Screeching guitars over a rapid backbeat pierce 50 ears trying to hear 25 stilted conversations. A foot-long needle shoots directly through the beckoning orifices, winds around the ear canals and connects directly with the center of each half of the brain. A throbbing begins at the base of the skull as imaginary brain fluid leaks out of each ear. Each face contorts into wrinkled disgust and the faces move closer together.

“Music is my life!” screams one bearded-with-glasses 20-something into the ear of a young girl with hair framing her face, brown tank top, cut-off jean shorts and several colored tattoos spattered across each arm. Clouds of cigarette smoke linger between them and slowly rise to the tar-stained ceiling. From the other end of the bar, the shapes and cartoons on her arms aren’t distinguishable, but I’m convinced they’re more than just blobs of ink. ”Have you ever heard the first Bad Brains album?” he continues to yell, ”It’s so raw, I can’t get enough of it!”

The band falls into a repetitive pattern of chunky chords, fast, pounding, tribal drums and hollering vocals. A few words sneak out of the mix, “MAKE…APPOINTMENT…TIME…MIND…EXCUSE!” Fuzzed mumbling fills the spaces between the recognizable words.

“I’m so glad you like them, too! Did you go see them at State a few months ago? They were great. I was there for Propaghandi, though!” the girl hollers back.

“What!? I can’t hear a fucking thing with this shit music!”

“Ha! I know! I wish they’d turn it down or something!” she yells in the middle of a song ending. Well, not exactly ending. The thumping tune had devolved into squelching feedback and noise crying memories of ghosts too fresh to even know they were dead.

The bar continues to fill with people lining up for beer and liquor memory tonic promising foggy notions for hours to come. Bodies pressing up against each other and conversations continue. A buffer borders the band a good five to 10 feet in every direction. In the middle of the vacuum, the group bounces off each other, climbs amps, jumps off, falls on the ground in a general hootenany and self-inflicted chaos.

On the other side of town, Johnny Winter fills a medium-sized open-aired venue and plays hits from the ’60s or ’70s or whenever he’s from. A 45-year-old man with greying hair, pony tail and beard turns to his 18-year-old son (in baggy jeans and with flowing long blond hair) to remark, “It’s so important to support local arts, son. If we don’t come out to these local shows, what kind of local scene will we have? Local music is so important.”

Clouds rumble overhead as Johnny looks skyward and pauses thoughtfully following a 12-minute blues jam. “Don’t forget Woodstock, boys and girls. I was there. Chant off the rain, just chant it off. There’s no mud here and you girls aren’t as young as you were back then,” he sputters into the microphone with a big inside joke grin. Cheers erupt as he leads a chant, “NO RAIN, NO RAIN, NO RAIN!” the crowd follows and stomps their feet.

All at once, the sky cracks open and pours dangerous amounts of rain onto the unsuspecting crowd. A few well-prepared concert goers still in their business leisure suits from the Friday 9-to-5 pull out their umbrellas and the rest run forward toward the stage.

In front of the crowd at the bar, I see and hear all these things at once. My wandering brain picks up random transmissions from across town and throughout the room. When I play music I black out in catatonic stupor for better or worse. I can’t control my thoughts as I rip my hand to shreds strumming my guitar and hollering my lungs out absentmindedly. Or completely focused and precise. I can never tell which one for sure.

A dear friend of mine is in the midst of the arduous, exhilerating, terrifying and liberating process of coming out. She recently wrote to me about the central role certain music has played in helping her to interpret and cope with her whirlwind emotions. I’ve combined her suggestions with a few of my own favorites to create a soundtrack that is guaranteed to make anyone’s coming out possible, bearable and even totally awesome.

Prince, Cream: I’ve chosen this raunchy classic primarily for the obvious reason, but also for its subtext of affirmation and empowerment: “Do your dance / Why should you wait any longer? / Take your chance / It can only make you stronger.” So true.

