02 NOVEMBER 15 by MATT KAMEN
When independent film Credence launched its crowdfunding campaign last July, it made history as the first sci-fi project to specifically and overtly deal with LGBT themes. Now, 18 months on and with a West End premiere to its name, the short is finally available to purchase.
True to its community-driven origins, which saw a dedicated 607 backers chip in a total £23k — almost four times its initial goal of £6,000 — director Mike Buonaiuto has opted for an online release release with a miniscule price tag to get the film to as many viewers as possible. It’s currently available exclusively on Vimeo for £3.99 in high-def download and streaming formats.
Anyone who contributed more than £15 during the crowdfunding phase will get the film for free. The purchase price to new viewers is, Buonaiuto says “a minimal fee to cover outstanding costs for completing a production of this scale and detail”, which saw “countless people” contribute talent and production skills to see the project completed.
“Launching traditionally would not have made too much sense for Credence, which was completely built by people’s crowdfunded cash,” Buonaiuto tells WIRED. “So the team decided to give the film a completely independent launch — fuelled by the thousands of people who shared and contributed to the campaign over the last few years.”
The half-hour tale follows husbands John (Anthony Topham) and Scott (Alex Hammond) as they try to ensure safe passage for their daughter Ellie (Tia Kenny) away from a doomed Earth. Although it’s a rare portrayal of gay parents in cinema, it also stands — in this writer’s opinion — as an example of raw humanity and the extents people can go to for love. Buonaiuto is optimistic that both the characters’ portrayal, deliberately as far as possible from the standard imagery cinema often uses as shorthand for LGBT people, and Credence’s production model will have a positive impact.
“We hope this inspires other filmmakers to take a chance at breaking stereotypes in filmmaking, and in production models” he says. “Filmmakers have to get creative if they want to tell new stories that have never been told before. Credence was written, produced and funded completely differently to most short films, telling a very different story, and we wanted to launch to be very people-led and unique too.”
If digital downloads aren’t your movie-watching cup of tea, there are also plans for a more traditional release to follow. “We’ve had so much interest for Blu-ray and DVD releases, which is really encouraging,” Buonaiuto says. “This is something we’ll certainly consider next year, with a few partner options, and we’re also talking with film festivals for more screenings.”
On Being Black and Gay
Anthony Lorenzo
Writer, copywriter, pontificator.
A gift of childhood is the distinct lack of self-awareness. You’re alive, but you don’t contemplate ‘life’. One happy day becomes the next, until suddenly; your hitherto unknown differences are thrust upon you. Once a child, now a black child. You believed you were essentially the same as all the other kids in class, skin colour notwithstanding. The teacher picks on you, and Joel, and Emmanuel, for doing things you see everyone else doing. It takes a while to put the pieces together. Negative certainly, but the sense of kinship, the shared outrage at your bad treatment, is a silver lining. You’ll get past poor treatment, because you’re in it together.
Forward 10 years, and society not being content with one box, sees fit to squeeze that airless cardboard cube into another. You’re now aware you’re a gay black child. Joel and Emmanuel leave you for dust, having to fight against notions of their violent masculinity, or worse, fulfilling the prophecies. You’re on your own.
To dwell on What It’s Like to be at an intersection of various oppressive constructs is to dance with depression.
Predictably, racism is as rife here as it is anywhere else. We didn’t need a survey, when on Grindr and other such ‘hookup sites’ the bastardised ‘No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish’ signs are listed next to long walks in the park, good senses of humour, and proclivities towards extra-large penises.
Where do you turn? The outright rejection of you based on your race is tempered not by more understanding men, but by attraction to you based on your race, or more specifically, based on pre-conceived notions of what your race has to offer: Big cocks, thug-like masculinity, animalistic lust. When you’re strong, you ignore it. When you’re desperate, you capitulate.
You turn to your racial kin, but they’ve decided you have wantonly emasculated yourself – something colonialists did through slavery – and you are thus now on the side of ‘the enemy’. Too black to be humanised by white LGBT, too white to be embraced by the Black community [Gayness, according to some Black academics, is a White plot to kill the black male, and by corollary, all black people]. Ponder for a second, the conflicting message a black gay man such as myself contends with: In the gay community, you’re a hyper-masculine thug, in the black community, you’ve wilfully feminised yourself.
The black community is not more homophobic than any other community. Homophobia is a colonial throwback to a time when the bible was handed to the oppressed with one hand, and the books taken from them with the other. You see more homophobic laws in countries touched by colonialism because there was no time to ponder ancient and well-established gender or sexual fluidity, not when backs were breaking in the fields. Such ignorance is clung to, because where do you turn if you give up on all you were taught? Can old dogs learn new tricks? Is decolonisation of the mind even possible?
This all-encompassing barrel of contradictions is something those of us at such intersections must ponder regularly. It’s bad enough as a man, so to imagine how black lesbians feel, or black transpeople feel, is to dance ever strenuously in that quagmire of depression. Perhaps this is why it’s easier for mainstream media to ignore the issues altogether. Writing about whether Ukip should be allowed to pride is easier than contemplating the pain PoC face when we see extremist viewpoints being normalised and celebrated (for Pride is a celebration). It’s easier to pontificate on liberty and argue for free speech, than it is to discuss another of those freedoms, the Right to Assembly, and whether PoC feel safe enough to assemble when faced with people who do not want us and our families around.
I suppose we have to remember that beauty and strength reside in us. The rejection, the juggling of toxic balls, the hatred; those things are external. On a subconscious level, we know that hatred such as racism is borne from fear, jealousy, and ignorance. I used to be torn between feeling like I had to choose one or the other: be gay, or be black. To be one was to let the other side down. The knowledge that the two aren’t mutually exclusive was as shocking as it was simple. I am me. You are you. No-one can remove our sense of self without our permission. Don’t forget that, and celebrate your existence!
