Beefcake and Gay Topics in the Top Rock Songs

I've been going through contemporary music charts, to see if there are any gay themes or performers, or if it's all a wasteland of heterosexist boy meets girl lo-oo-oove.  And, incidentally, to see if any of the performers have been to the gym reently.  Previous posts covered rap, country, and pop, and today rock.

Wait -- how do rock and pop differ?
1. When I was a Nazarene, rock was strictly forbidden, but most pop was ok.
2. Rock favors groups, rather than individual vocalists..
3. Rock instrumentals are more elaborate.
4. Rock lyrics tend to be more complex.

So here's what's gay about the Top Rock Songs of June 1st.

1. Five Finger Death Punch featuring Kenny Wayne Shepherd, "Blue on Black."  The lyrics are poetic and rather obscure, but I think it's about someone who died, gender and relationship unspecified: Joker on jack, match on fire, cold on ice, as a dead man's touch, whisper on a scream, doesn't change a thing, doesn't bring you back.

According to an article in The Houston Press, the group performs "Bro Metal," praising men as aggressive sexual predators, "penis-measuring of the most insecure type."  Ivan Moody (center) seems to have an alpha-male physique.

2. The Black Keys, "Lo/Hi" More poetic, obscure lyrics: Out on a limb in the wind of a huricane, down at the bar like a star in the falling rain.  But I think it's about being lonely.

The Black Keys, formed in Akron, Ohio in 2001, consists of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney. They have won six Grammies.

In 2013 Patrick Carney was the subject of homophobic tirades from Justin Bieber's fans after he stated that the singer did not deserve a Grammy.  But he's married to a woman, so....

3. Bad Wolves, "Remember When."  Two  brothers remember their lost innocence and their descent into crime, and now they're tired of the violence, tired of the silence, and falling through the ice.

Bad Wolves is a heavy metal band formed in 2017.  When lead vocalist Tommy Vext was in another group in 2012, he released a song about two soldiers who have a secret gay relationshp.  So probably not homophobic.

He looks like he has some  muscles under the ink, too.

4. Badflower, "Heroin."  It's not actually about drugs, it's about a girlfriend  She's back in my life.  She's so poisonous that I'll die, but I can't stop myself.

Badflower only released their debut album in March 201.  Lead singer Josh Katz (pictured) has sort of an underfed emo thing going on.

I keep searching on these artists with the key word "gay," and getting the same article that has nothing to do with them, but mentions Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford coming out in 1998.  So I guess nothing specifically gay or homophobic in Badflower's opus.

5. Shinedown, "Monsters."  My monsters are real and they're trained to kill, and they're coming back.

Shinedown is an alternative rock band from Jacksonville, Florida. Nothing specifically gay or homophobic in their press.

Guitarist Zach Myers (right) may have seen a free weight or two.

6. Papa Roach, "Elevate."  I'm sinking down, and I want something to lift me up, to elevat me to the next level.

The lyrics seem rather like Christian rock, but Papa Roach is actually not an elderly man who smokes marijuana and sings about Jesus, but a group from Vacaville, California, formed in 1993.

None of the Beatles had tattoos, you know.

Papa Roach replied to a hater on twitter: "We're not gay, but you really shouldn't talk bad about gay people.  They can kick your ass."


7. Breaking Benjamin, "Tourniquet."  I won't save you, I won't change you, I won't fight the pain within, because I was born to live this hell.

Breaking Benjamin is a rock group formed in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1999 by Benjamin Burnley.  They have been criticized by haters as "a gay screamo band," whatever that is, and one of their lyrics refers to a "polyamorous friend."

8. Godsmack, "Under Your Scars."  You're like a shooting star in the rain, you're everything that feels like home to me, under your scars I could live inside you time and time again.

Now that's got to be Christian rock, living inside "the scars" of Jesus.

Godsmack, a band from Lawrence, Massachusetts, is so famous that the mayor of Boston declared March 6th Godsmack Day.  But one of its singers, Sully Erna, is a vocal proponent of Wicca, so if not Jesus, whose scars are they?

