Queer Music Heritage is both an entertaining and informative website and a radio program produced and hosted by JD Doyle. The program is part of Queer Voices on KPFT 90.1 in Houston. The website has archives going back to 2000 with lots of photographs and transcripts from the radio program.
There are also quite a few cover scans of albums by gay and lesbian recording artists, artist spotlights, and many other features.
http://www.queermusicheritage.us
More below the fold.
One of my favorite sections of the website is about Camp Records, a company that produced gay novelty records in the mid-1960s.
The Most Outrageous (and Queerest) Record Label of the 60s
by JD Doyle
Almost nothing is known about the mysterious 60's record label Camp Records. They released an album and 10 45 rpm records of gay parody songs, most done with effeminate voices.
[...]
The artists singing most of the songs were uncredited, or with names obviously made up, like Byrd E. Bath and B. Bubba, but one name stands out, Rodney Dangerfield. That name credited on one of the songs, and possibly another. This would have been very early in Dangerfield's career, as his website bio says he decided to devote his career to comedy at age 40, which would have been in 1961. But I don't think it was the comedian we know; just a prop name used for the release. Dangerfield disclaims any knowledge of it...
In addition to historical information, the Camp Records section includes scans of the various album and 45 covers and digital music files that can be downloaded.
It is important to keep in mind that these records were marketed to a gay audience through specialty magazines of the era, such as Vagabond and Drum. They were not intended to be hateful nor disparaging toward gay men.
Ads for Camp Records recordings appeared along with books, movies, magazines and novelty products. The company ran both full-page ads and smaller ones like the one shown in the example below.
It seems that ads for Camp Records disappeared from these publications after running for only a few of months in 1965. At the same time, distributors of erotic books and magazines began to sell items that were much more explicit. It could have been that the magazines used the sale of these records to establish that they sold items that had a "redeeming social value" and thereby hoped to avoid obscenity charges. Once obscenity laws began to change, the novelty products were no longer needed -- and took up space for more profitable x-rated items. Or, perhaps Camp Records simply went out of business.
Regardless of my speculation, these records are certainly unique and have a place in recording history. It is admirable that JD Doyle has taken the time to document them on his website.
Crossposted at AlbumArtExchange Blog.
"26-year-old Nir Katz, youth counselor, IDF veteran, college student" and "16-year-old Liz Trobishi, a self-described straight ally":"Although I am not a part of the Igy community I really love being with them," the 16-year-old wrote on the youth organization's online forum a few months ago.
Avi Cohen at Ynetnews reports on this horror, though the latest update is that a third victim has died:
The incident took place at a time during which teenagers belonging to the GLBT community were holding a meeting. At around 10:40 pm shots were heard at the meeting place in central Tel Aviv. A man dressed in black was spotted by eyewitnesses fleeing the scene, and he was later spotted again on a nearby street.
The police's Tel Aviv district commander, Major-General Shahar Ayalon, said the incident had not been preceded by threats to members of the community.
"For 15 years this place has served as a club belonging to the union for private rights. Today a teen meeting was taking place," he said. "At some point someone walked in and began firing left and right. The shooter escaped and we are searching for the suspect. We have no specific description of the suspect or the circumstances."
In a breaking update, Tel Aviv police district commander, Major-General Shahar Ayalonhas ordered all LGBT clubs in Tel Aviv to close following the shooting incident.
From the AP:
Openly gay Knesset lawmaker Nitzan Horowitz said it was "without a doubt the biggest ever attack on the Israeli gay community, we are all in shock."
Witnesses told Israeli media that the gunman was dressed all in black, and described the scene as a "bloodbath."
And a finger is being pointed at religious bigotry. (AFP):
"It is not surprising that such a crime can be committed given the incitement of hatred against the homosexual community," the president of Tel Aviv's gay and lesbian community, Mai Pelem, told reporters.
Pelem was referring to verbal attacks against gays from the religious community.
In the past, swastikas had been painted at the entrance to the centre in an attempt to stigmatise homosexuals.
It's an open thread! Pleeeeease feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread...
Below is what my cartoon sockpuppet Bookworm Bob & I have been looking at late this past week.
• KITV's UH Coach McMackin Under Fire For Gay Slur:
University of Hawaii football coach Greg McMackin drew sharp criticism for using a gay slur repeatedly during a Western Athletic Conference media day Thursday in Salt Lake City.The WAC football coaches are in Utah for the football season preview.
McMackin was referring to last season's Hawaii Bowl when he said Notre Dame University's team did a "little f-----t dance" for Hawaii. That was during the banquet the night before the game when UH Warriors performed their haka.
