http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids....

couldn't resist and oddly (or . . . not?), the guy in it who says "you want some of this?" is pretty close to how people think I look / how I'm viewed by others; therefore it confirms how much I must confuse other Gay Men, looking for smooth and cool guys, but evidently I'm what you get.

Raising your expectations, am I? Raised expectations are a bitch, but what am I to do? I want to get people to hear this song.

I've had little exposure before this year to Chris Gates. It's not like he put in an add request; he just was someone with a main profile pic I saw in some other list of friends. Then I started listening....

To listen to "Being The Man Of My Dreams" go to his myspace profile www.myspace.com/bigchrisgates ... a widget set to random shuffle -- NOT the myspace standard music player -- will start playing the 36 songs loaded onto the widget automatically. Scroll down to track 14 and click for "Being..." to play.

It's part of a great set of "acoustic demo"s played just by strumming a good acoustic guitar, with Gates singing in a Texas croak. Damn near impossibly, the man croaks beautifully, especially on the best of the demo songs "The Same," "Matches and Gasoline," and "Being The Man of My Dreams."

You can imagine my response to seeing that song title... when I stumbled on Chris, somehow, because I was at some band's profile (forget which) that had The Big Boys as one of their top friends, and Big Boys was one of those bands that Pedro Serrano played, so I was curious/had never before followed up and listened to them myself, and figured This Big Chris Gates looks kinda cute in his little profile pic (You'll see.), and he seems to be one of the band's leaders; may as well take a look/listen"...

You can imagine what I was thinking, given my penchant to try to unearth underexposed Gay musicians, when "Being The Man Of My Dreams" came into view.

I've never been more pleased to be wrong.

Because it's not a Gay thing; he's not Gay.

But the song! The song....

And the guitar playing is so clean, yet natural. And that Texas drawl laden growl of a voice.

(When you're done with that one, if you want to, let the other tracks play -- or, my suggestion , click to listen to the rest of the acoustic demo tracks first. Then, after you've gained a surer understanding of what Gates is capable of, you can let the rockers-with-band play.)

I've just about used any excuse to write to folks and bring this guy to folks' attention. I just don't understand how he's not garnering more attention from the music biz and the mainstream.

At minimum I hope it introduces you to one more musician you'll enjoy.

Be well,
Bill

Hosted By: The Stone Pony
When: Saturday Nov 22, 2008
at 7:30 PM
Where The Stone Pony
913 Ocean Avenue
Asbury Park, New Jersey, 07712
United States
Description:
The Stone Pony

Click Here To View Event

Does anyone else remember Tuff Darts' song "Your Love Is Like Nuclear Waste"???

Yes, it was tongue-in-cheek, DEEPLY, so you had to commit to the metaphor or else the lyrics' snarkiness wouldn't oppose with your better nature, and then where would you be?, what fun would *that* be?

But most memorably, in the now largely bygone days of vinyl, the needle would run in the groove directly up to the label, and for rare and usually quirky reasons someone would allow the sound to continue, too (instead of the normal practice of silencing the groove before it approached the final circuit around the label). And "Your Love Is Like Nuclear Waste" had THE BEST inner groove gimmick ever: The song ended with the sound of a bomb being dropped and exploding, and the explosion continued infinitely in the inner groove -- at least until the needle lifted.

I totally adored playing it on WRSU-FM.

I've GOT to pull the album out of the box it's buried in before next week's / Saturday the 22nd's show.

Folks:

Found this story in my travels. All I heard about it Monday night was a crawl on MSNBC that 90 (I think was the number reported) protesters had been arrested.

Earlier that night I was at a presentation by an all-around asshole of a sex educator (I was in a minority of 2 in my assessment of him as an asshole, out of the 2-3 dozen people who attended his talk); one of his many assholy comments reminisced about the massive protests of the 60s and 70s and bitched about "Why don't kids do that today??" Now I regret not having stood up and yelled in his face (as I was tempted to do) "Because today it doesn't work!" Protesters in the past met police violence. Protesters today meet restrictions that prevent them from ever communicating -- not only with the people they're protesting against, but with anything close to mainstream media. The state has taken away the rights of free speech and assembly in perhaps its most necessary and essential form: when protesting politically in public space. And because it's done in the name of public safety, it's accorded a pass by the public at large. If only the power establishment was half as concerned about, hell, I'll let you fill in the blank with your own concern, from the 43,000 people who died in car accidents on the nations roads, to the people who've died in the Iraq War, to the millions of kids harmed by some chemical or another. But no: It's allegedly constitutionally protected peaceful political protests that's a threat to public safety.

BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT.

I've also got this video on the homepage of my profile (myspace.com/bearealman).

And these are the links to where I found the story.

http://newsproject.org/videos/113

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/100_protesters_arrested_in_Denver_hit_0826.html


Police Trap Peaceful Protesters in Denver

By Davin Hutchins on Aug 25, 2008


A calm political protest quickly turned chaotic as anxious

Denver police surrounded protestors peacefully marching
toward the Democratic National Convention Center. After
trapping the crowd between two buildings, hundreds of
officers used pepper spray, batons and unwarranted
aggression. After being surrounded for 20 minutes, two ANP
producers managed to escape after recording the whole affair.

..

... again.

Fuck, that's a great song.

[Here, folks, I interrupt the flow of this message to inform you that this is an otherwise unedited copy of a message I just sent to Big Chris Gates (formerly of The Big Boys, etc.) about my response to his recent music, especially "Being The Man Of My Dreams." I share it with you, including asides to previous and here-unseen messages I sent him, so you may take any insight you receive based on how the song effects me and turn it into motivation to at least listen to it. Add friend him, write your own messages, buy a CD-- whatever you do, I'm just saying this is another outstanding instance of a musician deserving of greater appreciation. His profile is http://www.myspace.com/bigchrisgates OK? - Bill]

I don't know, with all the nudge-wink bullshit I've written you, whether I've communicated well, or at all, just how much respect I have for your songwriting.

I've taken liberties, acted like you're an old pal, instead of someone making the sacrifices to put your music out there. And I took as a kind of permission to be playful what you said about how you were cool about gay folks.

And I just can't get over ... let me backtrack.

there's another gay man I know, in fact he's the one I mentioned was into the Big Boys and The Dicks and all kinds of other punk bands and other music. (He also in fact introduced me to Franti and to Free, the musicians I mentioned in my last message.) So I kind of think he has, indirectly, introduced me to your solo career as well. And he impressed more than a few ideas on me that clarified some thoughts I'd held myself before we got to talking about music and gay culture. One of them was how there are all these songs, if you approach them from who we are, as gay men, that sound like gay men *should* have written them, but str8 men did. And we bemoaned that fact. From Springsteen's "Backstreets" to any number of Bouncing Souls songs, we'd just shake are heads and think about their lyrics about deep, soulful man-to-man brotherhood (if that's not the best word, it's the best we could come up with), and insight to the male psyche. And we just wonder and wonder and wonder why gay men weren't writing those songs.

I share that with you because "BTMOMD" is a song like that, a song that gives that deep *thing* -- wouldn't call it a "need" exactly, but whatever it is, it's only fulfilled by proxy. I know literally hundreds of out gay musicians, and the few that even approach "Being The Man Of My Dreams"'s not-fully-definable capture of something right about men, and something real about men: Bob Mould, Scott Free, Brady Earnhart ... the list gets sparse real quick ...

I guess all I'm trying to say is I listen and listen and listen, I dedicate hours and hours to keeping an open mind and poking my ears in unlikely corners, because every so often I hear gems lurking in the darkness. And I'm racked so by the truth of BTMOMD. It's one of those songs which truly makes the patient search for songs that lay a man's heart plainly before the world worth it.

"Thanks" isn't expressive enough. I must have realized that when last I wrote, but tried to hide it behind stuff that didn't matter. (It didn't work, just as much as what you wrote last time: "honest music cuts through all that anyway" describes what *does* work.)

so I just wanted to clear that up for you (or maybe just for me). Your other songs are consistently good, too; I'm just fastened to that one for now.

and one last thing: I suppose you have a fuller arrangement imagined for a studio recording of that "demo" of BTMOMD. I don't mean to try to deny you your vision for the song. I'm just deeply into the current version. (Obviously.) Would you consider releasing the demo as well? When I listen to it, a good deal of what works for me is the delivery as-is, just perfect as it is.
(and that's not a man-crush or my imagination talking; that's my honest response to the music.)

Thanks for reading me, verbosely specifying things that are likely crystal clear without explanations.

Be well,
Bill

I just read the latest blog from Greg, lead singer of the Bouncing Souls, and had to comment on what he wrote.