Bruce Springsteen, Rosalita (Come Out Tonight): I don’t think Bruce knew he was writing the following lines for me and gay people everywhere, but we should still thank him for them: “Closets are for hangers. Winners use the door / So use it, Rosie, that’s what its there for!” Although set in a fairly cliche heterosexual context, this song is all about sexual defiance, transgression and freedom. It resonates with queer audiences in a profound way.

Ani DiFranco, Shameless: This spunky jam about a clandestine same-sex love affair was critical in my own coming out journey. Ani communicates the experience of being closeted in characteristically clunky couplets like “We’re in a room without a door and I am sure without a doubt / They’re gonna wanna know how we got in here and they’re gonna wanna know how we plan to get out.” Check out a rousing performance (complete with a full-throttle audience sing-along) after the jump.

Madonna, Secret: Lines like “Until I learned to love myself / I was never, ever lovin’ anybody else” make this song a shoe in for any coming out soundtrack.  Unlike the Springsteen song mentioned earlier, Madonna seems to have been consciouss of the relevance Secret would have for GLBT listeners. The video features an assortment of drag kings, queens, same-sex couples and even Madonna herself engaged in some intense girl-on-girl hand caressing.

Sarah Bettens, Come Over Here: This sensual, low-end driven sexin’ jam from the solo corpus of the K’s Choice lead vocalist speaks candidly about the costs (”Someone out there will hate you now”) and benefits (”Paradise for those who fall”) of coming out. It’s an extremely compelling and rare combination of pithy and  hot.

Melissa Etheridge, Nowhere to Go: This song is a great one to throw on if you’re starting to chicken out… or chicken in, rather. The verses speak to the emotional agony of the closet. The song’s speaker and her lover must drive to the outskirts of town ”past the Wal-Mart and Prison” on “a road that goes to nowhere” to share simple moments of intimacy. The song climaxes with Melissa mournfully bellowing “I’m so close to heaven this hell is not mine.” If that’s not enough to kick your butt out of the closet, nothing will.

Well, take my breath away! At age 51 actress Kelly McGillis of Top-Gun , The Accused and Witness fame, has confirmed rumors that she is, indeed, a lesbian. While this comes as no surprise to devotees of The L-Word  (McGillis portrayed a closeted Army Colonel on the Showtime series back in 2007), it does make me look at Tom Cruise, McGillis’s Top-Gun co-star, in a whole new light. Check out the pic after the jump. I think she’s offered me a ride on her motorcycle before…

On the morning of November 5th, 2008, the day after the historic election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, I was performing in a highschool in Palatka, Florida. The students, approximately 1/3 of whom in this particular district were African American, were palpably stoked. Many of them wore bootleg Obama t-shirts featuring images not just of the President Elect, but of his whole beautiful family. I started out my program by asking, “Does anyone know who won yesterday’s presidential election?” The students erupted into a chant of “O-bam-a! O-bam-a!” that made the aging media center feel more like a football stadium.

One would think that spending a day surrounded by so much pride and exuberance would be the ultimate spiritual jumpstart; that I packed up my gear that afternoon and floated back to St. Petersburg on a cloud of contentment knowing that the platitudes I’ve spent my life singing are true, that ”the times they are a’changin.’” Unfortunately, that was not the case. That day, which was such an unblemished triumph of justice and hope over prejudice and fear to all those young people, to me was a painful reminder that a well funded and well organized segment of my state’s and country’s body politic does not think me or other gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people like me their equal. November 5, 2008 taught me that in America a black man can (finally) take the Presidential Oath of Office, but a gay man or woman can’t even exchange a marriage vow. 

As I drove back home that afternoon, I scribbled a line on a Dunkin’ Doughnuts napkin: “I’m gonna love you, no matter what they say.” Months later, I found the napkin and decided to finish the song.

Given that my two year “wedding” anniversary and the day when the California Supreme Court will release its ruling on the fate of Proposition 8 (www.dayofdecision.com) are fast approaching, I thought I’d send ”Dying Day” out into the world. Special thanks to Jody Gray and Pro Star Recording Studio for making the video for me.

