David Hughes

2019-07-022025-08-10 by David Hughes

Stonewall, the Great Gay Migration and the Monumental Divide

Last Wednesday I watched a somewhat slimmed-down version of the new documentary Lavender Scare, based on the 2004 (!) book of the same name by David K. Johnson.¹ In the film Meryl Streep’s narration explains how the influx of homosexuals from rural to urban regions began in the 1930s, the start of the Great Gay Migration²:

Washington was a boom town. The government was creating thousands of new jobs to combat the Great Depression. Many of the young men and women who came for those jobs were homosexuals. They grabbed the chance to experience a new level of acceptance and friendship in a big city far from home.

I was reminded of a recent essay, “Forget Stonewall,” in the May/June edition of The Gay & Lesbian Review, by Yasmin Nair who reminds readers that the source of that influx still exists.

2019-06-262025-08-10 by David Hughes

Atoms for Peace

Nuclear Power Plant Cooling Tower photo image

I hadn’t intended to post more than one or two entries per month here, but stuff keeps coming over the transom. Bear with me. This is a first look at the embrace of nuclear by environmentalists and climate scientists.

2019-06-172025-08-10 by David Hughes

Survives of the Rich and Famous

Over the weekend my wife Andrea Carney told me that Greenland is experiencing another heatwave, not unlike in 2012. And as always the opinion of an expert, at an institution forty-five minutes away from me, brings the iconic island and its—our—challenge ever closer.

It reminds me of a topic I’ve intended to cover here.

Survivor: A Reality Competition

I once got burned, listening to and then watching a TED Talk by someone who claimed to be able to turn desert into meadow. So enthusiastic was I that I sent the talk to family and friends, only to be told by one friend, who had ranching experience, that the claim was preposterous.³ When I looked into it I found out my friend appeared to be right. So, caveat lector; I don’t think I could confirm or deny what follows as easily.

I came across an article online last October and made a note to write about it. Checking now, wouldn’t you know, the author did his own TED Talk in December. When reading the article, all I knew about Douglas Rushkoff was that he often is invited to speak at gatherings of—well, the conclave he discusses in the article was of “a hundred or so investment bankers.”⁴ I could have moved on at that point but his title and tagline were too intriguing: “Survival of the Richest. The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind.”

2019-06-082025-08-09 by David Hughes

Secrets & Lies & Biden’s Gut Reaction

This post involves a period of U.S. history that’s been dubbed The Lavender Scare. A new documentary film by that name opened yesterday in New York and Los Angeles. Alas, I’m in Denver…

2019-06-062025-08-10 by David Hughes

Morrissey and Milkshakes: Some Say (I Got Devil)

As I noted in my last post, I can’t ignore Morrissey’s recent displays of support of the relatively new political party For Britain. What follows is my personal approach to the ongoing controversy—mainly looking for clues in Morrissey’s own words via his 2013 memoir, Autobiography (London: Penguin Classics). But I begin by listening to his new album.

2019-05-252025-08-09 by David Hughes

Morrissey Morass

Given my commentary regarding Morrissey in my posts here I can’t ignore his support for what’s described as the “far-right political party” For Britain. I haven’t delved into this but am reminded of how filmmaker Derek Jarman, with whom Morrissey collaborated,⁵ sounded the alarum of Britain’s demise. And there’s other stuff. Again, I won’t ignore this.

Note

2019-05-192025-08-09 by David Hughes

Make mine a La Croix

Listening to songs by The Royal Family and the Poor while writing my last post, I found myself comparing them with those of Scott Stapleton, who has created and contributed to music in various guises: solo, Virgin Forest, Phosphorescent, New Duo.

Phosphorescent Forest

I first became enamored of Stapleton when viewing the chipped silver laquer of his nails as he played pedal steel on Phosphorescent’s “Song for Zula” at Glastonbury in 2014. It’s just about all we see of him apart from a denim shirt and ’stache. His picking is tasteful and ensemble (yes that’s an adjective) and contrasts with his keyboard work the year before on Phosphorescent’s “The Quotidian Beasts” at the SXSW music festival. There, he is flamboyant in a red T on the keys, practically conjuring the song’s lyrics as they are sung by Matthew Houck (aka Phosphorescent), with flourishes from his hands and arms.

2019-05-062025-08-09 by David Hughes

Vaneigem and Bubblegum

Last week, when I was uninspired whilst reviewing my running list of blog topics, YouTube operated as a sort of Oblique Strategies, the deck of cards initially developed by musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt independently in the late 1960s and early ’70s. (Eno included four of Schmidt’s prints in his 1977 album Before and After Science.) The cards’ suggestions and comments can act as disinterested—oblique—prods for artists when they encounter roadblocks during the creative process. And so YouTube essentially did the same for me, but not obliquely—rather, evidently, based on my past searches and pointing-and-clicking. “Recommended for you” last week was an obscure track from The Zulu Compilation (1984), an album I happen to have in my collection. Zulu Records was formed by Jayne Casey and Ambrose Reynolds (both of whom also worked in the band Pink Industry, which issued lovely minimalist and melancholic music in the ’80s). The compilation is perhaps most collectible for its inclusion of a pre-Trevor Horn version of “Love Has Got a Gun” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

I hadn’t listened to that compilation LP in years and had completely forgotten the track YouTube selected for me: “The Kremlin in Flame [sic]” by S.T.F.O.T.P.A. It sounds like something from the 1976 Art & Language-Red Crayola collaboration, Corrected Slogans (discussed in my post I Found That Essence Rare). After some searching I found the identity of the track’s creators in a 2010 interview by Arthur McDonald of The Royal Family and the Poor fame. Except that I’d never heard of the band. Or, rather, when coming across their LPs, two of which were issued by Factory Records, I’d passed them by.

2019-04-192025-08-08 by David Hughes

Took Me to Church

Seeing the nave and altar of Notre-Dame de Paris after its recent fire, and thinking of it open to the elements, I had an eery sense of, well, déjà vu. I had been there, literally, with my family on a 2002 trip to France in celebration of my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. But I had been in that ruin, virtually and earlier, twice more.

2019-04-132025-08-08 by David Hughes

Careless Whisper: Pansy Patois

In December while trying to verify the colloquialism in The Smiths’ song title “Reel Around the Fountain”⁶ I noticed that the band’s singer Morrissey had employed a now-abandoned slang in his solo single “Piccadilly Palare,” sung in the character of a former street hustler. It was the lead track on his album Bona Drag, but I hadn’t really collected Morrissey records and skipped that one because it was a compendium of singles. I had, however, collected much Smiths, but I was confused by the band’s many, many compilations and 12-inch vinyl product. In fact “Paint a Vulgar Picture,” from the final album, can be seen as a commentary on this excess, as it laments a pop star’s exploitation in death but also questions the star’s complicity in life.

Satiate the need
slip them into different sleeves!
Buy both, and be deceived