Tag Archives: Music

Music Musings: Soft Cell’s Sex Dwarf – 1981 Underground Kink Classic Vid

Posted on February 19, 2011 by | 1 comment

Soft Cell: just another way of saying “differentially permeable membrane.” Biology’s version of the club doorman. You get In. But You: Keep Out. No, really. Here’s slinky kinky Marc Almond  as a young thing back in the day, fetishizing and  valorizing monstrosity in the underground hit Sex Dwarf. David Ball on synthesizer. Together, they were Soft Cell, best known for their hit cover of Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go. Coming at you live, this gem was also covered by Nine Inch Nails, among others.

Originally published in 1981 as part of the album Non Stop Erotic Cabaret, the lyrics to this kink classic by Marc Almond and David Ball:

Sex Dwarf…Isn’t it nice
Sugar and spice
Luring disco dollies
To a life of vice

I could make a film
And make you my star
You’d be a natural
The way you are
I would like you on
A long black leash
I would parade you
Down the high street
You’ve got the attraction
You’ve got the pulling power
Walk my little doggy
Walk my little sex dwarf
(Here, doggy, doggy)
We could make a scene
We’d be a team
Making the headlines
Sounds like a dream
When we hit the floor
You just watch them move aside
We will take them
For a ride of rides
They all love your
Miniature ways
You know what they say
About small boys

Sex dwarf…

I’m in my Rolls Royce
Look it’s so huge
It’s big and it’s gold
With my dumb chauffeur
Looking to procure
Run little doggy
Lure a disco dolly
Run my little sex dwarf
I feel so lonely
Get my little camera
Take a pretty picture
Sex dwarf
In a gold Rolls
Making it with the dumb chauffeur

Sex dwarf…

We could make an outfit
For my little sex dwarf
To match the gold Rolls
And my dumb chauffeur
We’ll all look so good
We’ll knock ’em cold
Knocking ’em cold
In black and gold
We can have playtime
In my little playroom
Disco dollies
My sex dwarf
And my dumb chauffeur
I would like you on a long black lead
You can bring me all the things I need

Sex dwarf…

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Posted in England, Europe, Music, Subcultures, Video

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Tim’m T. West is a fly-brotha. New Music Video. Score for Hearts Break Open, Indy Queer Film.

Posted on January 20, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Friend of this site Tim’m T. West is a fly-brotha. He is also a poet, a philosopher, a professor and a gay rapper. Et cetera and then some. This is the video version of his score for Hearts Break Open, an independent feature film that asks the question what would Jesus do if he were alive today…and an HIV+ gay man. “What would be his cross to bear? How would we crucify him? Would he crucify himself?”

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Posted in Music, Video

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Vitas Bumac wrestles a Violin into Submission, escapes his Cage and Shatters Glass. Smile!

Posted on January 13, 2011 by | Leave a comment

It’s called Smile. Sure it is. A cold-war gumshoe dandy delivers ear-splitting wails while theatrically clutching  a violin we only hear simulated on the high end of his five-octave range. A noose swings provocatively, a caged canary escapes, glass shatters.  This one from the always strange and inventive Vitas Bumak. Nostalgia, loss, grief and rage filtered through an arch sense of cornball drama. The stuff of opera and life and good enough reason to…Smile! More Vitas here and here.

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Posted in Europe, Music, Russia, Video

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Justin Bond in the New Yorker. Fabulous Pixels and Ink! Plus…vintage Kiki and Herb.

Posted on January 3, 2011 by | Leave a comment

At Joe's Pub

Friend of this site Mx. Justin V. Bond is featured in this week’s New Yorker magazine. Congratulations, Justin!

In “Justin Bond performs his life and ours”, theater critic Hilton Als runs through a history of Mx. Bond’s early history, focusing on the “Kiki and Herb” days, and reviews the current show at Joe’s Pub, before summing things up: “Bond’s message: we must celebrate diversity, or die.” Good words for today – or any day. New Yorker requires a subscription to read full articles on-line, but you can see an abstract of the article here.

In celebration of the past, enjoy this classic Kiki and Herb video of their vintage rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart. Beautifully produced and directed by Victoria Leacok. For recent work, there is the very biting New Depression. A live version. And in anticipation of the future, check out Bond’s site. It’s been a ride. And it’s not over yet. Hang on tight!

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Posted in Drag, Music, New York, Video

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Soldiers spoof Beach Boys Kokomo: “Protecting human rights, air strikes and firefights” – “Kosovo” video

Posted on January 3, 2011 by | Leave a comment

This anonymous group of soldiers re-does The Beach Boys Kokomo with a hyper-critical anti-war edge. Plus they dance with their shirts off.

“Croatia, Albania, somewhere near Romania. It’s Euro. And NATO. Why the hell do we go? Somalia, Grenada, a rescue in Kuwait, well screw you, Rwanda. Wish we could have helped you.

Protecting human rights. Air strikes and firefights. And we’ll be dropping our bombs wherever Serbian bad guys hide, right up from Kosovo.”