In 2010 Sully Erna used a homophobic slur against rock competitor Creed.

9. I Prevail, "Breaking Down."  Got a pain that I can't avoid, I think I'm breaking down.

"I Prevail" or "One Prevail" is a metalcore group formed in Southfield, Michigan in 2013.

Lead singer Eric Vanderberghe (the one who doesn't look like a nightmare ghoul) is gay, I think.

10. Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, "Mind Your Manners."  I'm leaving you behind, I don't need you anymore, times change, so mind your manners and just stand there nicely.

Slash, born in 1965, was formerly lead guitarist for the heavy metal band Guns n  Roses.  Even I know that they were one of the more homophobic bands of the 1990s.

He performs with the nightmarishly ugly Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, the name of his backup performers.  I'm not even going to look them up.

Themes:  Only one of 10 songs specifically refers to romance (with a girl), and 4 others refer to people who could be romantic partners, friends, relatives, or God without specifying gender.  All of the songs angry or depressed, full of loathing for one's self and "this shitty world."

And people enjoy listening to them?

Gay Subjects:   Nothing mentioned in the lyrics, but five of the groups appear to be gay-positive.  The others appear to be homophobic.

Beefcake:  If you like skinny, sickly Emo or heavily-tattooed Alpha Male.

Edwin Landseer and Jacob Bell: Victorian BFFs or Boyfriends?

I found this in, of all places, a book on Alice in Wonderland.  Male nudity in art is not a violation of Blogger policy, so it's ok to show.

It is actually a painting of a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream (1851), now in the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia.

Queen Titania embraces Bottom with the ass's head, while fairy folk look on in amusement. The rabbit on the right may have inspired Lewis Carroll to include the White Rabbit character in Alice in Wonderland.

 In the front foreground, we see a naked, muscular male fairy bathed in autumn light. .

The male physique is so striking, the nudity so incongruous, that I had to look up the artist.


Edwin Landseer (1802-1873), an artistic prodigy who began displaying his paintings at the Royal Academy at age 15.  A darling of the Victorian age: he painted Queen Victoria, her family, and her pets, and was chosen to sculpt the lions in Trafalgar Square.   But he made most of his money by selling engravings of his paintings, introducing fine art to the Victorian middle class.

When he died, flags flew at half-mast, and shops closed for the day in mourning.

I looked at his opus -- mostly dogs and horses, an occasional person.

His painting Man Proposes, God Disposes, depicting polar bears eating the remains of Sir John Franklin's Artic expedition of 1845, now hangs in Royal Holloway College at the University of London.  It is covered during exams, because according to rumor if you sit too close to it, you will go mad.

 As far as I can tell, the illustration from A Midsummer Night's Dream is the only nude man in Landseer's opus.  Could it be an eruption of hidden passion, gay desire come to light?

Here's my evidence:

Landseer never married, but he was always surrounded by men.  He suffered from bouts of insanity through his life, and when he was incapacitated, the person who took care of his affairs was not his brother Thomas, but his friend Jacob Bell (1810-1859).

The two also went on an extended tour of Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland in 1840.

So who was this Jacob Bell?

Originally intending to become a painter, Bell dropped out of art school and became a chemist (pharmacist).  He remained a patron of the arts, moving in artistic circles, sponsoring young artists, surrounding himself with...um...men. He was also an avid theater-goer and opera buff, sponsoring the first performances in England of La Traviata. And a dog lover, like Landseer.

He never married, either.

Two heterosexual bffs united through their love of animals and art?

Or boyfriends?

Or connected by a passion that neither understood or voiced, that erupted in a beefcake painting of Queen Titania?

"Open Up the Closet Door": The Theme Song of 300 Nights in a Leather Bar

In West Hollywood, gay bars always had a theme song that you would hear over and over, at least once an hour, every time you visited.

