Craig Hanlon-Smith

BOOK REVIEW: Madonna 66

Posted on 29/11/201629/11/2016 by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Starlight, Star bright.

In June 1983 a well-known New York casting director and producer, asked her photographer son Richard  to drop everything and head over to Manhattan’s Lower East Side to take polaroids of a young and upcoming performer.

The production team was preparing a modern-day treatment of the classic fairy tale Cinderella and in this New York City fable that would satirise the rock music world, the central character was to be re-named ‘Cinde Rella’, perhaps one of the reasons the film was never made. But the buzz around the project was that the lead was to be played by an emerging dance music artist with a couple of moderate hits to her name: Madonna Ciccone.

Six weeks before the release of her eponymous debut album in late July 1983, Richard Corman photographed the 24-year old singer in a range of different set-ups  at her brother Christopher’s apartment. And although the young woman in the centre of each shot is instantly familiar, taken some fifteen months before her infamous garter revealing floor roll at the inaugural MTV music awards which would propel her to the top of the US music charts for more than twenty years, there’s a excitable naivety that has in more recent years been replaced by an all-knowing dominance. An expectation of everything yet to come.

For over thirty years Cormon believed he had lost the polaroids until whilst on a recent apartment move in New York and a review of many unlabeled boxes, he rediscovered the collection. Produced here, quite simply are the contents of that almost lost forever bundle of 66 photographs.

Richard Corman’s photography has been described by Ken Burns, documentarian and director as an “artistic vision dedicated to the highest aspirations of human endeavor…the photographs record in big moments and small, among the famous and ordinary, the gifted and challenged, larger truths relevant to all of us.”

As a portrait photographer, Corman has worked with a thrilling breadth of subjects from Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nelson Mandela to esteemed actors at the top of their profession including Robert De Niro, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Tilda Swinton.

Corman, a native New Yorker had unique working relationships with various artists before they reached international recognition, including Madonna, Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring in the early 80s, all of whom would later shape their own genres within their artistic fields beyond recognition.

Published by independents NJG, ‘Madonna 66’, a must for any Madonna fan is a ‘limited edition’ publication of 500 ‘strictly limited’ signed and numbered by Richard Corman with a signed print (£100) and a further 1000 books signed and numbered (£60).

Featuring all 66 previously unpublished Polaroid images of Madonna (a selection shown here), shot on Friday June 17, 1983, the 66 accompany a 14-page film treatment ‘Cinde Rella’ all 164 pages housed in a flesh pink hardback cover, bound by a  2 inch thick black rubber band symbolic of Madonna’s rubber bracelets, worn in the published collection.

For more info and how to get your hands on a copy, click here:

She Loves You! The lives and works of Lez Ingham.

Posted on 26/10/201606/11/2016 by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Craig Hanlon-Smith spends an evening in the company of local artist Lez Ingham to find out what inspires her to paint the stars.

The ring on my phone took me by surprise as I browsed for a gift in a painfully quiet wine-shop in Seven Dials. Stepping into the street to take the call I struggled to hear the voice on the other end, local artist Lez Ingham, calling to arrange our interview a few days later. After sharing some barely audible appreciations of Southern Rail the date was set: “Come to mine darling” she sang, “I’ll open a bottle of something fabulous. And dinner – shall I cook you dinner?” Three days later, loaded with interest and a dollop of apprehension, I climb the stairs to Lez’s Hove pad and to one of the warmest and most excitable welcomes I have ever received.

She stands, hands on hips blinking from behind large brimmed (and extremely stylish) spectacles, penetrating with a stare that may be assessing my hair, my posture, my general appearance, who knows, before breaking into a beam “Yes! you’re marvellous. I hadn’t known what to expect but you’re verrrrry interesting”.

Installing me on the sofa thrusting a red wine into my hand, and then disappearing into the kitchen to chink a few pots and stir at the bubbling saucepan, she enthusiastically yells “ask me anything!” before she is back seconds later talking ten to the dozen all about an upbringing which began in Zambia where she was born, and then took in much of the United States; “I had the most wonderful childhood” she shares. “My parents were truly wonderful people, I loved them so very much, I really did”. Lez’s family and relationship with her parents is a subject she returns to during our evening together time and again. This level of personal detail and shared intimacy is fascinatingly immediate and I find myself thinking of all the people I know who might find it strange and not at all British, but of course of all those who would immediately love Lez as I begin to think I do.

