Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Worth Another Listen - Tom Robinson

tom robinson tom robinson

Tom Robinson is a British singer/songwriter, best known as a founding member of the Tom Robinson Band, a rather politically active rock/punk band in the 70s and early 80s. He is most likely best known for the song (Sing If You're) Glad To Be Gay, the 1978 hit single. For a long time, it was thought that Robinson was gay sheerly because of his open support of the community, but later he maintained he was bisexual, falling in love and marrying a woman. This upset some gay rights activists, and became a bit of a joke to the press. Too bad, because as far as I knew, there is a 'B' in LGBT. To this day Robinson is still active in promoting tolerance and acceptance for the LGBT community.



Robinson also had a career as a songwriter, including a period of collaboration with Elton John. The Tom Robinson Band had another hit in the UK, called 2-4-6-8 Motorway. During the time they were together, the TRB worked with producers such as Ray Davies [of the Kinks fame] and Steve Lilywhite.



Eventually Robinson went on to be a host/presenter on BBC radio, as well as work on some other projects. One was a radio documentary, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away, examining the LGBT music scene. He also had a series on men and masculinity, entitled The Locker Room. You can find out more about Tom Robinson on his website here.

2 comments:

  1. Loved the article Howard. It is quite unusual to find someone singing a song with the title "gay" in it and even more so from 1978. This guy had guts!

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  2. You are the only other person that I have run into that is into Tom Robinson! I discovered him on a complitaion CD- FRUIT COCKTAIL from the 90s.

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