Artist you may like

Hi Everyone. I’d like to share an artist that I think many will like. I enjoy learning of great singers that don’t seem to hit the radio. This is Dave Fenley. He’s got a great soulful and gravelly voice.

“A Copacetic Couple” Indeed!

Disco and Classical Music: A Copacetic Couple

In the history and cultural impact of disco music, the 1977 blockbuster Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta as working-class “dance king” Tony Manero, wasn’t only notable for bringing the disco sound and culture to mainstream audiences, translating Vince Aletti’s writings for The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and Record World for a much wider public, it also made a strong case for the cross-pollination of disco and perhaps its most antithetical genre: classical music.
“To a large degree, it was never a completely unified or singular style. Disco resulted in a global, Esperanto-like music that would be shared by, and marketed to, the world,” writes music historian Ken McLeod.

In the case of Saturday Night Fever, “[t]he use of disco-inflected classical music in the film represents the economic and social success to which Tony and his friends ultimately aspire,” argues McLeod. “The disco milieu represents one form of illusion—the illusion of power in the outside ‘real’ world that Tony imagines.”

Indeed, classical music represents an exotic world of sophistication, elitism, and wealth which, especially when merged with a homogeneous disco beat, becomes an enticing symbol of the unattainable, illusory, and artificial nature of Tony’s dreams.

Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” makes its appearance when Tony and his friends arrive at the 2001 Oddyssey (sic) disco club.

“To some extent he is represented as the new heir to the cultural prestige of classical music,” writes McLeod of Tony’s appearance. The soundtrack, with its

seemingly contradictory and almost synthetically forced fusion of classical music and disco underlines the artificiality of his entrance and of the world into which he has crossed. It is likely no accident that the famous “fate” motive, heard here near the beginning of the movie, functions as a foreshadowing of the dramatic events that will soon unfold within this world.

“A Fifth of Beethoven” is easily the highest-profile instance of disco appropriation of classical music. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 is typically associated with notions of monumentality, heroism, fate, and relentless transcendence of the will. And while Beethoven’s version is about transcending humanity, Murphy’s is steeped in humanity, as it represents acceptance of common human desires—such as dancing—rather than superhuman transcendence of them.

The soundtrack also featured another instrumental disco–classical interpretation: David Shire’s “Night on Disco Mountain,” which adapts Mussorgsky’s orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain (which is also the Chernabog segment in Disney’s Fantasia). “Night on Disco Mountain” is heard when Tony and his friend pretend to jump off the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.

“The faked suicides are symbolized by the ‘fake’ classical music,” writes McLeod.

Shire’s track adds another layer of grotesque ambient sounds to further heighten the atmosphere of chaos and alienation, producing what McLeod calls “an international and futuristic potpourri of sounds.”

“A Fifth of Beethoven” and “Night on Disco Mountain” weren’t isolated instances of classical–disco fusion. Wendy Carlos’s Switched-On Bach and Switched-On Brandenburgs recordings became instant commercial radio and dance hits. K-Tel Records initiated their popular Hooked on Classics series that combined classical music with elements of disco and pop music. This trend spawned a number of disco–classical albums such as Klassiks Go Disko, featuring “A Sixth of Tchaikovsky” and “Brahms’s Disco Dance No. 5,” and Saturday Night Fiedler, an album of disco arrangements by the Boston Pops.

“Many of classical music’s qualities, such as structural complexity and cultural prestige, were natural targets for simplification, reduction, and transmission to a mass audience,” argues McLeod. Artificiality is another common thread, as both genres thrive on the notion. “As in a discotheque,” he writes, “classical music is often enjoyed and appreciated in escapist settings by wealthy, well-dressed devotees.”

There are also similarities between classical and disco compositional style.

RIP

Not a big fan, but I enjoyed the Osbournes as a family and individually, and I wish peace and comfort to those who love Ozzy.

