One week from now, when the clock strikes 6 next Saturday morning, I will depart Cape Town en route to Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania, where I will begin a 10-day, 9-night
overland tour from Dar all the way to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. As much as I'm looking forward to finally spending time in Zanzibar and the Serengeti
and perhaps catching a glimpse of Mount Kilimanjaro, I'm terrified, too.
I'm heading way out of my comfort zone, exposing myself to yellow fever (got my vaccination!), malaria (pills: check!) and deadly animals with sharp teeth. But I'm not just talking about the three days I'll spend camping in the middle of the Serengeti. Can a loner like
me who actually prefers to travel solo, handle 10 days and 9 nights on the road (mostly unpaved, I imagine) with up to 17 strangers? It'll either change my life or make me want to end
it.
Yes, I have my hopes and fears, but being a glass-half-full type, I'm choosing to accentuate the positive -- and there are a lot of reasons for me to look forward to what the first half of July holds. Here are 9 of them, one for each night I'll lay me down to sleep on the road. (I'll bookend the overland tour with one night in Dar and one in Nairobi.)
1. Every time I dreamed of Africa before actually coming here, visions of a safari, not Cape Town's spectacular natural/man-made cityscape, were dancing in my head. It's
pretty much what put Africa on my to-do list, even before I was old enough to care about Cape Town. Many years ago when I interviewed Suzanne Vega, she talked about the exciting life she wanted to lead: "I'm not necessarily talking about going on an African safari…." Are you kidding? I
thought to myself. I'd kill to go on an African safari! Some 20 years later, I'm about to fulfill one of my key requirements for leading
an exciting life -- and nobody had to be killed.
2. I know little things mean a lot and all that jazz, but it can't be good that the highlight of yesterday was finding that fabulous wine-bottle opener at Pic
n Pay. My days and nights are begging for upheaval, even if I'll be spending most of the former admiring breathtaking scenery while an 18-seater truck takes us
through Tanzania, from the Indian Ocean coast up through the north east of the country.
3. After two weeks without a drop of alcohol, one glass of Lagare gave me a buzz and sent me to bed at 8.30pm last night. I could probably stand to be
forcibly separated from that wine-bottle opener and the Lagare stash I picked up several weeks ago at Beyerskloof in Stellenbosch. Why does it have to go
down so yummy and easy?
4. One can only take so many breathtaking shots of Signal Hill, Lion's Head, Table Mountain and Devil's Peak before even my digital camera starts begging for
a change of scenery. Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play… I'm expecting a far more extensive menagerie of animal
sightings in the Serengeti.
5. A change of season is in order, too. The Capetonian winter is nowhere near as bad as I'd been told it would be, but really, a lot more sunshine wouldn't
kill me, and rainy season in Tanzania ended in May.
6. I could really use a break from emails, status updates, stupid Grindr messages, #hashtags and, yes, blogging, too, but since the temptation to plug in is
too great as long as I have WiFi access (shoddy as it often is in Cape Town), having to do without it in the middle of the wilderness might be just
what my sanity needs.
7. Speaking of blogging, I need some fresh inspiration for when I get back to Cape Town civilization. I'm sort of over gay and race issues for now. After more than six months of Black and White (racial
politics are so exhausting), I'm looking forward to a Technicolor National Geographic experience.
8. As much as I appreciate the benefits of functional training at 360 every Tuesday morning at 7, my aching muscles could use a break, and my mind could use a
couple of Monday nights not being consumed by fear of the grueling hour-long workout one bad night's sleep ahead. (On the minus side, for the past month,
after James and Daniel had their way with my body, the 30-minute walk of pride home -- the view: left -- was one of the highlights of my week. I'll miss it.)
9. Speaking of bad night's sleep, may Tanzania bring some relief from my chronic insomnia. It's been a lifelong malady, but the past few weeks, it's gotten
progressively worse than ever. I never seem to have trouble actually falling asleep, but like clockwork, when it strikes 2 (one hour earlier than when my
internal alarm previously went off), I'm up, only to fall back asleep for 30-minute intervals until I give up and get up at 5. A former roommate once told
me that when she visited Africa for the first time, it changed the way she sleeps. I need new sleeping patterns badly. I hope they finally kick in while I'm trekking
through Tanzania.
South African TV has interesting timing. Just days before Jeremy Meeks' police mugshot seduced the Internet, DStv's Comedy Central in Cape Town aired an
episode of Anger Management in which Jordan (Laura Bell Bundy) breaks the cardinal rule for therapists by making out with a patient, a prison
inmate with dreamy blue eyes and irresistible facial hair who looks amazing in orange.
Honestly, I get it. Scott Elrod (the actor who plays the smooth criminal) is that attractive. So is Meeks, a 30-year-old possible prison-inmate-to-be
(again, sigh) from Stockton, California, whose mugshot following his June 18 arrest for felony weapons possession has sent millions of hearts -- femaleand male -- fluttering. The most popular of the many Facebook pages dedicated to him has nearly 200,000
likes!
I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a thing for bad boys myself. The first time I admitted it out loud was the day Christina Aguilera beat me to it. I was
interviewing her for a 2000 Teen People cover story when she revealed her strongest weakness: a beautiful bad boy. Thug love, once mostly limited
to gangsta circles, had officially gone mainstream. In a couple of years, the formerly squeaky-clean Mousketeer would be stripping for her Stripped album and collaborating with Redman in the "Dirrty" video.
