Tom Robinson part 2

In 1979, Tom Robinson Band broke up and Tom became involved in solo projects: he wrote songs with Elton John and toured small venues, playing mainly gay-themed songs. His concert at the Collegiate Theatre, London, in June 1979 was recorded. It was released in 1982 as Cabaret 79. It was reissued in 1997 as Cabaret 79: Glad To Be Gay, with the addition of a few more recent live recordings. This is the album that will take up our time today.

"So, a bit of history. 1979 was a cusp year for gay people in the UK: the liberation movement that had started with the Stonewall Riots in America in 1969 - and Gay Liberation Front in Britain soon after - had snowballed to the extent that it had built up its own momentum without having actually achieved any significant reforms. By 1979 our paper, Gay News, was selling 25,000 copies a fortnight; we were shortly to have our very own (and wonderful) ITV magazine series, Gay Life; and Greater London Arts had given £1,000 for a gay arts festival." (from tomrobinson.bandcamp.com: Peter Scott - Presland).

The album begins with Pub Hassle, a funny music hall piece written by Barbara Norden, concerning a redneck homophobe trying to pick up a lesbian in a pub.

Truce is a very touching song: it brings up the historical truce that occurred, without orders from above, between French and German soldiers fighting in the trenches of the Great War, in order to celebrate Xmas 1914 in peace. It then compares it to a hypothetical truce, between LGBTQI people and homophobes. Here's how it ends:

There's a couple of days when the bashers of gays

Who oppress, arrest and charge us

All leave us alone to return back home

For a truce...

With our mothers and our fathers

But the very next day it's back to the fray

And setting our homes in order

Bashing Lesbian mothers

And underage lovers

Disowning gay sons and daughters

Well it's quaint to pretend

We could all live as friends

With the Christmas angels calling

But the dream turns sour

In a matter of hours

And they make it all up in the morning

https://soundcloud.com/tomrobinson/06-truce

or

https://tomrobinson.bandcamp.com/track/truce

There is a slightly different version of Glad To Be Gay in the 1982 LP, updating some of the song's facts. Then, in the 1997 CD reissue there is this version, along with an even newer one, called Glad To Be Gay '97. In the latter he touches on the heat that he received from the gay purists, when he married a woman, even though he was perfectly clear in his interviews: "I won't even call myself bisexual: I'm a gay man who happens to be in love with a woman."

Also on the CD version is a newer song concerning the AIDS plague, Last Rites by Carlton Edwards, performed in 1987 at Glasgow University. Its conclusion:

Man could not have been created without flaws

Sure we expected to lose a few wars

Yes I know that I'm crying

Well I'm shit scared of dying

When we ourselves opened the door

And yes I really mind the pain

My strength for loneliness is getting lower

It may never rain - for personally

The search seems to be...

Getting slower.

https://tomrobinson.bandcamp.com/track/last-rites

There were also two interesting cover versions in Cabaret 79: a song by Canadian Lewis Furey (who will be introduced the day after tomorrow). It's a sort of gay version of Dylan's Just Like A Woman. Sort of... Here's the last verse and chorus:

Twenty lovers in a week

You can get 'em

Sure you can

There's lot's of geeks

And every mother one of them

Wants to get lucky

Or maybe you need

More than one man

Probably a legion

Every one a fan

I'm trying to find it in me

To hope you're happy

So when you go

I feel you oughta know

You're closing a door

Behind you

And when we meet again

Promise not to pretend

We lost anything

Of value

https://tomrobinson.bandcamp.com/track/closing-a-door

Then, there's the reappropriation of Noel Coward's Mad About The Boy. Ever since Dinah Washington's excellent and very successful version, the song had been given the heterosexual stamp of approval. But Noel Coward (if you don't know who he is, do look him up), was as gay as they come and the song is too. Tom camps it up and the end result is outrageously entertaining. Here are the last verses and chorus:

Mad about the boy

I know it's stupid but I'm

Mad about the boy

He has a gay appeal that makes me feel

There may be something

Sad about the boy

Walking down the street

His eyes look out at me

From people that I meet

I know that quite sincerely

Housman really wrote

"The Shropshire Lad" about the boy

I'm hardly sentimental

Love isn't so sublime

I have to pay my rental

And I can't afford to waste much time

How I should enjoy -

For him to treat me

As a plaything or a toy

I'd give my all to him

And crawl to him

So help me God I'm

Mad about the boy

https://tomrobinson.bandcamp.com/track/mad-about-the-boy