday.
Think I'll have to add Mr Sher to my little list of the weekend broadsheets' Favourite Gays.

Sagging: Low Culture

"The responses to sagging say something about the different ways in which we regard male and female bodies. When women wear their jeans so low it shows off their knickers, it's undoubtedly regarded (if not intended) as sexually alluring. When teenage boys do it, it's a moral panic. Yet there's no sexual intent in sagging. We're a long way from Robert Plant and Mick Jagger wearing trousers so tight you could have discerned their religion from 10 rows back. Gay men, by-and-large, have shunned the saggy-jeaned look. In fact, pointing out that in displaying your bottom you might be making it an object of desire might be one thing that would get teenage boys to hitch their strides up."

Alex Needham, in The Guardian.
Fagburn's loving the use of the word "bottom".

• On Guardian Music today Alex Macpherson asks; 'Is Hip-Hop Homophobia At A Tipping Point?'
"Tyler, the Creator and Lil B are the latest rappers to turn the spotlight on homophobia in hip-hop, but the attention their lyrics attracts suggests attitudes are slowly changing"
Hip Hop and homophobia, like sport and homophobia, is a subject of endless fascination to the straight press, but most articles just repeat the same pious platitudes - this one makes some interesting and original points.