Jimmy Somerville re-records Bronski Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy’ for 30th anniversary

Ah, the beauty that is music...

A recap of a thirty year old song...and song with a profound impact...

Go ahead, and listen. I'll try to include just the video below, just in case. It's hard to believe this song is thirty years old. I would have been fourteen. Yes. I knew then. I knew. I knew that my feelings didn't match the world around me; everyone kept telling me I was to date girls and make families, but, when I slept, I dreamed of doing the same thing with men. I knew. Even at fourteen, when the hormones swooned and pounded on my temples.

Times, they were different in the 80s. I would have to go to the public library and hide in the stacks to find those books that helped me understand.  And entertainment was abject hell. Every word was negative; and the gay characters usually ended up dead.

We had MTV back then, a time when it still played music. And, since, even then, sleep was a fleeting concept, I would sit up and watch videos. I discovered, interestingly, that Britain actually had a separate "Top 10," and Wham!UK had a cool song on it, called "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go!"

I was mesmerized. I had to see more.

And I would have to learn how to find it.

I was hooked on the British New Wave, a kinda of synthpop that sounded like rock but had electronic backgrounds that gave it a pop-ish hold.

It was only a matter of time before I saw this song. Once. Just once one of those late night television viewings, while my parents were asleep in their room.

I was hooked a song about a man like myself. Falling for another dude and suffering the angst that comes with it. Of being utterly alone. But it also worked on another level. That wonderful falsetto was singing TO ME. He was Out and Proud.

I wasn't alone.

No. There were others.

And now, he obviously, must, understand the importance to that song to the Generation X crowd who are now making waves with marriage equality and equal employment.

We're still not alone. I'm at as much as I can be-so others never feel that unending dread that, one day, they'll be a victim. No. No more. You'll be just as annoying and satisified as the rest of the world. It does, in the end, get better.

Enjoy...here's his newer rendition.

Good music is good music.

And? Here's when he found a busker doing it on the streets and sang along...good going Jimmy!

Peace all, I'll try to write more.