I suspect that the mainstreaming of bad boys is part of why so many guys -- gay and straight -- are now running around sporting scruffy beards and body
art. Sometimes it looks bad, but more importantly it makes them look badder, especially tattoos, which have become nearly as de rigueur as bulging
biceps in many big-city gyms. Tattoos are to the 2010s what piercings were to the '90s, but a tattoo requires a bigger commitment and thus offers more
street cred. It screams, "Bad boy for life!" And nobody questions the sexuality of a guy with a tattoo (unless it's a dolphin), which can't be said about a
guy with a pierced ear. Tattoos are almost like the ultimate emblems of masculinity, proof that you're man enough to stand the pain.
Could you possibly be more "straight-acting," that unfortunate, misguided aspiration (to have and to be) so prevalent among gay men ages
thirtysomething and below, now that you've been branded permanently? You can look like a guy's guy and land one too, because who doesn't fantasize about a
bad boy -- or a boy who's good at playing the part -- with tattoos?
Would Adam Levine be the sexiest man alive (according to People, at least) without his? He'd be hot either way, but nothing offsets singing like a
girl quite like a six pack and an upper torso covered with ink.
Perhaps Meeks was watching The Voice and taking notes. He's an undeniably attractive man, but I see many equally handsome biracial men every day
on the streets of Cape Town. Meeks' appeal has two sides that are working in tandem. On one, his good looks might make him seem less threatening to some
("He's too pretty to be a criminal!"). All the "Free Jeremy!" campaigning doesn't focus on his actual case, only on how he looks. Meanwhile, had the same
photo been circulated online without any back story, it would have inspired swooning, but certainly not the near-hysteria that has ensued.
Had Meeks been launched into public consciousness as a model, would anyone have noticed him more than we notice other mannequins with flawless skin and
impossible cheekbones? Clean up his face and photoshop it onto the neck of a Calvin Klein model wearing a suit (as the creator of one photo on the
aforementioned Facebook page did), and his face, though still beautiful, doesn't have quite the same smoldering effect. It never would have gone viral. The
tattoos gave him a boost. The mugshot setting sold him. Crime didn't pay, but it made him a star.
But what good is a star when he's locked up behind bars with bail set at $900,000? (Meeks is already a prison veteran, having previously served nine years
for grand theft.) He could have been a contender, true model material, say some who are bemoaning the wasted potential of another young man. I'm not so
sure about that. Since his arrest, a stream of Meeks photos have surfaced, some of them unflattering, some displaying genetic blessings and some showing a
not-unattractive guy who lucked out and took one really fantastic photo.
A model scout might have passed right by him on the street without turning back. Notoriety made Meeks sexier. The lighting at the Stockton police station
sealed his viral appeal; so did his sordid circumstances -- because you don't become a meme just by being hot. Not only does it suggest he's bad to bones
that some of his fans want to jump, if only in their fantasies (because I don't believe that most people actually would want to hook up with a felon). It's
also an extension of another angle of bad-boy obsession that's more grounded in reality: the challenge. A bad boy is a fixer-upper, the guy we might be
able to change or save. One commentator talked about wanting to wipe that tear tattoo from his cheek and help him turn his life around. I'm sure she's not
alone.
I hope Meeks saves himself. Maybe he'll beat these latest charges and use his newfound platform to change his world. Hopefully he'll set a better example,
at least for his young son, and not inadvertently do the opposite. The last thing we need are other good-looking young men getting teardrop tattoos and
guns, breaking the law just to be noticed.
"Hearts on Fire" Randy Meisner
(1981) Original Eagle Meisner, the man who sang lead on "Take It to the Limit," charted all three of his solo Top 40 singles -- each of which deserves to be
revisited (click here and here for the other two) -- before former fellow bandmates Glenn Frey and Don Henley charted any of theirs. The week Eddie Rabbitt's
crossover-country classic "I Love a Rainy Night" was No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 for the second week, Meisner climbed from No. 23 to No. 21 with "Fire," his biggest hit. Incidentally, Rabbitt had scored a 1978 No. 2 hit with a different song, same title.
"Making Love" Roberta Flack (1982) When you're buried at the very end of a Top 40 solo career that includes such ageless evergreens as "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," "Killing Me Softly with His Song" and "Feel Like Makin' Love," it's hard not to decompose into a footnote. Had it been Oscar-nominated for Best Original Song, or had it not been the title song for a movie about the then-taboo subject of a married man (Michael Ontkean, wed to Charlie's Angel Kate Jackson) who has an affair with another man (Harry Hamlin, pre-L.A. Law), perhaps "Making Love" would have enjoyed a profile commensurate with its No. 13 Hot 100 peak. Perhaps Lauryn Hill would have covered it, too. Not that Burt Bacharach, who co-wrote it with his then-wife Carole Bayer Sager and Bruce Roberts, needed the royalties.
"You Should Hear How She Talks About You" Melissa Manchester
(1982) Mention the name Melissa Manchester, and anyone who knows her at all will likely remember a ballad: "Midnight Blue," "Through the Eyes of Love
(Theme from Ice Castles)," "Don't Cry Out Loud." But her biggest (and final) Top 40 single (No. 5) was actually a new-wave song that's nothing
like the adult-contemporary fare for which she became a mid-level pop star, and it won Manchester her only Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, against 100 percent uptempo competition (including Laura Branigan's "Gloria"!). For a song that couldn't possibly sound more '80s, it has aged pretty well.
"Can't Shake Loose" Agnetha Faltskog
(1983) Frida wasn't the only ABBA lady to go Top 40 in the U.S. in 1983 (with "I Know There's Something Going On," No. 14). Agnetha would make it No. 29 on
her own later that year, but modest success (compared to Frida's worldwide smash) wouldn't lead to longevity for the song. Interestingly, both Frida and
Agnetha enjoyed their lone solo Top 40 entries with songs written by Russ Ballard that veered closer to the dominant new-wave pop-rock sound of the time than to
ABBA's brand of soft Europop.
