08/07/2020
Strangeways Radio takes its name from a seminal album from the gender questioning indie pop group of the nineteen eighties The Smiths. The album in turn is named for a notorious prison in the United Kindgdom where a 1990 prison riot left one man dead and hundreds injured. Strangeways Radio is run by US based experts in indie music. With a brief that covers goth, post-punk, indie pop and folk pop, the website at one point ran as a streaming radio station, but these days is a multimedia resource for people interested in independent music, what in the US is sometimes called “College Music Radio” because of the popularity of these bands on student and college based radio services. To mark Pride Month, Brenna, a musician in her own right, hosts a special edition of “Shoegaze Sunday”, a videocast which showcases the dream pop genre. Dream pop or shoegaze might refer to music influenced by British bands like Slowdive, the Jesus and Mary Chain and Cocteau Twins. It's a popular genre within the indie scene. The “Shoegaze Sunday” videocast showcases bands that identify as predominatly LGBTQ on the spectra of gender and sexuality. And Brenna also delves into the rich history of independent music to showcase the Kitchens of Distinction, a band active from the middle nineteen eighties to the present, although with a long hiatus. The Kitchens are led by an openly gay man, Patrick Fitzgerald, and have unapologetically queer lyrics, a fact that led to even the supposedly liberal music papers like the New Musical Express and Melody Maker sometimes overlooking their musical richness because of the lyrical content. Brenna puts a little of that oversight right with her LGBTQ Shoegaze Sunday session. Tune in at Straneways Radio or via You Tube.
https://www.strangewaysradio.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC9siCIC0UQ&feature=youtu.be
