Bureau of Lost Culture26 Kesä 2024

The Queer Life of Pop - with Jon Savage

How Queer Culture Shaped Pop Culture

"The 1972 version of David Bowie didn’t spring from nowhere. Although he refused to affiliate himself explicitly with gay liberation, he had found both artistic and social inspiration in the gay world, in particular the renewed sense of freedom and possibility that rippled through the British gay subculture in the early 1970s."

We finally lured the award-winning, bestselling author, pop-culture, punk penman Jon Savage to the Bureau to talk about his life and epic new book The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979)

It's an electrifying, massively entertaining - and at times, tragic - look at key moments in music history between 1955 and 1979, which helped move gay culture from the margins to the mainstream and changed the face of pop forever – from the ambiguous sexuality of stars such as Little Richard in the 1950s through to David Bowie, glam rock and Sylvester’s ‘You Make Me Feel(Mighty Real)'.

We talked about all that, about Punk, Joy Division, Tony Wilson, Johnny Marr, Factory Records and about how Jon grew up in the London of the late '50s and '60s, how he became a writer during one of the most exciting times for music journalism in the '70s and '80s - and about his own Secret Public Life..

Jaksot(166)

The Road to Rebellion - Part 1

Roc Sanford is a British writer, artist and climate activist whose life has been a countercultural journey from an alternative childhood through academia to a remarkable experiment in off-grid living ...

3 Heinä 50min

Free Radicals - Tripping in the 18th Century.

In the company of historian of drugs, MIKE JAY, we journey back to the first psychedelic age - not the 1960s, but the 1790s, when Britain was at the forefront, at the frontier, of gonzo psychedelic sc...

10 Kesä 55min

The Shadow of the Counterculture

Ever thought the so-called ‘golden decade’ of the 1960s was only about peace and love? Think again. Beneath the surface, it was riddled with violence, paranoia, and chaos, even in its most iconic mome...

24 Touko 1h

21st Century Mutoid Man: Joe Rush - Part 2

This is the second part of our conversation with Joe Rush, the initiator, mentor, and driving force behind The Mutoid Waste Company, that extraordinary countercultural endeavour to turn the waste of o...

19 Touko 1h 2min

The Revolutionsts: How The Counterculture Turned to Terror

The Weather Underground, The Baader-Meinhof Group, The Red Brigade, Carlos the Jackal, The Japanese Red Army. The counterculture has always had a shadow side. There have been bad actors, casualties, t...

6 Touko 53min

Sex - Men - War

Beyond the official story, the myth, of the Second World War — its maps and medals, courage and sacrifice — there is another hidden narrative. Written in rare memoirs, or in letters and diaries never ...

2 Huhti 56min

20th Century Mutoid Man: Joe Rush - Part 1

If you had been at the Glastonbury Festival in 1987, you may have seen a familiar silhouette emerging in the dawn light - upright monoliths arranged in a circle. Was it Stonehenge - magically transf...

17 Maalis 1h 2min

The Library of Lost Maps

In the heart of London’s Bloomsbury, behind a scruffy turquoise door, the world lies folded into drawers. Here are maps that survived wars, regimes, and revolutions — not because they were valued, but...

3 Maalis 59min