Rowdy Roddy Piper Dies At Age 61

TMZ reports:

Wrestling legend "Rowdy" Roddy Piper has died at the age of 61 ... TMZ Sports has learned. Piper -- born Roderick George Toombs -- died from cardiac arrest in his sleep at his home in Hollywood on Thursday night. He was discovered on Friday. Piper was a wrestling icon -- one of the biggest stars in the WWE back in the '80s, and even wrestled in "Wrestlemania I" back in 1985 ... squaring off against Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. Roddy's rep tells us, "I am devastated at this news. Rod was a good friend as well as a client and one of the most generous, sincere and authentic people I have ever known. This is a true loss to us all." Piper had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 2006, but last November he said he was cancer free. A family source tells us he was "cancer free" at the time of his death.

Music Journalist Barry Walters Looks Back At Manhattan's Legendary Saint Disco

Veteran music journalist Barry Walters has penned a fascinating look back at Manhattan's much-storied Saint nightclub. It begins:

From September 1980 to May 1988, The Saint defined gay nightlife in New York during its most tumultuous and literally plagued decade. Conceived by off-Broadway impresario Mailman, who had just scored a runaway success with The New St. Marks Baths, The Saint set such high standards that it soon rendered its competition redundant.

“When it opened, it just sucked the life out of all the other clubs,” says Robbie Leslie, the most popular of the disco’s surviving DJs. “Everyone abandoned these clubs they professed loyalty to. It only took a week or two, and they just flocked over to The Saint.”

Housed in the three-story former site of the psychedelic rock concert hall Fillmore East, The Saint offered multi-sensory pleasure like no other venue before or since. It featured a circular, 4,800 square foot dancefloor topped by an aluminum dome 76 ft. by 38 ft. under which much of the club’s 1,500 lights would shine, as well as constellations from a Spitz Space System projector ten times brighter than one in a typical planetarium. Designed by architect Charles Terrell, The Saint pointedly directed one’s attention skyward. Its experience was clearly meant to be uplifting – visually and otherwise.

The perforated dome hid the last and largest of the revered Graebar sound systems: Powered by 630 drivers and 32 amplifiers, nearly 500 speakers generated 26,000 watts – a figure touted in The Saint’s publicity materials as being “probably the most powerful per square foot for entertainment purposes in existence.” All this splendor ultimately cost $4.6 million in 1980 dollars – well over $13 million in today’s currency.

You don't have to be an eldergay to enjoy the full piece.

AUDIO: There are many recordings of Saint DJ sets floating around. In the above-linked piece Walters includes this set from closing night DJ Jim Burgess.

TRAILER: New Order's Music Complete

Rolling Stone reports:

New Order will release their first album in 10 years when the dance icons return with their new LP Music Complete on September 25th. The band's 10th studio album, their first since 2005's Waiting for the Sirens' Call, will also mark New Order's first full-length release without longtime bassist Peter Hook, who left the group in 2007. However, Music Complete will feature the studio return of keyboardist Gillian Gilbert, who last appeared on 2001's Get Ready. Music Complete – the band's first release on Mute – will be available on CD, digital download, black vinyl and a limited edition clear vinyl. New Order will also offer up an exclusive eight-piece deluxe vinyl collection that includes the album plus extended versions of all 11 tracks on colored vinyl.

Original bassist Peter Hook left the band in 2007.

A Note From Neil Tennant

Killers frontman Brandon Flowers is probably the most famous Mormon in pop music and he and his family are featured in a video on the LDS website. While he's known to be gay-friendly, Flowers said little during the Prop 8 fracas. It will be interesting to hear his take on what is arguably the most famous gay anthem of all time.

UPDATE: Here's the first single from the coming album.

