Music Arcades: Tom Robinson: Having it Both Ways

I got this at Tom Robinson's 'Castaway' party in 2004 (first mentioned here). As I remember it, TR said he was clearing out his attic of old CDs and so there was a kind of lucky dip bucket, into which you put a donation in return for a couple of random CDs. This was one of them. Nowadays you can get the album as a 'free-with-donation' download from Tom's site.

You get a sense in everything Tom does of an irresistible urge he has to communicate his own experience — as a gay/bisexual man, a writer/performer, and a victim/survivor of a troubled youth — and to support others who share any part of that experience. His work as a DJ, public speaker, blogger and teacher manifests this. And so does this album, which seems to stem from the vilification TR received, as celebrated author of Glad to be Gay, when he settled down with a woman and had a family. I missed all that, because I don't read that section of the press, but if it led to this album, at least it had a silver lining.

And the album comes with a dedicated website featuring more explanation and advice, plus a great update of the Glad to be Gay lyrics (this verse included as a brief final track on the album):

For 29 years now I've fought for the right
For people to love just whoever they like
But the right-on and righteous are out for my blood
Now I live with my kids and a woman I love
Well if gay liberation means freedom for all
A label is no liberation at all
I'm here and I'm queer and I do what I do
And I'm not gonna wear… a "straight" jacket for you

Many of the songs on the album display the same well-honed and well-directed intelligence. You're the One is a favourite, one I remember Tom playing live at the last Castaway party I went to (2006). At the same time, there's something about the tone Tom sometimes adopts, in songs such as Disrespect, which sounds like a pep talk from an avuncular vicar, that grates a little with me. Perhaps it's just my lamentably English suspicion of positivity, or perhaps it's a feeling that life ought to have greater ambitions than pulling yourself together and 'realising your true potential.

The CD booklet comes with advice on topics from Samaritans' counselling to fighting racism to where to get a haircut on Northcote Road (a neighbourhood that raises my hackles more even than Lordship Lane). The CD itself also has a CD-ROM section, with little QuickTime videos and profiles of performers and songs. At the beginning of this, Tom salutes anyone sufficiently technologically clued-in to have a CD-ROM drive. I had to boot up my old iMac for the first time this year in order to read such antiquated media (it requires the 'classic' MacOS).

I recommend Tom's radio shows. And I played a very small part in supporting his latest broadcasting venture after I met him last Autumn. But I'll leave that story for another time.