If you’re interested in participating in Tampa Bay’s local Day of Decision rally, it will be held in Joe Chillura Courthouse Square Park (610 East Kennedy Boulevard, Tampa, FL 33602) from 7-9:30pm. There is no definite date yet because noone knows when exactly the Court will release its opinion. Impact-Florida, the GLBT rights organization I am involved with, will have 24 hours notice when the Court releases its decision. If you’d like to be notified, go to www.impact-florida.com and join our social network.

It is currently 4:39 p.m. on Tuesday, April 14 and my freakin’ federal income tax forms have yet to be finalized and postmarked. (Believe it or not, folksingers occasionally earn enough income to warrant filing their income taxes!) This, obviously, is a source of immense anxiety. In an attempt to soothe my nerves (and in the true spirit of tax procrastination), I’ve decided to take a break from my number crunching to post a playlist that is sure to chill me and all of you other tax slackers out. Trust me, this is better than Xanax.  Enjoy!

Nice and Slow, Usher

Money Made You Mean, Indigo Girls

2 Cool 2 Be 4-Gotten, Lucinda Williams

Mercy Now, Mary Gauthier

Pulse, Ani DiFranco

Keep Ya Head Up, 2Pac

You Can’t Always Get What You Want, The Rolling Stones

Beautiful, Dirty, Rich, Lady Gaga

Ride Wit Me, Nelly featuring City Spud

Oh My God, Whatever, Etc., Ryan Adams

What do the corn-fed, flag-wavin', salt-of-the-earth folks of Iowa have in common with the liberal, yankee blue bloods of Connecticut and Massachusetts? If you guessed State Supreme Courts that operate in accordance with the principles of justice and reason, you're absolutely right.

Earlier today, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously decided that a 1998 law limiting marriage to a man and a woman was unconstitutional. (Here's the New York Times story.) This decision makes Iowa the first state in the Midwest and the third state in the entire United States of America to approve same-sex marriage.

In honor of this landmark decision, here's a video of the Musical Theatre Academy of Orange County performing "Iowa Stubborn" from the Broadway classic, The Music Man. Cheers to Iowa for standing staunchly and stubbornly against the tide of bigotry, discrimination and hate! Our state and our country really "ought to give Iowa a try."




Growing up in and around the Tampa Bay music scene I would hear occasional murmurings about a time in the not-so-distant past when a handfull of local rags championed Tampa Bay’s local music community.  As I listened to such tales, my teenage imagination would conjure up images of chain smoking, black denim clad musicians hanging out on street corners reading these magazines as stegosauruses grazed behind them and terradactlys circled above their shaggy heads. In other words, music magazines devoted solely to covering the Tampa Bay music scene seemed outmoded and preposterous. Fortunately not everyone in Tampa Bay is as myopic and shortsighted as I tend to be…

Tampa Bay music scene stalwarts Jeannette Goldman (owner of Pro Star Recording Studio), Ken Thomas (webmaster of Tampabaymusicscene.com) and Thomas Garcia (local producer, songwriter and promoter) have banded together to publish Bay Area Beat: a magazine for the local scene and the local scene only.  

Here’s how their press release describes the mag’s mission: “Bay Area Beat is all about promoting LOCAL artists and musicians. Period. No priority coverage for national acts.” Here’s how Goldman rather emphatically put it to me during a recent phone interview, “We don’t care who is playing at the St. Pete Times Forum! We’re trying to support the musicians in the area that are working and making a living with their music.”

Bay Area Beat’s first issue hits the streets this Friday (April 3) and features local legends Rebekah Pulley, Ronny Elliott and Blind Buddy Moody. To celebrate the launch, these three artists will be performing a concert at Pro Star Recording Studio. Admission is $6 and the doors open at 7pm.

