Tainted love to put a soundtrack to our lives

Tainted Love, the new program from the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir, is not your ordinary musical performance. It contains nudity, adult themes, and unjust allegations of deviance and is playing this Sunday 22 June at the Paddington RSL.

SGLC will provide live soundtracks to films dealing with homosexuality from the 1930s to the 1960s. The show will be confronting, while providing education on early gay issues during the 20th century.

The co-conspirators for this very special one-off are Jay Katz and Miss Death from FBI’s Naked City. Audience members can expect some surprises in the soundtracks, which will cover songs from jazz standards to pop, some traditional tunes to Australian art music.

The world premiere of Paul Castle’s The Angel will raise the tone of the evening, accompanied by avant-garde film from the 1930s.

In the words of the immortal Miss Death, If you want to find out where mainstream society got its notions of homosexuality, you should see this show. While Jay Katz and Miss Death have screened films such as these via the Mu-Meson Archives before, their audience was predominantly heterosexual.

Rehearsing Tainted Love has been a bit of a rollercoaster for the Choir, music director Sarah Penicka says.

A lot of the material is very confronting. It’s a fascinating look at how the media shaped the public perceptions of homosexuality, from which we’re still reeling today.

Tainted Love is a fearless exploration of prejudice. We encourage you to step back in time with us for an afternoon -“ you may well end up questioning whether we’ve come far forward enough.

Tainted Love can be seen on Sunday 22 June, 4pm, at the Paddington RSL, 220-232 Oxford St, Paddington. Tickets: $33/$22, available from Moshtix or at the door.