Here’s The Truth About Being A Gay Latino
JamesMichael Nichols
The Huffington Post
“Suddenly I have become ‘Papi?'”
Being queer is a radically different experience for every individual.
Everyone’s ways of navigating the world are shaped by a number of intersecting identities — particularly one’s ethnic background. In a new video from Flama/Univision, contributor Gabe Gonzalez deconstructs the nuances of identifying as both gay and Latino and the way this shapes his life in American culture.
The video is decidedly satirical, and tackles a number of issues about exotification among queer men, as well as sexual health in the Latino community. According to Gonzalez, these are issues that Latino gay men in America are confronted with quite frequently.
“I want to spark honest conversation,” Gonzalez told The Huffington Post. “In particular, I want people to talk about sex and gender performance in the Latino community because we have a hard time addressing these topics. Growing up, most of my friends knew I was gay, but I faced these linguistic and cultural barriers fitting in at school. At home I spoke Spanish comfortably, but worried about ‘butching it up’ and acting like a ‘boy’ so my parents wouldn’t think I was gay. I always felt like I was hiding a part of myself no matter where I went — and a big part of that was never feeling like I had someone to talk to about my sexuality.”
Check out the video to hear more from Gonzalez or head here to follow him on Twitter.
Everyone’s ways of navigating the world are shaped by a number of intersecting identities — particularly one’s ethnic background. In a new video from Flama/Univision, contributor Gabe Gonzalez deconstructs the nuances of identifying as both gay and Latino and the way this shapes his life in American culture.
The video is decidedly satirical, and tackles a number of issues about exotification among queer men, as well as sexual health in the Latino community. According to Gonzalez, these are issues that Latino gay men in America are confronted with quite frequently.
“I want to spark honest conversation,” Gonzalez told The Huffington Post. “In particular, I want people to talk about sex and gender performance in the Latino community because we have a hard time addressing these topics. Growing up, most of my friends knew I was gay, but I faced these linguistic and cultural barriers fitting in at school. At home I spoke Spanish comfortably, but worried about ‘butching it up’ and acting like a ‘boy’ so my parents wouldn’t think I was gay. I always felt like I was hiding a part of myself no matter where I went — and a big part of that was never feeling like I had someone to talk to about my sexuality.”
Check out the video to hear more from Gonzalez or head here to follow him on Twitter.
Gay blood donation: Thirty men turned down over sex ban
By Peter Coulter
The NIBTS has stopped 30 men from donating blood at their clinics since 2011 after they said they had sexual contact with other men
Thirty men have been stopped from donating blood at clinics in Northern Ireland because they have had sexual contact with another man, a BBC investigation has found.
Elsewhere in the UK, there is a one-year deferral period for men who have had sex with men (MSM) to donate.
Northern Ireland has an outright ban.
But a judge ruled that former health minister Edwin Poots did not have the power to retain that ban. His ruling will be appealed in court later.
In the Northern Ireland Appeal Court on Monday, the current on-off health minister, the Democratic Unionist Party’s (DUP) Simon Hamilton, is appealing the judgement, alongside Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
They shall be asking who is in charge of blood policy and whether or not this is a devolved issue. The appeal is expected to last four days.
Screened
Following a Freedom of Information request, BBC News NI has seen emails sent between Northern Ireland’s Department of Health and the Northern Ireland Blood Transfusion Service (NIBTS), which is responsible for the collection, testing and distribution of blood.
The NIBTS also said it had stopped 30 men from donating blood at their clinics since 2011 after they informed staff that they had sexual contact with other men.
The BBC asked the NIBTS how confident it would be that its blood is screened correctly and that it would be safe for MSM to donate after the one-year deferral period.
It said: “All blood donations are subjected to the testing regimes required by the Blood Safety and Quality Regulations 2005.
“As such, NIBTS is confident that all blood samples are screened correctly.”
Direction
The BBC has also seen instructions sent to the NIBTS from Dr Elizabeth Mitchell, the deputy chief medical officer, instructing the organisation how to respond if approached by the media about the ban remaining in place.
Dr Kieran Morris, the former chief executive of the NIBTS, replied showing some concern about the process and how he would answer questions from his own staff.
“As chief executive officer and accountable officer for the NIBTS special agency service, I require from the Department of Health a written direction, giving me a clear line as to how we manage and control the situation,” he said.
“There is no doubt in my mind that referring all matters to the Department of Health press office will not be sustainable for more than a few days.”
Image copyrightPAcemakerA BBC investigation earlier this year found the Department of Health does not have any medical evidence of its own to support a permanent ban on gay men donating blood.
The ban was put in place across the UK during the Aids crisis of the 1980s, but was lifted in England, Scotland and Wales in November 2011.
Irrational
New rules were introduced that allowed blood donations from men whose last sexual contact with another man was more than a year earlier.
But Northern Ireland did not follow suit.
A gay man, granted anonymity due to his perceived vulnerability, launched a judicial review challenge over then health minister Edwin Poots’s decision not to adopt the same policy on this side of the Irish Sea.
A judge ruled that Mr Poots’ decision was “irrational” and “infected with apparent bias”.
Mr Poots said he had kept the ban on the basis of ensuring public safety.
In April, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that a lifetime ban may be justified in member states if no effective detection techniques exist within the country.
Devolved
The ECJ said countries must establish if such donors were at high risk of acquiring infectious diseases like HIV.
Mr Hamilton said he would study the ruling.
