RC 345: How To Survive A Plague Part 2: We Will Survive from Radio Clash Podcast: - London-based global music podcast feat. covers, mashups, remixes, and bootlegs since 2004.

Second part of How To Survive A Plague, and we cover the period 1989-2000 and beyond as the fight for drugs, money and action for the AIDS crisis comes to a crunch, and as Hollywood starts to pay attention (although no straight Oscar-baiting tragic gay tropes here – Peter’s Friends/Philadelphia *cough*).

It’s not all doom as the light on the horizon from the plague was combination therapy – which sadly came too late for some. And Act Up & the Lesbian Avengers and many other groups, actors, musicians and artists came to show that HIV was the unwanted guest at their loud and proud protest party. Fists in the air, die-ins, funerals as defiant protest even at the White House as security wrestles people with AIDS to the ground as they try and spread the ashes of their loved ones…Red Hot & Riot! FIGHT!

Defiant, angry, queer and very much here and in your face. They were not going down without a fight, and we should celebrate and remember them – as well as those who also bravely put their bodies on the firing line of medical research so that others could live. Like the many thousands of volunteers for the COVID virus trials last year they didn’t know what would happen but knew that something needed to be done. The plague needed to be fought.

And this part is a personal reaction to the last pandemic as I come into the picture on the scene in the mid 90’s, and what I witnessed and people I lost. Not really sure who will find this useful, it is a podcast I had to make to make sense of what I experienced in the last year and also in the 90’s and beyond.

Research for this episode and clips included from these films and documentaries (as well as those in Part 1):

The Normal Heart (1985, TV Movie 2014)
Tongues Untied (1989) ‘mythography’ by Marlon Riggs
Angels In America (play 1991-93, TV Movie 2003)
Jeffery, film (1995)
Blue by Derek Jarman (1993)
Life Before the Lifeboat documentary (2009)
We Were Here, documentary (2011)
How To Survive A Plague documentary (2012)

Hungry Ghosts and Unwelcome Guests in Plague Times (1:55, 160Mb)

Graveworm – It’s A Sin
Jimmy Somerville – Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)
Urbanized Feat. Silvano – Helpless (Extended Mix)
The Kinsey Sicks – AZT
MixMaster Mike, Lateef & The Gift Of Gab (Of Blackalicious) – Kalakuta Show
Michael Callen – How To Have Sex
Marlon Riggs & Essex Hemphill – Now We Think
Mary Gauthier – Goddamn HIV
Derek Jarman – The Darkness Comes in With the Tide
The Communards – For A Friend (Remix)
Bongwater – Kisses Sweeter Than Wine (Peel Session)
Laurie Anderson – Love Among The Sailors
Howard Ashman – Sheridan Square
Thomas Newman – Angels in America (Main Title)
My Morning Jacket, Merrill Garbus, Brittany Howard – Trouble Sleep Yanga Wake Am
Lights Camera Sundown – I Will Survive
Thomas Newman – Plasma Orgasmata
Thomas Newman – Delicate Particle Logic
Queen – The Show Must Go On
Pet Shop Boys – Postscript (I Believe In Ecstasy)