ehuffnsd said:

Explain that to me. What adversity has Kylie had to overcome until 2005? Compared to most people she's had a pretty cushy life. Same goes for Madonna. That cliche really doesn't answer my question, but then I suppose most of us don't really understand ourselves well anyway. Why should you be any different?

Also, I love pop music. I just don't think Kylie and Madonna post 1991 are very good at it.

whoknows said:

Madonna's mother died at 5, according to her a loner in school, was introduced to gay culture at an early age by her dance teacher. left home to NY where she knew no one was homeless, jobless and moneyless and became the largest superstar in the world.

Kylie had to survive being made fun of in the press like most gay people have to do during life.

have you ever gone out and had some one drive through your neighborhood and scream hatefilled words at you? I have. People everyday feel they can say hatefull things to both Madonna and Kylie. we are drawn to that.

whoknows said:

Aside from the "adversity quality" which ehuffnsd has pointed out, there are other factors at work when attempting to explain the popularity of Madonna and Kylie to a gay audience.

As I said before, both Kylie and Madonna constantly change by either adapting to others' artistry (in the case of Madonna) or allowing themselves to be moulded by others (in the case of Kylie)... You can call it "dress-up" or even liken it to a form of drag, but however you choose to analyse it, it's inherently appealing to the majority of their gay audiences.

I believe that the appeal stems from the fact that if you identify as being non-heterosexual, you are immediately pigeon-holed; put into a box labelled "queer". Before society judges you on your morales, likes and dislikes or political and spiritual beliefs, you will be judged on your sexuality. Every gay person wears an invisible uniform in the mind of every non-heterosexual.

When performers like Madonna, Kylie, Bowie or even Prince wilfully change their self-image, it's very inspiring to someone whom feels constricted by society's perception of them. Even I, whom I would consider to be quite "straight-acting", can appreciate how liberating it must be to "be" an alien one week, a cowgirl the next, a geisha the next week, a virgin the next...

whoknows said:

So was Prince being "irrelevant" when he chose to collaborate with both Kylie and Madonna?

Interesting theories. I'm a straight American male who counts both Kylie and Madonna among my top 10 artists.

whoknows said:

I don't know if you're including Kylie in that time reference, but her pop music notably improved AFTER 1991.

Justin1972UK said:

At last an intelligent response. This makes sense. Thank you. I buy this much more than that adversity bullshit which might add to your liking them but didn't cause you to like them in the first place. Gay people liked M and K from the start. Also, Madonna freely states that she's had a great life. James Brown's had a tougher life than Kylie could ever dream of. I don't see you guys
raving about him.

Justin1972UK said:

No, he just wanted to fuck them and I don't blame him. I would too. The list of sexy non entities Prince has worked with is a very long one.

ehuffnsd said:

This is very true. Remember what happened when the Great American Public finally realised that disco was "fag music"? They burned their disco records in Comiskey Park.

http://www.youtube.com/wa...key%20park

Interesting comments about disco and homophobia within this interview with D.J., Vince Aletti.

http://www.djhistory.com/...view_id=22

whoknows said:

I think the adversity which most female performers encounter, comes from the misogynystic train of thought that if they are pretty (or endeavour to make themselves pretty) then they must be talentless.

James Brown can beat up his wife in a PCP-fuelled rage; speed down a highway to evade the police whilst still high (and thus endanger others lives) and many people will look at all this and think: " What a guy!"...

Madonna sheds her clothes for an erotic photo-book and she's suddenly public enemy number one.

Justin1972UK said:

You are speaking so well this morning Justin, i know it's evening for you though. There is some liberation in putting different costumes. When i'm just Eric gay boy from the midwest i feel more trapped into some kind of box i can't escape, As boy eric Treasurer of the LA boys of Leather i feel some empowerment by able to escape what considered nomral. than as my activist side is manifested in Sister Iona Dubble-Wyde i have more freedom to express the extremes i keep hidden because of the mask of the white face.

in alot of ways i can releate to the need in M and K and P trying to be differnt people by adapting differnt looks.

