Oli Spleen

copyright Iona Dee Photography

Some months after the hardback edition of David Bowie Made Me Gay hit the shelves, I was contacted by a singer from Brighton. I had been unaware of the work of Oli Spleen (a.k.a. Oliver Speer) up until that point, a fact that pains me; had I known of Oli’s body of work I would definitely have wanted to include him in the book. I now, thanks to the man’s generosity, am the proud owner of copies of almost all of his physical releases.

Artist, performer, songwriter and charismatic frontman, Oli Spleen has been making music for two decades now, as a solo artist and in bands including The Flesh Happening, Spleen and Pink Narcissus. You’d probably class most of his discography as Queercore: it’s an uncompromising style of music whose brutality makes it nigh on impossible to get radio play, but it’s one that is honest, intelligent and playful. Always a contrarian he is currently working on a new album, to be called Gaslight Illuminations, which will be more at home with fans of Marc Almond, Bertolt Brecht, Scott Walker and Jacques Brel.

Oli’s first release (as Oliva Spleen) was the track Formaldehyde, Thalidomide, Hermaphrodite, from the 1999 spoken word collection Saltpetre 1. That was followed by a brace of cuts on the 2001 compilation Drowning By The Sea, and a further track on the various artists collection Trains Across the Sea the same year. “While I would write poems and songs as a child and teen it was a near death brush with AIDS on the millennium that drove me to feel compelled to express my pain and frustration through music,” he explains.

The first incarnation of The Flesh Happening formed in the summer of 2003, around the same time that Oli launched his first novel, Depravikazi. “My idea was to create a band that combined all the in-your-face confrontational energy of punk with the performance and theatrics of glam as well as taking influence from performance artists such as Leigh Bowery,” he says. With a repertoire that included songs with titles such as Anal Joy, Shit on Me and Hitler and Jesus, and a propensity to strip that would have embarrassed the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Flesh Happening were never going to find mainstream success, something Oli himself realised after meeting a PR specialist. “The first thing she said to me was ‘the most important thing is to be yourself,’ and then, when I mentioned I was gay, she said, ‘Oh, I don’t think you should be gay’!” The band split up in the summer of 2008 after issuing a CD EP and the 7” single Kamikaze/Waste. Several of the songs written by The Flesh Happening were later re-recorded by Oli for his 2008 album Spleen & The Flesh Machine.

Soon after the band split, Oli met guitarist Paddy Longlegs, and a new group, Pink Narcissus, was born. “The Flesh Happening had mostly explicitly queer subject matter: with Pink Narcissus I made the decision to write songs that weren’t specific to gender or sexuality. This decision was as much a response to my sexuality and gender identity as the songs with queer specific subject matter were,” Oli says.

copyright Iona Dee Photography

Named after the 1971 American arthouse drama concerning the erotic fantasies of a gay male prostitute, the duo added bass player Cod Riverson and drummer Cookie Allen, evolving a sound that drew heavily on influences from David Bowie, Jane’s Addiction, Iggy and the Stooges and the like. Pink Narcissus demonstrated a much more mature, accessible, sound, evident over three mini album/EP releases, Pink Narcissus, Block Your Ears Shield Your Eyes and Blood on the Page. The band, which now includes guitarist Lilith Ghost, issued its most recent album, the seven track, digital only collection Pig Miracle Day, on 6 October 2017, four years to the day that the title came to Oli in a dream. Alongside his work with the band, Oli has continued to work on solo projects, including the 2013 album Fag Machine – which saw him embracing electronica - and, more recently, an atmospheric cover of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights.

Oli’s sexuality is central to his work. “I don’t think I would be making music at all if I wasn’t queer,” he tells me. “If I were straight I wouldn’t have had to question my existence so fundamentally or gone through everything that lead me toward music in the first place. I’d imagine I would have had a far more conventional path. While I tend to identify more with women I don’t have a problem with the fact that I am perceived as male. It was my friend, trans activist Fox Fisher who first made me aware that non-binary was even a thing. Whilst the definition fits how I perceive myself I don’t enforce non-binary pronouns, it is simply how I feel inside.

“I have felt far more welcomed and understood by the trans community than I ever did in the more mainstream gay scene. Last year Pink Narcissus got to perform Brighton’s Trans Pride but the regular Brighton Pride has shown no interest in what I do whatsoever and doesn’t seem to support and nurture local live music at all.” It was this lack of acceptance that led him and a friend to launch Fag Machine, an LGBTQ club night in Brighton, showcasing acts that fall outside of the mainstream, or that have been marginalised by the commercialisation of the city’s gay scene. “The trans community seem to intrinsically understand the importance of giving a platform to authentic local talent: Fag Machine was a big hit with that crowd.”