After studying in London, Lez moved to South Africa and to a successful career in advertising and graphic design; “I was looking for a gay club called ‘The Studio’ in Cape Town but landed this career in advertising”; that I cannot make head nor tale of the chronology doesn’t appear to concern Lez as she leaps around her life story of lesbian squat parties in Notting Hill and bolshy relationships with work colleagues in the southern hemisphere, before settling back in first London and now Brighton as an artist. “I love this country” she tells me much later, “not ‘Britain’! That’s another of these political constructs, but England, and all it has to offer – the opportunities!”

Glass refilled as it is many times that evening, my bottom barely brushes the cushions of the sofa before she’s back from the kitchen and we’re off for a tour of the art. “Come to the bedroom and meet David!” she hurries, which does nothing to settle my heart-rate. David, it turns out is a painting and I am not at all disappointed to find a three dimensional Pop-Art inspired painting of David Bowie looming at me from above the bed, its colours and silver gleaming base as vibrant and arresting as its creator. The Bowie piece is one feature of a series of paintings appropriately named Icons, and as she talks of each work and its inspired name-sake, I am struck at how she speaks of the completed works and their inspirations as though long-standing friends, Michael Jackson, Grace Jones, Annie Lennox, Freddie Mercury and Elvis amongst the newly arrived dinner guests. I had spotted ‘Grace’ the moment I had stepped into the flat and took great delight in what I perceived to be a potential ice-breaker.

“I’ve seen her!” I gushed “great show!”

“I’ve met her” she responds, “she’s tiny!” And yet nothing Lez shares could ever be perceived as a name drop or show off when delivered with such warmth, humour, and a continuous sense of child-like wonder, which is contagious. Dinner is interrupted for Lez to say “I have to bring out Madonna, you must see her” and the compact living room fills with another larger than life painting that I just know would delight its namesake as much as it is does me.

“Touch her” an instruction Lez repeats with all the works she shares with me. “I want you to feel the texture, the paint, put your hands on it, go on! I’m not precious about my work” and I am instantly aware of how most usual art appreciation is distant, removed and locked away from the spectator behind a velvet rope. This experience is more akin to live theatre and I am sitting on the actors’ knee. It’s unusual, unnatural, unnerving but I like it.

Such is her apparent enthusiasm for my company, I am in little doubt that should I find myself in her corner she would see to it that team Lez give me as much support and attention as their main charge. She has an alarming yet I am certain fortunate ability to make her guest feel as though we have known one another for years, and I have to remind myself several times not to simply lap up the captivating company or wolf down the delicious food she has clearly spent hours preparing, that I am there to work.

Our evening is laced with intensely personal accounts of her youth, her family, relationships and most movingly of taking care of both her dying mother and immediately following, her former long-term partner;

“I was devastated when my parents died, my mother and my father and when my relationship ended” and over dinner she shares intensely personal memories of the aftermath of such loss.

I ask Lez to describe her work and spot the only moment in our evening together when I may have said something to irritate my host. “I can’t describe my work, I don’t describe it. It’s how I feel. I can tell you how I feel about it” and then launches into an explanation of how terrified and shaken she felt post 9/11, events which inspired one of many wall covering pieces ‘Super Girl’ from her collection of Super Heroes. “What’s bothering me now, is what a fucked up world we’re living in, how terrible it all is, the waste, the greed and the corruption” and I see in the art work she walks me through, an escape from all that bothers her, colour, light, and a fantastical sense of ‘other’.

Pop Art has a clear impact upon her work, but when pressed her inspirations straddle the decades: “Warhol, Hockney, Van Gogh people who broke the mould, who were ahead of their time”. Before I have chance to ask if she’s aware that all her listed influences are male she fixes me with that excited tractor beam of a stare to tell me “in my past life I think I was a man, I know I was a man. Because in this life, I think like a man”.

And so what next for Lez Ingham? “Portraits – something I have wanted to do for a long time. Portraits of people I admire, people I love and respect, people who stand out”. And as our evening together draws to a close and I dance off into the rainy late evening, infused with her contagious energy, one statement she shares echoes around my head:

“I love painting. I just love it. It really is the only thing to do”.

Information:

Lez’s work can be viewed at: Taylor-West & Sloan Optometrists, 80 Church Road, Hove

Photos by Jean-Luc Brouard: www.jeanlucbrouard.com

OPINION: Careless talk costs lives

Posted on 04/08/201604/08/2016 by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Gscene columnist Craig Hanlon-Smith urges NHS England to prescribe PreEP now to save lives, then engage in debate about behaviour tomorrow.