A number of issues will be looked at in the Court of Appeal, including whether blood policy should be a devolved matter.
The appeal is expected to last for four days.
The NIBTS did not respond to the BBC to give an additional comment.
A Department of Health spokesman said: “It would not be appropriate at this stage to comment on matters that are before the courts.”
The UK’s First Gay Old People’s Home To Open Within Three Years
“There won’t be any net curtains.” The organisation behind plans to build a care facility for LGBT elderly people speaks exclusively to BuzzFeed News.
Patrick Strudwick
Within three years, Britain could have its first elderly care home for LGBT people.
Valueline / Getty Images
In plans shown exclusively to BuzzFeed News, an “unashamedly ambitious” project with an “iconic architectural design” for up to 150 residents is already in the development stages.
Tonic Housing, the organisation behind the venture, is currently seeking to secure a site, either in London or Brighton, to begin catering for the more-than-a-million LGBT people over the age of 50 in Britain.
Similar homes have already opened in Germany, Sweden, and the USA, and facilities in France and Spain are imminent, but there are as yet no residential provisions in the UK aimed at the LGBT market.
James Greenshields, one of the four directors of Tonic Housing, tells BuzzFeed News that the idea came to them as they began to consider their own futures.
“If you don’t have your own children, and if you have fractured family relationships, which is a possibility, then you would not have the support networks that many older people count on,” he says. “So I thought, ‘What would happen to me?’ And then, ‘Well, what is there in the UK?’ I was really taken aback that although there are organisations for older LGBT people, in terms of care homes there is nothing at all. It was a shock. The need and the demand is out there.”
Tonic Housing’s plans are “unashamedly ambitious”, Greenshields says, and the building itself, a specially designed new structure catering for LGBT residents inspired by the plans for the LGBT care home in Spain, is intended to be an “iconic, statement piece of architecture”.
Getty
“The Madrid one had a very large glass frontage,” Greenshields says, “and what’s appealing about that is that so often you can identify older people’s housing because it looks a bit dismal and frumpy. But the one in Madrid felt like they wanted the outside world to come in, and that’s important.” There will be no net curtains, he adds, unless residents want them in their own rooms.
As well as single or two-bedroom apartments (the latter providing space for for additional nursing care), there will be dining options, gardens, a fitness and business centre, and a range of entertainment spaces.
“We want there to be a sense of it being an LGBT community hub, regardless of age,” Greenshields says, “so it would be a space where people would come because there might be a film club, exhibitions, or activities that would appeal to the LGBT community.” Drag queens may also be on hand.
“In the Berlin one, they had a restaurant and bar with a cabaret corner and a stage, so we’d hope to engage residents while also making it of interest to the wider LGBT community, so people would come to see a good show.”
Publica, an urban design and public realm consultancy, has been working alongside Tonic Housing to develop their ideas. Publica / Via publica.co.uk
As a result, Greenshields says, people of different ages would visit, enabling residents to stay connected with younger people. To avoid the home being a “ghetto”, heterosexual older people would also be able to live there, but the balance would always be at least 51% LGBT.
Greenshields and his co-directors have visited some of the existing facilities for LGBT seniors around the world. But it was “the Berlin one”, Lebensort Vielfalt, which consists of 25 flats for LGBT people of all ages, that cemented their determination to turn their architectural and business plans into reality.
“There was one guy we spoke to called Peter Sibley, who was British,” says Greenshields. “His background was in the theatre; he was quite a flamboyant character, with painted nails, elaborate stories, and a stage name: Rita the Ruin.
“He was in his early seventies and with failing health. He also identified in himself a wider vulnerability, a fear of going into a mainstream home. The fear had driven him, I think, to some ill health because he was so nervous of what might happen. That was really revealing. He said if there was an equivalent in the UK he would come back. This was someone who was almost in exile.”
But most elderly LGBT people are not able to go to Berlin or Stockholm to live somewhere they feel comfortable. Many, instead, are in mainstream care homes where attitudes from not only other residents but staff can prove intolerable.
A recent study by Stonewall, the LGBT rights organisation, and YouGov found that a quarter of staff in health and social care have heard colleagues make offensive remarks about LGBT people in the last five years, while 10% (and in London, 22%) have heard colleagues say that gay people can be “cured”. Almost three-quarters of staff say they have received no training in how to respond to the specific needs of gay patients.
A study by Stonewall and YouGov from 2011 found that half of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people over the age of 55 would feel uncomfortable coming out in a mainstream care home, and 60% didn’t feel GPs, social services, and housing providers could meet their needs.
“When we’ve asked the management in many of the mainstream care homes we’ve visited how many LGBT residents they have, in several, the answer has come back, ‘None,’” says Greenshields. “Statistically, that’s just very, very unlikely, so what that indicates is people are going back in the closet. There’s something utterly tragic about individuals who may have been involved in winning greater freedoms then finding themselves having to hide who they are.”
Having secured initial funding for research and development, Greenshields hopes to have found by Christmas a joint venture partner, which could be an organisation that currently provides mainstream elderly care provision. Tonic Housing also plans to secure land for the project within nine months, and within a year to apply for planning permission for the building work to begin.
Publica / Via publica.co.uk
Design sketches for Britain’s first LGBT elderly care home.
Tonic Housing is focusing its hunt for a location principally in London and the Brighton area – it has identified a possible plot just outside Brighton but is “open” to other regions. Greenshields hopes the home will be the first of many, a blueprint for similar schemes around the country that also influences “current mainstream provision”.
Tonic Housing also plans to provide domiciliary care specifically for the older LGBT demographic. This would allow LGBT-trained care workers to come to people’s homes, rather than having to move into a residential facility.
