5.21.12 Adam @Royal Albert Hall, + Promo News

I am a long-time lurker. I am de-lurking to say that even though I am not an older lady, how distressing I find the argument that older ladies should wear beige, sit down and shut up. So MUCH of our culture tells older women that every single day in so many ways. I'm discouraged that a fandom with Adam Lambert as its titular head -- a gay man who never considered staying in the closet, who recently stated this his fandom provides a safe place for people to be crazy, whose latest cd's title is "Trespassing" and whose track includes the line, "I'll shine when I wanta shine" -- would discourge others in it from shining the way they want to.

I don't think I even have the words to explain how dehumanizing it is to assert that people should be invisble for any reason, but especially just so that a pop star can achieve greater commercial success.

Discussion over.





I remember my modern music history class in college had an amazing professor who pulled in actual music makers to tell us their stories. In our section on what was called "Race Music, R&B and American Society", the prof had black musicians come in and talk to us about their experiences as music makers and consumers in the 1940s--60s. Our professor introduced them by recounting how some radio stations refused to play Elvis Presley originally because radio PTB assumed he was black. These black music makers spoke of their music being banned from certain radio stations in the north and south. I remember quite clearly their stories of being told that as music makers they could not enter the front door of some venues in the south, but only through the back door. The black musicians spoke of their concert/club experiences as consumers in which they had to pay the same ticket prices as white concert-goers, but were seated in the back of the house or even behind curtains so as not to offend TPTB. The black music makers talked of how some of their black friends and relatives could "pass" for being white and how they envied them for being able to get front-row tickets.

They further explained that certain white performers would not allow blacks to purchase tickets or be given entry to their shows for fear of being seen as a "race" or "Negro" act and thereby being banned from being played on "white" stations or "white" venues. The white performers would often say how "sorry" they were to have those rules, but what could they do -- that was the way the world was and they had to play by those rules.

I remember those stories told by some very elderly people from more than 50 years in the past and how happy they were that those barriers had come tumbling down. Yet I sit here in 2012 and I see that while no one other than Gene Simmons argues that Adam should have stayed in the sexual orientation closet, I'm reading (not just here but on other fan sites as well) that Adam's strategy for success necessarily entails that older females spend money to attend shows and buy products, but should only be seen in public at his events if they will be invisible and "pass". And I think we haven't come far at all. Have we just found other ways to make people sit in the back of the theater -- all in the name of strategies for "success" and playing the game the 'right' way?

I'd bet serious cash that the older ladies are not the reason why some radio stations are not playing Adam's music, they're just the excuse. And if that excuse was removed, they'd find another. And another and another until by the time Adam removed all of the ways he's unacceptable, he wouldn't recognize himself any more.