GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

JULY 5, 1996

Evenings Out

IRENE YOUNG

Mister Sa bring me a drea

The ever changing

ROW

Suede joins Jimmy Rutland, center, and Jon Arterton as the Flirtations.

by Dawn Leach

Barbershop music lovers have enjoyed the singing of the Flirtations in its many incarnations for nearly a decade now. Gay audiences, hungry for material that speaks to our lives, have always eaten up the group's entertaining, out and proud lyrics. Even though it has been a gay male group, the majority of the fans have been women.

Over the past eight years the all-gay, allmale a cappella group has been through eleven different combinations of singers, but their most recent transformation may be the best one yet. Last year pop jazz vocalist Suede became the first female member of the Flirts.

"From the very first concert the Flirts gave, the lesbian community has been very much behind us all the way," said cofounder Jon Arterton. "The idea of having a woman in our group is something that we've been toying with and arguing about for years."

Suede joined Arterton and long-time member Jimmy Rutland to form a trio, and audiences have been delighted with the result.

"The crowds just love it. A lot of people admit that they had reservations, a lot of men especially, and they all walk away from the concert feeling like it's a wonderful addition."

Rutland said that the music of the Flirtations has been a bridge between the gay and straight communities, and now that Suede is a part of the group, they're becoming a bridge between gay men and lesbians.

Suede and the Flirtations already shared many of the same fans, so the combination

seemed natural, said Rutland. He said he has been friends with Suede for about twelve years and is thrilled they are making music together.

"The men's and women's communities have so long been separate that it's really wonderful to be bringing that together, offstage and on,” he said. “One thing that's really moving is that we're hearing more and more from people that have formerly been separatists and it's the first time they've

the Flirtations became out and proud. "We've had some lesbians come up to us and say, 'Oh, I miss the campy queeniness!'

"But we're quite happy to have evolved in a slightly different direction," said Arterton. "Not to say that we don't still beg for dates on stage. Some things will never change."

After successfully touring around the world, on June 1 the Flirts released Three, their first CD as a trio.

Three is a real feel-good collection that

"A lot of people have told us that in one way or another our performances or our recordings have helped them in their lives, it has helped them in their coming out process, it has helped them in their grieving process. That kind of input is amazing. It keeps us going."

come to a show where it's men on stage. That's been really wonderful to hear."

Because of their wider audience, the Flirts have been doing, well, a little less flirting, a little less camp.

"A good bit of our humor, maybe almost all of it in years past," said Arterton, "has been sexual innuendo," a persona of camp they owe to tenor Michael Callen. “A lot of that came straight from Michael."

Callen, who was also well-known as an AIDS activist, was one of the cofounders of the group. He died in 1993 of AIDS complications.

Arterton said Callen was a big part of how

has all the things that the Flirtations arc known for: gorgeous, close harmony, camp, and a "gay is good" attitude. The fourteen songs run the gamut from a Beach Boys remake to Sweet Honey in the Rock, from intimate and touching to silly fun.

One of my favorites is "Miss Celie's Blues" (or "Sister") which, as you may recall from the movie version of Alice Walker's The Color Purple, is the song that Shug Avery dedicated to her new lover Celie in front of an audience of her adoring fans. Suede recorded it several years ago. Arterton arranged the piece to recreate the jazz-band accompaniment vocally in the Flirtations recording.

The song and accompaniment were performed with great gusto and the result is both impressive and funny.

Three contains one of the Flirtations' signature pieces, "Everything Possible," a lullaby that affirms that there are many ways to grow up, and it is okay to love whomever you choose.

I also especially enjoyed "Mister Sandman" because it made me laugh. The Flirts have a talent for taking a song that was written on a heterosexual theme and turning it absolutely queer.

"It seems like humor is a good way to let people gently hear your message," said Rutland. "It's always worked for us really well."

"A lot of people have told us that in one way or another our performances or our recordings have helped them in their lives, it has helped them in their coming out process, it has helped them in their grieving process," said Arterton. "That kind of input is amazing. It keeps us going."

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Where do the Flirtations go from here? "We've had quite enough change recently," said Arterton. "We're going to stay where we are for a while."

"We just keep rolling along," he added. "We're almost constantly on tour. It is a struggle to make a living as a musician of any kind, and as an openly gay musician. There are financial hardships, not to mention lifestyle hardships of being on the road half the time. There are times when it gets a little wearing. What does the future hold? You don't really have much control over that. You just keep plugging away."