CD Reviews

Jobriath | Jobriath + Creatures Of The Street

Collectors’ Choice (2008)

By GUSTAVO TURNER | November 7, 2008

2.5 Stars

So, you were intrigued by the rambling last track on Okkervil River’s The Stand-Ins — the cumbersomely titled “Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed on the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel, 1979” — and curiosity led you to YouTube, where you found an astonishing video of said less-than-momentous event. Bruce went by “Cole Berlin” at the time, and he was working on a cabaret musical in his pyramid-shape room (not even Todd Haynes could make this stuff up), but a few years back he had pranced all over the rock landscape as “Jobriath,” Broadway’s answer to Bowie. Jobriath was all the things the early Bowie either wanted or pretended to be: all-American, a bona fide musical-theater performer, and unabashedly gay. The two albums now reissued are the lone vestiges of that brief moment in the limelight, strange amalgams of Ziggy Stardust, musical-queen culture, and more than a hint of street hustle. The end result is not genius (though Morrissey and others have argued otherwise) or even amusing camp, but it is real in a way that the soundtracks to The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Velvet Goldmine — both mutant companions to these platters — could never be. Of course, in 1973-’74 the American market was not ready for an out-and-proud free-love boy proclaiming “Take Me I’m Yours” and extolling “Street Corner Love.” Even Bowie had a hard time pushing his tame Soho androgyny in the heartland; he adapted by turning his alien drag show into a plastic soul revue. For an insistent coterie, though, Jobriath (dead of AIDS in 1983) still shines on from a little club in Heaven where every night Bruce Campbell plays the piano while Klaus Nomi out-Dietrich herself with their rendition of “Falling in Love Again.” As below, so above. They can’t help it.

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, David Bowie, Musicals, More

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Where To Follow Me
Talking Politics | March 24, 2013 at 11:09 AM

Mo Takes His Turn
March 21, 2013 at 12:59 PM

[Q&A] KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko on art, Columbine and having balls
On The Download | March 18, 2013 at 3:22 PM

See this film series: The Belmont World Film Series @ Studio Cinema in Belmont
Outside The Frame | March 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM

See this film: This is Spinal Tap [with post-film talk by expert from Acoustical Society of America] @ the Coolidge
March 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM

ARTICLES BY GUSTAVO TURNER

IAN KING | PANIC GRASS AND FEVER FEW | March 16, 2010
Just a few weeks after we reviewed the belated release of African Head Charge's latest, another, more recent gem from the always rewarding sonic laboratory of Adrian Sherwood arrives.

JOE CUBA | EL ALCALDE DEL BARRIO | March 09, 2010
Fania kicks off 2010 with what is sure to end up being one of the year's most important archival releases of Latin music.

ALEJANDRO FRANOV | DIGITARIA | March 03, 2010
Alejandro Franov is an Argentine multi-instrumentalist who's been involved in the more serious, and often experimental, side of the Buenos Aires music scene since he was a teen in the late 1980s.

THE SOULJAZZ ORCHESTRA | RISING SUN | February 23, 2010
We're living in the middle of a veritable renaissance of "Spiritual Jazz."

AFRICAN HEAD CHARGE | VISION OF PSYCHEDELIC AFRICA | February 09, 2010
UK dub guru Adrian Sherwood and adventurous percussionist Bonjo I have been releasing their sonic experiments as African Head Charge since the early 1980s.