"Souls" Rick Springfield
(1983) I thought I knew every Rick Springfield Top 40 hit from 1981's "Jessie's Girl" to 1988's "Rock of Life" almost by heart until a few months ago when I came across an
old Billboard Top 40 list from 1983. I wondered, What's this song "Souls"? Then I YouTubed it and listened. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I still couldn't place it, as in attach it to a single memory from 1983. Where was I when the third hit from Living in Oz was climbing to No. 23? What kind of fool am I? Oops, wrong Springfield song that just
missed the Top 20!
"Don't Answer Me" The Alan Parsons Project
(1984) Before there was a-ha and the Norwegian trio's iconic 1985 video for "Take on Me," The Alan Parsons Project was revolutionizing MTV with its own
animated clip, the one for a No. 15 single that's now a sadly forgotten highlight from my favorite year in '80s music. (It doesn't even get its own Wikipedia entry!)
"Don't Shed a Tear" Paul Carrack
(1987) When you think of Paul Carrack (if you think of Paul Carrack), which song never pops into your head?
A) "How Long," Ace's 1975 No. 3 hit,
on which Carrack sang lead. B) "Tempted," Squeeze's 1981 No. 49 cult classic, on which Carrack sang lead. C) "Silent Running" and "The Living Years," Mike
+ The Mechanics' 1985 No. 6 and 1989 No. 1 (respectively), on which Carrack sang lead. D) "Don't Shed a Tear," Carrack's 1987 No. 9 solo hit.
If you picked D, join the club. Attention, members! Carrack's only solo Top 10 sounds better than you don't remember, especially that I don't need… bit at the coda.
"Boys Night Out" Timothy B. Schmit
(1987) He may forever be best known as the guy who sang lead on Eagles' final Top 10 hit (1980's "I Can't Tell You Why"), but Schmit's facial expressions
in the video for his only solo Top 40 (No. 25 peak) makes me wish he'd done/had more. (Fun fact: When Schmit went Top 40 with "Boys Night Out," bringing
the number of solo Top 40 Eagles to five, Eagles surpassed both The Beatles and Duran Duran, each of which spawned four Top 40 spin-offs, among bands who
bore fruit and multiplied. That would make Eagles the U.S. Spice Girls, 10 years earlier.)
"Call It Love" Poco
(1989) Here's the confusing thing: Randy Meisner, who only appeared on Poco's 1969 debut album (and was fired before its release), and not Timothy B. Schmit, who replaced him in both Poco
and Eagles, was the one who reunited with Poco for its 1989 comeback. Schmit must have been still enjoying his boys night out.
"The Doctor" The Doobie Brothers
(1989) Here's a Top 10 trip (No. 9) that's all the more impressive because the band didn't need Michael McDonald to take it, which might actually be
precisely why you'd probably have to be a diehard fan to remember it.
I prefer Facebook for allowing us to communicate in paragraphs, and Instagram, where a photo is worth, if not always a thousand words, so much more than
140 characters. But I suppose that Twitter has its place. Though I haven't quite figured out the true purpose of it (aside from allowing us all to achieve
the goal of being closer to celebrity, figuratively and literally, either by having billions of "followers" or talking directly to famous people), what it
lacks in practical value, it makes up for in entertainment value, especially when celebrities start attacking each other in front of an audience of
millions.
It can be a learning experience, too. I haven't discovered anything as enlightening as some of those articles that my Facebook friends are always sharing,
but in my time on Twitter, I've learned some lessons, most of them about Twitter, not life. Here are 8 of them.
1. Do be careful! Big brother (and sister) is watching.
In other words, don't tweet it if you don't want the entire world to read it. Unlike private Facebook posts, tweets, like Instagram pics, aren't only
visible to your followers. I've had several people tell me they don't use Twitter because nobody cares what they have to say, and they couldn't be more
wrong. I'm not sure how some random tweeter on the other side of the world happens across my tweet about how I'm en route to the loo -- BRB! -- and
why that would inspire them to "follow" me, but s**t like that happens (pun intended!).
I'm sure there are privacy settings you can use to block non-followers from reading your tweets, but using them would be missing the entire point of
Twitter. It's not so much about communicating ideas or even filling people in on what's new in your life as it is about accumulating as many followers as
possible.
2. Don't be afraid to approach icons on Twitter.
Just because Justin Bieber probably won't tweet you back doesn't mean someone much better won't. I once sent Alison Moyet a link to a blog post I wrote
celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of Yazoo's Upstairs at Eric's album. Within minutes, she'd tweeted me back, thanking me
for the kind words. Stephanie Mills once sent me a thank-you tweet, too, and I hadn't even solicited it by sending her a link to the blog post for which she was so grateful!
3. Do use hashtags, preferably in the middle of your tweets instead of at the end.
I'm still not 100 percent sure what those numeral signs (#) in front of words are supposed to do, and they eat up large chunks of your allotted 140
characters. Social media-savvy friends have explained that hashtagged words make it easier to find your posts in search engines. Fair enough (I guess). I
haven't yet determined their efficacy, but if you incorporate them into the body of your tweets instead of hashtagging at the end, not only will it save
space, it also will break up all of that black text with a lovely shade of babyish blue.
4. Don't even attempt to have an intelligent debate on Twitter.
It's bad enough that you have to condense your argument to 140 characters or less, but it'll only be further undermined when you have to drop a
period at the end or use "2" 4 "to" or "too" 2 make it fit. Likewise, it'll be tougher to take seriously dissenting opinions addressed to "U" instead of
"you." So keep it light and simple.