But initially, Tonic Housing’s prime focus is the care home. Greenshields sums up the spirit of the project in a slogan, perhaps, for both the elderly and for LGBT people: “We’re not going to hide away in a corner.”
Brewers minor leaguer says he's gay; MLB lauds his courage
David Denson during an Instructional League game against the San Francisco Giants in October last year. Photograph: Four Seam Images/AP
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) — It had been a long day and night for David Denson, in so many ways.
His team had been swept in a doubleheader in the low-level Pioneer League, he didn’t have much luck hitting and he’d made a throwing error, too.
But it wasn’t a total loss.
As the 20-year-old Denson headed to the Helena Brewers’ clubhouse at Melaleuca Field late Saturday, a middle-aged fan of the opposing Idaho Falls Chukars approached and extended his hand.
“I’m proud of you,” the man said.
“Thank you,” Denson said.
Hours earlier, the Milwaukee Brewers minor leaguer had become the first openly gay active player on a team affiliated with Major League Baseball.
The news broke in the middle of the second game, after he reached out to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell told his team about Denson’s story after its 4-2 win Saturday night over Philadelphia at Miller Park.
“It’s a very courageous move on his part to be the first one, the first active player to make this announcement,” Milwaukee star outfielder Ryan Braun said Sunday. “Hopefully, everybody is at a point where we can just be supportive, not just understanding, but accepting and supportive of him and his situation.”
In June, pitcher Sean Conroy of the Sonoma Stompers of the independent Pacific Association revealed he is gay. The Pacific Association is not affiliated with MLB. Denson’s coming out follows similar disclosures of late across sports: Michael Sam (NFL draftee); Jason Collins (NBA); Derrick Gordon and Edward Sarafin (NCAA basketball, football) and Dale Scott (major league umpire).
Several hours before Denson’s team played at Idaho Falls on Sunday, the Helena club said the first baseman-outfielder didn’t want to do further interviews for a few days.
“It’s a lot to take in right now,” Denson told the Idaho Falls Post-Register late Saturday night. “I’m a ballplayer first. That’s what I’m focusing on.”
When Counsell played in the majors, his agent was the same person who now represents Denson.
“I know David a little bit from going to see him in the minor leagues,” Counsell said. “I always looked out for him a little bit when I went to see him and had conversations with him. I’m happy for him more than anything.”
Denson was picked by Milwaukee in the 15th round of the 2013 draft from West Covina, California. He has split his time this year, starting and struggling at Wisconsin of the Class A Midwest League before being sent back to the rookie level Helena team.
Denson is hitting a combined .227 with five home runs and 26 RBIs this season. He homered earlier this month in the Northwest/Pioneer League All-Star game.
The first baseman and outfielder was 0 for 2 with two walks in a 6-5 loss on Sunday in Idaho Falls. He received a few claps before his first plate appearance.
MLB said Sunday that it backs Denson’s decision “to share his personal story and wishes him continued success with his goal of becoming a major leaguer.”
The league added that is “very proud” of the Brewers organization and this disclosure represents a “tremendous example of baseball’s desire to give every player the opportunity to play at their very best.”
The Brewers lauded Denson as a “highly respected member” of their family and “a very courageous young man.”
General manager Doug Melvin said in the statement: “Our goal for David is to help develop him into a major league player, just as it is for any player in our system, and we will continue to support him in every way as he chases that dream.”
Said Counsell: “I just wish him the best of luck trying to become a major league baseball player.”
“It’s not easy becoming a major league baseball player,” he said. “It certainly hasn’t been easy dealing with everything he’s had to deal with up to this point. Hopefully, this kind of gets something for himself out of the way that can allow all his talents to shine through.”
Denson came out with the help of Billy Bean, MLB’s first Ambassador for Inclusion. Bean disclosed he was gay after his playing career in the majors.
“Talking with my teammates, they gave me the confidence I needed, coming out to them,” Denson told the Journal Sentinel. “They said, “You’re still our teammate. You’re still our brother. We kind of had an idea, but your sexuality has nothing to do with your ability. You’re still a ballplayer at the end of the day. We don’t treat you any different. We’ve got your back.’
“That was a giant relief for me,” he added. “I never wanted to feel like I was forcing it on them. It just happened. The outcome was amazing. It was nice to know my teammates see me for who I am, not my sexuality.”
Braun said he would root for Denson and welcome him as a teammate.
“Hopefully, he’s strong enough to deal with everything that comes with it,” he said. “Obviously, he’ll get plenty of support, but I’m sure there will be plenty of challenging situations for him as well.”
“In sports specifically, I do think we’re making progress. We’re certainly headed in the right direction. So, hopefully, that continues. Any time something like this occurs, I think it’s a step in the right direction,” he said.
___
AP freelance writer Joe Totoraitis in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
Russell Tovey becomes a patron of the Albert Kennedy Trust
He’s joining Sir Ian McKellen and Lord Waheed Ali
LGBT youth homelessness charity, the Albert Kennedy Trust, has announced that actor Russell Tovey will become a patron of the charity.
Russell will act as a public figurehead for the AKT, raising awareness for LGBT homeless youths and bring to light the issues they face every day.
Joining him as a patron are singer and actress Heather Peace and Paralympian Claire Harvey.
The charity is committed to providing safe homes, mentoring and support to young people who experience homelessness as a result of coming out. Many young LGBT youths, that the AKT support, have had to experience abuse and rejection.
Commenting on the new patrons, Sir Ian McKellen said: “Their commitment will encourage others to contribute in whatever way they can to the essential work that the Albert Kennedy Trust does, on behalf of LGBT young people who desperately need help and protection.”