Chic - I'll Be There

Via the Los Angeles Times:

More than 20 years after Chic's last album, the titans of disco and forefathers of today's dance music have a brand new single. Billed as Chic featuring Nile Rodgers, the new song "Ill Be There" is a revival of an old sound while still sounding completely contemporary. It's based on tracks Rodgers originally recorded with the group Sister Sledge and later revamped with the modern house music duo the Martinez Brothers. "The outtake became a new song called 'I'll Be There,' so named because when I discovered my band's co-founder Bernard Edwards' body a few hours after he'd passed away, I said, 'Now, I can be there for you in death, the way you were there for me in life,'" Rodgers wrote on his website. "Back in the day 'Nard always looked out for me. I was the reckless one. We had lots of fun and good times. So on the song's surface it's really happy. It's about the origin of CHIC, and how dance music changed our lives forever."

Chic has been nominated to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame nine times but have still not won inclusion.

Mark Mothersbaugh Talks To Google Play

Stereogum recaps:

Mark Mothersbaugh was born legally blind. It wasn’t until he was in second grade that he was finally diagnosed with myopia and got his first pair of glasses. In a new animated video made for Google Play, the DEVO member narrates how his discovery of the world led him to want to become an artist. Then, he recounts the first time he saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and how that made him want to become a musician, too. “We decided we weren’t observing evolution, we were observing de-evolution, and we decided to write music about that,” he explains the start of DEVO’s mission.

Besides his work in Devo, Mothersbaugh has written scores for dozens of movies, video games, and television shows, including the theme song for Pee-Wee's Playhouse.

Jimmy Somerville - Some Wonder

Jimmy Somerville's disco tribute album Homage will be released on Tuesday and today we get the first production video. I interviewed Somerville back in November and you can check out a great fan video from album's glorious first single, Travesty.

Singer Steve Strange Dies At Age 55

Via BBC News:

Steve Strange, lead singer of 1980s pop band Visage, has died aged 55 following a heart attack, his record label says. The Welsh New Romantic icon - best known for the hit Fade To Grey - died in hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Record label boss Marc Green said his "family, band members and friends are all distraught at his untimely death". Born in Newbridge, Caerphilly county, Strange got involved in music after seeing the Sex Pistols in concert in 1976. He went to London aged 15 to work for Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McClaren before setting up the Blitz Club in Soho, central London, which would become a focal point for the New Romantic movement. Bands including Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Culture Club all got their start at the club before finding stardom. His band, Visage, formed in 1979 and released their breakthrough record, Fade To Grey, the following year, peaking at number eight in the UK Singles Chart. Strange finished recording a classical interpretation of the record last year.

I just wrote about Strange's latest project in November. You might recall that he was depicted in Boy George's 2002 Broadway musical, Taboo.

Funny Or Die: The Handkerchief Code

Quite the odd turn at the end. Naughty language!

GOP Holiday Sale

Singer Jimmy Ruffin Dies At 78

Motown legend Jimmy Ruffin, whose 1980 smash Hold On To My Love helped usher out an era of gay nightlife, has died at the age of 78. Via the Detroit Free Press:

Ruffin, whose poignant "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" is regarded by many as one of Motown's greatest works, died Monday afternoon in a Las Vegas hospital. A Mississippi native and the older brother of the late Temptations singer David Ruffin, Jimmy Ruffin did backup work with Motown in the early '60s before being drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in Germany. Upon returning to Motown in 1964, he cut material with little success before striking it big in 1966 with "Brokenhearted," which took him to No. 7 on Billboard's pop chart. The two brothers collaborated on the 1970 album "I Am My Brother's Keeper," and while Jimmy Ruffin ultimately notched eight solo songs on Billboard's R&B chart, his biggest success came in England, where he lived for a stretch and continued to perform frequently in later years.