5. Do keep calm and say, "Thank you."
The other day an Adam Lambert fan called me an "idiot" and wished me a "pathetic life" in response to one of my Huffington Post essays in which I made some
comments about Lambert that he/she interpreted as being disparaging. (Of all the fans I've encountered in my six years of blogging, Lambert's are the ones most
likely to take something you say about someone else personally.) I tried to think of a suitably snarky response, but in the end, I decided to go with a
simple "Thank you." He didn't respond "YW" (that's "You're welcome," in Twitter speak, as I learned from another Lambert fan after blowing her off with
gratitude), but within minutes he'd deleted the original tweet.
6. Don't ignore all unsolicited tweets from strangers that look like spam.
In between those mysterious ones from friends hawking some item that neither you nor they would ever use, there might be the occasional valuable offer. I
haven't gotten one yet, but I now have hope. The other day I was bemoaning the lack of razor-cartridge options in Cape Town supermarkets, and hours after
my fruitless search, I received an email from Dollar Shave Club, a U.S. company that delivers razor cartridges directly to your home (sadly, not if said dwelling is on the other side of the world, in South Africa) and apparently tweets its offers, too. What if it had been a tweet offering a service
that I can actually use and I had automatically tossed it out with the rest of the spam? If
there's a company in South Africa that makes can openers that last longer than a few months, please feel free to tweet me.
7. Do post "#mickeymouse #tattoo" images.
I'm not sure if he was only joking, but a friend of mine said on Facebook that this is the best way to "get every fucktard from Shangzen to Portland" to
follow you on Instagram. I'm assuming it works on Twitter, too!
8. Don't sweat if you have nothing to say.
Just tweet an uplifting self-help quote or a well-known name or place. Twitterers are suckers for positive-thinking aphorisms, and there are apparently
actual people who monitor Twitter for every mention of certain names and places. Just the mention of "Hamlet" in one of my recent tweets, got "William
Shakespeare" to follow me! Oscar Wilde and William Shakespeare? Twitter followers don't get much more impressive than that, and all it took was
name-dropping one great Dane.
How do I love this YouTube video? Let me count the ways: 1) It proves that a YouTube clip doesn't have to feature silly memes, cutesy cats or sexed-up pop tarts to rack up viral viewership in the millions. 2) It tackles a serious topic with humor, not preachy pontificating. 3) It presents so many important truths, not just in the video itself but also in the reactions to it, both the positive and the negative ones. (Righteous indignation to any kind of commentary can be just as telling as what inspired it.)
One of my favorite comments came from "SuperMommav":
"The point was that non whites are judged as a group and whites have the luxury of being judged as individuals."
If I could go back and run that sentence at the beginning of every article and blog post I've ever written about race...
As a writer who keeps returning to the subject of racism (and I devote two chapters in my forthcoming book, Is It True What They Say About Black Men?, to the anti-Asian racism I witnessed in Australia and, of all places, in Bangkok), I've read so many of the sort of complaints leveled at the video over and over, to the point of nausea: But I'm not like that... Not all white people are like that... How stereotypical!... Why are you still whining?
Add the indignant critics who drop the R words (reverse racism), and there's still no valid reason to dismiss a reality that too many people (typically ones who are unaffected by it) are simply too uncomfortable to face and others have no choice but to face. Just because you are not a criminal doesn't mean crime doesn't exist. Just because you are a man who doesn't cheat doesn't mean that many bordering on most men don't do it. Just because you don't make disparaging comments about/to black people, or Asian people, or [insert minority/ethnic group here] doesn't mean there aren't enough people doing it to make a video like this necessary.
A friend once had the audacity to call my articles on race too "black and white" because he doesn't think/act like the white people I write about, as if that somehow made my observations faulty, as if a better way to begin every article would be a disclaimer along the lines of "Please disregard this if it doesn't apply to you."
Attention: Not everything is about you.
Yes, the title "If Asians Said The Stuff White People Say" does mirror the sort of stereotyping that it's criticizing -- and I suppose you can say the same thing about every article that calls white people out on their racism because not all white people are like that -- but why devote so much time to worrying about semantics when there are far more pressing issues at hand? Having to uncomfortably watch one video that slams "white" behavior is nothing compared to living every day being judged as a group and not as an individual.
That there are exceptions is always implied. That the video isn't titled "If Asians Said the Stuff SOME White People Say" doesn't automatically invalidate it or make it just as racist as the racists it's ridiculing. (And I suspect it's the lampooning aspect that's caused so many hurt feelings: Who wants to be turned into the butt of their own unintentional joke?) As for the dreaded R words, reacting to a crime with another crime doesn't absolve the first criminal from guilt. Both criminals will be tried -- in separate courts. If you have issues with reverse racism (and I must dissent with the poster who says it doesn't exist), put them in your own article, or in your own YouTube video.
Don't use it as an excuse to dismiss this one. Whining and putting your hands over your ears because you know better doesn't make it a non-issue. Firing back with comments like "Well, some [insert minority/ethnic group here] are racist," or "Black people use the N word, too," doesn't absolve the original sin. Yes, racism is a difficult topic, but it's one that many of us can't avoid by simply turning off the computer and choosing to ignore it.
For many of us, it won't be ignored (like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction -- and we all know how scary and threatening she was). If it's so uncomfortable to talk about or read about or look at for one minute and 45 seconds, imagine what it must feel like for those of us who must live with it every day of our lives.
This tribute to Sam Smith on the day of his debut album's U.S. release is from my HuffPost Gay Voices blog.