Russell has been active supporter of the charity for a long time, running workshops for AKT’s Young People Ambassadors, and fundraising for the charity’s many events.
Russell expressed his support for the work AKT does within the community: “The AKT helps thousands of young people every year find their footing again. Everyone deserves to live safe and supported and this charity changes lives for the better, daily.
“I am honored to be associated with them and if just by being there, I can make any difference at all, then that difference is the most important thing.”
To find out more information about the Albert Kennedy Trust and to make a donation to support them, go to their website: akt.org.uk.
Words Ellen Johnson, @ellenfjohnson
Adam and the Angst
Photography by Jack Waterlot | Styling by Alison Brooks | Groomer: Abreea Saunders
For Adam Lambert, Hollywood isn’t just a metaphor for success or disillusionment. It’s a real place — his city for the last 15 years. It was his home before he ran away with all the accolades (if not the title) on American Idol, before he debuted an album at the top of the Billboard charts, before guest starring on Glee, and before fronting a stadium-rock band that ranks among the biggest of all time.
When it came time to write and record his new album, The Original High, he knew where his material would come from.
“I wanted the album to be a real snapshot of my life, my real life, my authentic life in L.A. over the past 15 years,” says Lambert. “I wanted it to sound like music I listen to when I go out or when I’m at the fucking gym or in Runyon Canyon or in my car.” He pauses. “It’s a bit of a melancholy album, you know? It’s talking about the ups and downs of life in Hollywood.”
If Lambert had been singing specifically about his time in the music industry, the ups would certainly include the debut of his sophomore album, Trespassing, at the number 1 spot on the Billboard 200 — a historic first for a gay artist; or being handpicked by Brian May and Roger Taylor to be heir apparent to Freddie Mercury as Queen’s frontman in a globe-trotting tour. The downs might include disappointingly little radio play for Trespassing’s singles, despite that auspicious launch. Or it might include the reaction from his then-label, RCA Records.
During the downtime following the release of Trespassing, Lambert was going out, going to dinners, and hanging out with friends. And his conversations with them had a new and different purpose. He began asking friends heavy stuff: What is it that you want? Why are you in this city? What are you looking for?
He says, “Most of the people that I asked weren’t able to answer it. ‘How the fuck are we supposed to know? I don’t know what I want.’ And I understood that. I was like, Exactly. What is it that we’re chasing? What is the driving force here? Is it happiness? Is it success? Is it sex? Is it love? Is it validation?”
SLIDESHOW | ADAM LAMBERT: ORIGINAL HIGH
Lambert went to RCA, armed with some new insights from those conversations and the experience of two albums, and said, “Let’s try something different.” But RCA had something different in mind as well: a 1980s cover album. Lambert thought about the proposal for a few weeks, and researched New Wave. “It didn’t feel like the right thing. So I said, ‘I don’t really want to do that,’ and they said, ‘Well, that’s what we want to do.’ And I said, ‘OK, I’m going to go.’ ”
Now a free agent for the first time, Lambert approached two of his former collaborators, the Swedish super-producers Max Martin and Shellback, who variously co-wrote and co-produced Britney Spears’s “…Baby One More Time,” Katy Perry’s “Roar,” Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger,” and Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” He brought a demo of a new song titled “The Original High,” about chasing the rush of first times.
“Shell got really excited,” says Lambert. “He immediately heard how he could turn it into an even stronger song.” Martin and Shellback talked with Lambert about where life had been taking him, and he says they told him, “What if we executive produce the whole thing, the whole album?”
“I breathed a sigh of relief because, at that point, I wasn’t sure what the fuck was happening next,” Lambert says. “These two guys are people I respect so much and I also really enjoy them as people. They answered my prayers.”
Lambert spent eight weeks in Stockholm, working on new songs and meeting Martin and Shellback’s collective of musicians, known as Wolf Cousins. “Habits” singer Tove Lo was a part of that group, and together they wrote and recorded the song “Rumors” in Stockholm. She says collaborating was “a lot of fun, and also easy because he can sing the shit out of anything! We kind of want to share similar emotions in our music, so we understand each other lyrically.”
Lambert calls Shellbeck the “mad scientist” of the studio. “He understands how to worm into people’s brains,” Lambert told a Stockholm audience in June. “He came up with this melody,” says Lambert, “and Tove Lo and I sat down and were like, ‘How do we make a story out of these cool sounds?’ ”
The album’s first single came from those earlier, ambivalent conversations about Los Angeles. “ ‘Ghost Town’ is kind of setting the scene,” Lambert says. “You moved to the big city, you have these ideas, you have these ambitions, and then what happens when you get to a fork in the road, or you hit a wall, and you’re like, Oh, it’s not what I thought it was going to be, or I’m not getting what I thought I wanted, and everything I thought I knew is being called into question? How does that make you feel?” He quotes his lyrics: “ ‘My heart is a ghost town.’ I feel empty. I feel unfulfilled.”
So the song wasn’t primarily about a breakup? “It rolls into that,” he says, laughing. “You can spend a lot of your energy in a place like Hollywood chasing ass.”
“Evil in the Night” — despite high-energy steel guitar, bombastic lyrics, and just a touch of Jamiroquai-esque funk — feels like a refinement of a signature Lambert sound.
“I chilled out a little bit. I don’t know if it’s just being in my 30s,” he says. “When you’re younger and you’ve got a skill, you tend to show off more — you feel like you have more to prove. Over the last few years, I’ve gotten into a place where I feel a little more confident in what I do, and I don’t feel I need to prove myself as far as ‘look at all the tricks I can do.’ Now music for me is more about wanting to prove that I can feel something.”
