AS I SEE IT...

By Aaron Ross

Every year this time I yearn for the excitement of New York's social and entertainment activities. As a native of the Big Apple I miss not only the goings, but the exchange of comments before, during and after with those of similar interests and life-styles. So let me make this column a sort of meeting place, and with glasses in hand let's dish about what has been, what's now, and what's coming up.

Did you see the opening night crowd at Chita Rivera's show at the Front Row, and the "swellegants" at Lola's engagement at the Palace Theatre. Why, over half must be ...! I'll bet that some of the upcoming attractions will look like a gay convention. Everybody, but everybody, will surely be at Eette's (Midler) show at the Front Row on January 26-29. Did you see and hear her on the Rolling Stone 10th Anniversary TV special when she said "I'm bi...(pause) ... bilingual!"? Ever since her start at the gay Continental Baths in Manhattan, Bette has directed her material to us and we in turn have made her our gay queen. What's surprising is how the masses have

HIGH GEAR/DECEMBER 1977

adopted her too. Who would have believed that just a few years ago, Bette's very "in" material would go over on a network TV special as it did on December 7th. Her recorded live, in-concert album, made right here at Cleveland's Music Hall last year, must be in every gay's record collection. So who says that Clevelanders are square? Based on audience reaction to her gay comments, nine out of ten must be...!

And who would have believed that Clevelanders would support two shows that started out in New York's off-Broadway Greenwich Village and side street, theatres with an appeal that should have been reserved for only the most selective theatregoer. Well, I'd like to think that "we" had something to do with it. "Vanities" has been held over indefinitely at the Center Repertory Theatre and "Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf" will be at the Hanna Theatre for not one, but two weeks. What you don't know too much about "Vanities"? Where have you been! it's a campy, funny play about three gals with Act One presenting them as teenagers in

the 60's, Act Two finding them progressing to engagements and marriages, and Act Three showing them as mamas or career girls drinking too much, sleeping around, etc. It's definitely not Laverne and Shirley. And anyone who has lived through the school years, dating games, and mating games of the 60's and 70's, should recognize the bittersweet humor and trenchant truths of this well-written play. Now you're asking, "What has this play got to do with me?" See it, and you'll understand. "Colored Girls" is a series of songs, poems and vehement outbursts about a minority group trying to make it in a world that doesn't accept them. Strikes a chord? If there isn't empathy between us and "them" we deserve to spend the rest of our free hours cruising the bars.

New York is known for its giving breaks to unknowns. In small, intimate clubs seating no more than a hundred or so (like the show places that used to be here in Cleveland the old Bayou Landing and The Vaults), a predominantly gay audience would acclaim the talents of Peter Allen, Chita Rivera, and

the Manhattan Transfer. This group, like the Pointer Sisters, built their shows around the "oldies" songs like "Java Jive", "Chanson D'Amour", etc. With campy costumes and drag show shenanigans; they burlesqued the Andrews Sisters, Carmen Miranda, and the rock fifties. Obviously New York gays loved them and shortly after, Cleveland "discovered" them too with two best-selling albums and a sold-out engagement at the Front Row. Manhattan Transfer is coming back to the Front Row on Saturday, January 21st for one performance only. True, the Front Row is not the type of watering hole they're best in, but it will do. So don't miss them.

Although it's an established fact that disco and gays are synonymous, it seems that we'd rather dance to disco records than see the artists who made them in person. Yet, I'm sure that the O'Jays and Dee Dee Sharp will get the disco nuts OUT to the Front Row December 30th through January 1st. Likewise, the rock lovers among us will surely be at the Coliseum on Monday, December 26th to see Ted Nugent and Holland's

Golden Earrings.

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What is it about old flicks, old movie stars and old songs that attract the gay crowd. The Fred Astaire retrospective at the Cleveland State U Auditorium and the Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart films at the New Mayfield Cinema find gays filling the theatre. Of special interest to gays is this double bill at the New Mayfield on December 14th-17th featuring "The Music Lovers", Ken Russell's film about the homosexual torments of Tchaikovsky, and "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," possibly the finest gay film ever made. And on December 20th and 21st, Andy Warhol's "Trash" comes to the Heights Arts Theatre with transvestite, Holly Woodlawn. Until next month Go out (come out) and enjoy.

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forward as the Polish folk song, "My Mother Warned Me Never to Love A Man." However, gay males (more so than women) frequently fail to recognize their own identity in the "old Country." Gay life did not start with Stonewall or even the Stone

Age.

SEASONS GREETINGS

FROM THE

american disco disco

COME TO THE NEW YEAR'S

CHAMPAGNE PARTY

DECEMBER 31

CORNER OF KENMORE AND LAKESHORE BLVDS. AKRON no reservations required