Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)
TOM ROBINSON BAND – Rising Free TRB (EMI Records, 1978)
Don't Take No For An Answer /(Sing If You're) Glad To Be Gay /Martin / Right On Sister (Recorded live at High Wycombe Town Hall, Sussex University and The Lyceum London).
Barbarella’s Club in Birmingham was packed to see the Tom Robinson Band in 1977 mainly, I think, because he had just appeared on Top of the Tops playing his catchy apolitical hit 2-4-6-8 Motorway. For that appearance, he looked cute and cheeky – a bit like an overgrown schoolboy : shaggy hair in no particular style, not long, not short; a striped tie loosened as if he’d just arrived late for class. Above all, he looked approachable and not an enemy of the state. This didn’t stop the BBC from banning his next single despite the fact that it contained no offensive language or explicit sexist or racist terminology. Its ‘crime’ was to assert that gay men both existed and were deserving of respect.
The Rising Free EP is more representative of the TRB band than the Motorway single. Someone once described them as The Socialist Worker set to music.
Sexual politics were at the top of the agenda and Glad To Be Gay is the reason most would have wanted to own of copy of this EP. The sarcasm is bitter and the message is not intended to be subtle. This is one verse, for example:
Pictures of naked young women are fun
In Titbits and Playboy, page three of The Sun
There’s no nudes in Gay News our last magazine
But they still find excuses to call it obscene
Read how disgusting we are in the press
The News of The World and the Sunday Express
Molesters of children, corruptors of youth
It’s there in the paper, it must be the truth
Listened to now, it sounds very tame but at the time such outspoken statements were something of a novelty. We had gay pop stars of course, Elton, Bowie etc, but they were not interested in turning their sexuality into more than a fashion statement.
Ironically, Tom Robinson is now employed by the BBC as a Deejay and that the fact that he lives with a woman and has fathered a child means that many might cite him as proof that being Gay is just a faze. Yet, he is still a campaigner against gender stereotyping and other good political/environmental causes.
At Barbarella’s I still remember the packed club singing along to Glad To Be Gay despite the fact that the audience seemed composed more of straight men and women.