Ozzy by Clay Jones

RIP, Prince of Darkness Read on Substack

I was not a massive fan of Ozzy Osbourne, but I was still a fan. When I got a news alert in a text while on the city bus (see? I get news alerts, people) telling me he had passed, and just a few weeks after his final performance, I knew I had to honor him.

I was never really a metal head, but Ozzy ruled. Even if I didn’t like him, I was in a scene where everyone else did. I was very much in the know about Ozzy. If nothing else, I liked him solo more than I liked Black Sabbath.

Randy Rhoads is why I’m an Ozzy fan, and I still listen to him after Randy’s tragic death in 1982 from a plane crash. Randy’s career was just getting started with a bright future in front of him.

So, did Ozzay really bite the head off a bat? I have been hearing different versions of this story for years. But yes, it appears that he actually did. Reportedly, it wasn’t a stunt.

Ozzy used to throw out real animal parts during a tour in the early 80s. Fans learned about this, so they were prepared when they went to his shows. Somewhere in Iowa, a 17-year-old Ozzy fan threw a bat on stage. Ozzy thought it was fake and bit its head off. In one version, he said he discovered it was real when it was in his mouth and he tasted “warm, gloopy liquid,” and the head twitched. He claimed it was a live bat.

In a different version, he said it was dead. The kid who brought the bat also said it was dead.

Ozzy also told two different stories about biting the heads off doves at a meeting with CBS executives. In one version, he brought three live doves, and being drunk (Oz had substance issues), he bit the heads off all three of the LIVE doves.

In a second version, he brought one to release at the end of the meeting, but it died, so waste not, want not….he made use of it by biting its head off. I don’t know what actually happened. I wasn’t there.

Ozzy had just done his final performance a few weeks ago at a concert billed as “Back To The Beginning: Ozzy’s Final Bow,” in Birmingham, England, in front of 42,000. He sang from a custom-built throne as he had been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease for the past five years, and walking was extremely difficult for him. (snip-MORE)

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Watch The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne: A Free Documentary on the Heavy Metal Pioneer (RIP)

Snippet:

“This is supposed to be my farewell tour,” says Ozzy Osbourne in a clip included in the Biography television documentary above. He then gives the finger and adds, “We’ll see.” The year was 1993, and indeed, there turned out to have been much more to come for the former frontman of Black Sabbath, the band that opened the floodgates — or perhaps hellgates — of heavy metal. After an impoverished childhood spent playing in the bomb sites of postwar Birmingham, Osbourne hopped from job to job, including one failed stint at a slaughterhouse and another as a criminal. He then turned singer, receiving a PA system from his father and forming a blues group with a few local musicians. People pay good money to see scary movies, they one day reckoned, so why not make scary music?

The time was the late nineteen-sixties, when listeners approached record albums as quasi-cinematic experiences. Taking their name from Mario Bava’s anthology horror film, which had come out a few years before, Black Sabbath delivered on expectations many weren’t even aware they had. Today, anyone can put on an early Black Sabbath album and identify the music as heavy metal, not a world apart from any of its newer variants. (snip-MORE)

“A reminder that LGBTQ+ people have always been here, creating beauty even in the darkest circumstances.” (Language NSFW)

Queer History 947: Guess What, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Was GAY AS FUCK by Wendy🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🌈

Read on Substack

The year was 1877, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was drowning. Not in the Moscow River, though he’d fucking consider it soon enough, but in the suffocating heteronormative bullshit of Imperial Russia. Here was a man whose soul screamed in B-flat minor, whose heart pounded in 4/4 time, and whose sexual identity was buried so deep beneath layers of social expectation that it would take historians over a century to dig through the wreckage and find the truth: Tchaikovsky was gay as a fucking rainbow, and it nearly destroyed him.

I literally played the youtube video musical all through writing this shit. Thats how fucking awesome this is.

Tchaikovsy, how I love you.