Tuesday’s High Court hearing at which it was determined that the NHS, can fund HIV preventative treatment PrEP has lit alight social media. The problem with a concise limit of 140 characters is that one’s opinion has to be kept to the basics and Twitter may not necessarily be the most appropriate medium with which to join in the debate.

We’ve all been guilty of it. I recently leapt into the lions’ den of football management to the tune of a sixteen word limit with interesting results. I have not changed my opinion on the subject at hand but concede that given the opportunity to publish 1000 word articles whereupon I can justify my ultimate conclusion with six different pieces of evidence, Twitter is possibly best left to posting links to longer articles, such as this one. And so, in response to those incensed at the suggestion PrEP should be available on the NHS and wishing all manner of death and destruction upon an apparent sexually promiscuous homosexual community, I have this to say.

The prescription of PrEP is a strategy aimed at saving lives. It is an HIV infection preventative measure that has up to a 90% success rate across various trials, and although not inexpensive, is a fraction of the cost of treating an HIV infection itself.

Are there some, who given the opportunity may pop a pill, throw caution to the wind and share themselves amongst the sexually active multitudes with wild and gay abandon? It’s possible. Am I wholly comfortable at the idea that preventative treatments come in chemical form rather than education, discussion and behaviour changing support? No. But let’s list that as second on the priority menu.

First and foremost is the opportunity to prevent further infections and save lives and we will not change behaviours by merely ranting or condemning swathes of the population in a tweet. The behaviour will continue but without the protection. Give people PrEP what’s the problem?

Of course I have the advantage of being old enough to remember when AIDS came trucking into view the first time around and the destruction left in its wake. Through my work with GScene and Mad ‘Ed Theatre I have met countless older LGBT people who talk about the AIDS holocaust, of sections of the community numbering first hundreds, then thousands, disappearing into death as if overnight. Of families burying their sons, brothers, nephews, cousins. In the years before legal partnerships and same-sex marriage, of long-term partners evicted from their homes following the death of their twenty-seven year old lover who had died without leaving a will. Of boyfriends and partners denied hospital visiting rights because they were not listed anywhere as ‘next of kin’. Disease does not only ravage the body of the sick, it infects our social stability, tears apart communities and unlike mankind, it knows no prejudice. PrEP, had it been around thirty years ago, could have prevented such suffering, well it is around now and we would be fools to argue against it.

During the early 1980s as AIDS was developing, Governments were slow to act. Health minister Norman Fowler was warned by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that if he proceeded with his proposed course of action he would be known as the ‘Minister for AIDS’ and his career would end. He ignored her and the ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’ campaign was born. Although sometimes criticised for its iron fist of fear approach, the UK has half the number of HIV/AIDS cases of France, where no such campaign existed. Action helps, inaction and more ‘wait and see talk’ will kill people.

When US President Ronald Reagan finally mustered up the interest to utter the word AIDS in 1987, his focus centred entirely around infections from blood transfusions and drug addicted mother to baby transmissions. He was unable to bring himself to say the word ‘gay’ once in his key AIDS address preferring to skirt around the issue. I know that as a community we are often quick to point that AIDS is not only a gay disease, and it isn’t, but we remain uncomfortable that the possibility of it looms large over our heads like a storm cloud. He was not alone in his dithering. Scientists argued with one-another over the origins of the virus more concerned with their own race to the Nobel prize than improving public health.

Sections of the gay community fought between themselves over their rights to sexual liberation versus community education and prevention and ultimately too much talk killed people. In the US in 1987 there were 15,000 HIV/AIDS cases, by the end of the millennium there were half a million. Not taking enough or the right kind of action will infect and ultimately kill people. PrEP can stop this and the time for talk, legal appeals and injunctions is running out.

Of course we should examine our behaviour, of course it is irresponsible to have countless sexual partners, sometimes hundreds and to not use condoms to protect ourselves, but it is also irresponsible to overeat high fat, high sugared convenience foods, not to undertake any exercise, to drink excess alcohol, to use drugs and to smoke. Our health services treat all of these social issues, to refuse PrEP to people who need it would be both discriminatory and stupid. Save lives today, and then let’s talk behaviour tomorrow.

