GLAAD GRAMMYS… There are 105 categories in the
just-announced 46th Annual Grammy Awards, and there's still
not one specifically honoring Gay Music of the Year -- unless you count
the Best Musical Show Album category. Wouldn't musicals be at the heart of any
attempt to define “gay music?” Well, the problem is that most of the artists
recognized through gay-popular categories such as that one aren't gay, and the
theme of the recognized art isn't, either. So every year around this time our
attention turns to the Gay & Lesbian
Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) for our gay
music fix. Among the many categories of its Media Awards, GLAAD honors the
previous year's leading gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender musicians. For
the 2004 ceremony, to be held in late March, the Outstanding Musical Artist
category features a bountiful crop of nominees: the feisty lesbian
pop-eclecticism of Bitch and Animal,
R&B renegade Meshell Ndegeocello,
naughty and haughty punk-pop rapper Peaches,
pop-folk crooner Rufus Wainwright
and last but not least our favorite, the madcap Danish dance-rock of Junior Senior…
DANCE GRAMMYS… Junior Senior was one oversight among the
Grammy nominees this year -- if any song deserved nomination in the Best Dance
Recording category, it was “Move Your Feet.” Instead, divas dominate. Madonna racks up her only nomination of
the year here, for “Die Another Day.” (Alert the
media: American Life (Maverick) is
now, officially, dead.) Cher
somehow squeaks by with a nod for “Love One Another,” her unremarkable remake
of a tune that earned Amber no
recognition a couple years ago. Kylie
Minogue is here with “Come Into My World,” as is Sunshine Anderson, indirectly
recognized for her dramatic vocal performance on Groove Armada's neo-disco
“Easy.” But odds favor Telepopmusik's
airy “Breathe” to win if Madonna doesn't, since “Breathe” is the heir apparent
to last year's winner, original Mitsubishi-branded dance tune, Dirty Vegas's “Days Go By.” A second
dance music category honors best remixer, and previous Grammy winner Peter Rauhofer should claim it, for his
mix of Christina Aguilera's
“Beautiful.” His competition? Well, it should include The Scumfrog for Monica's “So Gone.” Or Gabriel & Dresden for Annie
Lennox's “Pavement Cracks”), to name two obvious examples. Instead, Maurice Joshua appears again for his
boring reworking of a Beyonce track,
this time “Crazy in Love.” Also nominated: Martin
Buttrich & Timo Maas for Tori
Amos's “Don't Make Me Come to Vegas,” Bill
Hamel for Seal's “Get It
Together” and the incomparable Masters
at Work for The Latin Project's
“Lei Lo Lai”…
HOUSE GIANT LITTLE LOUIE IN TOWN…
In addition to its recognized remixing work, Masters at Work made probably the
best house music artist album last year, Our
Time Is Coming (Tommy Boy). Next spring, one of the two Masters, “Little” Louie Vega, will release his
own artist album, Elements of Life
(Vega Records), featuring uptempo, relentlessly upbeat songs infused with
Vega's seeming conversion to new-age spirituality since the birth last year of
his son. It's a blend of timeless-sounding soulful, God-fearing house,
Afro-Latino rhythms and often Brazilian-styled chillout. While the album is
heavier on rhythms than a typical Masters at Work album, it's also strangely sleepier,
with a little too much focus on easy-listening sonics. Here's hoping Vega will
concentrate his DJ turn this Saturday at Club Five -- see
www.primacycompanies.com for information -- on tunes from his MAW repertoire as
well as livelier tracks from Elements of
Life, including the samba-oriented “Ma Mi Mama,” sung by his wife, Anané, the salsa of “Quimbombo,” and
the improvisational Latin jazz of “Mozalounge”…
MAMMA MIA INDEED… Just to clarify our early comment: if
musicals were ever truly gay, they're becoming increasingly less so. Excepting
for Elton John, nearly every
high-profile Broadway musical in development looks to be insufferably straight.
Credit Mamma Mia! mania,
as well as Billy Joel's Movin' Out -- and not the fledgling Boy George-inspired Taboo -- for the wave of musicals coming
built around hit songs of aging rockers, or of musicals written by aging
rockers. Not that there won't be gay appeal in next spring's Lovelace: The Musical, based on the
life of late porn actress Linda “Deep
Throat” Lovelace, written by the Go-Go's Charlotte Caffey and Jane
Wiedlin and starring former Family
Ties actress Tina Yothers and
John Waters regular Mink Stole. And
there may be some gay appeal in We Will
Rock You, a musical about the future using 32 songs from Queen that will open sometime in the
next couple years. And who wouldn't find appeal in next year's musical,
tentatively titled The Lennon Project,
based on John Lennon's post-Beatles
songs, including “Imagine?” But Tonight's
the Night, currently in London,
based on Rod Stewart's greatest
hits? Or All Shook Up, based on songs
from Elvis Presley, set in the
mid-1950s in “Anywhere USA,” and coming to Broadway in spring of 2005? This
“gay music” lover will pass, thanks.
Gay musicmaker and increasing musical-maker Elton John, meanwhile, is working
with his longtime collaborator Bernie
Taupin to convert gay-popular author Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat into a Broadway musical, scheduled for 2005. In
addition, John and Taupin's work has inspired, of all television networks, FOX,
which plans to create a music-driven drama series, dubbed Rhapsody, with themes influenced by John-Taupin songs…
