Gay Minstrels Seek Straight Audience

For the “alternative-music” duo Romanovsky and Phillips, which performed Sunday at Garden Grove for the newly formed Orange County Visibility League, breaking stereotypes is part of their job. Originally from San Francisco, this openly gay partnership has been dubbed “the gay Smothers Brothers” for their combination of topical songs and humor.

“I don’t feel our music is exclusive to gay people,” said Paul Phillips, the more flamboyant member of the team, who sings and plays piano occasionally. “At the concert we did in Pasadena (in February) there were quite a few non-gay people. They were the ones that wanted (most) to talk to us afterward.”

Ron Romanovsky, who sings, plays guitar and piano and writes most of the material, added: “We’re starting to get attention in the straight press now.”

On stage Sunday for an audience of about 400, the duo’s songs and commentary varied between outrageousness and expressions of pain and coping. Into the “outrageous” category fell such provocatively titled numbers as “The Sodomy Song.” That title was Romanovsky’s response to a recent Supreme Court ruling upholding sodomy laws; the duo performed it during six days of demonstrations in Washington in October.

Into the pain and coping category fell such songs as “The Woman Next Door” (about a battered wife) and “Living with AIDS.” Romanovsky said writing and performing a serious song about the impact of AIDS was probably the hardest thing he ever had to write. “(People have) been asking why didn’t we have a song about AIDS because we wrote about everything else. It took having a friend get (AIDS) to make me find the right way to talk about it.”

Phillips added, “I think as a result of AIDS, a lot more non-gay people are getting involved.”

“AIDS” and “Sodomy” were particularly appropriate this evening because the Visibility League that sponsored the concert was formed by a group of people from Orange County, who attended the October march on Washington for “The Names Project,” the making and displaying of cloth panels quilted with the names of people who have died from AIDS.

Sunday’s performance benefited the Orange County Names Project, which seeks to place panels commemorating county AIDS patients in the ongoing project. (A traveling exhibition is scheduled to stop in Los Angeles soon.)

The concert was the first public activity for the Orange County Visibility League, but it marks the fourth time Romanovsky and Phillips have played in the county.

“I love going to places where there’s a more conservative environment,” Phillips said, “because I like stirring people up, and it’s no fun to (always) play for people who are already in agreement with you. We’re stirring up gay and lesbian people too because we’re really radical compared to what they’re used to--especially in Orange County.”