OPINION: True Blue and those ‘gay cure’ skeletons in the closets of the Tory leadership candidates

Posted on 10/07/201610/07/2016 by Craig Hanlon-Smith

The devils are in the detail as Craig Hanlon-Smith questions if the next Prime Minister should be decided by the Tory blue rinse brigade rather than the country at large.

The end of June 2016 marked the 30^th anniversary of Madonna’s True Blue album. And as radio stations commemorated this pop music anniversary by broadcasting such selections from the watershed collection as Open Your Heart, Live to Tell and Papa Don’t Preach, casting an eye across the news reports of The Conservative Party leadership race, one could be forgiven for momentarily believing we had all been transported back in time the full thirty years, and La Isla Bonita is nowhere to be seen.

Any relief at the early withdrawal of Stephen Crabb, a front bench Government minister with links to a Christian organisation that offers cure therapies to LGBT teenagers, soon dissipated with a cursory glance at the final three.

Michael Gove held the most impressive voting record on LGBT rights having supported our community at every available turn for many years. However, speak to anyone from the world of education and they will explain to you that as former education minister, simply because Mr. Gove learnt his times-tables backwards in Latin whilst dressed up as King Henry VIII, his assertion that everyone else must follow suit has sent children’s learning into an unmanageable tailspin. But worry not of him. After shafting his closest colleague and Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson, who as a result failed to make it off the starting blocks, in the most public and humiliating of political back-stabbing U-turns, he was eliminated in the second round and has scuttled off back to run the justice department. I know. You couldn’t make it up.

And to the final two, a political leap of faith into progressive gender politics with an all female short-list. Never has the UK faced the prospect of such a juxtaposition of emotions, faced with the dichotomy of a strong female lead married to a socially dysfunctional political agenda. Well, not for thirty years or more, since Margaret Thatcher drove across our green and pleasant lands in a tank, her headscarf billowing in the wind like the stained robes of a twisted Boadicea.

Theresa May’s LGBT voting record is somewhat mixed. Under the captainship of Iain Duncan Smith her early political career followed the party whip in voting against the equal age of consent, against same-sex adoptions and against the repeal of section 28. She has since voted in favour of civil partnerships and followed exactly the pro-quality stance of David Cameron (as Prime Minister). She appears to be one who toes the party line playing a relatively cool role during the referendum but quietly agreeing with the leadership’s pro-remain position.

When pressed on her LGBT record Theresa May recently, said: “I supported Civil Partnerships in 2004, and was proud to sponsor the legislation that introduced full marriage equality in 2013 because I believe marriage should be for everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation. I didn’t believe the state should perpetuate discrimination and prejudice against LGBT people. That’s why equal marriage was a hugely significant social reform. And it also made a powerful and important statement that as a country we value and respect everyone”.

May has garnered support from almost two-thirds of the parliamentary party and remains the bookies favourite but as the election of Jeremy Corbyn teaches us, once the ballot papers are sent out nationwide to the party faithful, the voting patterns of the sitting MPs are an irrelevance.

And so to Andrea Leadsom; the surprise dark horse galloping up the rear that left such Tory stalwarts as Michael Gove and Liam Fox choking in the smoke of her political backdraft.

Leadsom has proclaimed herself to be the natural heir to Margaret Thatcher and if that isn’t enough to cast you back thirty years, cop a feel at this lot. Leadsom positively abstained from the parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage saying that she agreed with both points of view. Fence-sitting that would not be possible as a Prime Minister. She has stated clearly as part of her campaign that she “does not like” the same-sex marriage legislation, and whilst supporting equal love, would have preferred the extensions of Civil Partnerships to all relationships. She claims that the same-sex marriage bill has created a great deal of hurt amongst Christian communities and that marriage should have been preserved as an opportunity for men and women in the sight of God. She clearly hasn’t heard of LGBT Christians, gay priests or lesbian vicars or if she has, took a Victorian approach to the idea. If we ignore it, then it cannot be happening.

What cannot be ignored, is that Leadsom has for a decade supported young people exchanges between the UK and “a fantastic youth centre” (her words) in Uganda known as The Discovery Centre funded by an organisation called Youth With A Mission (YWAM). YWAM is an evangelical mission founded in California that runs a centre in Amsterdam “helping broken people who struggle with their unwanted homosexuality” (their words).

No one is suggesting that Andrea Leadsom herself is kidnapping LGBT youth and anointing them with reparative therapy, but she is an active supporter of an organisation that does, and she could be your next Prime Minister.