Hold On To My Love, which reached #10 on the pop chart, was the final song played at the 1988 closing party of New York City's legendary Saint, perhaps the most storied gay nightclub of all time. The track had become a beloved Saint staple, largely due to the extended remix created by Saint DJ Robbie Leslie, who in that pre-computer era took Ruffin's 45rpm single and used "a reel/reel tape deck, a few razor blades, and editing tape" to create the eight-minute version of the song that continues to be a highlight of disco classics events. Shortly after the Saint shuttered its doors that day, an anonymous graffiti artist painted the song's title and Ruffin's name above the club's main entrance in what Leslie calls an "evocative tribute." You can read more about how Leslie created his version here. Hold On To My Love was written and produced by Robin Gibb.

TRAILER: Visage's Orchestral

From Visage frontman Steve Strange:

Founding fathers of the New Romantics and pioneers of the 80s sound Visage, return with a new album “Orchestral” in Winter 2014. In March 2014 Visage were asked to perform at the closing ceremony of the World Ski Jumping Championships in Prague. Sensing an opportunity for grandeur, Steve Strange – the illustrious leader of Visage – joined forces with the Czech Synthosymphonica Orchestra. Headed by Armin Effenberger, their speciality is mixing classical music arrangements and full orchestras with classic synthesizer sounds.

RELATED: Former Visage member Midge Ure co-wrote and produced the mammoth (and for many, cringe-inducing) 1984 charity singe, Do They Know It's Christmas, which will be re-recorded this weekend by Bono, Chris Martin, One Direction, and others as a benefit for ebola relief. With sales of over 12M copies, the original is among the twenty greatest-selling singles of all time.

JMG Interview With Jimmy Somerville Plus Worldwide Debut Of Travesty Re-Edit

I recently had the privilege of speaking with groundbreaking dance artist Jimmy Somerville about his new album and his history as one of the loudest and proudest gay artists. 

JMG: Hi, Jimmy! Let's start with today and work backwards. Tell us about your coming album, Homage, and its first single, Travesty, which made its worldwide debut on my site last month to much acclaim from my readers. From the first single, this feels like a total throwback to the lush orchestrated disco sound of the 70s.

Jimmy Somerville: That's it, exactly. This is the album I've always wanted to do. This is the album that if it came out when I was 15 years old, I'd have been dancing around my bedroom to it.

JMG: I've been dancing around my bedroom to it and I'm a few multiples of 15 years old. It's been five years since your last album and a decade since one was released in the US. Why the long break? 

JS: Well, it all had to do with money, confidence, and direction. After my contract to London [Records] came to an end - my relationship [with them] was so toxic - it destroyed my belief in myself as a writer and performer. Only in the last two and half years did everything turn in my head. It was like, "I can do this. I'm doing this for me." It's like I'm starting my career all over again.

JMG: Speaking of starting your career, you came out as a proud gay artist in the early 80s when few others would. At that time you publicly slammed artists like Boy George who were still being coy about their gayness. How do you think things have changed for young gay artists today?

JS: It all depends on how you want to further your career, sadly. When it's all about your sexuality that sometimes means it's automatically turned into a negative. You create this smokescreen and that's kind of sad. I was coming from a political agenda and different mindset. I was very much a radical at the front of a political awakening.

JMG: Sam Smith has been out pretty much from the start.

JS: He's out there, he's really successful, and you know what, nobody gives a shit. But even today it's a brave thing to do. I take my hat off to him.

JMG: As to your political awakening, like many gay men my age, 1984's Smalltown Boy was part of my own political awakening. For so many of us, that song was so painfully personal but also truly beautiful. I can't think of any other song that was so simultaneously heartbreaking and empowering.

JS: It never fails to move when I hear that. It never fails to make me tearful. It's not even really my song anymore. It means too much to so many other people.

JMG: When Bronski Beat was touring back then, my friends and I drove hundreds of miles to hear you at Fort Lauderdale's Copa. But when we got there, no Jimmy Somerville.

JS: Yeah, sorry about that. It was just Frank [Bronski] and Larry [Steinbachek] at that point. The club didn't tell you?

JMG: Nope. People were pissed and they let the other guys know it by chanting,  "Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy."