15 Queer Composers You Should Know | WFMT

The Tortured Genius Behind the Swan Lake

Let’s cut through the academic ass-kissing and get to the brutal reality. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, born in 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia, was a man caught between two worlds: the soaring heights of musical genius and the crushing depths of societal homophobia. This wasn’t some gentle “product of his time” situation—this was a death sentence with a fucking bow tie.

In 19th-century Russia, being gay wasn’t just socially unacceptable; it was literally illegal and punishable by exile to Siberia or worse. The Orthodox Church considered homosexuality a mortal sin, the state considered it a criminal act, and society considered it grounds for complete social annihilation. Tchaikovsky knew this shit intimately, and it carved holes in his psyche that would bleed beautiful, agonizing music for the rest of his life.

The evidence of Tchaikovsky’s sexuality isn’t hidden in some dusty archive—it’s splattered across his correspondence like blood on a battlefield. His letters to men, particularly to his nephew Vladimir “Bob” Davydov, drip with passion that no amount of Victorian-era emotional repression can disguise. These weren’t your typical “Dear Friend” pleasantries; these were love letters disguised as family correspondence, each word carefully chosen to dance around the truth that could have killed him.

The Marriage That Nearly Killed Him

Enter Antonina Miliukova, a woman whose timing was about as good as a heart attack during a symphony performance. In 1877, this aspiring opera singer decided to confess her love to Tchaikovsky through a series of increasingly desperate letters. Most gay men throughout history have developed sophisticated avoidance techniques for such situations, but Tchaikovsky was operating under a particularly cruel form of internalized homophobia mixed with genuine terror.

The composer’s response? He fucking married her. On July 18, 1877, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky walked down the aisle like a man walking to his execution, because that’s essentially what it was. The marriage was a disaster from day one—a psychological horror show that lasted all of nine weeks before Tchaikovsky fled like his ass was on fire.

But those nine weeks? They nearly broke him completely. Tchaikovsky’s mental health, already fragile from years of sexual repression and social anxiety, shattered like a champagne flute hitting concrete. He attempted suicide by walking into the Moscow River in October 1877, hoping to catch pneumonia and die “naturally” rather than face the shame of admitting his marriage was a lie. The water was too fucking cold, and he survived, but the psychological damage was done.

The Brother Who Lived Free

While Pyotr was busy torturing himself with heteronormative performance art, his younger brother Modest was living his truth with the kind of balls that would make a bull jealous. Modest Tchaikovsky was openly gay in a time when that shit could get you killed, and he gave exactly zero fucks about what society thought.

Modest became a prominent playwright and librettist, penning the libretto for Pyotr’s “Queen of Spades” among other works. Their artistic collaboration flowed from deep fraternal understanding and shared sensibilities—two gay brothers finding ways to create beauty in a world that wanted them dead. But the difference between them was stark: Modest embraced his identity and lived authentically, while Pyotr remained trapped in a cage of his own making.

The psychological impact of watching his brother live freely while he remained closeted must have been excruciating. Modest’s existence was living proof that authenticity was possible, even in Imperial Russia, but Pyotr’s internalized shame and terror kept him locked away from his own truth.

The Music That Bled Truth

Here’s where Tchaikovsky’s genius becomes both heartbreaking and historically significant: he couldn’t live his truth, so he composed it. Every note, every crescendo, every heart-wrenching melody was a piece of his closeted soul screaming for recognition. The “Pathétique” Symphony, his final masterpiece, isn’t just music—it’s a fucking suicide note written in B minor.

Listen to the 1812 Overture and try to tell me that’s the work of a heterosexual man. The dramatic tension, the explosive release, the way it builds to an almost unbearable climax—this is the musical equivalent of a man who’s been sexually and emotionally repressed his entire life finally finding a way to express what he can’t say out loud.

Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty—these aren’t just ballets, they’re coded messages from a gay man who couldn’t be gay. The tragic heroines, the impossible love stories, the themes of transformation and hidden identity—Tchaikovsky was writing his own story in every goddamn note, and the world was too busy enjoying the pretty music to notice the pain behind it.