"It's the singer, not the song," the band Survivor declared on its 1984 album Vital Signs. But as anyone who's ever perused a Billboard
chart knows by now, good singers and good songs often finish last. And if any of those singers of any of those songs happens to be a gay man, more
power -- and good luck -- to him. He'll need both.
Although the importance of being straight if you want to be a male pop star has been waning in recent years, music remains the one area where women have it
better -- if they're gay. It's hard to imagine that the rainbow flag-waving up-with-gay-marriage sentiment of "Same Love," the 2012 rap single that
featured a lesbian, Mary Lambert, singing the hook, would have resulted in a Grammy-nominated No. 11 hit if its headliners, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis,
weren't two straight guys. We haven't come that far. Not yet.
Adam Lambert hung on to his burgeoning fan base but only had modest success as a recording artist after coming out as a gay man in 2009, three weeks after
coming in second on American Idol. Although his second album, 2012's Trespassing, made him the first openly gay singer to score a No. 1
album on Billboard's Top 200 chart, it didn't even go gold. Frank Ocean earned critical acclaim and Grammy attention after revealing that he'd
once fallen in love with a man before the release of his 2012 debut album, channel ORANGE, but that didn't translate to blockbuster status for the
merely gold-selling ORANGE or Jason DeRulo-sized hit singles.
George Michael and Elton John have enjoyed both critical acclaim and commercial hits, as has, to a lesser extent, Judas Priest's Rob Halford, but their
heydays were well before they came out, as were the shorter pop-idol cycles of Ricky Martin, Clay Aiken, 'N Sync's Lance Bass and Kajagoogoo's Limahl.
Freddie Mercury may hardly have been closeted at the height of Queen-mania, but he never publicly acknowledged being gay, not even as he lay dying of AIDS,
and while the U.K. has been generally more accepting of its openly gay pop artists (see Boy George, Marc Almond, Jimmy Sommerville, Pet Shop Boys,
Erasure's Andy Bell and Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Holly Johnson), most of those acts had spotty or fleeting chart runs in the U.S. America hasn't had a
platinum-level male superstar who was openly gay during his commercial peak since Culture Club's in the early '80s.
That seems likely to change any week now, courtesy of Sam Smith, whose unrequited love for a man inspired his entire debut album, In the Lonely Hour. Like Boy George, he's a British blue-eyed soul singer who is anything but the norm, not because of his sexuality (which he has
yet to officially define by hanging a label on it), or his physical appearance, but because his rise seems to have been imported from another era when
stars were born, not manufactured.
In the Lonely Hour, out in the U.S. on June 17, is on track to make one of the splashiest debuts of the year. Outselling J. Lo, whose A.K.A. comes out the same day,
is an almost foregone conclusion, thanks to an enviable ongoing run of hit singles. Last week, Smith appeared on three that were simultaneously in the Top
40 ofBillboard's Hot 100: "La La La," his 2014 collaboration with Naughty Boy that already peaked at No. 19 and is now at No. 41; "Latch," the
2013 Disclosure single on which he is the featured vocalist, which just rose five more notches to a new No. 17 high; and "Stay with Me," his gospel-soaked
solo breakthrough that this week leapfrogs 19 to 10, becoming his first U.S. Top 10.
Look out, Iggy Azalea. Smith is coming for you, too. Like Azalea, the white Australian female rapper who has held down the top two spots on the Hot 100 for
three weeks now, Smith is a foreigner riding a black American music form to the top. Also like Azalea, this "overnight sensation" has actually been years
in the making.
Although Smith, at 22, is a part of the post-Idol generation, his early breaks came not through reality TV or social media, but rather, the old
fashioned way, far from the maddening TV cameras, in front of fans who often came to see someone else. One fateful night, that would have been Adele. Smith
met one of his managers in 2008 when he was opening for a then-emergent Adele in London. His subsequent rise has come in three stages.
1) Building underground buzz that slowly crossed over into the mainstream.
Smith did it via "Latch" and "La La La," the latter of which hit No. 1 in the U.K. last year and was the sixth fastest-selling U.K. single of 2013. He
maintained a crucial aura of mystique by not appearing in either video, remaining free to focus on perfecting his craft and not his public persona.
2) Getting on Saturday Night Live.
It worked for Adele in October of 2008, when an SNL performance paved the road to smash status for her debut album, 19, which had spent
months logging modest but not remarkable success. Smith landed his own plum performing spot on the March 29 SNL more than two months before the
U.S. release of his album.
3) Coming out.
Frankly, when Smith revealed last month in Fader magazine that In the Lonely Hour
was inspired by his unrequited love for a man, things could have gone either way, even in a celebrity climate where Michael Sam and Tom Daley have recently
made it safer to be young, gifted and gay. His revelation was met with a collective shrug while raising his profile and his singles to greater heights.
But still, why Smith and not Adam Lambert, who at one point seemed to be as poised on the verge as Smith is now? Timing, for one thing. Acceptance of gays
has evolved in the five years since Lambert was the American Idol runner-up, with gay marriage no longer an out-of-reach dream but a reality in
more than half the U.S. states, and television brimming with gay representation.
Also, unlike Lambert, Smith undersells himself. There's no flash, no attention-grabbing antics, no controversy. (Lambert infamously kissed a male member of
his band and shoved the face of another into his crotch while performing at the American Music Awards in 2009.) It's hard to imagine baby-faced Smith
making anyone squirm.