JS: (Chuckles.) I'm sure that went over well.

JMG: Last year you appeared in a wildly viral video in which you seemed to surprise a Berlin street busker as he was singing Smalltown Boy. Was that really just a happy random circumstance?

JS: Um...half and half. He knew I was nearby.

JMG: A Bronski Beat concert is a major plot point in the movie Pride, which is in US theaters right now. How did that come about?

JS: Mark, the main character, was my best friend [in real life]. He kept hitting on my boyfriend. We had a massive fight and then we were inseparable. I wrote For A Friend [Communards, 1987] for Mark when he died.

JMG: Since you mentioned a Communards song, dare I ask if you keep in touch with [bandmate] Richard Coles?

JS:  We keep in touch by email. You know, he's an Anglican priest now and he's written a book. Look it up on Amazon, there's actually a halo on the cover.

JMG: So what's next for you?

JS: Basically I'll just keep writing material for another album. Some touring for this one, but there's no band. I'm not on a label and this album cost hardly anything to do. It was just made with so much love and friendship.

JMG: My San Francisco readers are dying for a concert.

JS: San Francisco! I'd love to play there.

JMG: Thanks very much, Jimmy. Before we go, since your new album is old school disco, I'm wondering what your personal all-time favorite disco song is?

JS: Oh, that's so hard!. There's so many, it's impossible to say, really. But if I had to pick just one...hmm...I'd guess I'd say Divine's Native Love. You just can't hear that without wanting to move.

The single and extended 12" version of Travesty are now available for download. Homage will be released in early 2015. Below is the worldwide debut of legendary Saint DJ Robbie Leslie's eleven-minute re-edit of Travesty.

David Mixner Reveals Having Helped Eight Friends With AIDS Commit Suicide

Noted activist and former Clinton White House aide David Mixner made a startling revelation during the premiere of his show here in New York City. Via the Daily Beast:

It is the morning after. We are speaking about Mixner’s emotional on-stage confession—unelicited by anyone but himself—Monday night to the assisted suicides he oversaw of friends dying of AIDS in the 1980s. As Mixner bluntly revealed during Oh Hell No!, his one-man autobiographical stage show: “I killed eight.” One of those eight was his beloved partner Peter Scott, who—along with the seven others—was in the debilitating final stages of the disease and had asked Mixner to help him die. Mixner revealed that he had been part of an underground euthanasia network, aided by medical professionals, who were now “all gone” and could therefore not be punished professionally or prosecuted. Mixner, whose activism spans 40 intense years, himself consulted lawyers before confessing on stage and says he feels a legal prosecution is “unlikely. I am not worried, and what I did was right. In the end I wanted people to know about these decisions I had to take in my 30s that no one should have to take in their 30s.”

Mixner says he would insert a morphine drip into his friends' IV and then call their loved ones so they could be there at the end. Hit the link for much more about Mixner's work in the early years of the movement.

Nancy Reagan's Astrologer Dies At 87

Via the New York Times:

In his 1988 memoir, Donald T. Regan, a former chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan, revealed what he called the administration’s “most closely guarded secret.” He said an astrologer had set the time for summit meetings, presidential debates, Reagan’s 1985 cancer surgery, State of the Union addresses and much more. Without an O.K. from the astrologer, he said, Air Force One did not take off. The astrologer, whose name Mr. Regan did not know when he wrote the book, was Joan Quigley. She died on Tuesday at 87 at her home in San Francisco, her sister and only immediate survivor, Ruth Quigley, said. Mr. Regan said that Miss Quigley — a Vassar-educated socialite who preferred the honorific Miss to Ms. (she never married) — had made her celestial recommendations through phone calls to the first lady, Nancy Reagan, often two or three a day. Mrs. Reagan, he said, set up private lines for her at the White House and at the presidential retreat at Camp David.

Quigley was introduced to the Reagans by Merv Griffin.

