One Sweetsong

Bennett Law reviews two‘ CDs of less-than-stellar performances

that the secret to being a good liar

is to be specific: the more detail
you include in your lie, the more cred-
ibility it has.

Here I Am, advertised as “A
Musical Personal Ad” written and per-
formed by aspiring 27-year-old New
York writer-actor David Sisco, is a
song cycle of gay discovery, coming
out, and search for romance. The
navel gazing and self-absorption of its
central character suggests a Sondheim
-esque sensibility, and a couple of the
better numbers (“Here I Am!” and
“Uncle D”) would not seem out of
place in Sondheim’s Company.

But Here I Am lacks the
verbal dexterity and wordplay that dis-
tinguishes Sondheim. And perhaps
more to the point, David Sisco isn't a
-good liar. He shoitchanged his oppor-

lleamed in a college acting class

tunities to illuminate universal themes
and generate an emotional response in
his listeners by relying on worn
stereotypes to tell his story. Almost
nothing about his songs is fresh,
clever, or intellectually engaging. For
example, the travails of afifth grader
(“Fifth Grade”) are so inconsequential
to an adult gay man (can you believe
it? — he was the last one picked for
gym! !) that the song is tiresome. Sisco
strains to wring grand emotions from
what are, in retrospect, minor slights.
Sisco is a pleasant singer,

and demonstrates deft dynamic sensi-
tivity, but he was not gifted with a
compelling voice. He unfortunately
demonstrates a lack of awareness of
his vocal limitations with a disastrous
foray into blues singing with “Baby,
You’d do Right by Me” for which he
just doesn’t have the chops. In a
cringe-inducing performance, he ulti-

 

mately screams much of this number.
To be fair, there are some
good ideas underlying a couple of the
pieces. I found “Beautiful Boy,” a
song about the_beautiful boys Sisco
has loved (as opposed to the pretty
boys), the beginning of an exploration
of a lovely concept, but it too quickly
dissolves into insipidity. Along with
“Here IAm!,” the only truly success-
ful number in the song cycle is “Uncle

s . . . . - .V. . . . . . ._. ..‘ ‘us -.-_~,-_§.,- -~.- -,3‘ ' '3'...‘

Hm .0 mounain

I

D,” in which Sisco recounts how he
adores his sister’s daughters but longs
for children of his own. This number
communicates the specificity it needs
to feel honest and real.

The complete song cycle
Here I Am won the Alex Libby Award
for Best Musical Performance for its
presentation in September, 2002 at the
Columbus National Gay & Lesbian
Theater Festival. It may be more inter-

esting in a live performance, but I am »

not inclined to give this CD another
spin.

The movie “Latter Days” has an
exhilarating pedal-to-the-metal
start: the picture opens on a handsome
Los Angeleno primping for a night
out. There’s a knock at the door,
which he answers with an aggressive?
offer: “I’m going to give you the blow
job of a lifetime.” The guy at the door
is helpless against this lean and hun-
gry shark, but it’s not until after his —
um — mind is blown that he clarifies
that he actually has come by to take
the shark’s female roommate out on a
date. This case of mistaken identity
both provides for the immediate estab-

  

_ u - u u u » 1 _

lishment of characters and promises a
lusty sex romp to follow.

From that charged up open-
ing, though, this pleasant film mel-
lows out and takes a softer route to its
conclusion. Appropriately enough, the

' soundtrack is true to this structure.

The first cut is energetic electronica —
good driving music. Subsequent
tracks, though, generally mellow out,
some of them dangerously close to
being numbingly derivative — at their
worst, almost even tpom-video banal.

One sweet exception stood
out for me: a love duet entitled, “If I _
Could Be With You Now” is charm-
ingly performed by two men, Dean
Nolen and Bobby Joyner. It’s not so
much that the song is exceptional, but
having the two men trade off lines in
the kind of power love ballad that
once dominated the top 40 pop charts
helps to enliven this otherwise listless".
soundtrackl V

Bennett Law listens to sound tracks in
Bethel.

