Here's Jobriath with Rock of Ages from his 1973 eponymous LP. While Bowie flirted with homosexuality, Jobriath's stage persona was courageously and defiantly gay. Todd Haynes' dissapointing 1998 film Velvet Goldmine, featured lead character Brian Slade who was clearly an amalgam of Bowie and Jobriath, but the film was a muddled mess that is best forgotten for those interested in the era.
Love the band, love the tune, and love the space suit and helmet! By the way, his 1973 LP will soon be re-released on Rhino August 19th, so check it out.!
Cheers! Have a great Saturday!
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I actually saw him in a club touring the first album at the peak of the hype. (The band included some guys from Stories, -- they were pretty good, in fact). And by hype, I mean billboard in Times Square and more press than you could shake a stick at.
Less than five or six years later, I saw Jobriath, sans drag and under his own name, reduced to playing Cole Porter songs at Sunday brunch at a restaurant down the street from me. No one had a clue who he used to be...
Anyone who gave a damn about Glam Rock in 1973 knew Jobriath was a joke. Your taste and knowledge of Glam Rock is highly suspect if you think Jobriath is more compelling than the brilliant Velvet Goldmine. Sadly, Jobriath embodies Bowie's quip, "We were quite miffed that people who had never seen Metropolis or read Christopher Isherwood were becoming glam rockers."
Sadly, I have to say that conventional wisdom like Bowie's is what killed glam rock and caused kids to start the punk rock revolution in its wake. At the time, we were sick to death of Bowie's arty pretentiousness. Sorry David, "Metropolis" has absolutely nothing to do with Rock and Roll.
Posting that quote makes me understand why you don't see VG as anything other than the overblown disaster that it was. The Roxy Music and Suzi Quatro lookalike bands were cool tho'.
Straight or gay it takes a lot of guts to appear on stage in that costume.
ROTP(lumber)
That's the problem with art deliberately concocted to be camp: is it a joke? is it serious? is it, as Cary Grant says as the angel in The Bishop's Wife, at its most serious when it's joking?
Thanks for the Jobriath clip. I'd heard of him but never heard him. The outfit is fab and I'll be in line for the CD next week. And I agree, Velvet Goldmine was a big disappointment. As for the Bowie quip, is it the very definition of pretentious, or just cute?
Well some of us weren't sick of Bowie's arty pretentiousness, and were totally receptive to Punk as well. Punk is just as pretentious as glam in its own way, Patti Smith and Richard Hell are pretty literate name droppers in their own right. Of course Bowie's line is cheeky, but are you really saying that Rock and Roll doesn't reference other art forms? What if you saw Metropolis at the Drive-In, sitting in your Rocket 88?
Well some of us weren't sick of Bowie's arty pretentiousness, and were totally receptive to Punk as well. Punk is just as pretentious as glam in its own way, Patti Smith and Richard Hell are pretty literate name droppers in their own right. Of course Bowie's line is cheeky, but are you really saying that Rock and Roll doesn't reference other art forms? What if you saw Metropolis at the Drive-In, sitting in your Rocket 88?
I'm with KC on this one -- Velvet Goldmine was a mess. Worse, it was a missed opportunity.
There's a great movie to be made about the Glam era, but -- and I say this as a fan of Todd Haynes -- VG wasn't it.
There was quite a bit about VG that I liked, mostly the "music video" segments. And there were some award worthy performances in I'm Not There. All in all, though, the best I can say for Haynes from what I've seen is that he has something to say about rock music and identity, he just hasn't figured out what it is yet.
Too much glam, not enough rock singing for me. I mean the guitar works, but Jobraith does not work as a rock singer for me in the way that the thin white duke did back in the day.
Trey
I'd never actually heard Jobriath before - he sounds like a wannabe New York Doll. I remember seeing the adverts in the music papers and wondering whose career was on the line for signing him.
I loved Velvet Goldmine but then I'm not one of "those interested in the era", I'm one of those who lived through the era. I thought it captured a lot of what was happening at the time.
I've never considered Bowie a rock singer.
ROT(Plumber)
Revenge, you certainly have a point. But he sang well on a few rock songs, like Suffragette City. I guess Bowie did a lot of pop and alternative and a little soul singing now that you bring up the point.
Trey
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