Discover Top Posts Tagged with #fagrag

Gay Liberationist & Fag Rag helmsman, Charles “Charley” Shively, with poets John Wieners, & Simon Pettet, & musician, composer, False Prophets’ guitarist, Steven Taylor, First Avenue and 12th Street, headed out for the day from Allen’s apartemnt behind them, May 9, 1995 [Photo: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries / Allen Ginsberg Estate]

#fagrag #charlesshively #johnwieners #gaylib #poetry #simonpettet #steventaylor #falseprophets #allenginsberg #poetrycommunity #queer #gay #lowereastside (at East Village)

#fagrag #charlesshively #johnwieners #gaylib #poetry #simonpettet #steventaylor #falseprophets #allenginsberg #poetrycommunity #queer #gay #lowereastside

Fag Rag: A Gay Male Newspaper

Issue #2, Fall 1971, Boston

#fagrag #gayliberation

Fagrag -- Live From Battle Mountain

Seeing a show at the ZACC can feel like you've taken over a rich parents' living room except there's no booze, you still have a curfew, and the no matter how crazy you wanna get, touching the walls is seriously VERBOTEN. I don't know how they did it but Fagrag managed to pull off a live show there that in many ways captures their giddy chaos better than any of their “proper” albums. A good part of that credit should go to Brian Thomas, who was the dude that recorded the thing. It was Fagrag's final show and we've been left with a testament that sounds less like a eulogy and more like suicide note. I only say that because a band as beholden to anarchy as they were was bound to self-destruct eventually.

Fagrag had been called many things in this town: good and often bad. They had themselves banned from playing the Badlander complex on two separate occasions. They've inspired the ire of numerous local promoters. They never really cared. To me, that only reinforced the fact that they understood that attitude goes a long way in being a punk band. Their fuck-all demeanor, while aggressive on the surface, also had the effect of making them charmingly honest. It's hard to be angry unless you have something to say. For them, their message was of enthusiastic drunkenness and raucous fun. I can get behind that. They made you feel it whenever they bleated out one of those songs you'd always thought would fall apart just before it didn't. They wouldn't be ignored and they succeeded in guiding their deconstruction into contagious bedlam.

Live From Battle Mountain is a party record. Of a party. Their set consists of songs culled from both their records (Centerfold and Rainbow Satan) and a number of tracks that made neither. It's interesting to see their progression laid bare like this. The subjects of the songs don't really change. They're still singing about friends, landlords, creepy hair salon guys, federal prison, drugs, being fat, having fun, etc. That's their honesty again. As far as I can tell, Fagrag has always written about their lives. They'd just managed to do it within the confines of an art form that prides itself in having no confines: punk. Fagrag had taken to heart the idea that punk isn't necessarily a genre, it's just a word defining the endless possibilities that an attitude can carry you wherever you want to go. There can be humor in there, and aggression, and they play all that out pretty well.

Check out Live From Battle Mountain, their entire last set at the ZACC, below:

FAG RAG - LIVE FROM BATTLE MOUNTAIN by beerbreath