Identifying as non-binary, or gender neutral, growing up in Hastings, on the south coast of England, his earliest musical influences were a little unusual. “The first record I owned was the album for Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock, my favourite TV show as a child,” he says. “Fraggles were an underground species of colourful bohemian Muppets who had a deep connection to music. In those formative years Fraggles were my friends, culture, and religion. All I wanted to be when I grew up was a Fraggle.

“Then when I was thirteen Nirvana broke big and I discovered Jane’s Addiction, a band that resonated with me as I felt they had Fraggle-like sensibilities. Both of these bands opened the doors for me to discover other music, from Leadbelly to Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Bowie, Iggy, The Velvet Underground and many more.

Through Bowie I discovered Jacques Brel and the French ‘chanson’ song writing tradition, with its deeply poetic lyricism. Later Leonard Cohen also deeply appealed to me for his lyrical ability as did Nina Simone for her raw intensity as a performer. Bands from X-Ray Spex to Can to The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band also went into the mix of influences that shaped The Flesh Happening.”

He was often beaten up for being ‘different’, as he explained on his own blog: “As a child at school under Thatcher’s Section 28 [the hateful, anti-gay legislation which came in to law 30 years ago this week], I was always told that homosexuality was ‘unnatural’. Subsequently I thought that there must be something terribly wrong with me.

“I was spat at daily throughout secondary school and as a teen I was repeatedly beaten up on Hastings’ streets. Looking androgynous as I did back then it wasn’t safe to go out at night, if I wasn’t attacked by gangs of youths I would often be stopped and searched by police who bizarrely thought I was trying to solicit clients as a male prostitute whilst wearing a dress. Throughout those years I was deeply unhappy and repeated attempted suicide.”

Luckily those years are long behind him, and his next album promises to show listeners another side of the multi-faceted artist. “It's going to be very different… but I think it's the album I always wanted to make,” Oli says of Gaslight Illuminations, which he is recording with current collaborator Mishkin Fitzgerald, of Brighton-based indie rock band Birdeatsbaby. “The title references a theme that runs through many of the tracks. My ex was addicted to crystal meth and would do that gaslighting thing where he would accuse me of things (which he himself was doing) and make me question my own sanity. The ‘Illuminations’ part is inspired by cabalistic notions of light and dark, how the darkness of the themes within the songs is turned into the light of inspiration in the form of the songs themselves.” The album will be available soon on both vinyl and CD.

Here's the video for Time, from Pig Miracle Day. You can listen to the whole album, or, better still, pay for a copy, at https://pinknarcissus.bandcamp.com/ 

And here is Tranquillised Lives, from Oli’s solo album Fag Machine, available to download at https://olispleen.bandcamp.com/

You can see more of Oli's videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/OliSpleen

Photos of Oli by Iona Dee. Copyright Iona Dee Photography https://ionadee.com/ 

All rights reserved: used by permission.

Charlie and Ray

I’m excited to announce that the paperback version of David Bowie Made Me Gay will be issued in the UK on July 12. To celebrate this, I am starting a new blog.

I’m incredibly proud of David Bowie Made Me Gay, but I’m also aware that, due to various constraints, there are a number of LGBTQ artists I was unable to include. Some of this was down to length, some down to the amount of time I had available for research, but some simply because I could not include everybody. If I’m honest, some of this was also due to only discovering some incredible LGBTQ artists after I had submitted the manuscript. The principle aim of this blog is to highlight those acts that were missed in the book, or perhaps deserve more coverage than I was able to give them at the time.

And I’m kicking everything off with Charlie and Ray, who I first discovered, if memory serves, at J.D. Doyle's essential Queer Music Heritage site.

Charlie and Ray were a vocal duo from New York, who initially came to prominence at the famous Apollo theatre in Harlem. The Apollo held a regular amateur night; one evening Charlie and Ray decided to enter and so popular were they that they not only won that night, but they topped the audience vote for the following four weeks. The duo’s breakneck delivery, high camp falsetto and general onstage presence won them a huge local following, and although it was no secret that the pair were gay, their audience either ignored the fact or simply did not care. Bridging the gap between rhythm and blues and rock ‘n roll, Charlie and Ray were performing what we as doo-wop years before the term had been coined.

In late 1954 the pair signed to talent agency Shaw Artists, who immediately placed them with the Broadway-based Herald Records, established in the summer of 1953 by Al Silver, Jack Angel and Jack Braverman. Angel had his own publishing company, Angel Music Inc., and signed Charles Jones (the Charlie of Charlie and Ray) as a songwriter. The duo’s first single, I Love You Madly was issued in October 1954. Within 10 days the initial pressing had completely sold out, with Detroit, Nashville, Los Angeles and New York record stores reporting healthy sales, and other acts were scurrying to get cover versions out: white vocal act The Four Coins scored a hit with the song in early 1955, but sadly although the original sold well, Herald did not have the distribution necessary to make Charlie and Ray’s version a national hit.

