Age of Consent (1981-1985), from Los Angeles, is the world’s first polysexual and gay rap group.

Where’s the CD?

Info about our retrospective CD is available below.

WHAT’S NEW

GIG LIST AND PRESS UPDATED

We’ve done some major updating to our Gig List (on the About page) and Articles & Ads (on the Press page). For instance we were recently reminded that John and David had deejayed at what happened to be the first gig by Red Hot Chili Peppers (under that name) on March 4, 1983, thanks to the eagle eye of a Pepperphile named Hamish. And we found we’d omitted the date of our last major gig, opening for Nona Hendryx, right, at the Palace on August 5 that same year.

LGBT+ MUSIC IN PRINT

Age of Consent is mentioned (and pictured) in a recent, comprehensive overview of LGBT+ music, Martin Aston’s Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache: How Music Came Out (Backbeat Books, 2017).

Age of Consent co-founder David Hughes offered to review the book, sight unseen, and the result is posted at The Tangent Group.

From the review: With this new volume Martin Aston fills a much needed lapse in LGBT+ pop history. Unlike books such as Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses (1988) edited by Angela McRobbie and John Gill's Queer Noises (1995), the former which deals with the subject tangentially and the latter which deals with it personally and sporadically, Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache (taking its name from a late '60s Northern soul hit) moves decade by decade through the 20th century (a bit before, and after), just as the music itself comes into play.

JOHN CALLAHAN 1945–2013

With sadness we mark the passing of John Francis Callahan, co-founder of Age of Consent. John died peacefully at home on Sunday, February 17. He had celebrated his birthday on February 2; he was 68 years old.

If Age of Consent never had been formed, band co-founder David Hughes still would be forever grateful for the ethic of professionalism that John brought to the work they did together in the summer of 1981. David thought he was doing performance art; John approached it as theater.

When John announced he wanted to move beyond Age of Consent in 1983, eventually becoming artistic director of Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles, little did David know that 20 years later he would interview John while researching the life of Celebration (and Mattachine Society) founder, Chuck Rowland. During AOC’s five years, David, ten years John’s junior, had little time for LGBT+ history—AOC’s “History Rap” notwithstanding. But David shared John’s passion for accuracy, and it is that which sent David on his current pursuit of chronicling forgotten players in the early Mattachine.

John had a rich life, as he explained on his Facebook profile:

Politico, educator, actor, producer, director, co-founder of World’s FIRST gay and bisexual rap group: Age of Consent 1981–1985. Currently doing battle with metastasized prostate cancer in my bones—no fun. Recently undergone Detox, Rehab and sober living—NOT a fanatic! In a 27 year Domestic Partner relationship with Brad Rader FlamingArtist.com and raderofthelostart.com.

John and Brad had since parted, but Brad was by his side when he breathed his last.

David talked with John many months before he died. John approached his illness—it was on-again-off-again—with a sense of good-natured wonder: This is happening to me; and so it is. John is survived by his daughter Lisa and former spouses Brad Rader and Donna Sprague. We all miss him.

A memorial for John Callahan will be held on Saturday, April 6, from 3 to 7 at John’s home. If you need the address or more information, please contact us.

LESSON PLAN

JD Doyle, indefatigable collector and broadcaster at Houston’s KPFT-FM, has developed Queer Music History 101: A Special Project of Queer Music Heritage, A Lesson For Use By University LGBT Studies Courses.

Since 2000, Doyle has produced his monthly radio show, Queer Music Heritage, on which Age of Consent has appeared from time to time. Queer Music History 101 is a more-or-less chronological romp through sixty years of “records” (remember those?) from the time their electronic players began to be marketed in the mid-1920s through the year of the first compact disc to sell a million copies.*

How many blueswomen have a U.S. postage stamp to commemorate their life, in part for singing, as did Ma Rainey, “I went out last night with a gang of my friends, they must have been women, cause I don’t like no men.” Who recalls the tradition of “cross-vocals” that allowed Bing Crosby to sing “Ain't No Sweet Man Worth the Salt of My Tears”? You may recognize Lisa Ben for her groundbreaking work with the Daughters of Bilitis, but have you heard her parody of “Frankie & Johnny”? All that and more are in store in Queer Music History 101.

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* And just what would that be, students? While this is not in the lesson plan, it is Dire Straits’ Brother in Arms, containing the Grammy-winning “Money for Nothing,” banned from airplay in Canada in January 2011 for containing the word faggot.

OLDER THAN OLD SCHOOL

Age of Consent’s David Hughes has published biographical profiles of two pioneers in the area of gay civil rights. Bob Hull and Chuck Rowland co-founded the Mattachine Society with Harry Hay, Rudi Gernreich, and Dale Jennings sixty years ago. The Mattachine set the stage for the gay liberation activism of the 1960s and 1970s. The profiles are posted at The Tangent Group: Bob Hull … Chuck Rowland.

Chuck Rowland (l) and Bob Hull (r) with two early Mattachine members, Konrad Stevens (t) and Jim Gruber (b).

David has enough material for a book-length biography of Hull and Rowland, and has added a third, largely overlooked Mattachine member to the project: Wallace de Ortega Maxey. See excerpts from the manuscript and other writings at The Tangent Group.

» OLDER WHAT’S NEW ITEMS ARCHIVED HERE

BUY THE AGE OF CONSENT CD

ORDER ONLINE

Age of Consent’s retrospective CD, Old School on the Down Low, is available via Amazon—both Audio CD and MP3.

CD TRACK LIST

Samples available at Amazon.

Fight Back (Remix)
Missionary Position (Live)
History Rap (Live)
Diddle Rap (Live)
Dickie’s Dead
Schizo Rap (Live)
Performance Pressure (Live)
God Sez (Live)
Twist and Shout (Live)
Age of Consent