Go and read it at this webaddress first,
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=962452&blogID=431446136&indicate=1

and my comment, which follows, will make more sense.

Greg:

I don't live in a world of punk rock fans, and I struggle a little sometimes to communicate to my friends how some bands, like the Bouncing Souls, stand apart from (and with) the crowd. There's even been a time when I've been a part of the crowd at a Souls show, and you spoke an intro to "Gone" (my favorite), and it sounded like you struggled to strike a balance between communicating something... extra, and keeping that punk rock energy. "Gone" said everything that needed to be said, but to me it sounded like it was important for you to make an appeal that people listen, shift their listening, to get more out of it.

What you wrote here confirms that sense I have that you are / that Bouncing Souls is a part of something bigger than themselves. Y'all are an ongoing example of how one can create that big spirit experience from humble pieces.

Sometimes the intended recipient of a message isn't there for it - not receptive, has their own agenda, is metaphorically asleep or blind to it, some say "isn't ready". But too often people / I spend too much time stuck with low expectations of others. You're conquering your fears, you're moving with love, you're freeing yourself in new ways.

But you're doing it in an often-denigrated context, all together considered pop culture. Besides your references to Jack Terricloth and Repo Man, what you wrote reminded me of En Vogue singing "free your mind and the rest will follow" and George Clinton/P-Funk singing "free your mind and your ass will follow."

I can *have* fun with pop culture, but what makes it more than just fun is that these bits of creativity aren't *just* escapist fun -- they're art, they're moments of art, they're touchstones in my life. There is a religious aspect to them, purely in the sense that I choose to feel connected to them, to the ideas expressed and the people expressing them and the people enjoying them.

If it's not too presumptuous of me to speak on behalf of my faith in not just my actions but that of others I've met who respond to the Bouncing Souls: You can write from a place of honesty and of transcending fear any time. You got it. People are there to catch what you're putting out.

I, too, "just had to do that."
Bill
(*The show was in Asbury Park in 2007 at the School of Rock music fest.)

Folks:

I've recently discovered the Homophonic.net video blog of interviews with Gay musical talents -- it's fantastic!, highly recommended -- and learned that interviewer Alex is one-half of the nascent chamber pop duo Archy & Mehitabel. As written in the 1920s and 30s by Don Marquis, Archy is a typewriting cockroach, Mehitabel a cat. Archy did most of the writing by jumping on the keys of a typewriter, sometimes taking Mehitabel's dictation. In my teens I read many of these epistles in books collecting them (most originally appeared in newspapers and magazines), but my first came to me like a wise prophet when I was 12, from the front of the paperback "Environmental Handbook." What follows is the single most influential item written about things ecological in my life. It impacts my thinking and passions to this day. Over the next 37 years I've often noticed some allegedly intelligent person who seemed ignorant of the facts made blatantly clear in the voice of one lowly but incredibly powerful cockroach.

It was a total pleasure to discover Homophonic's smart conversations with a wide scope of rising music makers from the BIGLT-Q worlds; it was also a very sweet pleasure to have an excuse to digress from the many More Important Things I Should Be Doing and revisit Archy & Mehitabel. For as long as I've wondered how smart people could miss the point about treasuring and working for a better environment, a point any empathetic cockroach could tell them, I've tried to spread the word. It's been long past due time that I spread the word here, so lets fix that. Without further ado:

what the ants are saying

By Don Marquis, in "archy does his part," 1935

dear boss i was talking with an ant
the other day
and he handed me a lot of
gossip which ants the world around
are chewing over among themselves

i pass it on to you
in the hope that you may relay it to other
human beings and hurt their feelings with it
no insect likes human beings
and if you think you can see why
the only reason i tolerate you is because
you seem less human to me than most of them
here is what the ants are saying

it wont be long now it wont be long
man is making deserts of the earth
it wont be long now
before man will have used it up
so that nothing but ants
and centipedes and scorpions
can find a living on it
man has oppressed us for a million years
but he goes on steadily
cutting the ground from under
his own feet making deserts deserts deserts
we ants remember
and have it all recorded
in our tribal lore
when gobi was a paradise
swarming with men and rich
in human prosperity
it is a desert now and the home
of scorpions ants and centipedes

what man calls civilization
always results in deserts
man is never on the square
he uses up the fat and greenery of the earth
each generation wastes a little more
of the future with greed and lust for riches

