HIGH GEAR, MARCH, 1977

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formative, and of interest to our gay members?" The answer was "Yes" and so I presented an "Evening of Gay Sounds" recordings that have been commercially made and released and (at one time or another) available in most large URBAN record stores. But don't rush to your local record emporium for the albums that I played. This is not the URBAN area where records like these can be found.

I started off the program with some routines that were recorded live at East and West Coast Gay nightspots by T.C. Jones and Charles Pierce two well known (to some) gay impersonators (which doesn't mean that they impersonate gays). These two talents have gained a certain measure of fame with the New York and California gay cafe society crowds of the 50s and 60s and were also "accepted" by the "in" crowds of all sexual persuasions. As can be deduced by this description, their material ranged from impressions of Tallulah and Bette (Davis not Midler), Hepburn and West, and Noel and Gertie, with references to the gay-oriented Broadway shows and tunes popular in the time of these recordings mostly 50s and 60s.

After 5 or so minutes of their "piss-elegant" chatter a cut from a 1973 album released by A & M Records entitled "God Save The Queen" which, from the blurbs on the album cover, was sanctioned and praised by some gay ministers and psychologists and writers of gay repute. The comedy sketches on this album poke fun at gay marriages, "fairy" tales, and gay relationships in general and only the

very sensitive gays would find them offensive. The Dignity group found the humor humorous and no one there criticized the satire critical as some of it was for which I'm grateful. (Why do some of our gay brothers and sisters take exception to jokes satirizing the gay life style? Let's face it. We provide enough humorous material by our words and actions to make any comedy writer jump with glee.)

From this I alternated between songs by Jim Bailey (and everybody who has ever watched the Carol Burnett, Dean Martin and Johnny Carson TV shows knows who he is) and his devastating impressions of Streisand, Garland and Peggy Lee (albums available on United Artists Records) to rock songs like "Everybody Seems To Be Gay in L.A." to soft rock ballads by Steven Grossman to some selections from a decumentary album on Homosexuality released by Capitol Records in the 1960s.

Unplayed but available at around 10 p.m. were the original cast recordings of "Let my people come" (an off-broadway smash that celebrated the "freedom" of the sexes), "Oh Calcutta", "Joan" (produced by the Dobama Theatre a year or so ago), and a dramatic adapatation of Oscar Wilde's "Picture of Dorian Gray". Also left unplayed was a segment of the "National Lampoon Radio Hour" originally which featured a satire interview with supposedly gay stars like Newman, Eastwood, Bronson by such "supposedly" straight stars as Maharis, Hudson, Lynde, etc.

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