But fear not my LGBT brothers and sisters, friends and allies, we are not alone. Leadsom has also laid into the childless credentials of her nearest opponent Theresa May. “Being a mother gives me the edge on May” ran the headline of the Saturday edition of The Times, and although Leadsom vehemently took to social media immediately the story was published on the Friday evening to state that she had been misrepresented, The Times responded by broadcasting the audio from the journalists interview.

Leadsom is clearly heard stating that “although I don’t know Theresa very well I am sure that she’d be really really sad that she hasn’t had children….. being a mum means that you have a very real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake. She possibly has nieces, nephews, lots of people but I have [emphasises] children, who are going to have children, who will directly be a part of what happens next”.

She has since made a recovery statement in respect of the comments stating that during the course of a lengthy interview, she was repeatedly asked about her children and that she made it clear that she did not want this in any way to be a feature of the campaign. “I am disgusted in the way that this has been presented. I want to be crystal clear that everyone has an equal stake in our society and in the future of our country. That is what I believe and it is what I have always believed. I have repeated my instructions to my campaign team that this campaign must at all times be principled and honourable”.

You will notice this is far from a retraction. Being disgusted in the way that the words you have actually said have been presented, does not absolve you of any responsibility for saying them in the first place. Covering your exposed unpleasantness in the mists of a politically savvy sound-bite may fool the party faithful, but I for one am crystal clear that you Mrs Leadsom, have clarified your position well.

One might recall Anne Widdecombe’s comments regarding former party leader Michael Howard when she said “there’s something of the night about him”. It would appear that whilst walking the halls at midnight dressed as The Grim Reaper, Mr Howard may not have been alone, he had a pupil; Andrea Leadsom.

What is abundantly clear, is that as a sitting party in Government with a majority of twelve, this election for our new Prime Minister will not be decided by the population of Great Britain, but by the paid up members of The Conservative Party. From a national population of almost 75 million, a mere 150,000 will have chosen the next Prime Minister, that is 0.2%, roughly the population of the Isle of Wight. It is undemocratic, deeply troubling and we could find ourselves faced with a Prime Minister, who believes you only contribute to society if you have spawned children from the fruit of thy womb Lord Jesus, and could well propose an amendment to the same-sex marriage bill the consequences of which would at the very least marginalise our LGBT communities.

Whilst we may wistfully skip around our kitchens to the nostalgic echoes of an 80’s pop tune, there are some true blue memories that are best left dead and buried. Too bad that 99.8% of us will not have a say.

CD REVIEW: Grace Jones: Warm Leatherette – Deluxe Edition

Posted on 04/07/2016 by Craig Hanlon-Smith

No Bulls**t, Jones is the drug.

Grace Jones is often lauded as an icon of grandiose style, almost a caricatured great-aunt to the somewhat clumsy niece Ga Ga, her music often taking a back seat in our distant memories of “didn’t she do…”. Her current run of album reissues should go some way to cementing her place in the hall of music legends , a piece in the jigsaw of substance alongside the post modernist style.

Jones emerged from the world of modelling into the late seventies crowded arena of Disco as a darling of the New York club and gay scene with her trio of albums Portfolio, Fame and Muse. With Disco creeping back into the shadows in the wake of the Disco Sucks movement, Jones retreated to The Bahamas and returned in 1980 with her first collection of recordings as part of the Compass Point triology so named after the studios in which they were recorded, now reissued here as Warm Leatherette – Deluxe Edition.

Often seen as the warm-up act to her seminal release Nightclubbing, Leatherette is certainly worth investigation on its own merits. Leaving the Studio 54 ‘camp’ in the dressing up box amongst the discarded feather boas, Jones’ Leatherette performance across the eight original recordings (there are a staggering 27 tracks on this reissue) introduced us to her dark theatricality on both the albums artwork and title track. Her half spoken, half sung lyrics rolling between seduction and threat in equal measure, a performance style still echoed amongst her more recent release Hurricane.

Those familiar with Jones’ greatest hits will here recognise both The Pretender’s Private Life and Roxy Music’s Love is the Drug from this collection, although the original album versions appearing here in their original form are in much simpler form.

As expected with a deluxe edition the magnificent (and superior) 1986 remixes of Love is the Drug feature here, still a mainstay of Grace Jones the 21st Century live experience.

