Ya see its a frightening thing when it dawns upon you

As I said way back in 2010, "International Coming Out Day"...to me sounds like (yawn) yet another American construct and and excuse for the greetings card industry to go into overdrive". It apparently took place a few days ago.

However, it is, completely coincidentally, a singularly important week pour moi. All this year on this very blog - as my regular reader may have observed - I have featured recurrent "timeslip moments" in music, mainly harking back to a certain milestone year, 1984.

For, sometime this week thirty years ago (gulp!), I finally put into words, out loud - in the middle of a drunken horde of fellow students (and to anyone who'd listen, to be honest) - that I, too was gay.



By way of celebration of this (slightly terrifying) milestone, here's a song that made its debut in the UK charts in this very week in 1984 - Shout To The Top, with its somewhat apposite lyrics:

I was halfway home, I was half insane
And every shop window I looked in just looked the same
I said, "Now send me a sign to save my life
Cause at this moment in time there is nothing certain in
These days of mine."

Ya see its a frightening thing when it dawns upon you
That I know as much as the day I was born
And though I wasn't asked, I might as well stay
And promise myself each and every day

That when you're knocked on your back and your life's a flop
And when you're down on the bottom there's nothing else
But to shout to the top, well we're gonna shout to the top
We're gonna shout to the top, we're gonna shout to the top
Hey, we're gonna shout to the top!"

And, because I couldn't choose between versions, here first is the original by the (then) cute Paul Weller and Style Council:

Style Council - Shout to the Top

Followed by a pounding House re-working of the song, featuring none other than the late, great and eternally-missed diva Miss Loleatta Holloway!

Fire Island featuring Loleatta Holloway - Shout to the Top

THREE DECADES?

Where do they go?

One more covered sigh

Timeslip moment again...

Thirty years ago this week, one of my favourite songs in the world entered the UK charts.

It is significant for a number of reasons:

• It forever evokes thoughts of sultry, beautiful summery weather - it was sweltering in 1983, as I recall.
• Emerging from the ashes of The Jam, The Style Council managed what many "post-post-punk projects" did not, and became almost as successful and respected as its predecessor.
• With its homoerotic video, evoking the zeitgeist of the wildly popular Brideshead Revisited, this was the first time that I ever found Paul Weller sexy. Definitely a factor in my coming-out the following year.

As Britain has actually had one this year for a change, here's the highly appropriate Long Hot Summer...



I play out my role
Why I've even been out walking
They tell me that it helps
But I know when I'm beaten
All those lonely films
And all those lonely parties
But now the feeling is off-screen
An' the tears for real not acted, anymore

I'm all mixed up inside
I want to run but I can't hide
And however much we try
We can't escape the truth and the fact is

Don't matter what I do
It don't matter what I do
Don't matter what I do
Don't matter what I do
Don't matter what I do
'Cause I end up hurting you

One more covered sigh
And one more glance you know means goodbye
Can't you see that's why
We're dashing ourselves against the rocks of a lifetime

(In my mind different voices call)
What once was pleasure now's pain for us all
(In my heart only shadows fall)
I once stood proud now I feel so small
(I don't know whether to laugh or cry)
The long hot summer just passed me by.

Simply gorgeous.

The Style Council