The Psychological Massacre of the Closet

The psychological effects of Tchaikovsky’s forced closeting weren’t just personal—they were epidemic. Here was one of the world’s greatest composers, a man whose music would outlive empires, reduced to a trembling, suicidal wreck because he couldn’t love who he wanted to love. The internalized homophobia didn’t just damage him; it robbed the world of the person he could have been if he’d been free to live authentically.

Tchaikovsky’s diaries and letters reveal a man in constant psychological torment. He described his sexuality as a “curse” and spent his life trying to cure himself of feelings that were as natural as breathing. The self-hatred was so profound that it affected every aspect of his existence—his relationships, his work, his health, even his death.

The composer died in 1893, officially of cholera, but the circumstances were suspicious enough that many historians believe he committed suicide. Whether he died by disease or by his own hand, the cause was the same: a society that killed its own children rather than let them love freely.

The Ripple Effect on LGBTQ+ History

Tchaikovsky’s story isn’t just about one tortured genius—it’s about the systematic destruction of queer lives throughout history. Every note he wrote in anguish represents thousands of LGBTQ+ people who were crushed by the same forces that nearly destroyed him. His music became a sanctuary for queer people who recognized their own pain in his melodies, a coded language that said “you are not alone” to generations of closeted individuals.

The philosophical implications are staggering. Here was a man whose gifts to humanity were immeasurable, whose music brought joy to millions, whose artistic legacy is literally priceless—and society nearly destroyed him because of who he loved. How many other Tchaikovskys did we lose? How many symphonies were never written because their composers were too busy trying to survive in a world that wanted them dead?

The Social Impact of Closeted Genius

Tchaikovsky’s forced closeting had massive social implications that ripple through history. His marriage to Antonina became a cautionary tale about the dangers of forced heteronormative performance, but it also demonstrated how society’s homophobia damages everyone involved. Antonina became a victim too, trapped in a marriage with a man who could never love her the way she deserved.

The composer’s patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, provided him with financial support for thirteen years on the condition that they never meet in person. This relationship, conducted entirely through letters, became one of the most important in his life precisely because it was free from the sexual and social expectations that tormented him elsewhere. Von Meck understood, perhaps intuitively, that Tchaikovsky needed space to be himself—even if she never knew exactly what that meant.

The Philosophical Questions That Haunt Us

Tchaikovsky’s life raises philosophical questions that should make every thinking person’s blood boil. What is the moral cost of forcing human beings to deny their fundamental nature? How do we measure the artistic and social contributions we lost when we systemically oppressed LGBTQ+ people? What masterpieces were never created because their potential creators were too busy fighting for survival?

The composer’s struggle with his identity wasn’t just personal—it was a reflection of humanity’s broader failure to accept and celebrate diversity. His music became a form of resistance, a way of smuggling queer sensibility into mainstream culture without triggering the violent backlash that open authenticity would have provoked.

The Legacy That Survives

Despite the psychological torture he endured, Tchaikovsky’s music survives as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. His compositions continue to move audiences to tears, to inspire dancers and musicians, to provide soundtrack for some of humanity’s most beautiful moments. The Swan Lake pas de deux has become synonymous with romantic love, performed by countless couples who have no idea they’re dancing to the work of a closeted gay man.

This is the ultimate irony: the music that emerged from Tchaikovsky’s repression has become the soundtrack for heterosexual romance across the globe. His pain became everyone’s pleasure, his torment became the world’s joy. It’s both beautiful and heartbreaking—a reminder that LGBTQ+ people have always been here, creating beauty even in the darkest circumstances.

The Modern Relevance

Tchaikovsky’s story remains devastatingly relevant because homophobia didn’t die with the 19th century. In Putin’s Russia, being openly gay is still dangerous. In dozens of countries around the world, LGBTQ+ people face imprisonment, violence, or death for being authentic. The composer’s struggle continues in the lives of countless individuals who still can’t live their truth without fear.

