By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: Saturday 19 October 2024

‘Contempt in your eyes when I turn to kiss his lips …’ sang Bronski Beat lead singer Jimmy Somerville on Why, the gay trio’s 2nd hit and a top 10 single in Germany, Italy, the UK, Ireland, Switzerland and Australia in 1984.

• Read on for reasons including how queer artists reimagined an 80s album opposing the Thatcher government as AIDS fears grew

A decade later I was kissing my then boyfriend in an Exeter club I occasionally DJ-ed at and was thumped in the face by an unknown assailant.

I was invited behind the bar as staff helped staunch my nosebleed and the following day I went to work at the local paper as its crime correspondent with a black eye and my likely homophobic assault unreported.

Such was the shame I felt about my sexuality a decade after Bronski Beat’s debut album which continues to intrigue yet baffle me even as I listen to it 40 years after its release.

It’s an unusual record with electrothrob debut single Smalltown Boy and its accompanying video articulating a feeling I had felt that growing up in the Hampshire village backwater of Blackwater that ‘the love that you need will never be found at home’.

Follow up Why was even more musically and lyrically uncompromising and it’s only recently when Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant spoke: ‘Name me an illness, call me a sin, never feel guilty, never give in’ on the Superchumbo remix of the track that it made a little more sense, defiance even, to the older me.

Listening back to The Age Of Consent now aside from those genius singles it’s a curious mix of well chosen yet diverse covers with some other rather experimental originals thrown into the mix with youthful lyrics which don’t necessarily hang especially well together. And yet …

Somerville left the band after that album and formed The Communards with Richard Coles and its uplifting orchestral pop was a sound I could more happily identify with and I would see them live at a hugely memorable Royal Albert Hall gig and later at Reading Hexagon. I would also interview Don’t Leave Me This Way singer Sarah Jane Morris while working at the Exeter Express and Echo in the 90s.

However, we’re here in the front row at the Southbank Centre with queer and trans artists of today to reimagine that debut album that represented opposition to the Thatcher government during the miners’ strike while lighting a beacon of hope as fear of AIDS was everywhere.

And seen through this lens there’s an undeniable anger – or Screaming – to the lyrics about issues that still feel pertinent now (No More War and Need A Man Blues) with a real warmth to the music.

A highlight tonight for us is Tom Rasmussen’s falsetto on Why, they’ve talked also about being violently attacked, and they’re joined by a terrific line up including Bishi, Lulu Manning, Planningtorock, Tawiah, Tony Njoku and the Pink Singers, alongside a specially curated queer house band performing bold new arrangements of the record.

The house band includes KK Brown (percussion), Maxie Cheer (drums), Chris Clarke (harp), Tom Foskett-Barnes (keys/musical director/arranger), Alley Lloyd (bass), Evelyn May (synths) and Hanna Mbuya (tuba).

Panels from the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt are on display in the Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer throughout the evening which tell the stories of many of those lost in the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s.

Lovingly handmade by family, friends and lovers, the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt holds the memory of approximately 384 people within its 42 blocks, each of which is 12ft by 12ft. The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt is archived at HIV charity Positive East.

Curated and produced by Laurie Belgrave for The Chateau, with curation consultancy by Lulu Manning, there are even some words from Somerville himself (above).

Dearest reader, I think this smalltown boy would have found some comfort and hope in the knowledge – 40 years after the release of this album – he would be living happily in London with his husband.

Brilliant nights like this remind us how far we’ve come – but also how much further we could still go.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Jimmy Somerville Tickets
• Have you seen a Jimmy Somerville show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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