Charlie and Ray would issue seven 45s (their earliest releases were also available on 78) during their career, and despite the fact that they’re all wonderful, sadly none of them would trouble the charts. Like many other songwriters, Charles Jones often fell foul to unscrupulous people within the music industry: in March 1955 he registered the copyright of four songs, Certainly Baby, Dearest One, Guess I’m Through With Love and Oh Gee, Ooh Wee, yet when Certainly Baby was issued as the plug side to the duo’s third single, the label credit claimed that the song had been penned by Frank Slay Jr. and Bob Crewe. Crewe and Slay certainly produced the track, and the pair also received writers’ credits on other Herald releases, but in this instance it seems they were given the credit in lieu of payment for their production services. It was a neat trick that would not have cost the Herald team a cent, but meant that Charles Jones would never see any royalty payments for his composition.

Charlie and Ray were “easily the most unique duo of the nineteen fifties and light years ahead of their time,” according to music historian C.J. Marion, who saw them play at the Rockland Palace in Harlem, in early 1955. “I was a bit taken aback by the hip rolling, pocketbook swinging entrance (being all of 14 years old at the time), but once the music started and the crowd got into it, what a show! I remember writing a letter to Alan Freed and asking a gender-oriented question about Charlie and Ray but never receiving an answer…”

Although none of their discs were national chart hits, many of them received heavy radio play, and this in turn lead to some lucrative live engagements for the boys. In June 1955 the duo performed at the Apollo as part of Tommy (Dr. Jive) Smalls’ six times daily rock n’ roll package. The opening show found the crowds lined up in double columns around the block, and similar demonstrations of the line-up’s popularity took place at most of the other shows throughout the week. Jack Schiffman, son of the owner of the Apollo Theatre, said that ‘everyone connected with the show is well pleased with the results and we definitely would not hesitate to book Tommy Smalls back in the very near future.’ As well as Charlie and Ray, Dr. Jive’s imposing roster included The Moonglows, Herald stable mates The Nutmegs, Bo Diddley, the Four Fellows, and Buddy Johnson. Dr Jive brought a similar package back to the Apollo in August, and shortly after that they were off with Lou Krefetz’ “Big Ten Review”, a 40-date tour which kicked off in St Louis on 26 August and visited cities throughout the east, midwest, south and southwest, with Faye Adams, Big Joe Turner, The Clovers, Bo Diddley, Gene and Eunice, and Etta James and Her Peaches among others.

No sooner was that tour over than they were playing a 15-hour spectacular at the Carnegie Hall (October 29), the venue’s first ever rock ‘n roll show, with Faye Adams, Bo Diddley, Etta James, Joe Turner, the Clovers and more. A week later they were on Cashbox magazine’s list of the Most Promising New Vocal Combinations of 1955. Between these tours and jamborees Charlie and Ray managed to fit in regular headlining dates in Atlanta and at the Apollo. Over the next few years they would continue to be a popular live draw, although their discs failed to break nationally. In May 1957, in a last ditch attempt to have a hit, Herald reissued I Love You Madly (this time backed with a new song, Sweet Thing) but it again failed to chart and the duo were dropped. The following month they began a week-long booking at the Apollo, part of Dr. Jive’s big rock and roll show, playing until the Fourth of July alongside acts including Donnie Elbert, the Sensations, the Heartbeats, the Charts, the Jesters and Roy Brown and his band.

It seems as though, disillusioned by their lack of success, Charlie and Ray decided to part ways – or stop touring together – for now, at least. They issued one more 45, for TEL Records around 1959, but when this too proved to be a flop they stopped performing altogether. Then, out of the blue, in late 1964/early 1965 the duo resurfaced, playing the All Gold Oldies Show at the Apollo with Screaming Jay Hawkins, but that was the end: a disc that appeared on Josie under the name Charlie and Ray was by a different act.

It’s a huge shame that Charlie and Ray are all but forgotten these days: they deserve our attention not only for making some truly great vocal sides, but for being that rarest of things, an openly LGBTQ act at a time when so few performers dared to be so honest. Says C.J. Marion: “Charlie and Ray were unabashedly gay and black, which taken in the context of the first Eisenhower era, made them an act apart in more ways than one. They presented themselves as not drag queens, which was a popular method at the time, but as straight looking singers with a singular delivery. Add to this mix the fact that they could produce some of the hardest rocking tunes of the time and you get an unforgettable pair of performers.”

Most of their sides were collected on the compilation I Love You Madly, sadly the final two TEL sides are missing from that collection, and they do not appear on YouTube either. So here you go: here are both sides of the final Charlie and Ray 45, just for you!

Enjoy!