Aric Olnes on Facebook on 3/15:
I just saw Martha Wash opening for Boy George & Culture Club in Sacramento on Friday night [3/13] and she closed her set with the entire Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus behind her singing “It’s Raining Men.“
The whole concert was a treat.
Boy George & Culture Club were amazing. They did all their big hits plus cover songs by Wham!, Rolling Stones, T-Rex, David Bowie and Prince.
Monumental queerness, and you want to, need to, get up and dance. I’ll get to almost all of this, starting (as AO does) with Martha Wash and “It’s Raining Men”
Martha Wash. From Wikipedia:
Martha Elaine Wash (born December 28, 1953) is an American singer and songwriter. Known for her distinctive and powerful voice, Wash first achieved fame as half of the Two Tons O’ Fun, along with Izora Armstead, as they sang backing vocals for the disco singer Sylvester including on his signature hit “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”. After gaining their own record deal, they released three consecutive commercially successful songs which all peaked at number two in the dance charts. The duo was renamed the Weather Girls in 1982 after they released the top-selling single “It’s Raining Men”, which brought them to mainstream pop attention.
“It’s Raining Men”. From Wikipedia:
Paul Jabara and Paul Shaffer wrote the song over the course of one afternoon in 1979, intending it for Donna Summer, who had scored a hit with “Last Dance” (1978). However, as Shaffer later recalled, Summer had recently become a born-again Christian and rejected the song as “blasphemous”. The song was then offered to Diana Ross, Cher, and Barbra Streisand, all of whom declined it.
In 1982, the song was offered to the Weather Girls (then known as the Two Tons and formerly known as Two Tons O’ Fun). Martha Wash and Izora Armstead of the Two Tons also dismissed the song. Wash recounted, “We thought it was a crazy song — in fact, too crazy to record. I kept saying, ‘It’s raining men? Really? Are you kidding me?’… I just did not think people would buy it… That’s why I kept saying no.” The duo eventually recorded the song in ninety minutes after Jabara persistently pleaded with them to record the song. The Waters Sisters (Julia Waters Tillman and Maxine Waters Willard), Stephanie Spruill, and Zenobia Conkerite performed background vocals on the chorus of the song.
… [recognized as one of the greatest dance songs of all time,] “It’s Raining Men” has [widely] been perceived as a gay anthem.
You can watch the music video here. The main chorus:
It’s raining men! Hallelujah!
It’s raining men! Amen!
I’m gonna go out to run and let myself get
Absolutely soaking wet!
It’s raining men! Hallelujah!
It’s raining men! Every specimen!
Tall, blonde, dark and lean
Rough and tough and strong and mean
Boy George and Culture Club. From Wikipedia:
Boy George in 2016 (Wikipedia photo)George Alan O’Dowd (born 14 June 1961), known professionally as Boy George, is a British musician, songwriter and DJ who rose to fame as the lead singer of the pop band Culture Club. He is also a solo artist and is the former lead singer of the band Jesus Loves You. Boy George’s music spans several genres, including pop, new wave, soul, soft rock, disco and reggae.
Boy George grew up in Eltham and was part of the New Romantic movement which emerged in the late 1970s to early 1980s. His androgynous look and style of fashion was greatly inspired by glam rock pioneers David Bowie and Marc Bolan. He formed Culture Club with Roy Hay, Mikey Craig and Jon Moss in 1981
Culture Club disbanded in 1986 but had subsequent reunions; it re-formed in 2014 and has toured with Boy Geoge since then.
On this blog: my 9/29/11 posting “Comma chameleons”, with
plays on the song title “Karma Chameleon” (by the British New Wave band Culture Club, featured on the group’s 1983 album Colour by Numbers (link)), with the chorus:
Karma karma karma karma, karma chameleon
You come and go, you come and go
Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dream
Red gold and green, red gold and green(performance available on YouTube here; the comma pun works especially well in Boy George’s non-rhotic performance.)
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