There’ve been a lot of flagrantly gay singers in the history of pop music — Jobriath, Romanovsky and Phillips, Sir Elton John, Chris Tanner, Ryan Adams, etc. — but none have made as great an impact on me personally as Tom Wilson (who goes by Tom Wilson Weinberg these days).

There’ve been a lot of flagrantly gay singers in the history of pop music — Jobriath, Romanovsky and Phillips, Sir Elton John, Chris Tanner, Ryan Adams, etc. — but none have made as great an impact on me personally as Tom Wilson (who goes by Tom Wilson Weinberg these days).

Sometime around 1999 my painfully old friend (who I’ve also know for quite sometime) Doug Pressman, AKA The Record Grouch, first played me Tom’s second LP All-American Boy. Doug found it whilst digging in the dollar bin at the sorely missed Footlights Records in ye olde Manhattan. Doug has hundreds of thousands of LPs and obsessively brings hundreds more into his overburdened apartment each week. Record-wise, he is rarely stirred by anything. Did you find a “weird” vanity pressing at a Salvation Army? Well, Doug has already heard it and sold it and is not impressed. This dawg has kinda seen it all. Yet, it only took a casual listen to All-American Boy to inspire this curmudgeon to pick up his land-line. “Come over here now…I found something you have to hear.”

The first 15 seconds of “He Likes Me” typically elicits spit-takes even from humorless gay activists-types. All-American Boy makes The Frogs It’s Only Right and Natural sound like Buju Banton. The marriage of Tom’s seemingly put-on faggy Muppet voice and the 1970s pizza parlor show-tune accompaniment seem far too gay to be real. But unlike The Frogs, Tom and his magical gay universe are real. It’s easy to point and laugh when first hearing the lyrics “Turkey stuffin’ Egg McMuffin and ME!!!” BUT if you possess an attention span and a human heart, a few tracks into the LP you will be struck more by Tom’s vulnerability and sincerity than his silly-willy world of complete gayness. His songs will demand future listening and inspire a rare balance between “I can’t believe this is real” absurdity and actual emotional meaning.

Last week I had the honor of meeting and interviewing Tom on Tedward’s Viva Radio program, Me + You. In this era of postured banality polluting the quarry of contemporary music, Tom Wilson is truly a diamond in the rough.

Listen to some tracks from his original LPs:

“He Likes Me”
“Brief Encounter”
“1:00 A.M.”

Check out the interview, and buy both of his LPs while they last for $5 each from Tom himself at TomWilsonWeinberg.com.

-JEFFREY JENSEN

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