If you’d like to submit a story suggestion or idea to Bay Area Beat, you can do so here. Don’t be shy about shamelessly promoting your band, venue or upcoming show. According to Goldman, that’s what this mag is here for: “Bay Area Beat belongs to all of us. Who better knows the scene than the folks that are in it?”

Bob Greene is a traumatologist. This somewhat morbid designation means precisely what you think it means: Bob is a certified expert in psychic pain. The Florida State University Traumatology Institute conferred this title upon him, but his years of practice as a licensed clinical social worker are the true source of his expertise. In this capacity he has counseled thousands of people, including survivors of some of the greatest collective traumas of our time.

The day after the September 11 terrorist attacks he drove to New York City to counsel people in the financial district who had watched helplessly as planes crashed into buildings, emergency rescue vehicles unknowingly drove over top of human remains and fire, smoke and ash consumed everything comforting and familiar. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bob provided counseling for the Tampa Bay 2-1-1 volunteers who spent two weeks in Monroe, LA fielding 2,000 calls a day from storm survivors in desperate need of rescue, shelter, psychiatric medication or even food after going without for three days.

Here’s how Bob, a man as unassuming and unpretentious as his name, describes his work: “I talk to folks just like me: bozos on the bus just trying to make it through this crazy world. I listen. There’s something about saying it out loud.” Here’s how I, a lifelong songwriter and singer, describe Bob’s work: He’s a pad of paper, a journal or a napkin and a bartender’s pen. He’s the multitrack Tascam I used to record my fist song when I was a sophomore in high school. He’s an open mic night or a house concert with a particularly gracious and responsive audience. He’s an opportunity to let the inside out, to let thought hit air.

I met Bob in my capacity as the director of Impact-Florida, a GLBT rights organization formed in response to the passage of Amendment 2. One of my members caught wind that Bob was starting a support group for people struggling to come to terms with their sexuality or with that of a friend or loved one and urged me to meet with him to find out what Impact-Florida could do to help. He was obviously impressed with Bob’s credentials and experience, but what resonated with him (and eventually with me) the most was Bob’s story.

Bob is the father of a gay daughter. When she came out to him, his response was something akin to, “Okay.” “It was a non-starter,” he explains. “We’re close. We talk on the phone everyday. She’s my buddy.” In other words, Bob was totally cool. He loved and respected his gay daughter just as much as he’d loved and respected her when she identified as heterosexual. Nothing about their relationship changed. What did change was Bob’s consciousness. As the feminists used to say, it got raised:

“I started wondering,” Bob explains, “‘What’s my daughter facing? What are her fears? How does she feel?’” It was not difficult for the traumatologist to get a sense of the emotional, familial, professional, social and political hell that many openly GLBT people are forced to endure. “I can imagine the fright, uncertainty, self-doubt and self-loathing,” Bob says. These imaginings led him to the idea of forming a support group.

I know the phrase “support group” conjures up all sorts of negative images in the minds of many people. Prior to my conversations with Bob, I associated it solely with rickety folding chairs, harsh fluorescent lights, stale coffee (if you’re lucky) and awkward moments of inappropriate personal revelation. However, after spending an hour or so with Bob discussing his vision for the group, I’m thinking about it in a whole new way.

At 20 years old, before I “came out” to my friends and family, I came out to a coffee shop full of strangers as I sang a love song I had written using the gender-specific pronouns “she” and “her.” I remember trembling and being short of breath. I made it through the song and the audience clapped politely, just as they had done for all of my previous songs. I didn’t die. The building didn’t explode and no one was struck by lightning. This tiny bit of affirmation relieved years of anxiety, self-loathing and fear and ultimately gave me the confidence to tell my friends and my family that my “friend” from college was actually my lover. If it weren’t for that coffee shop, what would I have done? Where would I have turned? Who would I be today?

Bob’s group aims to be that coffee shop for anyone who’s feeling lost, confused and afraid like I did. They’ll meet on Thursdays from 5pm-7pm and Saturdays from 10am-12pm starting this Thursday (March 19) at Trinity Lutheran Church (401 5th Street North Saint Petersburg, FL 33701). It is open to people of all ages looking for a space where they can talk about issues relating to sexuality and gender identity.

