Songs about AIDS/safe sex

Actually, there's probably 20 other Frogs songs that either are about it or mention it. See also: Diamanda Galas.

Not serious: Jermaine Stewart "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off" (Abstinence is cool!)

Choice - "H.I.V. Positive"

(Well, and the rest of the songs on the America Is Dying Slowly compilation, apparently)

all the Red Hot comps, especially Red Hot & Riot

Soon to come:
Timbaland, Missy, JT, Bubba Sparxx, Kiley Dean - "The World is Ours"

No I'm never gonna do it without the fez on
Oh no
Don't make me do it without the fez on
Oh no
That's what I am please understand

but AIDS/stds generally, isn't that what Massive Attack's Protection is all about ?

I don't think "Shake the Disease" has anything to do with AIDS though.

This is in "Gone Til November." Elswhere on the same album, in "Anything Can Happen," he asks "Gonna make love with no condom this year?" and answers himself "No, no, no, that won't never happen."

It doesn't seem that long since hope was out of mind
And I was just surviving for the day
Suddenly a combination came my way
Giving me the strength for come what may
I've got something to live for
Got a reason to want more
Ain't going down
I intend to hang around
I've got something to live for

Bump.

Particularly I'm curious about how music - for my intents and purposes, house and disco - portrayed AIDS during the height of the crisis.

I'm not sure how correct I am in this regard, but it seems like within house and disco there's something of an serious need to address HIV/AIDS, but with a certain care, or perhaps anxiety about being explicit about it. I think of house/disco as being, for the most part, uplifting forms of music, but which nevertheless are very often and in some way a form of expression of the anxities and struggles of the black and gay communities from which this music was coming from, and hence maintains a certain balance between some sort of effervescent music, and a serious political gesture? This has been talked about in separate threads about Azari and IIIband the subtle HIV/AIDS subtexts in their music, for instance.
I'm interested in looking further in that direction of subtly coded expressions about HIV/AIDS, often hidden behind the facade of dance music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDJwu2rugG0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hYtUYiuzkw

not really getting anywhere beyond World of Echo but its not really what you're looking for and too obvious anyway. also i guess midtown 120 blues makes ref.

hoping this thread gets a good response btw

also "Rushing to Paradise" seems to alude to the aids epidemic. last year was pretty big for aids ballads, come to think of it.

guessing hes looking for artifacts not period pieces tho

"we don't have to take our clothes off" by jermaine jackson

promised land by joe smooth?

guessing hes looking for artifacts not period pieces tho

― plax (ico), Monday, May 24, 2010 2:43 PM Bookmark

yeah, i know. i'm just not as familiar with old house as i am new house

yeah me neither but still i feel like the current pastichey stuff is probably more explicit abt its "themes" than older house music?

maybe there's something there if you take the wide view that the subject of a lot of classic house tracks is either the body (jack your body, move your body, 7 ways to jack etc) or the absence thereof (you used to hold me, club lonely, waiting on my angel), "absent presence" and such, you know the drill

hmmn, I never thought about Promised Land, either way it's a reallyt glorious track (it's also a cover though, so...)

Problem is there is such a fine line between decoding and extremely strained reading/imposition.

File under the latter: NYC Peech Boys: Life is something special, although thats a bit of a wild guess on my part.

It doesn't fit EDB's house/disco focus, but this thread needs a mention of the Communards' "For a Friend."

I don't mean to hijack the thread by any means.

Also, the shot of the steam coming out of the phone in the police car is just shouting out to be gifed and looped.

the scene in the Sex over the phone video that is.

Yellowman - AIDS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w7XDiwOkYo

Gregory D & Mannie Fresh - VD Woman

closest thing I can think of is Arthur Russell's 'A Sudden Chill' but it aint disco

I guess, if Thaemlitz is right, and house was a situation, then the context was enough to serve as signifier w/in the music while the lyrical themes themselves are structured around universalist themes (as joe says the Body, the Dancefloor- House is a feeling) that are then queered through their specific context. Seems like the Haynsification of these themes is made necessary by the changing cultural situation which doesn't provide the context whereby the specificity of the queer body/ the communal spaces of queerness is always implicit? I dunno

yeah, that makes sense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nRMHkEdnUI

So forgetting everything I said about coding, can anyone elaborate on how HIV/AIDS was responded to/acknowledged on the part of disco/house peoples.