north africa was once a garden spot
and then came carthage and rome
and despoiled the storehouse
and now you have sahara
sahara ants and centipedes

toltecs and aztecs had a mighty
civilization on this continent
but they robbed the soil and wasted nature
and now you have deserts scorpions ants and centipedes
and the deserts of the near east
followed egypt and babylon and assyria
and persia and rome and the turk
the ant is the inheritor of tamerlane
and the scorpion succeeds the caesars

america was once a paradise
of timberland and stream
but it is dying because of the greed
and money lust of a thousand little kings
who slashed the timber all to hell
and would not be controlled
and changed the climate
and stole the rainfall from posterity
and it wont be long now
it wont be long
till everything is desert
from the alleghenies to the rockies
the deserts are coming
the deserts are spreading
the springs and streams are drying up
one day the mississippi itself
will be a bed of sand
ants and scorpions and centipedes
shall inherit the earth

men talk of money and industry
of hard times and recoveries
of finance and economics
but the ants wait and the scorpions wait
for while men talk they are making deserts all the time
getting the world ready for the conquering ant
drought and erosion and desert
because men cannot learn

rainfall passing off in flood and freshet
and carrying good soil with it
because there are no longer forests
to withhold the water in the
billion meticulations of the roots

it wont be long now It won't be long
till earth is barren as the moon
and sapless as a mumbled bone

dear boss i relay this information
without any fear that humanity
will take warning and reform

archy

I won a pair of tickets to see Pansy Division tonight, Friday July 18, at The Troc.

(Finally! I've missed three other opportunities in the last 5 years!)

My honey can't go, and, oh what the hell why not, I know it's last minute, but if you see me there outside the Troc, and I recognize you (that part's important) either because we've met or I know you as a friend from here, you could get in to see them with me. I'm not looking for a date - just companionship would be fun. The show is only about 7 hours from the time I post this entry, (at 9) so I figure it's unlikely anyone will be able to take me up on it or run into me, but I'm making the offer. First person accepted will get in. This is not a contest.

Oh, and first tonight there's a screening of Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band Screening. at the "Arts Bank" at 7:15, and after the 9-ish starting PD concert, PARTY LIKE A QUEER PUNK STAR!!! at Sex Dwarf! Philly's New Wave Dance Party with DJ Robert Drake
11:00pm, "There's no prepackaged pop here - just pure non-stop new wave dance trax!" Combination Ticket (Concert and After-Party): $10 Cover / $5 with your Pansy Division ticket stub
After-Party Only: $5 at the door after 11pm

Like it says, Tix are only $10, so come anyway and see a rare Pansy Division gig - they won't be back to the East Coast this year, and they're recording an album for release in 09, so you'll be first to hear new songs.

Bill

PS: Lots has gone on in my life lately. Trip to Denver. Experienced community (even if temporarily) with Michael Franti performance, + a dozen other artists (esp impressive: new band The Shackletons) as XPoNential Music Fest. Met two guys from Florida who helped me with a dead car battery. Found discarded faux classical columns and placed em in backyard. Heard the call of music reviewing and listening even louder. Hope to get to all this in the weeks ahead.

Link to HardRockHideout.com page with Danielia Cotton performance video

This simply can NOT BE ME writing that Subject's headline, because I NEVER resort to "ROCKS!/SUCKS!" barking. But color me dawg, because wherever I look, I find new confirmation that Cotton has that undeniable "IT" which lovers of rock'n'roll want from their singers, performers, songwriters and bandleaders.

Cotton has IT in ALL of those roles, and maybe more - I don't know yet, I've only known about her for about two weeks now.

Apparently her latest album, "Rare Child" is her third. And she's a Jersey Girl. And she was a WXPN Artist To Watch back in 2005. And she just blew me away with a head-turning, traffic-stopping (really), awe-inspiring performance at Jersey Pride on June 1.

I know, I'm raving. So? I'm late to the party and I'm making up for lost time.

Well, sheeeee-it, if I can't rave for Danielia Cotton and her talented, fundamentally accessible musical style, who can I rave for? If ever I've tried to bring folks attention to an under-appreciated musician, one whose lack of appreciation defies understanding (but for the weird state of da moosic biz, and how it routinely promotes the lowest of lowball performers in a cynical cycle of never overestimating the intelligence of the american public) (forgive me; this was supposed to be an all-positive rave), one who simply completely deserves better sales in response to solid, soulful, keepin' it real and keep on keepin' it on through good-times and bad-times music - then this time is the time to make the point without holding back.

