Red Hot + Blue (album)

Use your mentality. Wake up to reality.

Thirty years ago, on Saturday, December 1, 1990, the Red Hot + Blue special debuted on ABC. This was an hour-long collection of videos from the Cole Porter tribute album (of the same name) which was a major fundraiser for the Red Hot Organization, dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS through music, pop culture and art. 

“Cole Porter was one of America’s greatest songwriters, and his music spoke about love and sex and experimentation with intelligence -- and that’s what you want when dealing with an AIDS benefit.” - Leigh Blake, "Red Hot" project co-director

It is difficult to communicate how controversial it was to discuss HIV/AIDS on television. It is shameful to think. This televised special of music videos of Cole Porter songs was aired at 10:00 PM on World AIDS Day, after a particularly disturbing episode of Twin Peaks in which Agent Cooper finally captures the murderer of Laura Palmer (no spoilers.)

The home video recording included the bumpers and intros to each music video that had been originally created for the broadcast, including Richard Gere's suggestion that people use condoms or not share needles, to prevent infection. These bits were cut at the last minute as a result of pressure, and fear, from the network, and replaced with inoffensive tributes to composer Cole Porter.

However, several of the videos that were broadcast were embedded with activist messaging, inlcuding Erasure's ACT UP inspired Too Darn Hot and  k.d. lang's devastating take on So In Love which includes imagery of one caring for her ill partner.

These covers sang to the pseudo-sophisticate in me. Several of them are faithful renditions of Cole Porter classics (Sinead O'Connor's You Do Something To Me, Lisa Stansfield's Down In the Depths, the aforemention k.d. lang track) as they emulate big band or cocktail lounge piano stylings.

The Thompson Twins Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? is an 80s pop throwback, but several tracks look to the future, original hip-hop singles which only use Porter titles for the hook or chorus. The plaintive piano breakdown at 2:30 on Neneh Cherry's I've Got You Under My Skin was a loop I sampled and used on several amateur audio projects as I diddled around with nascent computer sound programs. It even showed up in my design for The Gulf at Dobama's Night Kitchen, ten years later.

We played this album often, and the music reminds me of so much from an intense and fleeting moment in my (very) early adulthood; it was heard in shops in England during a university trip that December, and was part of our soundtrack during the winter run-up to the Persian Gulf War, my final quarter at school. The subject of the album itself was emotionally confusing, mournful and celebratory all at once.

I had one foot out the door, ready to graduate and head I did not know where.

And, of course, HIV is still with us. The COVID-19 epidemic has shown us - again - how social inequity, intolerance, and plain ignorance contribute to the human cost of any transmittable human infection. The theme for this year's World AIDS Day is “Global solidarity, shared responsibility."

Source:

Cole Porter: Red, Hot and New : Fund-raising: 26 years after his death, the great American songwriter’s music still intrigues pop figures by Robert Hilburn, L.A. Times (10/29/1990)

Do Do That Voodoo

For those of you jonesing for a piece of this new play Centennial! ... the first public performance of one short scene from my unofficial history of Cleveland theater will be presented as part of Cleveland Public Theatre's annual benefit extravaganza -- PANDEMONIUM!
In 2003, then-Artistic Director Randy Rollison had the brilliant idea to kick out all the stops and create a mammoth benefit which would not only entertain and intoxicate (in all sense of the word) as many monied patrons as possible, but also to show off as many square inches of CPT's burgeoning campus as possible. At the same time, he solved the seemingly unending bane of the theaterworld -- mooching artists. Why yes you can have a free ticket! But you have to perform.

And we do. And we love it. Because no one wants to miss this party.

That first year Randy asked me to shepherd some actors together to present Neo-Futurist plays in the scene shop. And so for one night Magdalyn, Josh, Kelly and I were the New Guerrillas presenting Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (by permission) an attempt to perform ten plays in ten minutes. A dozen audience members were seated in the freight elevator at the Levin lobby, were handed a menu of plays, dropped down to ground level, the doors swung open and the four of us started shouting at them for which play they wanted to see. After ten minutes a buzzer went off, the doors closed and the audience went away. It was such a hit we were asked to reprise it several additional times during the evening. Yes, I kissed Christine Howey on the mouth. Yes, I paid her two dollars.

What we were unaware of, sequestered in the bowels of the theater, was how expansive the rest of the party was. We simply hadn't seen it. After we were released, we went above and found a huge dance party going on in the Gordon Square and out into the then-unpaved parking lot. It was huge! Since then, we the acquisition of the Church and Fellowship Hall spaces, it has gotten even bigger.

In 2005 we were about to open the revival of The Vampyres and I provided a cutting from that play ... which was presented out of doors on a platform stage. It was just one of those cases of bad planning on my part, I was unable to participate in any of the technical preparations and just distanced myself from the entire event. It wasn't the year for it for me, with a two year-old and a new baby at home. When Beth asked if I was interested in providing something this year, I made sure the scene fit the venue.

Two years ago, my wife wrote a piece especially for the event, a tribute to the goddess Kali in the form of a Mary Kay party, a scene I was delighted to have participated in. Last year the theme for the night was Wild Thing and though I was unable to attend, I was very happy to send the actor-teachers from Great Lakes to teach happy, adult partygoers how we coach first graders to perform Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are. Apparently, it was quite a hit.
This year, my scene Do Do That Voodoo takes place in the Intimate Bar at the Alcazar Hotel following a performance of the Federal Theatre's Negro Unit touring production of Macbeth, directed by Orson Welles.

The scene will feature Toni K. Thayer as the Voice of the Living Newspaper, Emily Pucell as Dare Wright, Geoff Hoffman as Bernard Schrader, Joshua D. Brown as Orson Welles, Eric Perusek as the bartender ... and your truly as William F. McDermott.

Saturday, September 10. Pandemonium. Be there.


Evan Palazzo
"You Do Something To Me"

The Alcazar Hotel

Located at the intersection of Surrey and Derbyshire Roads in the Cedar Hill neighborhood of Cleveland Heights, the "Moorish" styled and tiled Alcazar Hotel opened in 1923. The building is an irregular pentagon, has 175 rooms, and was inspired by the Hotel Ponce De Leon in St. Petersburg, Florida.

During the 1930s it was stylish hangout, where people could dine in the Patio Dining Room or have a cocktail in the Intimate Bar. You could take rooms by the evening or the month. During the Great Lakes Exposition, Johnny Weissmuller stayed here when he was performing in the Aquacade.

Was Cole Porter, in fact, inspired to write the lyrics to Night and Day when staying here in 1932? Who knows, I am just passing that along. But he, like Bob Hope, Mary Martin and George Gershwin did actually take rooms here, once upon a time.

And of course, William McDermott liked to drink here.

Alcazar means "home in a fortress."

Sources: cleveland.com
Alcazar website