Other highlights include her unique take on The Marvellettes The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game, A Rolling Stone, and the almost intimidating Bullshit.

For a true collectors item; splash out on the four LP vinyl. If you don’t, Miss Jones will come for you. Probably in the night.

Warm Leatherette – The Deluxe Edition is out now on Island/UMG. Available as 4LP/2CD/BluRay pure audio/Download.

Star of ‘Back to Jamaica’ to co-compere Trans Pride

Posted on 24/06/201624/06/2016 by Craig Hanlon-Smith

In January of this year a BBC Newsbeat documentary followed two transgender friends on a life changing journey to one of the most transphobic and homophobic countries in the world.

Steffan and Romario, both now living in the UK, traveled back to Jamaica to reveal their new identities to their families.

On the eve of an emotional return to Jamaica, this months GScene cover model Romario Wanliss summed up how many LGBT people have felt throughout their lives when he said; “I’m battling between feeling revengeful, vindictive and at the same time feeling hopeful, it’s a mixture of feelings”.

There is almost a casual bravery from the friends as they scroll through local news reports on their smart phones of local homosexuals being set upon by an angry mob and murdered in broad daylight. There is however a remarkable normality to the Romario and Steffan who present as a two guys, just passing the time of day. Dressed in the mundane every day designs that adorn millions of young men the world over, there is certainly little in their appearance to attract the potential unkindness of strangers.

The documentary follows Romario through an emotional reunion with his sister and later father, on-screen. Possibly the most uncomfortable moment is when his sister tells him that although she accepts him as family, she “doesn’t believe in the whole transgender and sexuality thing [sic]”.

Romario’s reaction in the face of such awkwardness is both kind and respectful of his families struggle to accept who he has now become. Their prejudice backed up with biblical references, he calmly speaks of his disappointment, but moves on, seemingly unaffected.

The documentary is just the beginning of Romario’s journey. He has a comprehensive presence online, with social media accounts across all platforms under the name Mr. Black Branson all of which record his transition both emotional and surgical. I caught up with Romario and asked him what was behind his decision to have such a visible and public persona: “early on in my transitioning, I tried to commit suicide, and I was let down by a charity that I had called and I decided that instead of picking up the phone, I would pick up the camera and record how I felt. It comes from the idea that if you share a story you can save a life, and I thought if I share my story, that might mean someone else doesn’t attempt to commit suicide, they would appreciate that they are not alone.”

Even without the context of his transgendered history, here is an individual who is likeable, creative, engaging, intelligent in his commentary both of the world and his role within it.

He is smart, calm, articulate and has a smile that would fill a room. Romario (and his close friend Steffan who makes regular appearances with him online) truly feel like the next generation of LGBT+ youth.The next step.

It is clear from their cultural heritage and discussions of their recorded histories that they have faced discrimination and hostility from friend, foe and family, and yet both seem not in the least bit jaded. I asked Romario if he felt that wider society (not just LGBT+) could benefit from the increased visibility of the transgendered community. “There have been many issues I have faced in my life, for example I have been homeless twice when I was kicked out by family members, I feel personally that by sharing my story and being visible, anyone from any community might look at another person’s situation and I think ‘you know what, my circumstances are not so tough after all’. These days I don’t worry so much about what to wear, about my what my future may hold, I just get up and get on with it, again, share a story save a life”.

Romario describes his future to me as a creative one filled with poetry, spoken word, music and cinematography. “I want, and I want other people to see me as a man, a man who just gets up every day, and gets on.” As Romario himself says on one of his many spoken word YouTube films: “There is a light, you become stronger just like you predicted. You empower, you motivate, some look up to you, some even fear you. The kitten becomes the lion. You are tried, tested, but you are never broken”. Mr. Black Brandon, Romario Wanliss, you are an inspiration to us all.

Romario will be co-compering the main stage at Trans* Pride in Brunswick Square, Hove on Saturday, July 23.

You can watch their story here.

REVIEW: Sunset Boulevard@ The Coliseum

Posted on 06/04/2016 by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Never Say Goodbye – The long awaited revival of Sunset Boulevard *****

Great musicals require great stories. Consider the longest running shows in London’s current West End and the golden ages of yesteryear, and of course the scores and choreographers are key, but it’s strong stories and enchanting characters that matter.