From 1985 to 1993, I went to Mugi, the Asian bar in Hollywood, almost every Saturday night, sometimes Wednesday or Friday, too.  That means that I heard "One Night in Bangkok" at least 300 times.

From 1990 to 1995, I went to the Faultline, the leather bar on Melrose, near Los Angeles City College.  There were some Asian guys there, too, of course.

I was there almost every Sunday afternoon, sometimes Friday or Saturday, too.  So I heard their theme song over 300 times.

I never heard it anywhere else. I didn't know the title or the group, and I didn't bother asking.

It seemed to be a Gay Pride anthem:

Open up the closet door, watch out, here I come.

Although some of the lyrics seemed to involve a bar pickup:

You, I don't even know your name, baby.
You, something something, baby.

With a chorus:
Round, round, round, round, something something baby, round round round round.

Years later, I heard the song again, at the gym of all places, and it brought me back to those many nights and Sunday afternoons surrounded by shirtless and leather-clad men.  When I got home, I did an internet search.


It's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)", by the British band Dead or Alive, released in December 1984, peaked at #4 on the dance charts in January 1985.

Boy, did I get the lyrics wrong!  The "gay pride anthem":

Open up your lovin' arms, watch out here I come.

The bar pickup:

If I, I get to know your name, baby
Then I could trace your private number, baby

No specific gay content, although the lead singer of the bad was the fabulously feminine Peter Burns (bottom left), an androgyne in the mold of Boy George, who married a woman and then a man, but divorced him and declared in homophobic contempt that "gay marriage doesn't work.  It's better to marry a woman."

Other members were Mike Percy, Steve Coy, and Tim Lever.

I'm still trying to figure out why an androgynous dance number was the theme song in a leather bar with no androgyny and no dancing.

It doesn't really matter.  Even though I know the lyrics now, I still can hear in my head the gay pride anthem from 300 nights at the Faultline:

Open up the closet door, watch out, here I come.

See also: One Night in Bangkok

The Gay World of Pablo Picasso

When I visited the Pablo Picasso Museum in Barcelona, I saw many portraits of women, but only a few of men, and they were all fully clothed.  I concluded that the artist (1881-1973), well known for his many wives and girlfriends, was simply not interested in the male form.

But it turns out that the museum was keeping some of his works under wraps.  Such as this Cubist fragment of a man who is all eyes and penis.

In fact, during his years as a student in Barcelona, Picasso produced many realistic paintings and drawings of nude men, such as this model from 1897.



















During his Blue Period (1901-1904), when he fell into a deep depression after the death of his friend Carlos Casagemas, Picasso consoled himself with a number of nude images.

He was in a cheerier mood during his Rose Period (1904-1906), when he was living in Paris.  He continued to produce male nudes, but specialized in adolescents, such as Boy Leading a Horse.

Picasso was very prolific during his long life, producing thousands of paintings and drawings. But, except for a few adolescent boys, his male portraits are often censored, left out of books, not displayed in museums, to give us the impression that he only ever used female models, and perhaps to erase the awareness of same-sex desire from the world.

Did Picasso have any same-sex interests of his own?  Probably -- he wanted to try everything in life, so he must have taken time out from his pursuit of the feminine for some same-sex dalliances.  His biography uncovers an affair with a gypsy boy when he was 17, and suggests that he and Casamegas were romantic partners.

We know that he was nonchalant about gay identity.  He had many gay friends, including Gertrudge Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Sergei Diaghilev, Jean Cocteau, art dealer Paul Rosenberg, and collector John Richardson.  He enjoyed surrounding himself with gay men, if only because they adored him for reasons other than his art.

The Horrible Beefcake in the Horrible Hometown of Horrible Comic Artist Howard Cruse

Howard Cruse is the most depressing gay cartoonist of all time (and that's saying a lot: gay cartoons are typically cries of agony and despair).  His stories are about pain, loneliness, homophobia, death, hate crimes, AIDS, death, death, and more death (you know somebody's gonna die).  I have often wondered:
1. Who actually reads his stuff?
2.  What turned him into such a Sad Sack?