In the Lonely Hour
, already a No. 1 hit in the U.K., is just a singer and his songs, and the street cred is pouring in. Years ago, Mary J. Blige's then-label, MCA Records,
blocked the release of her duet with George Michael on a cover of Stevie Wonder's "As" from release in the U.S. allegedly because of concerns over how his
sexuality would affect her image. Now when she appears on the Darkchild remix of "Stay with Me," it makes her look cooler.
It also helps that Smith, unlike Michael at his closeted '80s peak, isn't pushing a sexual agenda with his image or with his music. "I'm not a centerfold,"
Frank Ocean told Rolling Stone shortly after his own coming out. "I'm not trying to sell you sex." That could easily apply to Smith, too. He's
like a British Bruno Mars, sexless in a sensible suit, the perfect non-threatening blue-eyed soulful package.
Had Smith come out of the starting gate with a boyfriend in tow, flaunting Jason DeRulo's taut exposed six-pack and oozing sex appeal, would his
transatlantic crossing have been as smooth? I'm not sure that mainstream pop fans are ready for a gay male superstar who wears his sexuality on his
shirtless torso, or in his videos the way Robin Thicke and Justin Timberlake recently have. Adam Lambert sold sex as flamboyance (no wonder the surviving
members of Queen love him -- Freddie Mercury excelled at this), making it perhaps more palatable for straights (his AMAs stunt aside) who were okay with
gay people but not necessarily gay sexuality, and the follow-ups to his first few singles still tanked.
By embracing understatement in both his music ("Stay with Me" might be the stateliest, most polite song on the charts) and his image (even his generic
alliterative name practically screams "DON'T STARE!"), Smith is poised to go where no British man or woman has managed to go since Adele. And he's doing it
in much the same way, without glitter and noise. So many other promising careers have been crushed for emphasizing talent over image, but in a nice pop
twist, that might be the secret to Smith's success, the very thing that's made his sexuality a footnote and his pop domination all but imminent.
I'll always have a soft spot for MartÃn, perhaps the most significantly recurring name during my nearly six-year love-to-love/hate affair with Buenos Aires, though I
don't believe I ever actually dated one. Coincidentally, as I write this blog post, there's a Sunday-afternoon Martin marathon on South
African TV -- '90s black entertainment is everything here -- but neither Martin nor MartÃns are the main point of this post. Bear with me,
though.
I met my favorite MartÃn one Sunday night by the upstairs bar in Amerika in early 2006, at the end of my third holiday in BA. He'd go on to become my
second Argentine friend (the first: another MartÃn, naturally, one whom I met halfway through my first BA trip). MartÃn No. 2 was sweet, cute, an excellent
kisser, a fellow May baby, and unlike MartÃn No. 1, he spoke English. Though he moved to Madrid probably around the halfway
point of my four and a half years in BA, he's someone with whom I still connect at least twice a year, on my birthday and 12 days later, on his.
He once told me about the time he went to an outdoor Madonna concert and somehow got separated from his friends. As panic set in, the sky swelled with rain
and it began to pour down. Cue "Rain." It was a literal watershed moment. From then on, "Rain" was his favorite Madonna song.
I now let his slip in good taste slide because although I've never cared for that Madonna song, MartÃn was the one who got me to appreciate another one, "Isaac" on Confessions on the Dance Floor. I didn't care for it until he called it his personal highlight on Confessions, encouraging me to reconsider its merit. It's still not my favorite on Confessions (which is still my favorite Madonna album), but since "Like It Or Not" is the closing track, I no longer have to skip over anything on it. MartÃn didn't sell me on "Rain," but I knew it could be so much worse. His favorite Madonna song could have been "I Want You," her Ambien-strength 1995 collaboration with Massive Attack,
a lowlight of her late-'90s hyper-serious monochromatic phase.
But getting back to rain (the meteorological event, not the song, and the real point of this post), though God's green earth can't live without it, I
certainly can. It may provide the perfect excuse to spend a lazy day inside eating comfort food and watching bad TV, but it gets old fast. I have no idea
what it was about rainy nights that drove the late Eddie Rabbitt to write a 1981 No. 1 country and pop hit about them. I love a rainy night only when I sleep
through it, and the sun comes up in the morning.
I've been told to get used to rainy nights (and days) in Cape Town, though, at least for the next two and a half months, for winter is rainy season. It's not like I haven't lived through rainy seasons recently, but in
Southeast Asia, where it's more or less summer all year long, running in the rain, which I've done exactly once, can be an enjoyable experience.
In drafty wintry Cape Town, it would simply be an unpleasant thing to do because you'd have to bundle up even more than usual. Sure I chuckle to myself when Capetonians complain about the cold and overdress
the part -- Cape Town's average winter highs and lows would almost qualify as beach-friendly in New York -- but I think they might be reacting not to the wind chill but to
the frequent rain, which probably seems more frequent than it actually is because of its timing.
If it weren't for rain's environmental benefits (which became so apparent to me while driving through the Namibian desert last month) and its cleansing
properties (both literal and figurative), I might have no use for it at all. It's not like I really need an excuse to spend the day indoors. Oh, but without
rain, what great music we all would have missed out on: "Cloudbusting" by Kate Bush, "Let the Rain Come Down" by Toni Childs, "Summer Rain" by Belinda Carlisle, "A Day Without Rain" by Enya, and the following 10 rainy-day classics.
"Songs About Rain" Gary Allan
"Rainy Night in Georgia" Brooke Benton
"Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" Willie Nelson
"The Rains Came" Freddy Fender
"Crying in the Rain" Tammy Wynette (and The Everly Brothers and a-ha)
Last night I met up with Ben, a well-rounded and well-educated 30-year-old from Pittsburgh by way of New York City (Bensonhurst, to be precise) who gave me the rare feeling of being a Cape Town expert, if only because he's sort of new here. After spending three years in Cameroon with the Peace Corps, he's now Cape Town-based for two months on a related internship. As has been the case with most of the other white Americans in Africa whom I've met since my arrival in Cape Town last November, I was impressed by Ben's awareness of/interest in racial politics and comforted by his sympathy for/interest in my experiences as a black man in Cape Town.
