Contents
- 1 Career
- 2 Discography
- 3 See
also
- 4 External
links
Career
Robinson was the founding member of the Tom
Robinson Band (TRB), an overtly political band
with several classic hits in the 1970s, such as "2-4-6-8 Motorway",[1] "Power in the Darkness", "Up
against the wall"[2]and "Don't take no for an answer"[3]
He was an outspoken advocate of the gay movement in the 1970s and perhaps
his best known song is "Glad to be Gay"[4], originally written for a Pride rally in London in 1976,
and which reached No.18 in the UK Singles Chart as part of TRB's
"Don't Take No For An Answer" EP.
In the 1980s
he fronted and bankrolled Sector 27, a less political rock band
which released one album
- produced by Steve Lillywhite and left Robinson
virtually bankrupt.
He fled to Hamburg
to escape his creditors where he penned his 1983 hit "War Baby" and released his first solo album North
By Northwest. His return to the UK led to late-night
performances at the Edinburgh Fringe, some of which
later surfaced on the live album Midnight at the
Fringe. With his various bands and as a solo artist, he has
released a dozen studio albums plus a variety of singles
compilation albums, live CDs
and limited edition, fanclub only bootlegs
known as the Castaway Club series.
Since the late 1980s he has increasingly worked as a
broadcaster and DJ on BBC Radio. He has presented programmes
such as Home Truths, Pick
Of The Week and The Locker Room
- a long running series about men and masculinity - on BBC
Radio 4, and was awarded a Sony Academy Award in 1997 for "You've Got
To Hide Your Love Away" a radio documentary on gay music
produced by Matthew Linfoot. He has also worked on Radios
1, 2,
3,
5
Live and BBC
6 Music - where he currently presents his own new music show with
sessions and live music guests on Monday and Tuesday nights.
He has become an advocate for a wider sexuality than his
earlier portrayal as only a homosexual campaigner allowed - marrying a
woman and starting a family. The family newspapers found this
exceptionally amusing, with headlines such as "BRITAIN'S NO 1 GAY IN
LOVE WITH GIRL BIKER" (The Sunday People)
and "GLAD TO BE DAD" (The
Sun). Robinson maintains that he suffered abuse
from homosexual activists as a result. His last studio album Having
It Both Ways (1996) included a short hidden track at the end
of the record, sung a cappella to the tune of his earlier hit
"Glad To be Gay", in which he sings about having spent twenty one years
fighting for gay liberation, ending with the line "I'm not gonna
wear... a 'straight' jacket for you".
Robinson rarely performs live nowadays, apart from two annual
free concerts, known as Castaway Parties, for members of his mailing
list. These take place in South London and Belgium every
January. In the Belgian Castaway shows, he introduces many songs in Flemish.
The Castaway Parties invariably feature a wide variety of established
and unknown artists and groups who have included Show
Of Hands, Philip Jeays, Jan Allain, Jakko
Jakszyk, Stoney, Roddy
Frame, The Bewley Brothers and Paleday
alongside personal friends such as Lee Griffiths and T. V. Smith.
He is also an enthusiastic proponent of Apple
computers, which he has used extensively since the mid 1980s and in
1999/2000 was involved in celebrity seminar work for Apple to promote
their home video editing software iMovie.
His brother
is the television director and producer,
Matthew
Robinson.
He is currently Scheduled to play at the 30 year anniversary
of Rock Against Racism on July 19th
at the Hackney Empire
Discography
Singles
- "The Whitby Two-Step" (1975)
- "2-4-6-8 Motorway" (1977)
- "Don't Take No For An Answer" EP (1978)
- "Up Against The Wall" (1978)
- "Bully For You" (1979)
- "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again" (1979)
- "Not Ready" (1980)
- "Invitation" (1980)
- "Total Recall" (1981)
- "Now Martin's Gone" (1982)
- "War Baby" (1983)
- "Listen to the Radio (Atmospherics)" (1983)
- "Back in the Old Country" (1984)
- "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" (1984 - Steely Dan
cover)
- "Prison" (1985)
- "Nothing Like the Real Thing" (1986)
- "Still Loving You" (1986)
- "Feel So Good" (1987)
- "Spain" (1987)
- "Hard Cases" (1988)
- "Blood Brother" (1990)
- "Living In A Boom Time" (1992)
- "Hard" (1994)
- "Connecticut" (1996)
Albums
- Cafe Society (1975)
- Power In The Darkness (1978)
- TRB Two (1979) (produced by Todd
Rundgren)
- Sector 27 (1980)
- Tom Robinson Band (1981)
- North By Northwest (1982)
- Cabaret '79: Glad To Be Gay (1982)
- Hope and Glory (1984, later reissued as War
Baby: Hope and Glory)
- Still Loving You (1986)
- The Collection (1987)
- Last Tango: Midnight At The Fringe (1988)
- We Never Had It So Good (1990, with Jakko
Jakszyk)
- Winter of '89 (1992, bootlegged as Motorway:
Live)
- Living In A Boom Time (1992)
- Love Over Rage (1994)
- Having It Both Ways (1996)
- The Undiscovered Tom Robinson (1998)
- Home From Home (1999)
- Smelling Dogs (2001, spoken word album)
See also
External links