Sunset Boulevard has both, in spades. Never since the release of the original film has its central theme and character been so relevant. An entertainment industry that nurtures, nay exploits its current commodity, the latest ingénue, and then as she grows older, discards her to make way for another thirty years younger. We’ve witnessed it time and again and in Sunset Boulevard it drives our protagonist, Norma Desmond, mad – literally.

This latest production, described as semi-staged, seems anything but. Yes, the grandiose sets of the original 1993 production are gone, the running costs of which eventually contributed to a relatively early closure for a Lloyd Webber production (four years – consider Phantom in September celebrates thirty), but they are replaced with an onstage 50+ piece orchestra and a network of steel darkened stairways and bridges criss-crossing the performance space like the technical inner workings of a 1950s Hollywood sound studio.

If you’re a Lloyd-Webber hater, then everything you dislike is here, the repeated phrases of music and song time and again, but here, in Sunset they are both an essential and magnificent. When the piece opens you feel certain the Overture has been lifted directly from the 1950 Billy Wider movie and the 1500 strong audience are captivated.

There are strong performances from both the chorus and principal performers including Siobhan Dillon who takes the role of the young love interest Betty Schaefer, Fred Johansen, Desmond’s creepy butler who it turns out has a far more alarming role as her first husband and former film director and Michael Xavier as down on his luck Hollywood writer Joe Gillis, who moved in with the fading film star and rejuvenates her false hope of ‘a return’.

They’re all cracking. But is it Glenn Close who is central to this production’s success, and she steers her performance away from the potential melodrama of a pantomime villain to retain a heart-breaking naivety in Norma that her greatest days are yet ahead.

It is genius casting that we have a former ingénue of Hollywood in this leading role, and whilst Close’s career is far from over (she’s rumoured to be attached to a potential film of the musical), we can’t help making the life/art/life comparisons throughout. If it’s Elaine Paige or Barbara Streisand style singing you want, you won’t get it, Close acts through her songs and although sings well, her vocal weaknesses are what makes her performance terrific. Warm, worn and always teetering towards fragile, she’s perfect.

The second the orchestra’s final note faded, the entire London Coliseum jumped to its feet where it remained long after the lights were up. The advertising suggests that this is the theatrical event of the year. It is. If you can’t get a ticket, kill someone who did. It will be worth the gaol time.

Sunset Boulevard directed by Lonny Price, with choreography by Stephen Mear, Music Andrew Lloyd Webber, Book and Lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton plays at the Coliseum until May 7 2016.

Limited tickets are available.

CD REVIEW: The Sound of McAlmont & Butler

Posted on 28/12/2015 by Craig Hanlon-Smith

So you want to know me now? The Sound of McAlmont & Butler celebrates its 20th anniversary.

The pitfalls of skirting about the peripheral edges of a mass music movement such as Brit-Pop in the mid 1990s are that you are certain to disappear from view as swiftly as you briefly appeared.

That was certainly the case with David McAlmont and Bernard Butler in 1994. By the time Butler teamed up with the much underrated McAlmont, he had already abandoned Brett Andersson and Suede but not before delivering them a set of songs of such soaring quality in their second album Dog Man Star they would never again achieve without him.

Much of the eleven strong set here on this anniversary reissue highlights what an exceptional gift Butler is as a musician and composer and what an incredible talent David McAlmont is as a singer (check out his collaboration with David Arnold on Diamonds Are Forever yes – that one).

The creative relationship faltered and they had themselves already separated as a partnership by the time the album was released in 1995 amid allegations of homophobia (from McAlmont to Butler) and the split was described by both as acrimonious.

However, they recently reunited for a UK tour in support of this re-issue, which along with the original album includes a DVD of promotional videos and Top of the Pops appearances, and a further fifteen demos, rarities and live recordings. It would be true to say that the album never quite matches the magnificent and frankly symphonic ‘Yes’, an orchestral I Will Survive so F*** You masterpiece unrivalled by their contemporaries at the time and which criminally stalled at number 7 in the charts. But as an extended ‘full’ version appears here, its inclusion amongst your collection of pops finest moments is worth the deluxe package fee alone.

Available now on EDSEL recordings from all good high street and online retailers.

REVIEW: Bridge of Spies CD + DVD Box Set

Posted on 05/12/2015 by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Bridge of Spies. So much more than a Tom Hanks movie.

T’Pau – Bridge of Spies CD + DVD Box Set

Carol Decker and T’pau have been experiencing something of a renaissance in recent years following the success of their 25th anniversary tour and new album Pleasure and Pain released earlier this year.

