For Queer Mice
by BROWWWSER
Band Queers
ith only a few
exceptions like Melissa Etheridge, Elton John, RuPaul, Indigo
Girls, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure and a few others, most queer singers and
groups have been decidedly underground and certainly not played on the radio. So
what’s a LGBT band supposed to do to get exposure? Nowadays you find a friend or
groupie that knows a little HTML, and suddenly you’re on the web pushing your
product. With the Internet, we have an incredible tool to market ourselves. So who needs
radio? Grab a copy of RealAudio at www.realaudio.com and tune into the net for queer
music.
To start our audio tour,
let’s visit some sites that link to or list a lot more queer music performers then I
can in this column. Dutchboy Jay McLaren at www.euronet.nl/users/mclaren/outloud.html
has an extensive encyclopedia of gay and lesbian recordings called OutLoud. His fifteen-year research covers the last 70 years of
queer music. The Gay Discography (no pun intended) by
Hans is unfinished at www2.dk-online.dk/users/christ_h/discography.html,
but there’s still a ton to go through, from Margie Adam to Zrazy. For
reviews of queercore bands visit Larry-bob at www-02.io.com/~larrybob/musicexp2.html
for his Queer Music Explosion, from Arthur Loves
Plastic to The Zookeeper’s Wife. Larry-bob is also the ranting creator of Holy
Titclamps, the online home of this fiesty queer zine. For queer music, these are great
warm-up sites.
Lesbian and gay singers, songwriters, and artists can now band together to share
resources like never before at Pride Musicians.
Network over to www.pridemusicians.com for
bulletin boards where musicians and composers sell themselves, Java chat rooms to talk
about queer music, and a message forum too.
For my lesbian listeners, here
are a couple of Sapphic sites to get you started. Listen to some Sweet
Music at the beautiful (but graphic-intensive) Dyke’s World site at dykesworld.de/sweetmusic.html by Indina
Beuche. Women-loving women abound at these links to fan pages for Jamie Anderson to
Wild Mango and other Sisters on Stage. There’s no doubt about it: Lavender Jane Loves Women’s Music at www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Village/1410/.
LJ’s well-designed site lists discographies from Avotcja to the Wyrd
Sisters and a whole lot more. While this next site isn’t strictly homo-exclusive,
it’s too hip not to mention. Girls, go to www.gogirlsmusic.com
because, as they say, "cuz chicks rock!" You’ll love reading the GoGirls
Stories, the bulletin board, and the rate-a-band survey at GoGirls.com.
You go, girls!
With quite a few up-and-coming lesbian artists on the web, here are a few of my
favorites (alas, Two Nice Girls broke up years ago or they’d be here). Laura Bowly at the spirited bowly.com
will take your breath away with her sultry voice on her latest album, "Lovin’
By The Rules". Listen to sound clips, read the rave reviews, order online, sign
up for the Women-on-the-Road e-mail list, and browse her exhaustive link list. Opera will
never be the same after the Derivative Duo finish with
it! Listen to clips from their latest album, "Mutiny at the Matinee",
full of classical parodies like "Pasta Diva" and "The Cat Who Loved Too
Much" at www.nwlink.com/~rainier/duo.html.
Not your typical riot-grrrls! Then the fantastic duo of Cris
Williamson and Tret Fure have their own homepage at www.cris-tret.com, where you can find out about their
latest CD, "Between the Covers", see when they’ll be performing near
you, find out more about C&T, and much more. Finally see and hear what this thing
called Zrazy is at www.iol.ie/~zrazy/
with sound clips from their CD "Permanent Happiness". Zrazy is
really hard to categorize, so you’ll have to listen for yourself.
For the guys, start at artist Dave Hall’s site at
the Guiseppe Joe record label page. At www.giuseppejoe.com, listen to sound clips from his
debut album "Playin’ the Man" which is receiving rave reviews from
Out and Genre magazines. His mix of rock ‘n’ roll, soul, and folk will win you
over. The a cappella group Men Out Loud has had
moderate success with their album, "Sweet Enuf 2 Eat" and will be
releasing their latest CD in mid-1998. Read reviews and interviews, listen to samples, and
buy it online if you like it at home.earthlink.net/~menoutloud/.
Artist David Mahr has an exceptionally sharp website
at www.davidmahrmusic.com to promote his new
CD "No Drama!" If you like Erasure, you’ll like the synthpop
of David Mahr. Listen to clips and review them yourself on the bulletin board.
These artists are just a small sample of the queer talent available online.
Now for something completely different. Point your browsers to www.galachoruses.org where the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses list upcoming festivals
and conferences, inform you about membership and mailing list info, and point you towards
the gay and lesbian choruses in your area (including our two fantastic St. Louis choruses,
CHARIS and the Gateway Men’s Chorus, who
now has their own site at www.gatewaycity.com/gmc/).
Next the members of the Lesbian & Gay Bands of America
toot their own horns at www.rdrop.com/~joe/lgba.html.
These queer concert and marching bands around the country play at Pride Parades and other
community events (and give a new meaning to band queer!). They show just how diverse and
talented our community really is.
To show just how strong the queer music scene is, see who the nominees and winners of
the 1998 Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards were at
www.glama.com. I won’t spoil it for you, so go see
for yourself. There are a lot of other queer artists on the web that I don’t have the
space to go into here. And there’s always someone new to discover. Why not discover
some on your own?
