It Glides for Me

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Remember I had a gig coming up in September?

The theme is Love Music, Hate Homophobia, and the lineup is a series of gay-friendly bands - including one put together especially for the gig. It's called 'Darqroom", and one half of it is me.

We've been putting together a set of gay-themed songs and gay-themed movie samples. I've got a load of Derek Jarman stuff to plough through for useful snippets.

Well, there's another, unrelated gig been hastily arranged in a fortnight...and we've been asked to play because there's not many other bands available at short notice...and the theme isn't remotely gay...but all our songs still are. For instance...

"Jet Boy Jet Girl" by Elton Motello, a song about underage gay boys having oral sex, and one of them flying into a murderous rage because the other one gets a girlfriend.



The song was censored in the most inventive way - by being completely re-recorded with a different vocalist singing in a different language about a completely different subject. And, Milli Vanilli-like, the different vocalist wasn't actually the vocalist at all - he was a front for the record's producer being the singer. Now that's censorship.

Oh yes, the new subject was the pet cat of an alcoholic getting burned by exploding whiskey, but apparently that's fine for teenagers to listen to, and not as disturbing as boys having sex.

The "clean" version was "Ca Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand. Yes, you know it now.



Odd how the not-at-all-gay version looks extremely gay.

The English-language original was covered by The Damned, New York Dolls and others, who left the offending lyric "He gave me head" untouched, and seemingly offended none of their fans. But the version which tends to get anthologised is by the forgotten Chrono Gen, who rewrote it as "He gave me hell".

Darqroom will, of course, be singing the original and best lyrics. Which is to say, I will try.

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