This section, which was started April 28, 2007, includes SongFacts which were submitted to the SongFacts database and either edited out of recognition or not published. Also included will be SongFacts which have already been entered into the database by other contributors.
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Long Hot Summer
Long Hot Summer by the Tom Robinson Band (TRB) from the album Power In The Darkness.
A sample of the lyrics:
There's all this heat
Out in the street
Telling us to move along
It's gonna be a long hot summer
From now on
This is a song about the Stonewall Rebellion of June 1969. The Stonewall Inn was a bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, which was frequented by homosexuals. At that time – on both sides of the Atlantic – homosexuals were regarded as an easy target by the police, and establishments catering for them were subjected to arbitrary harassment. On this occasion though, a raid allegedly prompted by illegal drinking ended in violence. The patrons revolted, and over the course of the weekend a full scale riot and civil unrest resulted as outsiders joined in. The Encyclopedia Of Homosexuality says the Stonewall Rebellion was "a spontaneous act of resistance" to police harassment.
Happening as it did, at the end of the sixties, the Rebellion became part of the counterculture and folklore of resistance, which included student unrest and anti-Vietnam protests.
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Rock ’N Roll Widow
Rock ’N Roll Widow is the last track on the 1973 album Wishbone Four; the song was inspired by a shocking incident at an early Wishbone Ash gig.
On September 5, 1971, while the band was onstage at an open air concert in Austin, Texas, a hot dog vendor on the edge of the crowd was shot dead by an irate customer. The story is related in the band’s official biography, Blowin’ Free.
According to Ben Grillot of the Austin Public Library, the murder was reported in the September 7, 1971 issue of the Austin Statesman in a story Vendor Shot For Sandwich? The victim was named as 32 year old Francisco Carrasco, a Cuban student; he was shot in the upper abdomen with a .38 calibre revolver. The gunman appears to have got away.
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(Sing If You’re) Glad To Be Gay
(Sing If You’re) Glad To Be Gay by the Tom Robinson Band (TRB) was recorded as part of a live EP in November 1977 and appears on Robinson’s critically acclaimed debut album Power In The Darkness. As might be expected, this song calls on homosexuals to "come out" and declare their sexuality with pride. Robinson was an out – though not effeminate – homosexual at the time, although in later life he married and raised a family.
The song contains the interesting couplet:
"There’s no nudes in Gay News, our one magazine
But they still found excuses to call it obscene"
Those familiar with the story behind this sentence might beg to differ.
In June 1996, Gay News published a poem by the academic James Kirkup, The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name (a pun on Oscar Wilde). This "poem" described a centurion performing sexual acts on the dead body of Christ, and caused grave offence to many people, especially Christians.
As a result of this, the Christian activist Mrs Mary Whitehouse brought a prosecution for blasphemous libel – the first in Britain since 1921 - against the paper and its editor, Denis Lemon. The trial, in July 1977, resulted in their conviction, a fine for both defendants, and a suspended sentence for Lemon; Kirkup was not prosecuted.
The same issue of the journal contained an article by an anonymous paedophile in defence of his perversion.