About the video.

Up top is a link to a webpage that contains it.

Down below is the youtube.com link.

I'm not thrilled with the quality of the sound recording on it (it's not high fidelity), but I think Danielia's talent comes through. It's for her song "Make U Move" performed live at Vintage (a club with which I'm not familiar).

FYI, when first I saw the name Danielia I did not imagine that it was pronounced "duh-NEEL-eeyuh" - but it is.

One last thing: The one thought I can't shake about why she hasn't garnered greater attention is ... perhaps people so expect novelty that they equate it with quality. Danielia won't turn your head because you've never heard anything like her before. But the quality of what she's doing will attract you, and I believe you'll soon realize that it has been **ages** since we've heard anyone in soulful rock do better than pretend to sound this good in so many ways. (Not since Rufus with Chaka Khan??)

Danielia Cotton.

Folks, please: Take her a little further along her path, be it to stardom or however she defines her own brand of success, and give her some love. (CD sales, too.)

In my silence-breaking blog entry from a few days ago, I wrote:

"Lately I've been preparing copies of the latest [Dancing To Architecture] column ... If all goes well, you should be able now or soon to go to gaamc.org/services and find a link to the column, too, in pdf form and glorious color (which we can't afford to print in)."

Well, I'm thrilled to report that the column has in fact been putonline for y'all to read and enjoy. Despite a couple of minor errors that look glaring to me and my picky internal self-critic, I'm proud of squeezing in over a dozen musicians that deserve greater attention: YOUR attention (please). Even those I didn't do much more than mention a few folks = Troy Rusnack, Regina Sayles, and Sweet Namate = they at least earn my recommendation that you can listen to the songs they've posted at Myspace and you won't feel you've wasted your time (at the least!; my hope is you'll find them interesting enough to explore more; and they all, in my experience, were better represented by their live performances than by their recordings).
And I don't mean to forget Josh Zuckerman, who I also short-changed by merely mentioning him, but I've written about him before, and he has received more attention from other quarters than any other musician in my column but Shelby Lynne, and I have to expect that most of you readers are more familiar with his music than any other in the column. Zuckerman gets kudos for the love he gives time and again to Q events and other issues-deserving-of-support's events. I've been to about a half-dozen events myself where he has performed presumably for nothing but the CD sales or a small stipend. (And I make that presumption based on my understanding of the financial resources of the groups he performs for.)

But my primary purposes today are:
to praise Andy Skurna, GAAMC Trustee and website editor, for being the first in a string of GAAMC officers to not just see the potential of having content that mentions people and items that could generate hits on search engines and therefore traffic on the site, but wh also Actually Put The Content On The Site,
to give you an additional nudge to read Dancing To Architecture - Music Reviews and News with a Queer Ear - online finally,
and (I see I've "buried the lead" of this entry) to proclaim Mea Culpa about a communications-disconnect on my part.

Unlike what I wrote last time, the article is NOT linked from www.GAAAC.org/services, but FROM THE HOME PAGE,
www.GAAMC.org
-- Discovering that the link is there - at least for the month of June, as part of a special Gay Pride Month 2008 section - is a wonderful delightful surprise.

Look for this paragraph at GAAMC.org
Dancing to Architecture Special Edition: In the June 2008 edition of Dancing to Architecture, Bill Realman Stella's column of music reviews and news with a Queer ear, he catches up with Ron Morris's move from cute and cubby to more serious territory, tips his hat to Shelby Lynne's tribute to the songs of Dusty Springfield, and gives his two cents about the exciting line-up of performers on the music stage at Jersey Pride. Click on the following title to open an interactive .pdf with links galore to artists' websites and venues: Dancing to Architecture. You will also find Roy Schneider, Geoff Baker and, yes, really, Louis C.K.

Go there now. PLEASE!

with semi-literate hugs,
Bill,
who's also on the verge of posting a wild, weird video - the worst and the most tantalizing video ever, because the camera was shoting unintentionally, but which captures, without too much distortion, the sound of the fantastic Danielia Cotton who, yes, is at least as good performing live as she is on her recordings, just as I had hoped in the column - to YouTube. (My first video post there.)