After drinks at Mojito Cafe, we moved on to food at Zula Sound Bar. I was so at ease sitting beside chatty Ben that I dove into the pizza and burger that we ordered to share with gusto, unconcerned with maintaining any semblance of dinner-table composure or finding things to talk about. The conversation flowed. He could relate to my brand of familial angst, and he said he stares at globes, too! Sigh. Ben got me.
He told me that next week his job will be sending him to Johannesburg, a place he's never been to, not once but twice. As I offered my impression of South Africa's most populous city, I recommended some of my favorite places from my five days in Joburg before my arrival in Cape Town: the Melville district, 7th Street, Saffron Guest House, Sophiatown Bar Lounge. "There was a live jazz band and a predominantly black crowd," I said, describing the night I walked into the latter to order take-out. "I felt as if I'd stepped into a time-travel machine and ended up in the Harlem Renaissance."
Ben gave me a puzzled look, his first of the evening.
"The Harlem Renaissance?"
"Yeah, it was like I was back in the 1920s during the Harlem Renaissance."
"What is that? I've never heard of it. Was that in Harlem?"
I tried to hide my shock as I explained to him the black artistic movement of the Roaring Twenties, the iconic one that gave the world Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington, the Cotton Club, and so many of the writers who influenced the writers who influenced me. When I mentioned Langston Hughes, I expected a flicker of recognition. Doesn't everybody know about Langston Hughes?
Nothing. I was taken so completely off guard that I never made it to the Apartheid Museum, site of my defining moment in Johannesburg. Until Ben asked me to explain the Harlem Renaissance, I would have assumed he'd heard of the Apartheid Museum, too. But what do I know now? I might have expected the Harlem Renaissance to have a much higher profile among Americans, white and black, than the Apartheid Museum, which I'd never heard of myself until I was in Joburg. But suddenly, I was questioning everything I thought everybody knows.
Then I had a moment of clarity and realization. I'd always taken for granted that everyone has heard of the Harlem Renaissance, but perhaps it's a specially acquired taste of knowledge, something that only black people know about, like Angela Winbush, Miki Howard, Phyllis Hyman, Girlfriends and The Game.
I'd taken a class in black literature at the University of Florida (before "black" was politically correctly rechristened "African-American"), and the Harlem Renaissance and the writers it inspired were major parts of the course. It was what introduced me to the work of Zora Neal Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin and, of course, Hughes. I could have sworn that the class, like UF's general student population, was predominantly white, but now that I think of it, it probably wasn't. Most white students at the University of Florida in the early '90s likely would not have been interested in black literature.
That class must have been more black than I'd remembered, not just in subject matter. Maybe the Harlem Renaissance wasn't such common knowledge at all, especially among white people. I have lived with my knowledge of it for such a long time that I'd gotten to the point where it felt as if it had always been with me. But my black literature class must have been the first time I'd heard of it. When might a white student whose education veers away from the liberal arts -- or even one, like Ben, who has studied at The New School in New York City -- be exposed to it?
As a black writer and journalist, I'm sure I would have picked up knowledge of the Harlem Renaissance at some point, even had I not taken the black literature class. But why should I expect it to be on the historic radar of a white person who's neither a writer nor a creative type, even one who has spent the last three years being a part of the white minority in predominantly black Cameroon? The black experience there has nothing to do with Harlem.
Ironically, earlier the same day, I'd received an email from my Facebook friend Gavin, a white Canadian musician with whom I've been having a back-and-forth written dialogue for the past couple of weeks on race issues and pretty much everything else under the sun. Attached to it was an mp3 he ripped from the 1989 film Looking for Langston, which was inspired by Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance.
The excerpt was a powerful two-minute jazz-accompanied monologue/meditation on the objectification of the black male. The devastating final sentence -- "To you he's only visible in the dark" -- stunningly summarizes a point I've made over and over in several recent essays (particularly in this one and in this one), in the title of my forthcoming book, IsIt True What They Say About Black Men?, and in the book itself.
I didn't listen to the mp3 until the morning after my night out with Ben. As it played on a repeat loop, I found myself wondering what Gavin would think of Sophiatown Bar Lounge -- or my description of it. Clearly he's heard of the Harlem Renaissance.
But I won't hold Ben's lack of that specific knowledge against him. Although I was somewhat disappointed that my description of Sophiatown Bar Lounge didn't resonate with him the way I wanted it to, he has so much going for him. I was impressed by his desire to know more about his personal unknown and his lack of fear of it. That's what had driven him from his comfort zone in Pittsburgh/Bensonhurst to a West African country where he knew no one and didn't speak the language (something I can relate to, having done something similar when I moved to Buenos Aires nearly eight years ago). Most people in the U.S., white and black, have never even heard of Cameroon.
They should all be so lucky to be educated not only in geography but in other cultures, too, and maybe even learn French along the way. Alas, Cameroon is not so accessible to everyone, but the Harlem Renaissance is, even nearly a century later. Its sweet and bitter fruit -- the words of Hughes, Hurston, Wright and Baldwin, the music of Ellington and so many others -- should be part of the well-balanced diet of every American, black and white.