With a new album in full swing, Lambert had to publicly announce his parting of the ways with RCA in July 2013, simultaneously announcing that he’d signed on to appear on Glee’s fifth season. Warner Bros. contacted Lambert the next day.
“It was scary leaving the label,” says Lambert, but WB’s arrival made him feel confident. “It made me feel better about all of this, made me feel like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. That paired with Max and Shellback’s interest in doing the whole album — it was just like, This is all going to work. I know it’s going to work.”
Lambert grew up in San Diego, joining a children’s theater company at age 10. At 12, he floored the audience with a powerful operatic solo in Fiddler on the Roof.
After moving to Los Angeles, he worked in theater, including Ten Commandments: The Musical with Val Kilmer, and the first national touring company and L.A. production of Wicked. Though he’d been out since age 18, his newfound fame on the eighth season of American Idol brought the kind of scrutiny at age 27 for which an ensemble performer and Fiyero understudy couldn’t have prepared himself. His skillful reworking of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” and Tears for Fears’ “Mad World,” accompanying his darkly glamorous stage attire and affect (in contrast with his ultimately forgettable competition), made him an Idol audience favorite.
But before the season ended, Lambert appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly; the accompanying article speculated on his sexual orientation in light of his winking onstage sensibility and outré fashion. Pictures surfaced of him making out with a man (whom he later revealed was an ex-boyfriend) on a Burning Man social media site, Tribe.net. Lambert neither confirmed nor denied anything, to the frustration of many. Shortly after Idol wrapped in May 2009, and Lambert was awarded the runner-up spot, he came out in a cover story in Rolling Stone, but continued to field complaints for appearing in a Details photo shoot in which he suggestively grabbed a naked woman, and for subsequent tightly orchestrated media appearances. He essentially wasn’t being gay enough.
There’s no way to know exactly how much being out has contributed to or detracted from Lambert’s career, but it would be easy to understand why he may have felt he’d rather unfairly gone through the ringer. But he says he feels no envy for those musicians who’ve come out since he did, and may be having an easier go of it. Lambert praised gay singer Sam Smith to Attitude recently, saying, “I’m so happy for him, and I’m so happy his sexuality wasn’t a big thorn in his side.”
“It was just the way things went down,” Lambert says. “At that time, how many mainstream music artists did we have that were out? Elton John and George Michael — and his whole coming out was tabloid fun. There hadn’t been a blueprint to follow. That was the one thing I wished I’d had: a little more guidance. There were definitely moments of frustration and pressure, but there’s been a lot of goodwill as well, a lot of support from fans and media people, and it’s balanced out. I don’t have any sort of bitterness about it.”
Lambert has also forged a connection with Freddie Mercury, a queer artist of the past of whom he was a fan, and with whom he shares more than an octave-defying range. In 2009, May and Taylor performed Queen’s “We Are the Champions” live on the season finale of Idol with winner Kris Allen and runner-up Lambert in a vocal duet. Impressed with Lambert, they invited him to serve as their frontman at the 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards, on a brief European tour the next year, and on a world tour in 2014 and 2015.
“I’ve heard nothing but incredible stories about him,” Lambert says of Mercury. May and Taylor both told him that they’d have gotten on well, that he shared Mercury’s sense of humor. “From what I gathered, he seemed like a really sweet guy, actually — and a bit shy socially. I would have loved to meet him.” Lambert and his Queen bandmates have talked a lot about Mercury, including how out he was. “Technically, he wasn’t really closeted. I mean, he did interviews early on where they were like, ‘Are you gay?’ and he was like, ‘Oh, yeah, gay as a daffodil, darling,’” Lambert says and laughs. “But nobody really believed it because they didn’t want to. It was so taboo at that time that people didn’t actually think he would have been.”
In the promotion of his new album, fans have noticed Lambert’s new look, a touch easier on the velvet and mascara. “I just generally grew out of that old look and enjoyed new ones — it’s as simple as that,” he says. “There’s also a point where I was working really hard to achieve a look that I was really into, and it was really fun and I wanted to stand out and be crazy and be weird and make a statement with the stuff I was wearing. I look back on some of those red carpet looks, and I’m like, What were you thinking?”
“It’s like growing pains, but I was just trying to express myself. Looking back on it now, I can see that I was probably hiding behind it a little bit, sort of like the kid that goes to high school dressed like a goth because they’re actually really sensitive and they don’t want to interact with people and they’re a little scared.”
Though the studio work is meticulously planned, some other parts of Lambert’s life aren’t, and that’s OK. “Everybody thinks everything is so premeditated and thought-out,” he says. Some things are “just impulse…because I felt like it.”
But he says, “Six years is a while, and now I’m in a new space and time in my life, and I’m hoping that my music and my image all match where I’m at.
When it came time to write and record his new album, The Original High, he knew where his material would come from.
“I wanted the album to be a real snapshot of my life, my real life, my authentic life in L.A. over the past 15 years,” says Lambert. “I wanted it to sound like music I listen to when I go out or when I’m at the fucking gym or in Runyon Canyon or in my car.” He pauses. “It’s a bit of a melancholy album, you know? It’s talking about the ups and downs of life in Hollywood.”
If Lambert had been singing specifically about his time in the music industry, the ups would certainly include the debut of his sophomore album, Trespassing, at the number 1 spot on the Billboard 200 — a historic first for a gay artist; or being handpicked by Brian May and Roger Taylor to be heir apparent to Freddie Mercury as Queen’s frontman in a globe-trotting tour. The downs might include disappointingly little radio play for Trespassing’s singles, despite that auspicious launch. Or it might include the reaction from his then-label, RCA Records.