He grew up in Springville, Alabama, about 30 miles from Birmingham.  He memorializes the unrelenting agony of his youth in the unrelentingly depressing graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby, which I refuse to read, because who wants to read a graphic novel about a baby made of rubber with pins sticking out of it?

(This photo has nothing to do with Howard Cruse. I just thought you'd like to look at something pleasant.)

Maybe Springville, Alabama is to blame for the unrelenting agony that is Howard Cruse's mind.  Let's find out.

The population is 4,000, 90% white, median household income $43,000.

It's got a long, narrow Main Street that parallels Highway 59.  Driving from the south, the first thing you hit is Tucker Auto Salvage and the Springville Baptist Church. Dead cars and fundamentalists. Then some wealthy suburbs, a supermarket, and the Springville Cafe, which looks desolate. 

Next Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, the Middle School, a Mexican Restaurant, and an Italian Bistro.

Then the high school, next to a day spa for pets.

Then a Wal-Mart, and you're out of town.

It does sound bad.  But surely there's some beefcake. 

Not much.  The high school sports team is called the Red Devils.  This one is called the Lady Red Devils, for some reason.

A clearer photo,but I think the boys are too young to be beefcake. Hard to tell -- their faces are old.  Worn from the constant suffering of life in Springville?

He's happy, I think. The caption reads "Springville Drowns Lake Nona."  At the swimming competition.  There always has to be death in there somewhere.

This Teen Bodybuilder of the Week isn't bad. 

Very scary guys popped up in my search for adult beefcake. 

A bizarre bodybuilder, Raymond Fong, is featured at the GTO Bodybuilding Camp...oops, it's in "San Francico."

A powerlifter from...no, Spanish Fork.

A wrestler from Honeoye Falls, somewhere in New York.



















Charlotte, North Carolina

Ok, I give up.  Howard Cruse did in fact grow up in the bleakest place on Earth.  But he moved to New York City in 1977, so that's not an excuse.

See also: Howard Cruse, the World's Most Depressing Gay Comic Artist.

Tony Sansone: Jazz Age Bodybuilder and Gay Icon

Born in 1905 in New York City, son of Sicilian immigrants, Tony Sansone began working out at age 14, and drew the attention of physical culturalist Bernar McFadden and early strength-and-health advocate Charles Atlas.  This was before the days of professional bodybuilding, but still, Tony was entranced by the "rags to riches" stories of the Jazz Age, and found a way to make money from his physique:  he began modeling for photographs and selling them via mail order.

Who was interested in photos of a muscular man in a posing strap, or fully nude?  Mostly gay men.







How did he get around the Comstock Act?  Apparently his body was so perfectly symmetrical that it looked like a sculpture.  Works of art could be nude.


He became nearly as famous as Charles Atlas himself, sought out by artists like Arthur Lee ("Rhythm," 1930), praised as "the most beautiful man in America," compared to film star Rudolph Valentino.

In the late 1920s, Tony began expanding his enterprises, publishing photo books like Nudleafs and Modern Classics.  He also performed in films and on stage and opened his own gyms, but his first love was always modeling, displaying his body for aesthetic and erotic appreciation.

He lived through the "man-mountain" era of bodybuilding in the 1940s and 1950s, but continued to pose in the old-fashioned lithe, limber style, to be admired for his beauty rather than his bulk.

He lived through the Gay Liberation Era of the 1970s, and into the age of AIDS, knowing that most of the men who collected his photographs were gay.

No hint of Tony's own sexual identity, although he did have a wife and two kids.

Later in life he moved to St. Louis to be close to his son.  He died in 1987.

There are nude photos on Tales of West Hollywood.

Donelan: It's a Gay Life

When I was in grad school in Bloomington in 1982 and 1983, I was able to get copies of The Advocate at the adult bookstore.  One of my favorite features was a series of single-panel New Yorker-style cartoons, "It's a Gay Life," by Donelan,  lampooning the culture of 1970s gay neighborhoods: brunch, boyfriends, leathermen, queens, cruising, decorating, activism....

