RC 341: How To Survive A Plague Part 1: It Couldn't Happen Here from Radio Clash Podcast: - London-based global music podcast feat. covers, mashups, remixes, and bootlegs since 2004.

February is LGBTQ* History month in the UK, and with the recent TV series ‘It’s A Sin’ it seemed time to post this musical podcast series about the last pandemic, the HIV/AIDS ‘plague’. I started this last April during the first lockdown as I could see parallels between what I lived through in the ’80s and ’90s and what is happening now, with some major exceptions.

And no, it is not all doom and gloom – I am looking for positive lessons in how to survive this pandemic and what is to come, and is as much a celebration of the community and those that survived as a memorial to those we lost. So there is music from that era that talked about AIDS or soundtracked films, documentaries and the fight back to get the world to pay attention interspersed with spoken word clips and interviews with those who lived through that period, and what they learned.

This is possibly the most researched podcast I have ever done. I watched a lot of documentaries, read articles and watched TV series and films – and I’ve still not finished it all for part two!

A short list of included clips or research for this episode:

The Normal Heart (1985, TV Movie 2014)
AIDS Monolith TV advert (1987)
Tongues Untied (1989) ‘mythography’ by Marlon Riggs
Rent musical (1993, film 2005)
Blue by Derek Jarman (1993)
Zero Patience (1993)
Life Before the Lifeboat documentary (2009)
How To Survive A Plague documentary (2012)
It’s A Sin (2021 TV series)

Act Up! Fight Back! Fight AIDS! Fight the Plague! (148Mb, 1:40)

Gamma Ray – It’s A Sin
Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes – Don’t Leave Me This Way (A Tom Moulton Mix)
Derek Jarman – Mad Vincent
Patrick Cowley – I Feel Love
Bronski Beat Featuring Marc Almond – I Feel Love Medley (Source Mix)
Coil – Tainted Love
Pet Shop Boys – It Couldn’t Happen Here
Book of Love – Pretty Boys And Pretty Girls (Single Version)
Robbie Williams – There Are Bad Times Just Around The Corner
Michael Callen – Scheherazade (Miss HIV)
Marlon Riggs – The Wages of Silence
Sugar – The Slim
Ivy – Digging Your Scene
Marlon Riggs – Timebomb
Dead Prez, Jorge Ben Jor, Talib Kweli, Bilal & Postive Force – Shuffering & Shmiling
Gilles Chiasson, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Jesse L. Martin, Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal – Will I?