I mean, given how well these scenes - largely comprised of gay men and black and latino men in cities like New York, throughout the mid 80's, and taking place in cruisy clubs - seem to fit the bill of HIV/AIDS archetypes/stereotypes, I'm curious as to what sort of presence the virus, the fear of it, the losses it brought, and its negative social impact on these communities, appeared in music. Now my history is pretty spotty, but I've never encountered disco/house songs that I've perceived to deal with it; nevertheless I'm interested in the idea that a specter of HIV/AIDS still exists here, at this particularly formative moment for dance music (I further wonder whether this possible specter perhaps lives on in some form throughout subsequent dance music that has grown out of 80's disco/house?).

total denial?

I wonder about that because it raises even more complex questions. In light of how prevalent the disease came to be, not least in its social incarnation with which gay men, as well as lower-class black and latino men, wre taken to be an object of fear and hysteria, the lack of a response is a pretty strong reaction in and of itself.

*virus/syndrome, not disease [/(important)semantic pedantry]

In The Heart of Rock 'n' Soul, Dave Marsh said that Noel's "Silent Morning" was an AIDs eulogy.

are you referring to acknowledgement in the music itself? just conjecture on my part but dancefloor = escapism = this is where we go to get AWAY from all the heavy shit in our lives = the specter is there but we don't talk about it because we're here to have a good time?

"denial" seems wrong to me, at any rate

also this has been bothering me from what i posted upthread: jermaine STEWART, not jermaine jackson

Yeah, I think that's probably a good summation. I think I mentioned something upthread about the function of dance music as something uplifting, especially in light of plight. The hart part, then, is determining to what extent this reveals on one hand, or belies on the other, consciousness of the epidemic.

I guess Sex Over the Phone is probably the biggest exception I've found about this (Also, I'm going to do what I can to show the video for it as part of a school presentation).

"we don't talk about it" obv isn't totally accurate either - maybe in the music but the topic was certainly on lots of peoples' minds at the very least by '86/'87

that is god's work, showing that video, EDB

I want you to all know that I fought like a dog to include footage/stills from Sex Over the Phone in that presentation, but ultimately couldn't do it ;_;

btw id really like to read this when its done

Sure (if only because I find that very flattering!) The full (roughly 40 page) essay should be done in April. If you don't want to wait, or if that's tl;dr for your tastes, I have the (17 page) script of the presentation itself.

Also, this was the still I wanted to show:
http://soupofturtles.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/sotp.png

The still is actually really disappointing, because you can see the steam isn't coming from the phone itself. There's very much a sense of an "I know very well, but nevertheless" feeling at work here, where I really want to believe that phone sex was so hot that steam actually shot out of the receiver, and finding evidence of its construction is a little bit painful.

"Use Your Raincoat" -- D.O.A.
"Syphilis and Religion" -- Graham Parker
"The Clap" -- Yes
― Nom De Plume (Nom De Plume), Monday, December 1, 2003 6:55 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The Clap is about nothing. It's got no words. (response to 7 year old post)

this is absurd & beautiful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuMO5vQ5HE
(Risen From The Rank - A.I.D.S.)

Def Dames Dope - Don't be silly (1994)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1LNyguq5bk

Pierre's Pfantasy Club - Got The Bug (1987):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RU5qP27ie8

There's a Dutch one

Acda en de Munnik - Niemand Sterft

but it's pretty awful IMO

mama told me not to come

What do you guys think about that Alphabeat song, Rubber Boots/Mackintosh? Essentially it's a song about dealing with tough situations in life and the rubber boots are to be taken literally, but then there's this repeated phrase "you should wear rubber / always wear rubber" which is hard not to associate with safe sex

People are still having sex!

Wu-Tang - Tearz

I have a cassingle of this song, Joe Bracco's "Friend in My Pocket"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bxGbpptIvg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y__mIHElSo

May be indirect, but Pet Shop Boys'Positive Role Model has the play on words in the title: a banger about embracing falling off the wagon. The "positive role model" always struck me as partly meaning looking for an HIV+ role model who partied hard, went to the brink, and now is unafraid to be more of a hedonist than ever.