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Many people in our audience will have seen Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, an exploration of Black and Latinx ball culture in New York City. One of the film’s primary interview interlocutors is Dorian Corey, who is one of the film’s most quotable characters. Corey's life helps us explore the history of drag from balls for enslaved people in the 1870s to today. And did you know that Corey knew, during all those serene interviews in Paris Is Burning, that the man she had murdered in self-defense and not trusted police to handle it (would you?) was mummified in the closet behind her.

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SOURCES

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19931218/1737662/deceased-drag-show-star-leaves-mummy-mystery-behind-in-closet

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/24/burning-down-the-house-debate-paris-is-burning

https://files.eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5381/2016/06/16101213/hooks_paris-is-burning.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/18/style/paris-has-burned.html

https://www.swervmagazine.com/entertainment-2/pioneers/

https://queermusicheritage.com/drag-pearl.html

https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2005/The-Gay-30S/

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/drag-queen-slave-ball/

https://www.harlemworldmagazine.com/the-legendary-hamilton-lodge-ball-home-at-the-rockland-palace-dance-hall-in-harlem/

https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/queens-and-queers-rise-drag-ball-culture-1920s

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935316?seq=1

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/24/burning-down-the-house-debate-paris-is-burning

https://zagria.blogspot.com/2010/08/dorian-corey-1937-1993-performer.html

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

Abdurraqib, Hanif. "What Little Richard Deserved." The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-little-richard-deserved

Freeman, Scott. "Remembrance: How Little Richard Invented Rock'n'roll in Macon, Georgia." ArtsAtlanta. https://www.artsatl.org/remembrance-how-little-richard-invented-rock-n-roll-in-macon-georgia/

Little Richard: I Am Everything. HBO, dir. Lisa Cortes

Little Richard, Live in Paris, 1966: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7TWclEcASU&themeRefresh=1

Nyong'o, Tavia. "Too Black, Too Queer, Too Holy." The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/12/too-black-queer-holy-why-little-richard-never-truly-got-his-dues-turbaned-drag-queen-sexual-underworld

Smith, Jami. "The Drag Queens Who Helped Little Richard Invent Rock And Roll." https://www.songsthatsavedyou.com/p/drag-queens-who-helped-little-richard

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It's Extra Bad Gays LIVE! from Helsinki, where we discuss Donald Trump–our first straggot President–and his pardoning of George Santos. Then, Ben plugs an upcoming queer leftist novella you'll probably love, freshly translated into English. And two questions from gay guys in their forties invite the Gaggony Guncles to reflect on sex, desire, and the number homophobia has done on our psyches. Cruise carefully, catamites!

Smalltownnovella:

https://uglyducklingpresse.org/product/smalltownnovella/

This month on our subscriber-only show, we discuss the supposed A-Gays of Trump's Washington. Will the people working for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party get their faces eaten, or is their work paradoxically evidence that LGBT liberalism, now in its flop era, actually did deliver something on its own terrible terms? Then, we take on a Gaggony Guncles question from a listener curious how to navigate coming out to a friend who has learned to use their pronouns correctly but seems to take them as an individual exception to broader enby- and transphobia.

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For the full conversation, subscribe in Apple Podcasts or on our Patreon.

Today, we welcome music writer Hannah Pezzack to talk about the experimental electronica band Coil – namely, its two frontmen and only consistent members: vocalist Geoff Rushton, who performed under the stage name John Balance, and Peter Christopherson, nicknamed “Sleazy." At the heart of it all was an intense interest in the occult: in magic, alchemy, and esoteric symbolism. But just as central was their homosexuality: a queerness expressed through sexualised violence, the taboo, bodily fluids — blood, sweat, and scat — and an obsession with self-annihilation.

Subscribe to EXTRA BAD GAYS on Patreon or Apple Podcasts to join the community of subscribing members who make episodes like this possible, and get our monthly chat show about gay culture and politics!

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SOURCES:

Hayes Hampton. The Invocation of the Black Sun: Alchemy and Sexuality in the Work of Coil, in Folk Horror Revival: Harvest Hymns Volume I – Twisted Roots (Durham, UK: Wyrd Harvest Press, 2018)

David Keenan. England's Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of the Esoteric Underground, Revised and Expanded Edition (London: Strange Attractor Press, 2023; originally published 2003)

Cormac Pentecost. Man is the Animal, zine issues 1–4, (Temporal Boundary Press)

Genesis P‑Orridge. Nonbinary (New York: Abrams Press, 2022)

Nick Soulsby. Everything Keeps Dissolving: Conversations with Coil (London: Strange Attractor Press, 2023)

Spencer Sunshine. Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege (London: Routledge, 2024)

Cosey Fanni Tutti. Art Sex Music (London: Faber and Faber, 2017)

“AN INTERVIEW WITH COIL (Harvest History Month Pt. I),” conducted by Malahki Thorn, Heathen Harvest (originally published 1 April 2004), https://4ibrecords.com/2014/03/05/an-interview-with-coil-harvest-history-month-pt-i/

Hannah Pezzack on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hanapezzack/?hl=en

Hannah Pezzack on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/hannah-pezzack

Many thanks to Alina Valentina and Ruben Verkuylen for their invaluable technical assistance.

Gratitude to Elina Tapio (who first introduced me to Coil!) and Marco Segato – both part of eoobe – for keeping the spirit of John and Sleazy alive through their music: https://eoobe.bandcamp.com/

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner.

A preview of our conversation about Mayor Pete this week. For more, subscribe at Patreon or Apple Podcasts.

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