A friend was telling me that the Pride event he was attending last weekend had been moved within an anti-terror traffic bollard cordon amidst rumours of far-right action and was suffering funding challenges.
What a thing to have to navigate your young teenage son through. The joy of last year’s celebration of love and difference corroded by spectres of ignorance, hatred and fear, the prevailing winds of 2025. The erosion of LGBTQ+ rights and a grimy complicity seeping from elements of our political discourse, empowering bigotry and othering. Having to help someone you love understand and be aware how much some people out there hate what they are is heart-breaking.
Contempt in your eyes
As I turn to kiss his lips
It reminds me very much of the 1980’s, a decade I have no general nostalgia for at all. I see Clause 28, race riots, nuclear annihilation and strikes not rara skirts and Five Star*. Rather naively I thought these battles had been fought and won, but the sad truth is that people always seem to need a community to punch down upon.
Dancing can be a radical act.
Bronski Beat The Age Of Consent splashed down in late 1984. As a smalltown boy myself I experienced it as a new texture in the pop music of the day, a faster dance beat and a much mocked falsetto, but nothing more momentous – it wasn’t Eliminator, they didn’t have beards. Friends bought The Age Of Consent, usually amidst much showy disavowing of gayness**, I didn’t because it wasn’t rocky or rebellious enough for me; I blush at that last.
In the climate of those times to release not only an openly gay LP but a gay activist LP^ was as rebellious as it gets, forget all the empty posturing I mistook for guts back then. If you were gay back then I could imagine just weeping at this comet of honesty, heartache and joy striking the earth.
First track, let’s ease us in with a Hi-NRG banger about gay bashing, ‘Why?’. I’d danced to this a score of times without knowing what it was about, maybe because I had the privilege of not needing to know what it was about. It’s a great time, an excellent put down and a moving plea all at once, Jimmy Somerville’s falsetto getting increasingly out there as it races on.
I love the swinging Gershwin ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’, here repurposed as a sophisticated slap against religious bigotry ‘The things that you’re liable/To read in the Bible’, is a gorgeous change of pace. The arrangement is clever and restrained, Somerville singing lower and joined by the Pink Singers gay choir.
Solely for reasons of your patience and space I will skip the next few tracks and emerge at ‘Love And Money’, another slower paced burner with Somerville duetting with a saxophone at one point.
You leave in the morning with everything you own
In a little black case alone on a platform
The wind and the rain on a sad and lonely face
In a pompous mood I would call ‘Smalltown Boy’ the single best song of the 80’s^^. It is perfection and I have always found it simultaneously utterly joyful and heart-breaking. Those images of flight, bullying and emotional isolation and the joy of finding a community, choosing kind over kin get me every time. The video is perfect British kitchen sink drama and the best use of a train in British culture since Brief Encounter.
Sadly the rest of The Age Of Consent has not aged as well. The likes of ‘Junk’, ‘Need A Man Blues’ and ‘Heatwave’ are about as good as PSB album tracks. There is fun to be had in their sheer style but I find myself itching to play the first side again. They shouldn’t have touched ‘I Feel Love’ though, Bronski Beat’s version sounds dated and slow while Giorgio Moroder’s still sounds like the future.
Jimmy Somerville’s voice dominates this album, but Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek’s synthing and composition are every bit as important. Equally so is Mike Thorne’s^* production, which for the main remains blissfully free of 80’s tropes and cliches.
It took me a good decade to appreciate The Age Of Consent for what it is, a radical wolf in pop’s clothing. It took another twenty years*^ after that while I was watching my son navigating his own sexuality and his community’s history for this LP to burn through me and I finally understood the anger, despair but overriding joy of it all.
As the sleeve notes of my excellently done 2018 reissue copy of The Age Of Consent note, while listing the current ages of consent for gay sex by country, so much progress has been made but more needs to be done. This seems more prescient now.
Radical culture can help progress, can help to arrest the backsliding and keep us dancing to forget, dancing to remember and then dancing to forget it all again. Bronski Beat made this album with pride, battered uncertain but fraternal pride, long may it burn bright.
My friend’s Pride event went well, despite the negative climate, both metaphorical and rainiological, people marched in numbers, showed support and had a lot of fun doing so, as they should.
You and me together fighting for our love
That fight isn’t won yet.
1282 Down.
PS: for anyone who is still reading and/or interested I am optimistic that things will get better in general, equilibrium will be reasserted and populism defeated. I don’t care how doped up with sex, religion and TV they keep you, it doesn’t have any real answers and financial markets crave the stability that populism’s desperation for enemies ultimately fails to provide. I’m a revanchist, I believe that not only will we retake previous ground we will force more progress on the back of this.
PPS: I enjoyed this a lot:
*I was a serious teenager; its why we all drank so much in the 90’s.
**standard tactic was to switch straight to a discussion of Madonna’s assets.
^from the title on in.
^^to be fair I’d say the same even in a non-pompous mood.
^*the man who links Deep Purple Fireball with Soft Cell ‘Tainted Love’ and Wire Pink Flag.
*^Crom, I’m old!
As ever, a thoughtful, considered and relevant piece, bravo. As another small towner, my relationship to ‘Small Town Boy’ was similar to yours, I liked the sound but it wasn’t Powerslave or The Last in Line, so it passed me by, really. Looking back I shamefully should have thought about it more – metalheads could get a rough deal where I grew up so anyone LGBTQ+ must have had it much much much worse.
It is amazing how much of an uncomfortable truth this song foregrounded. I remember recently finding an old interview from the time with Holly Johnson, and asked about STB he said something along the lines of not recognising Bronski Beat’s “persecuted f****t characters.” That shocked me.
Thank you Tim, happy to serve in the liberal trenches. I rather love the idea of Bronski Beat covering The Last In Line, or Dio in his pomp having a crack at ‘Why?’ – he’d have made a real fist of the ‘fighting for our love’ bits at the end.
The Holly Johnson one is fascinating and I think shows the immense difference between growing up adjacent to an essentially left-wing arty city, compared to small town UK in the 80’s.
The belligerently liberal north west
Sobering, two steps forward one back, currently living in a thinly veiled police state right now where it’s quickly becoming illegal to be anything other than what the state says you can be. it’s important to stay to be an ally but the urge to flee is overwhelming although that may be another expression of privilege some people can’t leave.
Damn what do we do to each other in the name of fear.
I question your usage of ‘thinly veiled’ Neil.
good point, I live in the last bastion of democracy
The liberal northwest?
Another great read, thank you
Thank you very much, that’s kind.
I remember the ‘Small town boy’ vid and actually being shocked. People actually beat up others for being (insert derogatory word deployed with non-malicious ignorance)? Love that interview piece with Jimmy. But…
Even more, I love this whole post, Joe. Unreservedly. 💜💙💚💛🧡♥️
Thank you so much Bruce. My son got me to read a book by Derek Jarman recently and his anger was really illuminating – effectively he said that he had been criminal for half of his life and had absolutely no human rights for the other half.
I admit Bronski Beat wasn’t my type of music back then but I do give Jimmy Somerville full credit for tackling homophobic bigotry head on.
Absolutely, its ironic, being from a smalltown myself I had no idea what sort of struggle there was at that point, bigotry, queer bashing, in retrospect my heart aches for those guys and gals. This was a brave brave LP to make.