The Flirtations | |
---|---|
Origin | United States |
Genres | a cappella |
Years active | 1988–1997 |
Past members | Jon Arterton Michael Callen Aurelio Font TJ Myers Eliot Pilshaw Jimmy Rutland Suede Cliff Townsend [ citation needed ] |
The Flirtations were a pro-LGBT, male a cappella musical group active from 1988 to 1997. The original members were Jon Arterton, Michael Callen, Aurelio Font, TJ Myers, and Cliff Townsend. On the Out On the Road album they were joined by Jimmy Rutland. The group later reconfigured: for the album Three, Jon Arterton and Jimmy Rutland were joined by the woman Suede.
Their music provided an opportunity for both a celebration of gay culture and a call to arms in the battle against AIDS and homophobia. They were fronted by the gay activist Michael Callen from establishment in 1988 until his death from AIDS-related disease in 1993. The Flirtations performed at a number of prominent national venues, and performed a song in the soundtrack to Philadelphia . [1] [2] [3] [4]
The Flirtations contributed one cut each to the following collections:
Melissa Lou Etheridge is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and guitarist. Her eponymous debut album was released in 1988 and became an underground success. It peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard 200 and its lead single, "Bring Me Some Water", garnered Etheridge her first Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female in 1989. Her second album, Brave and Crazy, appeared that same year and earned Etheridge two more Grammy nominations. In 1992, Etheridge released her third album, Never Enough, and its lead single, "Ain't It Heavy", won Etheridge her first Grammy Award.
Zero Patience is a 1993 Canadian musical film written and directed by John Greyson. The film examines and refutes the urban legend of the alleged introduction of HIV to North America by a single individual, Gaëtan Dugas. Dugas, better known as Patient Zero, was the target of blame in the popular imagination in the 1980's in large measure because of Randy Shilts's American television film docudrama, And the Band Played On (1987), a history of the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Zero Patience tells its story against the backdrop of a romance between a time-displaced Sir Richard Francis Burton and the ghost of "Zero".
"New queer cinema" is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s.
Carole Ann Pope is a British-born Canadian rock singer-songwriter, whose provocative blend of hard-edged new wave rock with explicit homoerotic and BDSM-themed lyrics made her one of the first openly lesbian entertainers to achieve mainstream fame.
Catie Curtis is an American singer-songwriter working primarily in the folk rock idiom. Her most recent album recording,The Raft, was released in 2020.
Michael Callen was an American singer, songwriter, composer, author, and AIDS activist. Callen was diagnosed with AIDS in 1982 and became a pioneer of AIDS activism in New York City, working closely with his doctor, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, and Richard Berkowitz. Together, they published articles and pamphlets to raise awareness about the correlation between risky sexual behaviors and AIDS.
Kristine Elizabeth Weitz, widely known by her stage name Kristine W, is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and entrepreneur. She is most widely known as a dance music artist. Born and raised in Pasco, Washington, she found early success competing in pageants and talent contests, winning Miss Washington and a preliminary swimsuit award as well as a NFT award in the Miss America pageant. Kristine W is now one of the most popular dance club artists of all time, with 17 #1s to date on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart. She is currently listed among Billboard's 8 Greatest of All Time Top Dance Club Artists, and she was ranked number three in Billboard's Top Dance Artists of the Decade. She is especially popular in the gay community and is an outspoken supporter of LGBT rights, frequently performing at pride rallies and charity events for pro-LGBT organizations throughout the U.S.
Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, biographer, playwright, and gay rights activist. Duberman is Professor of History Emeritus at Herbert Lehman College in the Bronx, New York City.
AMASONG is a lesbian/feminist amateur choir based in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The group was created by Kristina Boerger in 1990. The group consists of about sixty women who perform female-oriented, folkloric, and classical music.
Essex Hemphill was an openly gay American poet and activist. He is known for his contributions to the Washington, D.C. art scene in the 1980s, and for openly discussing the topics pertinent to the African-American gay community.
Callen-Lorde Community Health Center is a primary care center located at 356 West 18th Street in New York City, New York. Callen-Lorde also provides comprehensive mental health services at The Thea Spyer Center, located at 230 West 17th Street. Callen-Lorde is dedicated to providing medical health care to the city's LGBTQ population without regard of ability to pay. It is named in honor of Michael Callen and Audre Lorde.
"Shine" is the title track and only single released from American singer Cyndi Lauper's eighth album Shine.
The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus (SFGMC) is the world's first openly gay chorus, one of the world's largest male choruses and the group most often credited with creating the LGBT choral movement.
Michael Thomas Ford is an American author of primarily gay-themed literature. He is best known for his "My Queer Life" series of comedic essay collections and for his award-winning novels Last Summer, Looking for It, Full Circle, Changing Tides, and What We Remember.
Melbourne Gay and Lesbian Chorus (MGLC) was founded in Australia in 1990 by a gay performer and activist, Lawrence Emanuel (1966). The chorus was first named 'AL sounds', due to its part affiliation with the Foundation. In April 1994, the name was changed to Melbourne Gay and Lesbian Chorus, reflecting the chorus's organizational independence and a desire to further challenge stereotypes.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+(LGBTQ+)music is music that focuses on the experiences of gender and sexual minorities as a product of the broad gay liberation movement.
Maxine "Max" Adele Feldman was an American folk singer-songwriter, comedian and pioneer of women's music. Feldman's song "Angry Atthis," first performed in May 1969 and first recorded in 1972, is considered the first openly distributed out lesbian song of what would become the women's music movement. Feldman identified as a "big loud Jewish butch lesbian."
Matt Fishel is a British singer, songwriter, music producer and record label owner. He plays guitar, piano, bass and keyboards. He grew up in Nottingham in the East Midlands in the late 1990s, going on to study Music and Performing Arts at Paul McCartney's Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) in the early 2000s, before moving to London, UK, where he currently lives.
Keith Christopher was an American actor, singer-songwriter and AIDS activist.
Cover Boy is an extended play (EP) by British singer, songwriter and recording artist Matt Fishel. It was released internationally on 14 July 2014 through Fishel's own record label Young Lust Records. The EP comprises seven cover versions. Cover Boy is Fishel's ninth release and his first collection of cover songs.