Justin1972UK said:

Wow, great reply.

ehuffnsd said:

I feel like I'm channelling Camille Paglia.

Justin1972UK said:

maybe it's time to write a book. use your wisdom from the years ar rama, and on the org.

Justin1972UK said:

You lost the stripes you picked up earlier with this dumb ass post. Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Fiona Apple, Sheryl Crow are all pretty and highly respected. Hell, add The Bangles to that list while you're at it. The women you like are not seen as talentless because of a patriarchal conspiracy. You demean women when you say that because it's like saying you think talent starved pygmys like JJ, K, M, etc. represent the whole of womankind. They don't. They represent the worst of it. If a man had done the Sex book he would have been flamed for it just as bad because it's pathetic. Madonna more or less admits that now. It's shallow attention seeking and nothing more. That goes for a lot more than just that book.

Also, an education for you about James Brown. He never knew his parents till after he got famous. He was raised in a brothel and forced to go onto the street and drag GIs in so they could fuck his aunt for a dime. When he went to school he was sent home for having "insufficient clothing". He never slept on a mattress until he was 10 years old. He was an outcast in his own community. Please do not compare his trials to Madonna's self induced PR gaffs.

ehuffnsd said:

Believe me, I didn't obtain any wisdom from either here or at the 'Rama!

Speaking of which, it looks like Claire at Madonnalicious is censoring her content in much the same way as Edward did, before the 'Rama's demise.

http://www.madonnalicious.com

There's not not one mention of yesterday's interview (concerning the state of Madonna's marriage) between Christopher Ciccone and the Daily Mirror. It's especially odd when you consider that the Daily Mirror is a British paper and Claire is a fellow-Brit.

http://www.madonnalicious...overs.html

I used to post everything - no matter how trivial, possibly inaccurate or silly. I left it up to the readers to separate the fact from the fiction. If it was in the news and it was about Madonna, it instantly became "Madonna News".

You lost the stripes you picked up earlier with this dumb ass post. Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Fiona Apple, Sheryl Crow are all pretty and highly respected. Hell, add The Bangles to that list while you're at it. The women you like are not seen as talentless because of a patriarchal conspiracy. You demean women when you say that because it's like saying you think talent starved pygmys like JJ, K, M, etc. represent the whole of womankind. They don't. They represent the worst of it. If a man had done the Sex book he would have been flamed for it just as bad because it's pathetic. Madonna more or less admits that now. It's shallow attention seeking and nothing more. That goes for a lot more than just that book.[/quote]

I shouldn't have included Kylie there because she's never used the desparate tactic of controversy to shift records and get attention that Madge and Janet have.

Justin1972UK said:

you learnt how catty and bitchy people are when they wanna show how better they are than someone one else. it's kinda a reason i'm just an silent observer for the most part at Madonnamad.

i agree with you on the need to post all sides of the story.

whoknows said:

I didn't realise I was earning "stripes"...

whoknows said:

I never said they weren't. For one, I said most female performers. In any case, these acts don't use their physicality as part of their act, in the same way that Kylie or Madonna do.

whoknows said:

How do they represent "the worst" of "womankind"? Are you a Dworkin-esque radical feminist?

whoknows said:

I think it's evident that she'll pass on the subject when interviewed, because she's bored of it. Her recent photo-shoot for W Magazine is practically a return to the early nineties imagery of the Erotica book. Arnold Schwarzenneger posed naked for an erotic photo-spread in a gay magazine in the 70s. I've never heard a single interview with him in which the subject is broached.

whoknows said:

Well, I'll agree with you there.

whoknows said:

Public adversity is far more damaging than private adversity - and especially so when your career depends on the maintenance of your image.

ehuffnsd said:

I remember the night that the 'Rama forum disintergrated before my eyes. It was being hacked into and shut down, piece by piece, by persons unknown. Myself, TallulahTwinkle and Rhys50 were all chatting on MSN watching the goings-on. It was like observing a riot in text and smileys.