Whether you’re the parent of a gay child or a young person looking for a safe place to sort out all of this murky and complicated sexuality stuff, Bob wants you to know that his group is here for you. In Bob’s words, “We’ll meet people’s needs whatever those may be. I’m doing this for my daughter. I’m a father. I’m a shrink. I can’t separate the two.”

According to California student Virgil Griffith, listening to Lil’ Wayne makes you stupid.

Alright, you caught me. That’s a complete misrepresentation of Mr. Griffith’s conclusions. I was just trying to get your attention. Now that I have it, here’s a more accurate summary of Griffith’s “research”:

Griffith compared aggregated Facebook data about favorite bands among students at 1,352 colleges with the average SAT scores at those schools creating an utterly unscientific but very entertaining statistical analysis of taste and intelligence. Here’s what he found:

Students who listed “Beethoven” as their “favorite music” on their Facebook page have an average SAT score of 1371. Students who listed “Lil Wayne” have an average SAT score of 889. Other notable artists/bands in the top 10 are Counting Crows with an average SAT score of 1247, Radiohead with an average SAT score of 1220 and Bob Dylan with an average SAT score of 1197. The bottom 10 included Beyonce (avg. SAT score: 932) and T.I. (avg. SAT score: 926).

 Outkast is the highest ranking “hip-hop” artist on the list at number 36 with fans sporting an average  SAT score of 1104. (Griffith lifted his genres directly from Last.fm.) The lowest ranking ”rock” band is Aerosmith at number 117. Their fans had an average SAT score of 987.

While it is unclear what any of this “data” means, there is something intriguing about Griffith’s underlying assumption that our musical tastes reflect something other than and beyond our age, culture and social mileu. For me, a self-proclaimed nerd, it brings to mind the classical Greek conception of music most famously articulated by Plato. In The Republic, a most serious treatise on political philosophy, Plato spends an entire chapter describing the vital role of music in education. He writes, “Education in music is most sovereign because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace.” Griffith’s claim that our musical taste (as self-reported on Facebook) correlates in some way to our SAT scores is the cold, impersonal and post-modern version of the phenomenon Plato is talking about. 

While I think Griffith’s ”methodology” is significantly flawed and, therefore, do not take his ”conclusions” very seriously, I wholeheartedly embrace the spirit of his inquiry. Music effects every facet of our being, including whatever part the SAT purports to measure, in profound and inexplicable ways. It is time we started listening as if more than our Saturday night depended on it.

Special thanks to Amy! for inspiring this blog. In a comment on my recent Songs to save your party blog she wrote, “As a follow up to this article, I propose you consider the question, what songs are guaranteed to END the party?”

Amy!, your wish is my command. I call this my “Maxi Pad Playlist” because these songs are guaranteed to suck the moisture (and the fun) right out of any party. If it’s two in the morning and you want your asshole friends out of your living room, throw any one of these tunes on and watch the polite excuses begin:

Sweet Caroline, Neil Diamond - This song sucks!

Wind Beneath My Wings, Bette Midler - Beaches: The ultimate buzz kill.

Summer Lovin’, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John - Last night, Creative Loafing threw a party celebrating the launch of their spiffy new website. I was there drinking a Dixie Cup of wine, discussing the sad condition of the newspaper business (hence the Dixie Cups) with a very interesting guy and having a generally pleasant time. And then, this bullshit filled the air. I couldn’t say my goodnights quickly enough.  

Taxi, Harry Chapin - This song has all the ingredients to ruin your night. It’s brooding, slow-moving, tragically sad and features a musical interlude with only cello and a male singing soprano.  

Come Sail Away, Styx - Speaking of male soprano, I think it’s more effective at breaking up a party than a police raid.

This is all I’ve got off the top of my head. Surely, there are more abjectly awful songs out there than these five. Add at will!