Jimmy Somerville - Back To Me

Streaming: New Holly Johnson Album

The first new album in 15 years from former Frankie Goes To Hollywood frontman Holly Johnson is streaming in full today at the Guardian. I'm really digging it. Ordering details and tour info is here.

Boy George Talks 1984 Pop Music

Via Rolling Stone:

While we were working on our list of the 100 best singles of 1984, Boy George popped by the Rolling Stone offices and offered his thoughts on a few of our selections. Watch the "Karma Chameleon" (Number 22!) singer remember hits like Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." – "It was so American and so rousing!" – and U2's "Pride (In the Name of Love)" – "They were just amazing, amazing." He also tells us of the time he went to Radio City Music Hall to check out Madonna's first major tour and ends by explaining why the success of some of these records could never be repeated. Later, he discussed why 1984 was "the year of more" and how Culture Club was also in competition with bands like Wham! and Duran Duran. "I think all artists have a nemesis," George said. "When George Michael came along I was like, 'He's called George? That's not allowed!"

(Tipped by JMG reader Mike)

Holly Johnson - In And Out Of Love

Via Digital Spy:

Holly Johnson has unveiled the music video for new song In and Out of Love. The track is the lead single from Europa, Johnson's first album in 14 years. The video has been directed by Chris Shepherd and produced by Alex Bedford. The follow-up to 1999's Soulstream coincides with the 30th anniversary of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's debut Welcome to the Pleasuredome and is released on September 29. Johnson returned to the studio after being introduced to Mark Ralph by The 2 Bears. "I'd pile my vintage synths into the back of a cab, head over to Mark's place, and we'd be up all night making this record," said Johnson.

RELATED:The Guardian has published a fascinating look back at Welcome To The Pleasuredome, which dominated the British charts for most of 1984. An excerpt:

Frankie were a blip, albeit a seismic one. Relax and Two Tribes are the sixth and 22nd bestselling UK singles ever – above Relax there are just charity records (Band Aid, Candle In The Wind) and novelty songs (Mull of Kintyre, You’re The One That I Want), give or take Bohemian Rhapsody. Frankie’s achievements – first three singles all No 1, a double debut album with advance sales of more than a million – are colossal. Yet they rarely get cited by other bands: they didn’t, for example, feature in the NME’s recent cover story on the 100 Most Influential Artists. But that’s because it would be impossible to recreate what they did. They were a one-off: two self-styled “ferocious homosexuals” up front, backed by three prototype Liam Gallaghers, who were known as “The Lads”. Their symphonic future disco came in sleeves full of literary allusions and they issued missives in T-shirt form: Frankie Say War! Hide Yourself, Arm The Unemployed and Bomb Is a Four Letter Word. The hi-tech sonics were the work of producer Trevor Horn; the intellectual subterfuge was courtesy of former NME writer Paul Morley.

BBC Airs Kate Bush Documentary

The Guardian has a review:

When Kate Bush got her £3,000 record deal from EMI at 16, she used some of it to pay for dance classes with the legendary choreographer Lindsay Kemp. In last night's The Kate Bush Story: Running Up That Hill (BBC 4), a documentary about the singer-songwriter broadcast on the near-eve of her first tour in 35 years, he remembered how he had to coax her forward from the back row – . "She was as timid as hell … but once she started dancing, she was a wild thing" – and a few months later found an LP pushed under his door. Bush herself appeared only in old interview footage – so young, so fragile, so shy, but full of the sureness and certainty that only talent brings – but what emerged was a wonderful, detailed portrait of that talent. Although it gave her precocity its full due (she had written The Man With the Child in His Eyes by the time Gilmour came to listen to her when she was 14), it also gave proper weight to her evolution and her later, less commercial, still astonishing work. Why it chose to close on a stupid jarring joke by Steve Coogan, I do not know. But the rest of it succeeded in making Bush and her work less of a mystery but no less beautiful for that.