George Harrison
Blow Away, 1979.
Why did all the good Beatles have to die, leaving only the, ummm, les interesting ones to carry on?
I think I’d be extremely embarrassed to tell anyone I lived on Mourning Dove Drive. Reflective Penguin Parkway, maybe, but not Mourning Dove Drive.
Charlatans
Weirdo, 1992.
The fact that this song was relatively popular at the time is a good indicator of why 1992 may have been my favorite year in the history of pop music. This particular video is also interesting because it’s not the version MTV usually played.
Among the strange things an insomniac can find on TV at 3:30 in the morning are tidbits such as the 1963 “I”ve Got a Secret” episode that features a very young (and pre-Velvet Underground) John Cale, whose secret was that he’d recently been part of a tag team 18-hour performance of Erik Satie’s “Vexations”. His co-contestant was the only audience member who’d sat through the entre performance.
It was interesting stuff, indeed, but I’ll have to admit I still would’ve preferred being asleep.
Charlie Dore
Pilot of the Airwaves, 1980.
The strange things are (a) the fact that Charlie Dore is actually British, and (b) the way this song pretty much disappeared forever once it left the pop charts. Most people seem not to have heard it even once since the summer of 1980.
Evelyn Thomas
High Energy, 1984.
The majority of that 1980s queer bar disco crap was not really my cup of tea. This was always one of those rare exceptions, and I’m not really 100% certain why.
Paris Is One Day Away
The Mood, 1983.
Local H
Bound for the Floor, 1996.
You just don’t hear nearly enough pop songs these days that use the word “copacetic.”
The South of Market area was a pleasant enough place to drink (or debauch) for much of the 1990s, particularly if you were a Sodomite looking for a scene that was a little less antiseptic and generic than the Castro. Following ten years of AIDS paranoia in the 1980s, the final decade of the twentieth century brought a return to openness about sex and a renewed vigor to South of Market nightlife.
The really great thing about the 1990s, though, was that the universal soundtrack did not consist solely of the same stale old disco divas and other “high NRG” dance tracks that had defined (defamed?) the term “queer bar” seemingly since the dawn of time.
Starting with the Lone Star Saloon — which was, incidentally and accidentally, the first queer bar your humble host ever visited in San Francisco — there was actually music featuring guitars being played in South of Market nightspots.
There had been other rock and roll or “alternative” theme nights, of course, including Junk (one of my favorites) and Jesus at The Stud, and one whose name I can’t recall at some club in Upper Haight. And Michael Pandolfi had done some semi-regular sets at Detour in the Castro. But the Lone Star was the first queer bar in San Francisco to look at the genre as a regular everyday format.
And on 15 April 1994, the Lone Star’s stepchild opened its doors at Eighth and Harrison as the appropriately-named Hole in the Wall Saloon. This tiny bar, which had formerly been a nondescript joint called The Borderline, was soon to redefine nightlife south of the slot with live DJs spinning rock and roll, and an attitude to match. It started slow, and early on, it was possible to find yourself surrounded ny maybe no more than a dozen other patrons on a Friday night. But by 1996, there were lines out the door every weekend. Too many of those waiting in line, alas, were slumming yuppies of the “see and be seen” variety who just didn’t get the concept. All the same, I had a lot of very interesting and very intoxicated nights there. Of course, it helped that my roommate was a bartender.
Eventually, the owners of Hole in the Wall also took over the SF Eagle, finally ridding the famed leather bar of its dreary lineup of bad, muffled dance covers (did the world really need a disco remake of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”?). In the new space, they even hosted live bands on occasion, while both bars had live DJs most nights. My Place, which was more notorious for sex than rock and roll, also got into the act on certain nights when the right bartenders were working.
My Place is gone now, but as far as I know, the other three bars are still plugging along, although things never seemed quite the same after the gentrification of the late 1990s. The Lone Star moved more toward the whole generic bear bar thing, and was playing a disturbing amount of country music when I stopped caring about 2001. And I read of some controversy over a potential relocation of the Hole in the Wall Saloon last year, but I’m not sure if anything came of it or if the relocation ever happened. To be honest, I’m 3000 miles, and many years, away from all that now, and I don’t really care too much anymore. Heck, I don’t even drink anymore.
Joe Jackson
Real Men, 1982.