Oh, nice -- Coach McMackin uses the other f-word at about the 2:50 minute mark (about halfway through the press conference) in the audio:
I'm sure Coach McMackin would be fired if he had used the n-word to describe his "little dance." That he hasn't been instantly fired for using the other f-word to describe his "little dance" says something both about how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are looked at in broader society (note that the audience laughed at the coach's "joke"), and about how all most offensive pejoratives against minority groups are not treated equally.
So, I'm aware of my own status in reading this piece about a coach using the other f-word. Would we be reading about this at all if he said he was doing a little she-male dance instead of a "little f-----t dance"? Even though she-male is one of the most offensive pejoratives one can use regarding trans people, it likely wouldn't get equal press treatment to even the other f-word.
• The media just can't seem to stay away from the Mayor Stu outfit controversy, so neither can we. 
Via Towleroad's , Trans Mayor Stu Rasmussen's Mini Skirt Catches Bill O'Rell O'Reilly's Eye comes this from the Bill O'Reilly Show's Kelly File:
Everyone is agreeing that Mayor Stu dressed inappropriately for the event, but at the end of the segment, when O'Reilly tries to get Kelly to say that youth shouldn't be exposed to trans people, Kelly strongly disagrees with that notion.
• Los Angeles Times' At UC Santa Barbara, sex as a matter of course; Sociology professors John and Janice Baldwin, married for 41 years, are trusted voices on love and lovemaking for thousands of students at the beach-side campus:
Reporting from Santa Barbara -- How well should people know each other before they have sex?In the biggest classroom at UC Santa Barbara, sociology professors John and Janice Baldwin are reeling off survey results showing that male and female students are almost equally willing to sleep with someone they love. But the hall erupts in knowing laughter as a gender gap emerges: Men, the long-married couple reports, remain eager for sex through descending categories of friendship and casual acquaintance. Women don't.
By the time Janice Baldwin gets to the statistic on sex between strangers, the din from the 600 students is so loud, they can hardly hear her announce that 37% of men would have sex with a person they had just met, compared with only 7% of women.
"So you can see, males are a little more likely to go to bed with somebody they don't know very well," Baldwin says dryly.
"Or at all," she adds, to guffaws...
Eep! Seriously though, interesting article -- when is reading about sex in a mainstream publication ever boring?
• New York Times' House Approves Limits on Executive Pay:
The House approved a measure Friday that would put new constraints on executive pay, capitalizing on outrage over multimillion-dollar bonuses to Wall Street executives whose firms were bailed out by taxpayers.The measure, which applies to any firm with more than $1 billion in assets, passed 237 to 185, with most lawmakers voting along party lines. The Senate will not take up a similar measure until after it returns from its August recess in September.
The bill, introduced by Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, would let regulators ban risky incentive-based pay that could have an adverse effect on the financial system.
It would also allow shareholders to vote on executive pay, though those votes would be nonbinding. In addition, it requires that compensation committees include individuals who are from outside management and are independent in that they receive no compensation from and have no relationship to company management. Democrats easily defeated an amendment by a vote of 179 to 244 that would have allowed states to pass laws that would override the federal law on compensation committees of corporate boards.
Populism at it's finest! Or something. 
Frankly, I'd rather see congress pass laws to ease the enabling of anti-trust lawsuits -- specifically to break up all of the "too big to fail" corporations -- rather than writing a populist bill aimed at limiting executive pay. But, that would actually mean doing something to stabilize the economy long term instead of doing something that is geared to obtaining votes in 2010.
• Our wiener story of the day: From the writer of Providence Budget Meals Examiner (at Examiner.com) comes Honoring President Obama's Beer Summit: Hot dogs cooked in beer:
I heard the news about President Obama's beer summit tonight. (OK, he's denying that it's a 'beer summit'. He describes it as 'three folks having a beer at the end of the day'...I won't comment on that.)
Well, 'folks', that reminded me of some pretty great times with my parents...and a beer story. Our conversations and fun always seemed to revolve around the kitchen table. Once in a great while, we would go out to eat. It was extreme dining--from a five star Greek restaurant in Boston to a night out having hot dogs cooked in beer at Lums.
Lums? Do you remember it? If you grew up in Massachusetts or Rhode Island, you may have entered into the doors of the chain restaurant known for its hot dogs cooked in beer and it's famous "Lumburger". Mind you, I don't even like beer. In fact, I've never even had one -- unless beer-dogs count? For that matter, I don't really like hot dogs either unless I have one at a baseball game. But eating a hot dog at Lums was different. The red (plastic) checkered table cloth, the cheesy plastic basket that the fries came in and the beer hot dogs. I felt so grown up ordering a hot dog cooked in beer at the age of ten...
In my best Homer Simpson impression: Mmmm. Hot dogs cooked in beer.
So anywho...It's an open thread! What are you reading or thinking about today?