dance dance revolution!
gay stuff! i made you a playlist!
it’s the first monday of june, the last week of school (!!!!!!), and this morning i was listening, as i do every single day, to KEXP, the greatest radio station on earth, and the beloved DJ john richards was kicking off pride month, playing songs that had me dancing in the kitchen before 8am. my kids hadn’t left for school yet and i was making lunches and breakfasts and signing permission slips and issuing reminders and feeding the pets and locating socks and sneakers and dispensing medications and reminding people of the time and shooing everyone out the door etc etc so it wasn’t a full-on dance party until everyone had left for school.
and then! i was like ‘i haven’t danced by myself alone in the kitchen on a monday morning for a very long time!’ inspired by john’s set, i made a rapid-fire playlist of my most favorite new wave dance-y jams and i put it on incredibly loud (the kind of loud that only works when i’m home alone, because weirdly no one else in my house likes super loud music?!) and i danced my middle-aged ass off for a significant amount of time. not for the entirety of this playlist, but definitely for a good chunk of it! like full-on ‘dance like no one’s watching’ and i’m pretty sure no one was watching, but if they were?! fine! they would’ve seen me looking ridiculous, sure, but also they would have seen me remembering how good it feels to move and jump and sing and flail (I was absolutely flailing at points!) and sweat. it woke me up, it cheered me up, it helped me shake off some funky stress-y life-overwhelm-y vibes. AND it made me feel excited and ready to be extra gay and joyful this month. fuck war, let’s dance!
so here’s the playlist for you—put it on, turn it up, lose yourself in synth-y fabulousness! i called it ‘gay wave’ because it sounds cute and it’s the vibe i’m after but the music nerd/accurate virgo in me feels the need to clarify that many of the songs/artists are *not* gay, but it all feels very gay-coded/gay-adjacent to me, and it was made by me, a gay person, so there.
Back in the 20th century when you made a mixtape (or CD, during the latter half of the last decade of the 20th century), you generally put the slow/tender/romantic songs at the end, and often the last track was like extra special. and while this playlist was thrown together in like 2 minutes (unlike mixtapes which were a true labor of time and love), i did make the last song on the playlist extra special. ‘mother of pearl’ is kind of a deepish cut (unless you’re a roxy music fan in which case it’s an obvious choice, and i know for sure it’s the fave song of all time for some of my dearest pals). one of the most moving performances i’ve ever witnessed was two years ago at the castro theater in SF at the memorial for heklina, the beloved drag queen who tragically passed, when an incredible array of queens—her dearest friends—performed an unreal tribute to her to this song. it was so stunning and i will never forget it. long live heklina, long live drag! Long live radical art and artists!
if anyone reading this actually puts on this playlist and dances around and feels joy PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT IT! that will maximize the joy! ripple effect!
IN OTHER GAY JOY NEWS:
I get to support not one but TWO very dear queer authors at fun book events this month! Come see us and buy these books!
Saturday JUNE 14 I’ll be in conversation with CARO DE ROBERTIS to celebrate the launch of the paperback version of their novel Palace of Eros AND the ground-breaking anthology So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Gender Queer, and Two-Spirit People of Color. 3pm at the Berkeley Public Library . Come see us, and also BUY CARO’S BOOKS!
Wednesday JUNE 18 I’ll be in conversation with SHOSHANA VON BLANCKENSEE for the launch of her debut novel GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS! At El Rio! With DJs and a Chloe Sherman slideshow! It’ll be super dykes-in-the-Mission-in-the-90s! I am SO excited for this book and you can pre-order it now!
Finally, my last bit of Gay Joy News is that it’s WNBA time, and we have season tix to the Golden State Valkyries, and the only thing better than going to these games and screaming and cheering for badass women’s sports is this t-shirt that the one and only Miriam Klein Stahl made and I can’t wait to wear it to a game. when the Vals get a 3-pointer the jumbotron very hilariously announces WHAT A DAGGER and Miriam may not love sports but she DOES love when shit is lez-coded! IYKYK!!!!
dance dance revolution!
xo
kate
"Kiss Them for Me" is the queerest Siouxsie song by far. And "The Caterpillar"! Swoon! Excellent work.
This shirt is amazing. And so is this playlist. Thanks for sharing. Happy Pride!