Tag Archives: LGBTQ+ Rights

Episode 21: Punk and Pride

Pride Month is rapidly passing and this weekend it’s Chicago’s turn to celebrate, so I thought I’d ponder the connections between punk rock and the LGBTQIA+ community.

First, I talk about Joe Strummer and the band’s support for the community, starting with “The Right Profile” from London Calling. “The Right Profile” is a song about the legendary but closeted actor Montgomery Clift. The song is clearly empathetic, but it focuses on Clift as a tragic figure, which, indeed, he was; but this shows how many allies viewed queer people back then — as sad, lonely people who led sordid lives as a result of societal pressure and rejection. However, Joe’s empathy and support for the community grew and evolved from there, to the point where, some twenty years later in “Diggin’ the New,” Joe celebrated LGBTQIA+ people not as tragic figures but just as people. And, notably, he embraced the trans community long before most straight, cisgender artists did.

But the connection between punk and the queer community is much more than a song or two. To that end, I refer to two fascinating pieces on LGBTQIA+ punk: Jayna Brown and Tavia Nyong’o’s 2020 NPR story, “Queer as Punk: A Guide To LGBTQIA+ Punk”; and Mark E. Moon’s 2022 article “Check Out These 10 Queer Punk Bands” from the Dallas Observer. 

More broadly, though, I talk about the way punk welcomed all comers, especially outsiders of every stripe — including LGBTQIA+ people. Though far from perfect, the world of punk rock gave so many of us who didn’t fit in anywhere else a time and a place to breathe, to be ourselves even if we didn’t know who or what we were. And that was and always has been especially important for queer people.

I also highlight some of the more influential queer and queer-supportive punk acts, like the Buzzcocks, the Slits, the B-52s, Tom Robinson, and the great Joan Jett. (By the way, the B-52s song I mention, “Dirty Back Road,” is from the Wild Planet album released in 1980).

Anyway, please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments below. And remember, as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.”

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Episode 7: Joe Strummer Was Ahead of His Time, Part Infinity

One of those top nights of the year

And I see everyone’s here

Oh, took me a long time to get it

But when its taken time

Think and don’t forget it

“Diggin’ the New,” from Rock Art and the X-Ray Style (1999)

Following up on last week’s discussion about Billy Bragg’s evolving views on LGBTQ+ rights, I relate a disturbing interaction I had on Twitter after posting last week’s show in which a random stranger reacted to my defending the rights of trans and nonbinary people in a particularly offensive way. That interaction got me thinking about how Joe Strummer was never afraid to evolve and grow and challenge his own understanding of the world. The song “Diggin’ the New” really embraces this — not only Joe’s drive to understand the world around him, but his embrace of trans rights long before most artists did.

Joe was always ahead of his time. He was ahead of where a good many people are today, even twenty years after his untimely death.

And because America experienced yet another school shooting this past week, this time at Michigan State University, I reflect on the Clash’s, and particularly Joe Strummer’s, running commentary on guns and violence. Although “The  Guns of Brixton” may seem to express pro-gun sentiment, Joe’s and the band’s views on guns and violence were in reality quite different. From their cover of “Police and Thieves” to “Tommy Gun,” an explicitly anti-violence anthem, to Joe’s “Burning Streets”/“London is Burning” track first recorded with the Mescaleros and later reworked and re-released on Joe Strummer 001, their position on gun violence was far more humane and nuanced than the folks who seemingly don’t care if mass shootings continue apace. Meantime, I can’t get over the prophetic words from “Burning Streets”/“London is Burning”:

Too many guns in this damn town

At the supermarket, you gotta duck down

Baby flak jackets on the merry-go-round

(London is burnin’)

There’s too many guns in this damn town

(London is burnin’)

Baby flak jackets on the merry-go-round …

So please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments. And as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.” 

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Episode 6: Happy International Clash Day

On this week’s podcast, I talk about International Clash Day, an annual celebration of the Only Band that Matters that takes place on February 7 each year. Seattle radio station KEXP began International Clash Day in an impromptu fashion ten years ago when a listener asked, in response to a deejay playing a Clash song, why the station didn’t play more Clash (always a good question!), and the deejay obliged. Since then, the celebration has grown around the world, from the US to Europe to Latin America and beyond.

International Clash Day seems to sneak up on me every year (maybe next year I’ll remember that it’s coming), but it’s always a good time to break out the guitar and give a few Clash tunes a test drive. Don’t worry; I do not torment you with my guitar playing on this episode … except for a few seconds. But those few seconds come from my favorite Clash song of all time, “Spanish Bombs” from London Calling. “Spanish Bombs” recalls the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, the world’s first fight against fascism and in many ways a precursor to World War II. The song focuses on the writers, artists, and musicians who joined the cause to defend the government against Franco’s fascists, which is quite appropriate given the Clash’s own anti-fascist activism. It’s worth remembering, too, that American novelist Ernest Hemingway and British novelist/journalist George Orwell went to Spain to defend the republic against the fascists. Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is an amazing memoir of his time there.

From International Clash Day I turn to the Grammys, noting that the Clash won exactly one award — the 2003 Grammy for Best Long Form Video for the documentary film, Westway to the World. I also weigh in on Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ performance of and Grammy win for the song “Unholy,” which caused a right-wing meltdown on social media. Petras made history as the first openly transgender woman to win a Grammy, but she was not the first trans Grammy winner of all time. That was Wendy Carlos, the classical artist who won three Grammys under her former name in 1970 for her pioneering Moog synthesizer works. 

I also discuss the Grammys tribute to the 50th anniversary of hip hop, featuring some of the legends of the game (Busta Rhymes, De La Soul, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Missy Elliott, Grandmaster Flash, Ice-T, Method Man, Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, and RUN-D.M.C., among others) and the Clash’s connection to the genre.

Finally, in this week’s Great Artists, Good People segment, I talk about British punk icon Billy Bragg, a close friend of Joe Strummer and an excellent songwriter in his own right. Among many fantastic songs, Bragg’s 1991 hit “Sexuality” was a celebration of gay rights at a time when that was still controversial. But, not to be outdone, Bragg updated the lyrics in 2021 to embrace and celebrate trans and nonbinary people as well, showing tremendous growth as a person and giving a well-deserved middle finger to the haters in the UK. We should all grow old like this.

So please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments. And as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.” 

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