Cream Abdul Babar "Temple of Doom"

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Cream Abdul Babar
The Backwater of Masculine Ethics
CD
(Albert Ayler's Jukebox Records/What's Wrong with Your Eye? Records, 1997)

Southern Voice was the main LGBT paper in the Atlanta area when I moved here. Music coverage was usually relegated to the latest from Madonna, or dance music, or lesbians with acoustic guitars. Nothing against any of those things, but none of them are all that interesting to me, for the most part. I happened to read an article right around the turn of the century, however, about a band from Florida with an openly gay member, noisician Tradd Sanderson, called Cream Abdul Babar. They were playing at The Echo Lounge that week (hence the article), so I decided to give them a shot, music as-yet unheard. As it turned out, they were a juggernaut of pretty monstrous proportions: heavy, noisy, metallic, and punk as <expletive deleted>. They were not, however, a ska punk band. I say this because I have seen them referred to as such on at least one occasion. See, there's a guy who plays trombone, and they have a silly pun for a name, so they must be ska punk, right?

Gahhhhhh . . .

Today's song is from their first full-length album, The Backwater of Masculine Ethics. It's been out of print for many years, but was reissued (less one track) as the first disc of the collection Excavation: 1993-1998, released by Public Guilt in 2004. The missing track was a cover of John Cage's 4:33, minus about 15 seconds and renamed 22:07.

Sadly, they split up several years ago. The last time I saw them was just shy of five years ago, when they played at The Masquerade with one of my favorite local combos, now also sadly disbanded, Light Pupil Dilate.

The Trees Community "I Will Not Leave You Comfortless"

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The Trees Community
The Christ Tree
CD boxset
(Dark Holler • Hand/Eye, 2007)

When I read the booklet that came with the quadruple disc, deluxe reissue of the 1975 album The Christ Tree by The Trees Community, something jumped out at me immediately. The last paragraph of the mini-bio of group founder and leader William Shipen Lebzelter states

. . . he contracted an incurable disease. He was gone so quickly that no one knew quite what had happened. He was just 44 years old when the Lord took him from us.

The time frame for his death would've been the 1980s, and incurable disease sounded suspiciously to me like a euphemism for AIDS. Hmmm . . .

Late one night a few months ago, I finally decided to Google Shipen to see if my suspicions were well founded. I found group member Katherine Shishonee Krupa's blog, Seven Story Bus: The Story of the Trees Community, which covers the history of the group. Though she wrote nothing about his death, Shishonee did write a fair amount about Shipen and fellow founding member Philip Ariel Dross's homosexuality and some of the challenges it presented both to the group and to outsiders.

As I read random blog entries that night, I started crying. The homosexuality of some group members was so clearly important in their history, yet the booklet completely straightwashed them. About Ariel's leaving the group and falling in love with the man with whom he spent the rest of his life (to the best of my knowledge), the booklet simply says, After four years with the group, he moved back to his home state of Florida where he found the love of his life.

All that aside, the album is absolutely wonderful, no matter one's religious affiliation or lack thereof. The Trees Community's approach to music making was a unique take on folk music with what we would today call world music instrumentation. There are gorgeous vocals, mellifluous melodies, and striking dashes of avant garde experimentalism. Today's song is from their 1973 cassette album A Portrait of Jesus Christ in Music, which takes up most of disc two of the box set. The piece was re-recorded for The Christ Tree, but in a radically different version.

Victory Rose "Fljúgðu"

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Victory Rose
Smekkleysa í hálfa öld
compilation CD
(Smekkleysa, 1994)

What, you may ask, is a Victory Rose? Well, in this case it's a person and a band and not a horticultural entity. Victory Rose, you see, is English for Sigur Rós, and was the band Sigur Rós's original name. So who's the person? That would be Sigur Rós openly gay vocalist/guitarist Jón Þór Birgisson's (aka Jónsi) newborn (at the time) baby sister Sigurrós.

:-)

Fljúgðu was their very first release, wayyy back in 1994, and the only thing released under the name Victory Rose. It was the penultimate track on the compilation CD Smekkleysa í hálfa öld, released by the label Smekkleysa in their homeland of Iceland. Their song is followed by a jazzyish lil' number by international superstar Björk. The other 15 tracks are by folks I know absolutely nothing about other than little has made an impression on me.

Funny story: The first time I saw Sigur Rós, I knew very little about them other than I loved the CD that I'd recently bought of their second album, Ágætis byrjun. So, the lights dimmed and they came out on stage and began to play. It was clear they were all guys (not counting their backing string quartet Amiina), so I figured the female vocalist would make a dramatic entrance when it was time for the vocals to kick in. Uhhhhh . . . nope! I was stunned when Jónsi stepped up to the mic and that gorgeous voice came spilling out!