"Oh, please, girlfriend.  Isn't brunch a little too early for attitude?"

Some cartoons were about the reaction of straights, those who knew -- and were ok with it.  In a clueless, stereotyping way.

"I know a homosexual.  George knows a homosexual.  You must have so much in common.  So here we are.

Others who didn't know, and didn't want to know.

"Did your roommate just say he was going to 'freshen his makeup'?"

I was most drawn to the cartoons depicting gay men in pairs and groups.  There was a whole society out there somewhere, a place where being gay was commonplace, even expected, where straights were the interlopers and strangers.

"I'd be more impressed if you could name me one man here you haven't dated."

I wanted that world.

Gerald P. Donelan grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and moved to San Francisco in the 1970s.  He published "It's a Gay Life" from 1978 to 1993.  There were two  reprints of his cartoons: Drawing on the Gay Experience (1987) and Donelan's Back (1988).  His work also appeared in Frontiers and in the Meatmen series of gay comic anthologies.

Today his work seems a bit dated, keying into feminine stereotypes a bit too much.  But in the height of the homophobic 1980s, it was a revelation.

"Tell me again the difference between eclectic and tacky."

See also: Do You Have Anything Gay?; Howard Cruse.

C. Paul Jennewein: Beefcake Sculptures on National Monuments

In the Great Hall of the Department of Justice, there's a semi-nude statue representing the Spirit of Justice.  She stands 12 feet tall, and is wearing a Roman toga, with one breast bare.  In 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft objected to being photographed near a bare breast, so she was blocked.

 But no one seems to notice that there's another statue in the Great Hall, the Majesty of Justice, a nude male in a stylized art deco style, carrying a torch.

Both are the work of C. Paul Jennewein (1890-1978), who sculpted 57 sculptures for the building in 1933-34.  He also sculpted a lot of public works with substantial beefcake, like the figures from Greek mythology on the pediment for the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

And the Annex at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis.  This sculpture represents sculpture.

Jennewein was born in Germany and apprenticed to the Stuttgart Art Museum at age 13.  At age 17, he moved to New York, where he lived with architect Charles Lauter.  He enlisted in World War I, studied art in Rome, and then returned to New York, where he lived in the Bronx for the rest of his life.  He was married, and had five children.

While living with his wife and kids, he sculpted this massive naked man with a sword and shield in the World War I Memorial, previously located in Providence, Rhode Island.

And this Hercules on the facade of the Education Building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

It wasn't all facades.  Here's his "American Youth"  at the Ardennes American Cemetery in Neupre, Belgium, for American soldiers who died on foreign soil.

Was he gay, or just enamored of classical nudity?  Your guess is as good as mine.

A Hundred Shirtless Hals in "Picnic"

Picnic is a 1953 play by William Inge about a drifter named Hal, who arrives in a small town in search of his old college buddy and arouses the secret passions of the male and female townsfolk (Inge was gay).

The original play doesn't actually call for Hal to take his shirt off, but ever since William Holden did in the 1955 film version, actors in Broadway revivals and community and college theaters across the country have been stripping down to show us their stuff.

Remember, Hal is a drifter, so he probably doesn't work out; yet he has to be hot enough to incite a lot of secret passions.  So his degree of muscularity varies from production to production.

Jenson Kerr at the Phoenix Theater goes for the abs.






Spencer Sickman at ACT St. Louis goes for the skinny.

David T. Patterson goes for the full bodybuilder pecs and shoulders at the Gym at Judson Memorial Church, an off-off Broadway theater.  Sorry, this guy is incredibly hot and all, but he doesn't look at all like a 1950s drifter.

Justin Sease has long hair and a glory trail to imbue Hal with a 1990s feel at the Hampton Theatre Company.

The Antaeus Theatre Company in Glendale, California, stars Daniel Bess with a bulge and a 2000s hipster smirk.

More after the break