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Boy George
Makes A Comeback

Gender-bending Boy George and his group Culture Club were a shock and a hit on the music scene in the mid-1980's, and after years away from the performance scene, they're back and winning audiences all over again. George (born George O'Dowd) has reunited with the original culturally and racially diverse team of Roy Hay, Mikey Craig, and Jon Moss for an international tour, including their first performance in their native Britain in 14 years. George has spent much of the interim as a DJ, including producing some successful dance collections of other people's music, and has become a Gay activist, most recently writing a weekly column in London's Sunday Express.

Looking back, George (still only 37 years old) sees the success of Culture Club as coming quickly and easily and requiring little of him, leaving him with the drug problems so common among those for whom too much comes too soon. In revisiting the music, he finds it wasn't just Motown-flavored bubble gum, but had actual substance reflecting the drug issues and his troubled love affair with drummer Moss; he described it to one interviewer as "the soundtrack of my despair." He kicked the drugs in 1987.

George's 80's persona has been described as "a cross between a China doll and Bob Marley" and "androgynous yard sale Judeo-Christian," and today in his own words it's the "Dalai Lama on acid look." An "out" Gay at 15, George was heavily into David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust glam. His relationship with the band's now-long-happily-married Moss forced him slightly back "in," but Bronski Beat's 1984 "Small Town Boy" made him feel he really must identify publicly as a Gay man. He's sometimes included male pronouns in songs, including one on his 1995 solo album "Cheapness and Beauty."

Culture Club had 25 U.S. Top Forty hits, and made the Top Ten with tunes including "Time (Clock of the Heart)," "I'll Tumble 4 Ya," "Church of the Poison Mind," "Karma Chameleon," and "Miss Me Blind." Culture Club broke up in 1986, although George released three solo albums after that (and the title tune for the 1992 movie The Crying Game). The group attempted a reunion in 1990, but then it all seemed old and boring to George, who backed out while they were beginning to put an album together. The latest reunion came at the suggestion of cable TV's VHI, after the channel developed a documentary about the band for its "Behind the Music" series. With not much else going on, George approached it with an attitude of "Why not?"

Although the current tour is distinctly a nostalgia thing, with Culture Club accompanied by Human League and Howard Jones in a package called "The Big Rewind Tour," George fully intends the reunion to be the beginning of something new, including a progressive album within a year or so. The seven-week sold-out tour launched in Monte Carlo. Culture Club's first U.S. show in 13 years was in Atlanta late last month. The tour passed through New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, and returned to Britain for the 14-year homecoming. They were warmly welcomed at every stop by diverse audiences, which included those far too young to have been around for their original incarnation. Culture Club will begin another 10-date British tour in December.

This year's double CD compilation of "Greatest Hits" and live performances from "VHI Storytellers/Greatest Moments" (Virgin) has won praise from Variety. It has some new cuts, including the new single "I Just Want to Be Loved" and "Some Strange Voodoo" (including the lyric "no happily ever after/no big dark man").

A movie version of George's candid 1995 autobiography Take It Like a Man is in development by Ethan and Erica Silverman. Although George has consulted on the script, will be writing new music for the film, and may even do the singing, a younger still-to-be-identified unknown will play him.

In an astonishing testimonial, no less than former Beatle Ringo Star remarked recently that he had once believed that Boy George would have as much cultural impact as his own group, saying, "I honestly thought he was going to be the one. He's still around now but he's lost the power." However, George may yet prove Ringo wrong. [NewsPlanet]

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AIDS Educator Gets Porn Indictment

A Cape May County, New Jersey grand jury on Aug. 25 indicted an AIDS educator for distribution of obscenity to minors after viewing the Gay Men's Health Crisis-produced video he showed a group of 15-17-year-olds at a youth shelter. The video is labeled for showing to adults only, and has not been approved for presentation to youth groups by the Atlantic City-based South Jersey AIDS Alliance, which sent staffer Keith Carson to the county-run shelter at the Crest Haven Government Complex. Carson will face arraignment before a Newark judge on Oct. 1; conviction could mean up to 18 months imprisonment.

Carson's attorney, David Rocah of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "The Supreme Court has made it clear that minors cannot be prevented from receiving information about sexuality. This will chill efforts of I-UV education around the state and country. The specter of having a prosecutor with no training or expertise looking over an educator's shoulder second-guessing, and the threat of prosecution is appalling, dangerous, counterproductive, and unconstitutional."

However, to County Prosecutor Stephen Moore, the video showing oral and anal sex between men, some in leather and chains, was "clearly inappropriate for educational purposes for young teens," and the case is "simply not a First Amendment issue."

It was the county's director of youth services, Ernie Campbell, who reported the February 23 video showing to law enforcement, even though he has not seen the tape. He admitted that there was some disagreement within his office as to how to proceed, not because of doubts about the video's inappropriateness, but as to whether or not it would be a successful prevention tool. "If it saves one kid, even if it emotionally upsets them...or empowered one of the girls to say 'no' [to unprotected sex]...maybe it did something." But although the Alliance had been sending an educator to the shelter each month for some time, it has not been invited back again.The youth shelter residents' participation was voluntary, and two young women walked out soon after the video had started.

Alliance executive director William Mattle agreed that the video was inappropriate for a teenaged audience, describing it as "a real deviation" from the materials the agency typically uses for that age group. Although he said that Carson had been quickly and decisively disciplined following complaints from the shelter, it was his belief that working in the field had "desensitized" Carson to the material, rather than that the staffer was "attempting to promote an agenda." Carson is still employed by the Alliance, which was not named in the indictment. [NewsPlanet]

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