[OutVoice] Comments on this?

[cagetaylor at aol.com]

Okay, gang..it's been so quiet here lately. I can't resist offering 
this item up for group discussion. I think it hits at the very heart of 
most of us, and I'm preparing a letter to Mr. Farber myself. He has his 
points--the one person I've shared this with marvelled at how he can 
"be so right and so wrong." Judge for yourselves, my darlings, from J. 
Farber's column..
By the way, his email address is jfarber at edit.nydailynews.com, if you 
feel so inclined as to respond to him directly..

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
AOL strikes wrong chord

Wednesday, February 15th, 2006

Does music have a sexual orientation?

Apparently America OnLine thinks so.

Call up their massively popular AOLmusic.com site, scroll through their 
"musical styles" choices, and right below "soundtracks" and just above 
"classic rock" you'll find a heretofore undiscovered genre known as 
"gay and lesbian" music.

If nothing else, this begs some intriguing questions about your CD 
collection:

How, exactly, would a CD become gay?

To this gay man, the absurdity of the question begs the most blinkered 
suppositions:

Was the CD abused by an LP when it was young?

Did it lack a proper stereo system to guide it while it was growing up?

Or maybe it was the product of some "intelligent design" decision at 
the manufacturing level - the technological equivalent to the so-called 
"gay gene."

AOLmusic isn't the only sonically minded company thinking gay these 
days. Sony/BMG has just proudly trumpeted a new label meant to tout 
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered artists called Twist. Its 
first releases arrive this June.

The label comes complete with a syndicated radio show, which just began 
spinning "gay music" locally on WPLJ Sundays from 10 p.m. to midnight.

On the surface, this all reads as terribly liberated, as if the 
conglomerates were saying: "Look how gay-friendly we are! We're 
promoting you guys to the hilt."

Unfortunately for, say, Twist, most gay musicians would sooner be 
shoved into the "spoken word" category than be ghettoized by their 
sexual-object choice. It's not that many don't want to be known for who 
they are. It's that they make music for the same audience any artist 
does: as large and lucrative a one as possible.

By labeling their music "gay," it sends the message to straight people 
that they can't possibly relate to what they're singing about.

Is this something tomorrow's Elton John would want to tell his 
potential listeners?

In the case of AOLmusic, the "gay and lesbian" music section makes 
assumptions about taste that necessarily stumble into stereotype. Take 
a look at what AOL considered "gay music" in its debut week:

A show tune (from "Rent"), a song from a fashion-oriented sexpot (Gwen 
Stefani) and a dance cut from - guess who? - Madonna.

Why not go all the way and throw in something from Judy Garland?

The only two acts included in the pop top 10 of late that have openly 
gay members are the one-named singer Antony and the Scissor Sisters, 
who, at least in England, have enough presumably straight fans to have 
hit No. 1 on the charts several times.

Of course, AOL didn't become a major corporation by being dumb. 
Stereotypes have some basis in truth. If you go to a Pet Shop Boys 
concert in New York, it's a safe bet a hefty percentage of those 
attending have been to a bar named Splash. And, of course, we've all 
gone to Broadway musicals and found ourselves wondering, briefly, why 
the line at the men's room is so much longer than the one at the 
women's.

But AOL's labeling of music as "gay and lesbian" is hardly the benign 
equivalent to those like-named sections that appear in travel books, 
city magazines or Internet guides like Craigslist. Those outlets 
provide crucial information for LGBT people about health, safety and 
the most likely place to find sex at 3 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon.

What's irritating about the growing "gay" demarcation for music isn't 
only that it's nonsensical. It's that it purports to be cutting edge 
while hinging on something as old as the proverbial hills: targeting a 
market.

Worse, this particular targeting operates on an antique model. For 
years, gay media sold itself to the advertising world on the strength 
of the community's uncommon amount of disposable income, generated by 
having no kids to support.

But with gay couples currently crowding the nation's fertility clinics 
and adoption houses, it's no longer a sure thing that they can, at 
whim, spend $300 on a throw cushion.

If AOL and other media outlets are so eager to codify gay taste, maybe 
they should go all the way and create their own version of the Kinsey 
Scale. Brainstormed by the famous sexologist in the '50s, Alfred 
Kinsey's scale rated people's orientation on a measure of 0 to 6.

"0" was the "most straight," "6" the "most gay," with all kinds of 
tantalizing gradations in between.

For the musical equivalent of "0" you'd have, say, Buju Banton (the 
dance hall star whose songs call for gay people to be slaughtered en 
masse). For "6" you could have something by Morrissey, whose lyrics 
epitomize that famous "gay sensibility" more bitingly than anyone since 
Oscar Wilde.

The problem is, Morrissey has never declared his sexual orientation. 
And what would we do with someone like Rob Halford, singer of the metal 
band Judas Priest, who has come out but who makes the most 
conventionally macho music on the planet?

Maybe this "gay music" stuff isn't as easy as it looks.

* * *

This week's 'Gay Music' (according to AOLmusic, that is)

1. "Just Stopping By" (DJ set), Andy Bell
2. "Behind These Hazel Eyes" (live), Kelly Clarkson
3. "Dare," Gorillaz
4. "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree," K.T. Tunstall
5. "I've Got a Life," Eurythmics
6. "Hit Me Baby One More Time," Britney Spears
7. "King of the Mountain," Kate Bush
8. "Just Let Go," Fischerspooner
9. "Beautiful" (live in studio), Christina Aguilera
10. "You're Beautiful" (in studio), James Blunt


Anyway, what's your opinion?
Love, Taylor