But his story also demonstrates the power of art to transcend oppression. Tchaikovsky couldn’t be openly gay, but his music queered the world anyway. Every performance of Swan Lake is a small act of resistance, every rendition of the Nutcracker Suite is a celebration of queer creativity, every tear shed during the Pathétique Symphony is a recognition of the pain caused by forcing people to hide who they are.

The Psychological Impact on Modern LGBTQ+ Communities

For modern LGBTQ+ people, Tchaikovsky’s story serves as both inspiration and warning. His music provides comfort and validation—proof that queer people have always existed, have always created beauty, have always found ways to express their truth even under impossible circumstances. But his psychological torture also serves as a reminder of what happens when society forces people to deny their authentic selves.

The composer’s internalized homophobia mirrors the struggles many LGBTQ+ people face today. The self-hatred, the attempts to “cure” himself, the desperate conformity to heteronormative expectations—these patterns persist in communities where acceptance is still lacking. Tchaikovsky’s story helps modern queer people understand that their struggles are part of a larger historical pattern, that they’re not alone in their pain.

The Fucking Truth We Can’t Ignore

Here’s the bottom line: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was gay as a fucking rainbow, and society nearly destroyed one of history’s greatest musical geniuses because of it. His story isn’t just about one man’s struggle—it’s about the systematic oppression of LGBTQ+ people throughout history and the incalculable cost of that oppression.

Every time someone tries to deny or diminish Tchaikovsky’s sexuality, they’re participating in the same erasure that tortured him during his lifetime. Every time someone argues that his personal life doesn’t matter, they’re missing the point entirely. His sexuality wasn’t separate from his music—it was the source of his music, the pain that created beauty, the truth that couldn’t be spoken but had to be expressed.

The evidence is there for anyone willing to look: the passionate letters, the disastrous marriage, the psychological torment, the coded themes in his compositions. Tchaikovsky was a gay man living in a world that wanted him dead, and he survived by bleeding music instead of truth. His story deserves to be told honestly, completely, and without the sanitizing bullshit that has obscured it for too long.

We owe it to Tchaikovsky, to his brother Modest, to every LGBTQ+ person who has ever had to hide their truth, to tell this story with the visceral honesty it deserves. Because in the end, the music was never just about entertainment—it was about survival, resistance, and the unbreakable human spirit that creates beauty even in the darkest fucking circumstances.

Tchaikovsky’s legacy isn’t just musical—it’s a testament to the fact that LGBTQ+ people have always been here, creating the culture that defines human civilization, even when that same civilization tried to destroy them. His story is our story, his pain is our pain, and his music is our victory song—a reminder that love, in all its forms, will always find a way to express itself, even when the world tries to silence it.

Citations:

Suchet J. 2019 “Tchaikovsky: The Man Revealed”
Poznansky, K. 2014 “Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man “

“A Persistent Lightness To His Spirit”

The Gay Minister Who Inspired Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’

By Jim McDermott

If asked to pick one Lady Gaga song to encapsulate who she is and what she stands for, you’d be hard pressed to come up with a better choice than “Born This Way.” Released in 2011, the song is a vibrant, full-body dance anthem that calls on listeners to celebrate who they are. “God makes no mistakes,” she sings in the refrain. “I’m on the right track, baby / I was born this way.” The song was immediately embraced upon release, particularly by the LGBTQ+ community.

As it turns out, this wasn’t the first time a song by that name made that kind of impact. In 1977, Motown Records released the disco anthem “I Was Born This Way,” an upbeat tune featuring a largely unknown Black gospel singer who responds to critics with a refrain that was a head-turner for its time: “I’m happy. I’m carefree. And I’m gay. I was born this way.”

READ: You Don’t Have To Understand Everything About Trans People To Love Us

In 2021, Gaga directed people’s attention to that song, saying it was the inspiration for her own hit. And in the new documentary I Was Born This Way, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June, directors Daniel Junge and Sam Pollard shine a light on its creation and its singer, Carl Bean, an extraordinary individual who spent his life serving his LGBTQ+ community.