During the downtime following the release of Trespassing, Lambert was going out, going to dinners, and hanging out with friends. And his conversations with them had a new and different purpose. He began asking friends heavy stuff: What is it that you want? Why are you in this city? What are you looking for?
He says, “Most of the people that I asked weren’t able to answer it. ‘How the fuck are we supposed to know? I don’t know what I want.’ And I understood that. I was like, Exactly. What is it that we’re chasing? What is the driving force here? Is it happiness? Is it success? Is it sex? Is it love? Is it validation?”
SLIDESHOW | ADAM LAMBERT: ORIGINAL HIGH
Lambert went to RCA, armed with some new insights from those conversations and the experience of two albums, and said, “Let’s try something different.” But RCA had something different in mind as well: a 1980s cover album. Lambert thought about the proposal for a few weeks, and researched New Wave. “It didn’t feel like the right thing. So I said, ‘I don’t really want to do that,’ and they said, ‘Well, that’s what we want to do.’ And I said, ‘OK, I’m going to go.’ ”
Now a free agent for the first time, Lambert approached two of his former collaborators, the Swedish super-producers Max Martin and Shellback, who variously co-wrote and co-produced Britney Spears’s “…Baby One More Time,” Katy Perry’s “Roar,” Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger,” and Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” He brought a demo of a new song titled “The Original High,” about chasing the rush of first times.
“Shell got really excited,” says Lambert. “He immediately heard how he could turn it into an even stronger song.” Martin and Shellback talked with Lambert about where life had been taking him, and he says they told him, “What if we executive produce the whole thing, the whole album?”
“I breathed a sigh of relief because, at that point, I wasn’t sure what the fuck was happening next,” Lambert says. “These two guys are people I respect so much and I also really enjoy them as people. They answered my prayers.”
Lambert spent eight weeks in Stockholm, working on new songs and meeting Martin and Shellback’s collective of musicians, known as Wolf Cousins. “Habits” singer Tove Lo was a part of that group, and together they wrote and recorded the song “Rumors” in Stockholm. She says collaborating was “a lot of fun, and also easy because he can sing the shit out of anything! We kind of want to share similar emotions in our music, so we understand each other lyrically.”
Lambert calls Shellbeck the “mad scientist” of the studio. “He understands how to worm into people’s brains,” Lambert told a Stockholm audience in June. “He came up with this melody,” says Lambert, “and Tove Lo and I sat down and were like, ‘How do we make a story out of these cool sounds?’ ”
The album’s first single came from those earlier, ambivalent conversations about Los Angeles. “ ‘Ghost Town’ is kind of setting the scene,” Lambert says. “You moved to the big city, you have these ideas, you have these ambitions, and then what happens when you get to a fork in the road, or you hit a wall, and you’re like, Oh, it’s not what I thought it was going to be, or I’m not getting what I thought I wanted, and everything I thought I knew is being called into question? How does that make you feel?” He quotes his lyrics: “ ‘My heart is a ghost town.’ I feel empty. I feel unfulfilled.”
So the song wasn’t primarily about a breakup? “It rolls into that,” he says, laughing. “You can spend a lot of your energy in a place like Hollywood chasing ass.”
“Evil in the Night” — despite high-energy steel guitar, bombastic lyrics, and just a touch of Jamiroquai-esque funk — feels like a refinement of a signature Lambert sound.
“I chilled out a little bit. I don’t know if it’s just being in my 30s,” he says. “When you’re younger and you’ve got a skill, you tend to show off more — you feel like you have more to prove. Over the last few years, I’ve gotten into a place where I feel a little more confident in what I do, and I don’t feel I need to prove myself as far as ‘look at all the tricks I can do.’ Now music for me is more about wanting to prove that I can feel something.”
With a new album in full swing, Lambert had to publicly announce his parting of the ways with RCA in July 2013, simultaneously announcing that he’d signed on to appear on Glee’s fifth season. Warner Bros. contacted Lambert the next day.
“It was scary leaving the label,” says Lambert, but WB’s arrival made him feel confident. “It made me feel better about all of this, made me feel like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. That paired with Max and Shellback’s interest in doing the whole album — it was just like, This is all going to work. I know it’s going to work.”
Lambert grew up in San Diego, joining a children’s theater company at age 10. At 12, he floored the audience with a powerful operatic solo in Fiddler on the Roof.
After moving to Los Angeles, he worked in theater, including Ten Commandments: The Musical with Val Kilmer, and the first national touring company and L.A. production of Wicked. Though he’d been out since age 18, his newfound fame on the eighth season of American Idol brought the kind of scrutiny at age 27 for which an ensemble performer and Fiyero understudy couldn’t have prepared himself. His skillful reworking of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” and Tears for Fears’ “Mad World,” accompanying his darkly glamorous stage attire and affect (in contrast with his ultimately forgettable competition), made him an Idol audience favorite.
But before the season ended, Lambert appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly; the accompanying article speculated on his sexual orientation in light of his winking onstage sensibility and outré fashion. Pictures surfaced of him making out with a man (whom he later revealed was an ex-boyfriend) on a Burning Man social media site, Tribe.net. Lambert neither confirmed nor denied anything, to the frustration of many. Shortly after Idol wrapped in May 2009, and Lambert was awarded the runner-up spot, he came out in a cover story in Rolling Stone, but continued to field complaints for appearing in a Details photo shoot in which he suggestively grabbed a naked woman, and for subsequent tightly orchestrated media appearances. He essentially wasn’t being gay enough.