Edward had already posted his decision to close the forum down at the start of that week, so we all (myself included) assumed that it was Edward whom was disassembling the forum.

Madonnamad was actually formed that night, on a Proboard by that young twinky-looking guy whom all the older queens perved over. I can't recall his name now but the last time I came across him, he was going under the name of Fux.

The insults some people levelled at the 'Rama moderators that night were beyond the pale. Some names are still on my shit-list whenever I come across them. A number of them post at other non-Madonna sites, such as Moopy.

I was never the biggest Madonna fan in the world. I was always more interested in her iconography and fan-base than her music. It was sad to leave Madonna Fandom behind, but not a great loss to me in the scheme of things.

Justin1972UK said:

i've never been active on any of the boards besides this one. Most of them seem to bitchy for me. maybe that's my own issue. but it's cool to get some insight in the demise of a site that was proably the best of it's kind.

Moonbeam said:

Same. Maybe we're just less afraid to admit what we like than other straight guys?

Axchi696 said:

Um, I never said that. Neither of them are particularly great vocalists, but Kylie is a hell of a lot better live than Madonna - better at hitting notes, more consistent throughout her set, etc.

ehuffnsd said:

We all reluctantly agreed to close the forum because it was getting too busy and thus too large to handle. I think the final straw was when some Dutch girl started a thread called "Would You Die For Madonna?" - the boards were beginning to resemble a cult.

Aside from this, Edward was in regular contact from Madonna's people at this time. Caresse Henry phoned him at work, on more than one occasion. He was asked to remove and amend some previous news stories I'd posted, because Madonna's people judged them to be "silly" or "inaccurate". Of course, these were stories which had previously been published elsewhere within legitimate media... He emailed me a new list of rules for posting news and I realised that we'd crossed the line from being a fan-site to being semi-official - another cog in the Madonna Machine.

After the forum closed, the 'Rama moved to a PHP format which I hated. It was ugly and prone to crashing. After ridding the site of the forum (which I always believed would be rested rather than killed-off forever), he enabled the ability for members to post comments on the news page. I felt this was unnecessary, messy and difficult to administrate.

Around this time, I moved home to share rent with a friend and cousin. This was a huge personal mistake - probably the biggest one I've ever made in my life. To cut a long-story short, my access to the internet was severely limited. The friend I lived with was going through a nervous breakdown after splitting with his long-term girlfriend and the hub for the network was in his bedroom. There was a week when he just stayed in bed for most of the day and I literally never saw him leave or enter his room. If his PC wasn't turned on, I couldn't access the net - it was as simple as that. On top of this, I was basically doing all the cooking, cleaning and shopping. Even when I could get online, I simply didn't have the time to contribute much. The situation lasted six months before I bailed out and had to move in with my parents for a few months.

By the time I'd moved home, Edward had killed the site off completely. I've never spoke with him since. When the site closed, a message headlined "Nothing Fails" was posted on the homepage, thanking me and others for our help but for months prior to this, he failed to reply to my phone calls, texts and emails.

I tried to salvage some of the wreckage by creating another site called Madonnatastic. However, within twelve months, the hosting company I used went bankrupt and I couldn't transfer the domain name elsewhere because of the complication that I needed my present host's consent to do so.

For two years, the 'Rama felt like the centre of the universe. It died a slow painful death through a slew of bad decisions and personal circumstance - not just mine.

whoknows said:

Seriously fucked up.

VoicesCarry said:

Perhaps!

Justin1972UK said:

wow

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

in answer to the topic headline: try the madonna fansite

boozoo2 said:

You really need to get over the fact that this is Music: Non-Prince and people are going to discuss Madonna.

VoicesCarry said:

It's true.