So it’s a dated war. Meet the new war. Same as the old war. These guys got it.

For a parody of Lady Gaga’s Telephone by soldiers in Afghanistan, click here.

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Posted in Music, SCANDAL: Politics, Crime, Revolution and More., Video

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Aussie Leather Electronica. Gay Skins. Loka Nunda. St. Vladimir…Can’t Think Str8 Video

Posted on December 30, 2010 by | 2 comments

“You’re driving me crazy and I can’t think str8. Be my mate.” Sexy Aussie Gay Leather themed music video produced at the Laird Hotel in August, 2010. Loka Nunda. St Vladimir. With Michael Lauer. Camera Steve Radic. Vedic Beats! Hot stuff from Down Under.

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Posted in Australia, Leather, Music, Subcultures

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Seminal Gay Punk Song: Elton Motello Jet Boy Jet Girl on Plattenkuche German TV

Posted on December 18, 2010 by | Leave a comment

A jolly good fellow. Mr. Elton Motello. This 1979 Plattenkuche “Trash TV” version is stage footage mixed with some old  German TV clips. Odd juxtaposition, but Motello’s perverse punk performance is well worth it. Other versions of this classic have been recorded by The Damned and Captain Sensible. The Francophone Ce Plane Pour Moi claims versions by Lou Deprijck and Plastic Bertrand, as a twinkie back in the day here and more recently, as a youthful silvering Papa here. He looks more like “the king of the divan” with a few years on him.

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Posted in Europe, Music, Subcultures, Video

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Euriamis Losada sings the Impossible Dream – more than just the Gay Gain Guy!

Posted on December 6, 2010 by | 1 comment

One man…scorned and covered with scars.  What a great line. Gay actor and singer Euriamis Losada gives another meaning to the classic Impossible Dream. Losada is originally from Miami and now lives in Los Angeles. His acting credits include Che and Another Gay Sequel, but he says that mostly, when he is recognized in public, it is from a Gain detergent commercial. Losada also sings with the LA Gay Mens Chorus. Good luck to him in his career. LA will eat actors alive, and this one is certainly tasty enough to temp a bite. Magnifico!

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Posted in Music, Southern California, Video

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Not your Daddy’s Islam: the Sexy Muslim Punks of Taqwacore rock the Casbah

Posted on November 14, 2010 by | 1 comment

Nav Mann and Dominic Rains star in "The Taqwacores." (photo: Josh Rosenfield / Strand Releasing)

When The Clash sang “Sharia don’t like it” thirty-some years ago, they could never have anticipated Taqwacore, the emerging hybrid of Islam and punk. In another instance of life following fiction, the term came from a novel. American convert Michael Muhammad Knight left his Philadelphia home at 17 to travel to Pakistan, where he studied at a madrassa. Years later, disillusioned, he wrote The Taqwacores, which centers on a fictive “Muslim punk house in Buffalo, New York, inhabited by burqa-wearing riot girls, mohawked Sufis, straightedge Sunnis, Shi’a skinheads, Indonesian skaters, Sudanese rude boys, gay Muslims, drunk Muslims, and feminists.” Taqwa means “piety” or “god-consciousness” and “core” is a suffix that refers to punk genres. Queercore and Homocore are other examples. Unknown to Knight when he self-published, a subculture of punk-influenced young Muslims was already simmering. Small groups, formerly largely unknown to one another, now had a term to refer to their movement.

The Kominas

The meme succeeded. Current Taqwacore bands include The Kominas, The Secret Trial Five, Al-Thawra, and Sarmust. Two Taqwacore films are currently screening, The Taqwacores, based on the novel, and the documentary Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam. As for Knight, he is now a graduate student in Islamic Studies at Harvard University.

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Posted in Music, Spirituality, Subcultures, Video

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The Legacy, the Legacy, don’t forget the Legacy: Justin Bond’s New Depression.

Posted on November 10, 2010 by | 2 comments

A good counterpoint to the feel-good Bush love-fest splashing across the media grid in response to the launch of his biography. As Kiki of the notorious Kiki and Herb, Justin Bond tore into the media-fed adulation that erupted at the passing of former president Reagan. “The legacy, the legacy…” s/he snarled while recounting his long silence during the devastating peak years of the AIDS crisis. “That’s the legacy, Ladies and Gentlemen!” Bond has shed the Kiki persona for now, but the fierce political wit that has long infused his performances remains strong as ever.

Enjoy the Bush book. I suggest reading it by candlelight with a little cat-food pate and a juice-box. You can sit on a milk crate. Of course, you won’t find these things at your local market because it went out of business. But you can get them all at Walmart along with a wave from the elderly social security recipient who really needs that greeter job…to buy that cat food, those juice boxes and that book. It is the New Depression after all. And it is FUN, dammit!

Don’t forget the legacy…

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Posted in Crime, Music, SCANDAL: Politics, Crime, Revolution and More., Video

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