OK, maybe not that funny of a story. So sue me.

Limp Wrist "I Love Hardcore Boys, I Love Boys Hardcore"

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Limp Wrist
Thee Official Limp Wrist Discography
CD
(Arashikage Records/Cheap Art Records/Golden Shower Records/Lengua Armada, 2005)

Biki asked for some punk the other day, so here some is.

^_^

I was late to the party on Limp Wrist. I didn't hear about them 'til they'd already been split up for a few years, though they're apparently now back together. I'd seen them mentioned a few times as a slammin' queercore band when I happened across their CD Thee Official Limp Wrist Discography in a bargain bin. Naturally, I snapped it up for home listening.

Now, I'd heard a few queercore bands and most of what I'd heard was on the pop-punk side, like Pansy Division, whom I featured during last year's LGBT History Month. Limp Wrist, on the other hand, sounded like they came raging straight right outta the early 80s: raw, angry, fast as hell, and loud as a very, very bad word.

Listening to this CD makes me all the more bummed I missed out on them back then. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll hit the road to my town one day. Fingers crossed!

Meat "Hypothermia"

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Meat
live on WREK-FM, November 8, 1994
radio session
(unreleased, 1994)

Yea! It's October again! Like last year, the jukebox has chosen to celebrate LGBT History Month!

This year, I've decided to be an egotistical maniac and start the month off with myself. It's my blog, and I can do what I want!

During my youth, I was a Boy Scout from 1974 through 1981. Back then, I'd not accepted my gayness, despite being well aware of it since around the time I became a Scout (coincidence, not result!). Over the years, I held just about every youth leadership position possible with two different troops (we moved when I was 15), including Senior Patrol Leader. I was inducted into the Order of the Arrow and achieved the highest rank in Scouting, Eagle. My Eagle pin is proudly on display in our curio cabinet, in fact. The current anti-gay policies of the BSA, unfortunately, completely disgust me. The notion that I am inherently immoral simply because of my sexual orientation is repugnant.

Why am I telling you this?

Well . . . page 381 of my 1979 printing (not sure what happened to my first handbook) of The Official Boy Scout Handbook covers what to do for emergency treatment for hypothermia:

HYPOTHERMIA. When you hear of someone having died from exposure or frozen to death, the killer may actually have been hypothermia—from hypo, low, and thermia, state of heat. It is caused by the body losing more heat than it generates. It occurs when a person is not clothed warmly enough for the air around him. Such a person is further endangered if he is exhausted, wet, and exposed to a strong wind as when caught in a rainstorm. Under such conditions the air doesn't have to be below freezing—a moderate air temperature of 40-50° may result in death.
Hypothermia starts with the patient feeling chilly, tired, irritable. If he is not helped at this stage, he will begin to shiver uncontrollably. Soon his shivering becomes violent. He may act irrationally. He may stumble and fall. If the shivering then stops, he is close to death.
First Aid. If you are on a hike or backpacking trip in severe weather and realize that someone in the party shows early symptoms of hypothermia, stop right then and there. Put up a shelter. Strip the patient gently and get him into a dry sleeping bag. A cold sleeping bag won't help much: a rescuer should also strip and get into the sleeping bag to use his warm body to warm the victim's cold body. When the victim begins to recover, give him a hot drink with plenty of sugar and quick-energy candy. Get him under a doctor's care.
NOTE: The body temperature of a swimmer drops steadily in water cooler than himself. The shivering that results is the onset of hypothermia. Get out of the water. Cover up. Exercise to get warm.

When I read that as a kid, my first thought was saving a particular boy I knew back then. Hey, I was in my mid-teens and my hormones were in high gear, OK? He was amazing, and I had a huge crush on him, but, being in the closet so deep that Mr. Tumnus was force-feeding me Turkish Delight, there was nothing I could do about it except obsess.

When I played guitar in a band in 1993/94, I decided to memorialize it in song. I'm not a great lyricist, so I told the (straight) singer what I wanted the song to be about and he took the reins. The music, however, is 100% mine. That's even me on crummy lead guitar. I'm no great shakes as a guitarist, but I relished being the only one in the band and fought attempts to add a second (I was the rhythm guitarist in my previous band, The Love Killers). I'm quite proud of the music I wrote back then (I wrote roughly 70% of the music for Meat), but this radio tape is about all I have left to document Meat. We recorded a four-song demo with our first drummer (our second is on this recording), but I'm not sure where my copy is. Plus, it was recorded by a rather clueless scam artist individual, and it sounded pretty lousy.

The image at the top of the post is the press sheet thing I wrote up to give folks with our aforementioned demo.