There’s no way to know exactly how much being out has contributed to or detracted from Lambert’s career, but it would be easy to understand why he may have felt he’d rather unfairly gone through the ringer. But he says he feels no envy for those musicians who’ve come out since he did, and may be having an easier go of it. Lambert praised gay singer Sam Smith to Attitude recently, saying, “I’m so happy for him, and I’m so happy his sexuality wasn’t a big thorn in his side.”
“It was just the way things went down,” Lambert says. “At that time, how many mainstream music artists did we have that were out? Elton John and George Michael — and his whole coming out was tabloid fun. There hadn’t been a blueprint to follow. That was the one thing I wished I’d had: a little more guidance. There were definitely moments of frustration and pressure, but there’s been a lot of goodwill as well, a lot of support from fans and media people, and it’s balanced out. I don’t have any sort of bitterness about it.”
Lambert has also forged a connection with Freddie Mercury, a queer artist of the past of whom he was a fan, and with whom he shares more than an octave-defying range. In 2009, May and Taylor performed Queen’s “We Are the Champions” live on the season finale of Idol with winner Kris Allen and runner-up Lambert in a vocal duet. Impressed with Lambert, they invited him to serve as their frontman at the 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards, on a brief European tour the next year, and on a world tour in 2014 and 2015.
“I’ve heard nothing but incredible stories about him,” Lambert says of Mercury. May and Taylor both told him that they’d have gotten on well, that he shared Mercury’s sense of humor. “From what I gathered, he seemed like a really sweet guy, actually — and a bit shy socially. I would have loved to meet him.” Lambert and his Queen bandmates have talked a lot about Mercury, including how out he was. “Technically, he wasn’t really closeted. I mean, he did interviews early on where they were like, ‘Are you gay?’ and he was like, ‘Oh, yeah, gay as a daffodil, darling,’” Lambert says and laughs. “But nobody really believed it because they didn’t want to. It was so taboo at that time that people didn’t actually think he would have been.”
In the promotion of his new album, fans have noticed Lambert’s new look, a touch easier on the velvet and mascara. “I just generally grew out of that old look and enjoyed new ones — it’s as simple as that,” he says. “There’s also a point where I was working really hard to achieve a look that I was really into, and it was really fun and I wanted to stand out and be crazy and be weird and make a statement with the stuff I was wearing. I look back on some of those red carpet looks, and I’m like, What were you thinking?”
“It’s like growing pains, but I was just trying to express myself. Looking back on it now, I can see that I was probably hiding behind it a little bit, sort of like the kid that goes to high school dressed like a goth because they’re actually really sensitive and they don’t want to interact with people and they’re a little scared.”
Though the studio work is meticulously planned, some other parts of Lambert’s life aren’t, and that’s OK. “Everybody thinks everything is so premeditated and thought-out,” he says. Some things are “just impulse…because I felt like it.”
But he says, “Six years is a while, and now I’m in a new space and time in my life, and I’m hoping that my music and my image all match where I’m at.
3 years in prison just for being gay
|
In 3 days, two Moroccan men could get 3-year jail terms – just for being gay.
Join a global outcry to free Lahcen and Mohsine.
UK Poll Shows Alarming Racism in Gay Community
Editorial: Are you a racist, have you allowed racism to go unchallenged when you have heard it being said? We would be the first to complain (hopefully) if we overheard homophobia being discussed as acceptable. We mustn’t loose sight of the fact that we are all supposed to be ‘equal’ and that we must treat everyone as equal!
Tuesday Jun 9, 2015
(Source:Noah Berger/AP)
As much as the global LGBT community prides itself on inclusiveness and tolerance, results from a new poll show that while we like to see ourselves as wrapped in a rainbow, color is still an issue with many gay men.
A recent survey taken by the U.K.-based FS magazine which polled over 850 white, black, Asian, South Asian, Arab and mixed race gay men, shows an alarming amount of racial and sexual stereotyping among gay males. Results of the survey showed that more than two-thirds of non-whites surveyed experienced racism from within the LGBT community in the U.K. with 80% of blacks and 79% of Asians reporting the highest incidences of racism. As a minority group, hispanics reported the lowest incidences of racism with 35%.
An interactive poll on the FS website shows 87% of readers agree that the gay community is in someway racist.
The report also points to a disturbing trend where pick-up apps like Grindr were a prime vehicle for sexual racism.
“I’ve been blocked on apps because I am South East Asian,” says Ari, 39 from London, “or thought of as Muslim, even though I am not a Muslim. I have had abuse sent through messages, saying ‘go back home Paki’ or a question asking if Allah is happy I am on here.”
The FS poll is a follow-up to a previous study conducted by the publication where 400 white men were polled about sexual stereotypes.
When asked about stereotypes within ethnic groups, the respondents said:
• Black men have large cocks: 78% of white gay men in our survey believe this to be true.
• Asian men have smaller than average cocks: 75% believe this to be true.
• Latin men are crazy, wild and passionate: 70% of white gay men believe this to be true.
• Mixed race men are more likely to be accepted by white men: 67% believe this to be true.
• Black men are more active, strong and dominant in the bedroom: 60% of white gay men believe this to be true.
• Asian men are mostly submissive bottoms: 56% believe this to be true.
• Arab men aren’t gay if they’re top only: 35% thought this to be true.
• Latin men are mostly rent boys or in it for a passport: 10% of white gay men believe this is true.
While the FS polls only surveyed gay men in the U.K., the results are mirrored across the ocean in the United States where, according to Wikipedia , many people experience racism in the dominant LGBT community where racial stereotypes merge with gender stereotypes, such that Asian-American LGBTs are viewed as more passive and feminine, while African-American LGBTs are viewed as more masculine and aggressive.
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