0 I A - - I
The Gay Beginning
David Carter’s documentation of the roots of rebellion in a
neighborhood bar takes reviewer Joel Rosinsky back to his

adolescence on the streets of New York.’

hen asked to review this
book, my initial thought .
was “How in the world am

I going to fit this into my already
ridiculous schedule?" I took the book
and brought it home, leaving it on my
coffee table for a while, feeling guilty
about agreeing to review it in the first
place. That is, until a few days later
when I opened it and started reading.
The guilt left and was replaced by
exhilaration as I was swiftly drawn
back into the events that many of us
feel marked 1969 as the year that
launched the Gay rights movement. I
couldn’t put the book down.

Even from the first few
pages, I was finding myself reliving
my teen-age years in Greenwich
Village. I had arrived in 1963 and left
in late 1967, two years before the
events at_Stonewall. The bars and
clubs I went to were mostly on the
east side of Sixth Avenue, not in the
west village, but they all suffered from
the same abuses by the police who

-were paid off and the mob that owned

them.'Author David Carter has well
documented the part that Ed Murphy
played’ in the running of the Stonewall
for the mob. But his reputation earlier
in the sixties when I hung out in the
clubs was one of a low-level wiseguy
who had done time in jail. And he was
known for having murdered a 13- or
14-year-old boy he was involved with.
This young boy had stolen something
from Ed. When the boy just disap-
peared one day, it was common
knowledge that he was dead. The bars
were not safe, but they were all we
had at the time. '
We might ask just what was
so special about the events that led up
to those six days at the Stonewall.
Answer: They helped change and
focus a splintered, politically impotent
movement into a power to be reckoned
with. Carter describes in detail the
social and political conditions of the
times in New York City. It was an
election year, and it was well known
thatvin New York lots of votes were to

 

be had for “cleaning up the city.” A
concerted effort was being made to
close down the gay bars, and there
were no protections: it was illegal to
serve alcohol to homosexuals. Both

the police and the mob were free to
abuse gay bar customers because most
of the patrons felt there was no
recourse, no place else to socialize.
Carter’s description of the

bars is depressingly accurate. They
were dark and dingy, the windows
painted black to protect the anonymity
of those who hid inside. They were
always overcrowded with not enough
fire exits. The drinks were watered
down and expensive, and the bars
were frequently visited by the NYPD

who liked to arrive unannounced to
intimidate the patrons and pick up
their payoffs. They would show up at
the door, and in seconds the lights
would come on and the music and
dancing would stop. People wouldn’t
even speak to each other while the
police were there. We would just wait
until the police left and the “danger”
passed. Then the lights would be
turned downand the music would
resume until the next time. And there
was always a next time. Carter’s inter-
views with people who lived through
these events gives witness to the
oppression and damage perpetrated on
the gay community in a time when
you could be fired, refused service, or
arrested for just being gay.

Carter goes into great detail
about the various political groups
formed leading up to and after
Stonewall. He chronicles much of the
infighting that is a natural part of any
movement trying to find a direction,
and define its purpose and goals.

Looking back from 2004, I

' can’t help but wonder how different
' the world would be for all of us, if not

for a disorganized group of folks who
back in 1969 spontaneously said to
themselves: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m
not gonna take it anymore.” It didn’t
appear to be such important an event
at the time. There was no way to know
exactly what was being planted in the

consciousness of a community, but
suddenly the back of the bus was no
longer acceptable and a movement
was transformed.

Fortunately, the book also
brought back lots of wonderful memo-
ries for me, like the time I lived at the
Albert Hotel on University Place with
my friend Upjohn (don’t ask, it’S a.
long story), and late one night, in a
club on east 3rd Street above the old
firehouse, Brandy Alexander explained
where and how everything gets tucked
when dressing up in drag.

For those who are too
young to have lived through the years
before Stonewall, Carter’s book is a
wonderfully accurate documentary of
that period of gay history. As a com-
munity, we owe it to ourselves to
know where we came from. If I can
borrow a line, “It was the best of times .
and the worst of times.” I really, really
enjoyed reading David Carter’s
Stonewall and reliving the best of
times. V

Joel Rosinsky is a licensed alcohol
and drug counselor with offices in
Essex Junction and Burlington.