Back
to May 2013 Show
Michael
Callen AIDS Work
(First
presented as a QMH Blog entry, 4/11/13)
Today,
April 11, is the anniversary of the birth of Michael Callen (April
11, 1955 - December 27, 1993)
and I am usually shouting from the rooftops about his exquisite voice
and the profound talent he
shared with us in the songs he wrote and recorded. I will leave that
for my May radio show, a very
special edition, a Michael Callen Tribute.
I
love that this entire booklet can be read on the website for Richard
Berkowitz.
There is also
a two-part interview video on Youtube with Callen and Berkowitz:
There
is much more that you can find by searching Youtube and the internet.
He
was also a frequent guest on television talk shows during those early
years of the AIDS epidemic, and wrote numerous articles. Many of those
articles by him, and others, were compiled in 1988 in the book "Surviving
and Thriving with AIDS," and in 1990 when his own book, "Surviving
AIDS" appeared. He also edited Volume 2.
Thanks to the Pacifica Archives, a 68-minute interview with Michael
Callen,
done by David Rothenberg in 1988, can be streamed in entirety at
this link,
and I much recommend it.
Also
in 1988 Michael's talk before the National Conference on AIDS was
captured and released
on a cassette tape. That 62-minute talk can
be heard here. Both of these interviews and talks
provide an amazing insight into the thinking about AIDS in the late
1980's.
Below,
AMFAR poster including Michael
And,
well, you knew I could not do an entire blog entry without music....if
you listen to the entire
1988 Conference tape, you can hear Michael near the end introduce
the song "Healing Power of Love,"
although the song is not actually included on the recording. I've
set up a two-minute excerpt with a
short section from the beginning of the talk, and then the song intro,
so you
can hear it here.
And then listen to this live video from 1989 of Michael singing the
song. A special treat of the
performance is to see co-writer Marsha Malamet at the piano.
