About QtP
What made you start this festival?
Love and a broken promise.
No really, what’s behind it?
It was just an idea I had at the end of 2006. I was probably bored at work and daydreaming. I go to a lot of gigs and festivals and used to interview a few bands for radio, so I’m quite comfortable going up to band members and having a chat if I like their stuff.
So, anyway I knew and knew of a few artists and bands who were, like me, gay with a passion for indie music and no connection whatsoever with this stereotype of Kylie & Madonna loving gays that populates TV and the media. They say nothing to me about my life (10 points going there for all the lyric spotters). I thought, why not invite along a couple of these people and put on a gig? But when I started thinking about it, I realised that they wouldn’t necessarily sit well together on the same bill. That’s why I decided to put on 3 gigs, go out and find some more musicians and make a mini-festival out of it.
Where did you find them?
Inevitably waiting for myspace pages to load eats up a lot of my life. I also asked around for recommendations. I was quite strict in listening without any bias: it has to be music first, sexuality irrelevant.
Come on, if it’s irrelevant, why put on these gigs? It smacks of a ghetto mentality.
Perhaps. I’m not going to run away from that criticism. But what I’d say is I’m not doing this for political ends. I’m doing it for the music and for fun. Yeah, if the music’s good who gives a fuck what the artist does in their bed. However you can’t escape the fact that music is such a cherished mirror to people’s emotional lives, that when an artist is gay and their music, style or attitude expresses something of your own feelings, a stronger and more powerful connection is made.I remember growing up and latching on to anything that spoke to the side of me that didn’t yet have a voice and it was a massive comfort. Thanks Cher. But seriously, Constant Craving as sung by k d lang would not have the same resonance if it were sung by, say Mariah Carey.
Even so, aren’t you running the risk of tarring your performers with the same pinko brush?
There’s nothing remotely samey about who’s playing, and they are happy to be part of this. I think all minority communities gather to promote their own, in the hope of finding their champions a wider audience and to push against false sterotypes. And we programme such a diverse range of performers from the glitchy, ants-in-your-pants dance of Dolby-Anol, via the strange cabaret of The Dirty Cakes to the reflective, personal worlds of our acoustic musicians.
Convince me in three words…
Bloody. Good. Fun