The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the 70s in San Francisco Information

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The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the 70s in San Francisco

A journey back through the music, madness, and unparalleled freedom of an era of change--the '70s--as told through the life of a pied piper singing in a dazzling falsetto, wearing glittering sequins, and leading the young people of the nation to San Francisco.

Annotation:
Though he was best known as a disco artist, the singer Sylvester, who died of AIDS in 1988, got his first introduction to performing in the late 1960s as one of a group of young gay black Los Angeles teenagers called the Disquotays, later graduating up to become a member of the outrageous San Francisco performance art troupe the Cockettes. Joshua Gamson's biography of one of the disco era's most memorable figures conjures the heady atmosphere of pre-AIDS 1970s San Francisco, with its bathhouses, non-stop partying, and hedonistic sexual adventures, and Sylvester's starring role in the constantly evolving drama.

Praise

Publishers Weekly
"Gamson's...extensively researched volume is a vibrant and moving oral biography....Seventeen years after his death, this gay icon gets the celebratory biography he deserves." 01/10/2005

Kirkus
"Worshipful...engaging and sometimes surprisingly insightful." 01/01/2005

Entertainment Weekly
"Gamson writes about the singer's offbeat life in San Francisco with the excitement of an archaeologist screaming 'Eureka!' at every turn; his prose is playful and furious." 03/04/2005

Mojo
"Gamson...writes crisp, smart prose and has done a great job of bringing to life someone who was never really a major star....Still, by the time you've seen our fabulous hero waste away to nothing, you'll feel something important has been lost." 09/30/2005