A Hint Of Mint: Marriage

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Marriage between two consenting non-related adults is now legal throughout the United States!

This week’s installment of A Hint of Mint features songs related to marriage, performed by artists from the LGBTQQISA communities. It is with great pleasure that I can write that some of the entries are outdated, though still a fun listen.

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Get ready to say I do I do I do I do I do!

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A Hint Of Mint – Volume 6: Pride

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This week’s installment of A Hint of Mint is a collection of songs about pride, most of which you can dance to. Some you know, some you likely don’t know yet. Artists include Pet Shop Boys, Divine and Pansy Division.

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A Hint Of Mint – Volume 5: Broadway

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On this installment of A Hint Of Mint we get ready for next week’s Tony Awards with minty show tunes and minty covers of show tunes from classic Broadway musicals. Artists include Erasure, k.d. lang and Magnetic Fields, plus original Broadway cast recordings from Hedwig & the Angry Inch, The Book of Mormon, La Cage Aux Folles, Avenue Q, and Spamalot.

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A Hint Of Mint – Volume 4

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Some news you may have missed:
– Tom Hardy will portray a famous singer/songwriter/pianist in the upcoming film musical Rocketman, though he admits he’s not a singer.
– A documentary about that late, great British songstress who in 2011 died way too young from alcohol poisoning opens this July.
– The Eurovision Song Contest 2015 wrapped up. The winning entry came from Sweden, who are no strangers to winning this competition. In 1974 a Swedish quartet won with a song called “Waterloo.”
– Twin Peaks is returning with David Lynch’s involvement!
– Taye Diggs is joining the Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
– The star of Funny Girl, The Way We Were and Meet the Fockers announced her autobiography will be published in 2017.
– On May 21 Boy George was honored at the Ivor Novello Awards for his outstanding contribution to music.

Inspired by the above, here is the latest installment of A Hint of Mint. It also includes a minty tribute to Bob Dylan, who turned 74 on May 24. Did you know Bob wrote the theme song of the television series Absolutely Fabulous? Listen and learn.

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A Hint Of Mint – Volume 3

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On the latest installment of A Hint of Mint, we’ll hear a version of a Cher hit in which she switches pronouns, making it mintier than most Cher songs. Also, we’ll hear a minty song from The Who and remember B.B. King, plus more! Country, disco, blues, rock, pop, punk and then some. Dive in!

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A Hint Of Mint – Volume 2

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On this installment of A Hint of Mint, we:
– Hear the hit song from an Irish quartet about a gay man telling his homophobic father he’s contracted AIDS (more about that song here)
– Hear the original version of “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” from 1963
– Hear the hit song performed by a woman from a famous musical family, written by her as a ballad tribute to a friend who dies from AIDS-related illness but transformed as a dance/house anthem
– Celebrate National Bike Month
– Celebrate Dance Like a Chicken Day (May 14)
– Hear a minty song from Donovan
– Celebrate Limerick Day (May 12) with a very-NSFW song from Loudon Wainwright, followed by a NSFW song about him by his daughter and a song he wrote performed by his son
– Hear a couple of songs that appeared on the TV show Girls, one a Rolling Stones cover performed by lesbian twins, the other by a woman who won a Grammy earlier this year
– Honor Stevie Wonder with two covers and one song on which he plays harmonica
– Hear recordings one is unlikely to hear elsewhere

A Hint of Mint – Volume 2 from Glenn Schwartz on 8tracks Radio.

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It’s Pete Shelley’s Birthday And I Need To Dance!

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In 1981, Pete Shelley reached #14 on the US Dance chart with “Homosapien,” a keyboard-centric single that sounded much different than his work as the lead singer of punk band The Buzzcocks.

“Homosapien” did not get much airplay in Shelley’s native England, as the BBC took exception to the lyric “Homo superior in my interior.” Shelley said the song was not intended as a “gay song;” rather, it’s about homosapiens falling in love with other homosapiens. That may be so, but the opening line is “I’m the shy boy, you’re the coy boy / And you know we’re homosapien, too,” so there is more than a little homo in this sapien.

Shelley lives as the homosapien of his song, eschewing labels because “there doesn’t seem to be a word for ‘having relationships with people,’” regardless of gender, which is where Shelley sees himself.

It’s Friday and I need to dance! It’s also Pete Shelley’s birthday (he’s 60), so we’ll kick off our dance party with “Homosapien.”

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Lou Reed – “Walk on the Wild Side”

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Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl was born in Puerto Rico in 1946. He grew up in New York and Miami Beach. At a very early age he recognized his attraction to men. Not fitting in and getting beaten up at school made Haroldo decide at age 15 to run away. Hitchhiking up the coast toward New York, Haroldo made a stop in Georgia where his friend Georgette plucked his eyebrows, applied mascara, and helped transform Haroldo into Holly.

In the Big Apple, Holly met Andy Warhol and the people who hung out at Warhol’s Factory, such as Candy Darling, Joe Dallesandro and Jackie Curtis.

The story of Holly and the other Warhol superstars is recounted in Lou Reed’s sole Hot 100 single, “Walk on the Wild Side.” The man born Louis Firbank was part of that scene in the Sixties, as his band, The Velvet Underground, was managed by Warhol. He felt an affinity with the people he sang about – as a teenager Reed’s parents sent him to a mental hospital where he would receive electroshock therapy to help cure him of his homosexual tendencies.

Though not gay himself, though perhaps bisexual, Reed wrote “Walk on the Wild Side” to be, in his words “an outright gay song,” saying it’s “from me to them, but they’re carefully worded so the straights can miss out on the implications and enjoy them without being offended.”

Produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, “Walk on the Wild Side” reached #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1973.

Tunes du Jour remembers the late Great Lou Reed today on what would have been his 73rd birthday. Here are twenty of his finest.

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