This multi-disc re-mastered release of their multi-platinum selling debut outing can only ensure that they remain in our conscience for a little whole longer yet. Including the original album in full, all the big hitters are here, most notably China in Your Hand, Heart and Soul, and Valentine, but also the often radio neglected but equally magnificent I Will Be With You and the studio version of Sex Talk a live recording of which just missed the top 20 in spring 1988.

For those of you who remember the original, the re-mastered release pulls out a few surprise trills and tricks which may have escaped you almost thirty years ago, and if you’re new to the album it doesn’t disappoint with the title track and Thank You For Goodbye surely contenders at the time for single releases themselves.

As with most deluxe packages there are remixes and 12” versions a plenty, along with a rack of non-album tracks previously unreleased on any album format, the best of which Giving My Love Away, could easily have sat amongst the original album set. All the videos for the singles are included, remastered and digitised, as is their Hammersmith Odeon gig from the massively successful 1/5th Tour now available on DVD for the first time.

Buy it for your loved one, your adopted teenager or just yourself. All beautifully presented in a hard-back book style cover, you’ll love it. Here’s hoping Rage and The Promise will get the same treatment.

Carol Decker and T’Pau tour the UK as part of their acoustic Songs & Stories Tour from January 30 through to April 23. They play Shoreham Rope Tackle Arts Centre on February 6 and The Royal Vauxhall Tavern on April 14.

For more information, click here:

REVIEW: Madonna: The Rebel Heart Tour

Posted on 05/12/201506/12/2015 by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Don’t It Taste Like Holy Water

Madonna: The Rebel Heart Tour. December 2nd 2015

“Bitches are you in my gang?” yells Madonna to a capacity crowd at London’s O2 arena and 20,000 forty something homosexuals scream in hysterical response and possibly regret not remembering their incontinence pants.

Whilst I have seen Madonna put on a show before, The Rebel Heart Tour has to be up there amongst her finest onstage outings. Although not amongst her most commercially successful, the Rebel Heart album is a cracker and of the opening seven songs, six are taken from her latest release.

Live, they’re even more energetic than the recordings; from the gratuitously theatrical staging of set opener Iconic to the Last Supper style staging of Holy Water and Devil Pray, Madonna never falters neither physically nor vocally and for almost two and a half hours, the 20,000 strong faithful are eating out of the palm of her hand.

There may be a few more quieter moments than on previous tours but rather than rest points for an aging superstar, these are opportunities for more reflective acoustic versions of all but forgotten gems which on Wednesday included True Blue and Who’s That Girl.

For a woman who has hundreds of hits to choose from there are bound to be personal favourites dropped from the possibles but Madonna and her creative team threw everything at the spectacular production from Deeper and Deeper to Holiday via a ukulele accompanied La Vie en Rose sung entirely in French.

Her audience chats were plentiful and warm and she even threw in an unexpected Drowned World – Substitute For Love, previously not included on the tour, and dedicated to the memory of her interior designer friend David Collins.

Whilst the O2 may this year alone have hosted GaGa, Kylie, Taylor Swift and Katie Perry to name a handful of Madgesty chasers, tonight Madonna showed us all why “Bitch, I’m Madonna”.

Madonna returns to the U.K from mainland Europe to play Birmingham, December 14, Manchester 16, Glasgow 20. The Rebel Heart Tour plays until March 2016.

For more information, click here:

Call us now

Author: Craig Hanlon-Smith

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Starlight, Star bright.

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Craig Hanlon-Smith spends an evening in the company of local artist Lez Ingham to find out what inspires her to paint the stars.

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Gscene columnist Craig Hanlon-Smith urges NHS England to prescribe PreEP now to save lives, then engage in debate about behaviour tomorrow.

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The devils are in the detail as Craig Hanlon-Smith questions if the next Prime Minister should be decided by the Tory blue rinse brigade rather than the country at large.

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No Bulls**t, Jones is the drug.

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In January of this year a BBC Newsbeat documentary followed two transgender friends on a life changing journey to one of the most transphobic and homophobic countries in the world.

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Never Say Goodbye – The long awaited revival of Sunset Boulevard *****

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So you want to know me now? The Sound of McAlmont & Butler celebrates its 20th anniversary.

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Bridge of Spies. So much more than a Tom Hanks movie.

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Don’t It Taste Like Holy Water

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