Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Vol 4

LINER NOTE #28 (Part 1)

LINER NOTE #28

ALPHABET CITY

So, do you remember allllll the way back in chapter 18, when Daron ditches Carynne in New York, in the East Village? He walks east, following "three outlandishly dressed men up one street and down another. They disappeared through the darkened doorway of a club on Avenue A."

Daron didn't know or remember the name of the club, but I did, at least at the time when I wrote the original draft of the chapter back in 1992. It was called The Pyramid Club, or sometimes just The Pyramid.

Daron describes dancing in a very dark room, and then the dancing being interrupted by a sudden performance of a tall, bald figure wrapped head to toe in white cloth like a mummy. He never found out the name of the performer, who lip synched to a backing track.

I knew who it was, though. Daron was describing a night I had myself at the Pyramid. The performer he described was Dean Johnson, also known as Dean of Dean and the Weenies. From Wikipedia: "Dean Johnson (1961–2007) was a transvestite musician, party promoter, and was a highly recognisable figure in the downtown New York City nightlife in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Known for his towering height, shaved head, giant sunglasses, and penchant for wearing short cocktail dresses that exaggerated the length of his pale, lithe figure, Johnson played a seminal role in the emergence of the Queercore gay rock and roll subculture in the East Village."

A video is worth a thousand words, though. Here's a song called "Fuck You." 

Another classic, "Death by GoGo," is disabled for embedding, but if you want to see a pomo intersection/parody of surf punk and a commentary on west coast living, replete with musical quotes from other songs, check this out: http://youtu.be/rOtsppjTaoY

Looking for more info about dear departed Dean led me to this website, QueerMusicHeritage.us, which I think some of you will enjoy poking around, too: http://www.queermusicheritage.us/outoct10dj.html

BOY BANDS

Okay, I think I talked in an earlier liner note about Lance Bass coming out, right? (Aha, mentioned it in a timeline back in Liner Note #5 in which I point out various milestones relevant to GLBT celebrities, coming out, and alternative music. Bass came out in July 2006.) I haven't yet talked about Ricky Martin, who I knew when he was 12-13 years old singing in the ultimate boy band, Menudo. Back then we didn't know what Ricky's sexual orientation would be, but when he came out as gay it wasn't a huge surprise. (My Menudo story is a very long one, enough to write a book about probably, but the tl;dr is this. When I was in high school I started a Menudo Fan Newsletter that turned into the largest Menudo Fan Club in the world, which I parlayed into my first freelance writing gigs for Superteen Magazine and others, as well as a weekly radio appearance every Friday night on 95.5 WPLJ Radio in New York. All of which led to a lot of interviews, some friendships, and some interesting rock and roll escapades. To learn more, you'll have to wait for me to write my autobiography.)

Another boy band staple, Jonathan Knight of NKOTB (New Kids on the Block) came around again on the gee-tar since he recently did an interview with Gay Times UK about how Tiffany (herself a teen pop star) had outed him in the national media. He makes the point that there's really a difference between everyone in your life knowing you're gay and being "out" in the public eye. I thought some of you might be interested in what he had to say. HuffPo piece on the interview: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/15/jonathan-knight-nkotb-gay_n_3084799.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

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