Junge and Pollard’s film starts with the story of Bean’s childhood in Baltimore. And many of the main moments are unforgiving: His mother abandons him at birth because she doesn’t feel ready to have a child; his uncle sexually assaults him for years; Bean attempts to kill himself as a teenager after his previously loving adoptive father hits him for being gay.

Bean, who died in 2021 at age 77, faced hardships in his life, many of which the film explores. But none of the horrors of Bean’s life land with the kind of bleakness one might expect. It’s not that the documentarians pull their punches, either. It’s Bean — there’s a persistent lightness to his spirit, the quiet joyfulness of someone who by some miracle is able to see a broader perspective. Those qualities so suffuse the story of his life that no darkness can overcome them.

And that faith sustained him when he moved first to New York City, where he would sing with Harlem’s Christian Tabernacle Choir, and then when he moved to Los Angeles and started writing his own songs. In New York, he worked at Macy’s and became lifelong friends with Cissy Houston, Estelle Brown, and Dionne Warwick; in Los Angeles, he signed a record deal but then discovered they only saw him as a gospel singer. And then, out of nowhere, Motown Records reached out.

The song “I Was Born This Way” has its own interesting history, which Junge and Pollard track. It was originally written years earlier by Bunny Jones, a New York City beautician who was friends with Stevie Wonder and later became a promoter. She wrote the song for one of her acts, a gay performer. But it wasn’t until two years later, when Motown reworked the song for disco and gave it to Bean to sing (with his friend Estelle Brown on backup), that it took off.

“There was such a feeling of freedom and relief and release when you danced to that song,” Minority AIDS Project program director Mike Jones says in the documentary. “All of the things we were trying to say throughout our lives to many of our friends and family that we could not say were in that song.”

While the collapse of disco would see the song fade from people’s memories, the film reveals the ways it continued to quietly live on. Musician and record producer Questlove talks about how often it has been sampled in other work over the decades. Among other places, you can hear it on Debbie Gibson’s “One Step Ahead,” Deee-Lite’s “Good Beat (Turn Up the Radio Mix),” and Rick Wade’s “Free.” The song, he says, “is the music equivalent of the Giving Tree.”

Meanwhile, Bean faced an unexpected fork in the road. Motown offered him the chance to do another big song. But “I Was Born This Way” had changed his perspective on the meaning and purpose of his life. “I had found my niche,” he said. “I knew my gig was to be a change agent in our society.”

And the film recounts how that choice led him down a path he could not have expected. Seeing how little was being offered to people of color when the AIDS pandemic erupted in the early ’80s, Bean started making visits on his own, traveling from person to person he learned about on Los Angeles city buses. Eventually he founded the Minority AIDS Foundation, which provided a hotline for information and to arrange visits.

When he learned from social workers that he would gain greater access to those who were sick if he became clergy, he also got ordained. Unexpectedly, some of those he visited asked for an Easter service. He provided it, not realizing it would be such a positive experience that they would aske him to lead to more services. Eventually, he started his own church, Unity Fellowship, an African American Christian community specifically for LGBTQ+ people.

Bean’s decades of generosity would eventually cost him. In his later years, he found himself unable to move his lower body. “All of those years of racism, of homophobia, all of that death and dying, it had an effect on my mind, my spirit, my being,” he said. “My body shut down.” The revelation is stunning — there’s been no sign over the course of the film that he has been suffering or overwhelmed with grief.

It’s a telling reminder of the sacrifices and generosity of so many queer people like Bean, whose stories are not well known. It’s also a testament to their irrepressible joy: At the end of the film, asked whether he has any last words for the camera, Bean offers a simple thought that pours directly out of the work of his life, including his famous song. “Find the place in you that allows you to love yourself and others,” he says. “It begins with love and ends with love.”

Then, as the film crew starts to pack up, he starts laughing warmly. There’s no reason. He just has so much to give.