I've been an INXS fan since the Sunday morning in 1983 when I heard "The One Thing" for the first time, the week it debuted on Casey Kasem's American Top 40 radio countdown. But it wasn't until I was a senior at the University of Florida eight years later that it really hit home just how great the band was. My then-roommate Stephanie, my BFF Maureen and I had driven several hours from Gainesville to Melbourne (the one in Florida, not my future home in Australia, birthplace of INXS) for our first INXS concert, and in between the greatest hits, the guys slipped in several album cuts without once losing my undivided attention. Not even The Cult and R.E.M., two of my Top 5 favorite bands at the time, quite pulled that off when I drove for hours to see them live around the same time.
This Throwback Thursday, as I dwell on the past, I've come to another conclusion about INXS: With "Need You Tonight" as an anchor, Michael Hutchence and his bandmates probably could have released a completely different line-up of singles and still have made it just as big. Unlike Oasis (whose Noel Gallagher once had the nerve to snark "Has-beens shouldn't be presenting f**king awards to gonna-bes" when accepting Best Album from Hutchence at the 1996 Brits), that's not because so many of their songs sounded like rewrites of each other.
These seven album tracks are testaments to INXS's versatility, quality control and avoidance of musical repetition. 1.) "Love Is (What I Say)" (from The Swing, 1984) Yes, the title is hopelessly pretentious (a distinct danger whenever songwriters opt to go the parenthetical route), but at 15, I thought what I thought Michael Hutchence was singing at the end of the "chorus" -- "I don't think we love each other/Enough to lie/Enough is enough/Fade away" -- was pure poetry. So what that he was actually singing "I don't think we know each other/Enough to lie/Enough is enough/Anyway"? That's poetry, too, on an essential mid-'80s album that was overflowing with it. (Honorable mentions on The Swing: "Johnson's Aeroplane" and the title track.)
2.) "Same Direction" (from Listen Like Thieves, 1985) INXS didn't get enough credit for being so versatile. As unmistakable as Hutchence's voice always was, The Swing and Listen Like Thieves, though a mere one year apart, didn't even sound like the work of the same band. But it's hard to imagine that 1987's Kick could have happened without the new direction of Thieves. More than any other song, this track bridged the dance edge of The Swing with the rock edge of Thieves and the INXS to come, making it essential not only to its parent album but to the band's canon as well.
3.) "Wild Life" (Kick, 1987) Like two other landmark '87 album releases (Michael Jackson's Bad and Whitney Houston's Whitney), Kick was loaded with singles and B-sides, four of which went Top 10. This is the best of the four that were available only on the album. Here, as on most of Kick's middle to end, Hutchence moved and grooved like Jagger with even more charisma than Mick had the previous year on The Rolling Stones' Dirty Work.
4.) "Faith in Each Other" (from X, 1990) "Suicide Blonde," the opening track and first single from X, was such bleached awesomeness, how could anything that came after it live up to it? Nothing did, not even track four (or nine, "Bitter Tears," which came closest), but most bands would kill to produce such excellent filler. (Fun fact: INXS celebrated its 10th anniversary by naming its seventh studio album the Roman numeral for 10, and 17 years later, Hutchence's former girlfriend Kylie Minogue, would give her 10th album the same title. An X homage to her ex?)
5 & 6.) "Back on Line" and "Strange Desire" (from Welcome to Wherever You Are, 1992) Twenty-two years after the release of INXS's best album (and until this week -- see below), these were the INXS tracks that I was most likely to listen to (usually on repeat) on any given day. "Strange Desire" appeared as the B-side of "Beautiful Girl" in remixed form, but by then INXS should have known better than to mess with perfection. (Fun fact: Welcome was one of the first albums I ever reviewed for People magazine. Honorable mentions: "Communication" and "Wishing Well.")
7.) "I'm Only Looking" (from Full Moon, Dirty Hearts, 1993) Here are the three things I remember most about the Michael Hutchence-fronted INXS's penultimate album: 1) "The Gift," the first single and a stunning approximation of non-grunge alternative rock circa '93 that deserved to be a much bigger hit. (At least the Brits, once again exhibiting better taste in music than us Yanks, were smart enough to send it to No. 11.) 2) Wondering if Ray Charles was an INXS fan before he appeared on "Please (You Got That...)." 3) Meeting Hutchence at an album-release party the night after River Phoenix died and having him light his cigarette with mine and then putting mine between my lips. Who knew that he, too, would die much too young a mere four years later?
Here's what I forgot until I revisited INXS's discography to write about "Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain)" (from Listen Like Thieves) this week for my BFF Lori's Mad World blog: 1) Chrissie Hynde doing her Chrissie Hynde thing on the title cut -- no pretender is she. 2) Track five, which has been in heavy rotation on my mp3 player and in my head ever since. Fun fact: Like "Shine Like It Does" (from Listen Like Thieves and Shine Like It Does: The Anthology [1979-1997]) and "Taste It" (from Welcome to Wherever You Are and Taste It: The Collection), it's a non-hit that was nonetheless name-dropped in the title of an INXS compilation (the video collection I'm Only Looking -- The Best of INXS).
INXS's 10 Best Singles
10.) "Mystify" (from Kick)
9.) "Not Enough Time" (from Welcome to Wherever You Are)
8.) "New Sensation"/"Guns in the Sky" (from Kick)
7.) "Don't Change" (from Shabooh Shoobah)
6.) "Original Sin" (from The Swing)
5.) "The Gift" (from Full Moon, Dirty Hearts)
4.) "Bitter Tears" (from X)
3.) "Need You Tonight"/"Mediate" (from Kick)
2.) "Suicide Blonde" (from X)
1.) "Heaven Sent" (from Welcome to Wherever You Are)
