Saturday morning music treat

One of my favorite albums for years and years was _Colossal Youth_ by Young Marble Giants.



In 1980, music didn't sound like this. Quiet, stripped down, hypnotic even. There are aspects of what they did in all sorts of places, including Nirvana, New Order, and Belle & Sebastian.

I had no idea there were videos; the recording is even more simple, gentle, inviting you to sit down and listen and dance, but so quietly that your body doesn't need to move.

Brand New Life:

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Cakewalking:

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There are things I think of as "perfect". Not the best, not the only, not anything but all and everything it needs to be. I think _Colossal Youth_ is perfect.

For a long time it was unavailable. I just checked and there is a CD reissue; I just ordered it from Amazon and I really think you should too.

My World AIDS Day post

My lover Eddie died in the spring of 1990 after a long, horrible year of being very sick. He was an amazing man and gave me so much, introduced me to so much. Most of all he was the first person to love me unconditionally and even more importantly make me understand what that meant. Without going into tedious history, from my earliest moments I sensed that the love for me came with conditions. It's haunted me ever since.

At that time, it seemed to me, the gay men I met were afraid and desperate and wanted love, someone to love them and hold them if/when they too got sick. Someone to give them what they felt they always wanted, what would make them happy, would provide them with what's now been reduced to the acronym LTR. Only they didn't think they had much time so they'd grab at it if it seemed possibly close.

So when I'd go out (and I went out a lot, because being in _our_ home without him was a painfully empty experience) and meet guys I'd be needing contact and affection but the last thing I wanted was to commit to anyone if there was any possibility that I was going to have to watch them, too, wither and die.

An album I listened too a lot during that period was Julia Fordham's _Porcelain_ - her voice and music had a sadness that could unlock the sobbing tears that I held in during the day so I could curl into a ball in the corner and let it out and have done with it for a while.

The title song was very relevant to me because of finding myself in bed with someone who, after too short a period, announced their love for me and my not knowing how to explain to them in any satisfying way that I didn't love them but I still... needed them? appreciated them? It still escapes me, I guess the best description would be emotional fuck buddy.

I don't just remember those who died, I also remember those who were so incredibly frightened....

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(no subject)

To those who recommended that I clear my cache, thank you. I'd never had that happen before so didn't know what to do.