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Living With AIDS:MichaeI Callen
on Politics, AIDS and Music as Warfare
He's talented and frustrated. He's
compassionate and filled with life. He's
angry and a bit sarcastic. He's a small town
boy who's on his way to big city success.
Michael Callen, singer/songwriter who has
been building a musical career for himself
while fighting a six-year battle with AIDS, is
a complex young man.
At 32, and originally from Rising Sun,
Indiana, Callen's boyish face radiates health,
giving no indication of what may be going on
inside his body. Not only does he appear
healthy, he also maintains a schedule that
would exhaust most healthy people. In
addition to his musical endeavors, Michael is
one of New York's most outspoken AIDS
activists. Over the years he has made
speeches, appeared on television, testified
before Congressional delegations, and
'performed at fundraisers, all in an effort to
educate the general public about AIDS, and
to preserve the rights of the afflicted.
Callen is a bafflement to his doctors.
When illness first struck, he was so ill no one
was sure how long he would survive - if at
all. Yet he continues to live and flourish,
both in his personal and professional lives.
"I attribute my long term survival in part to
having studiously avoided federally designed
treatment programs," he says. "And to the
love of a good man." Michael refused to
touch AZT, and instead uses alternative
therapies such as AL721 and aerosol
pentamidine. He has no faith in the FDA's
response to the disease.
In the kitchen of his New Yoik City
apartment, I am introduced to Callen's lover,
Richard Dwoiken. Each man's eyes light up
as they look at each other. It is the night of
June 14, and they tell me that it is their sixth
anniversary.
"I'm a former San Francisco boy," says
Dworkin. "A number of years ago I was the
drummer for a Haight Street band called
Buena Vista. We were a group of white boys
trying to be LaBelle."
Dworkin and Callen met in 1982, shortly
after Michael's diagnosis. The singer had
placed an ad in the New York Native seeking
musicians for a rock band. One of the people
who responded was Richard Dworkin, and
the two have been together ever since. "I got
a drummer, a band and a lover out of that one
ad - not bad," Callen says. The band was
called Lowlife, and consisted of Michael and
Richard, and two lesbians, bassist Pam
Brandt and guitarist Janet Cleary. They
played the Eastern club circuit, from New
Yoik to Florida, for three years. Dworkin is
now the drummer on Michael's debut LP,
Purple Heart. .
Purple Heart covers a wide range of
subjects and musical styles. Side A, or the
top side, as Callen calls it, is a diverse
mixture of pop/rock, new wave and ballads.
Side B, or the bottom side, consists entirely
of Callen accompanying himself on piano,
performing cabaret style ballads.
Although touted as an AIDS album,
Callen is quick to point out that only a few
songs are about the epidemic.
"The album is a celebration of being gay,"
he says. "AIDS is part of the album, as it is
part of our lives, but not exclusively. I
wanted to acknowledge the epidemic without
doing an 'AIDS album'. Although AIDS is
our most pressing issue at the present, there
are still many other aspects of our lives that I
wanted to deal with."
"My music is also meant to turn
heterosexuals queer. Hearing Purple Heart
should make the listener turn homo," he adds
with a chuckle.
"It is a source of frustration for me that
gays do not support gay men's music in the
same way as lesbians support women's
music," Callen says. "It takes a lot of hard
work and money to produce an album, and it
is aggravating when people don't support if
Many critics do not make allowances for low
budgets. They expect big productions, and
often judge an album by its budget rather
than its content."
Seeing Purple Heart do well is especially
important to Callen in the light of his illness.
When he began work on the album in early
1987, he was feeling especially vulnerable.
'Td just gotten over a bout of pneumonia, and
I was scared. I was thinking if I died
tomorrow, I'd leave behind a pile of AIDS
articles and speeches I'd written, but no
record of my music, which is for me -
because it reaches people emotionally - just
as important as my political work."
While putting the album together, Callen
also worked on launching the Community
Research Initiative, an innovative project that
puts promising AIDS drugs into the hands of
AIDS doctors in private practice and their
patients for scientific testing. He also edited
Surviving and Thriving with AIDS: Hints
for the Newly Diagnosed, a major source of
information for people with AIDS.
Now that his album has been released,
Callen has begun a new project. He has
joined the Flirtations, a gay a capella singing
group that blends doo-wop, jazz, rock and old
standards with original material. The group
was co-founded by Elliott Pilshaw, another
active force in gay men's music.
The Flirtations are entertainers with a
message. They are also very funny. So far
they have performed at numerous AIDS
benefits, in addition to numerous street
performances.
"They say New Yorkers are a jaded lot,"
says Callen. "But the sight of six men
harmonizing on the street seems to jar them
out of their shells. We have touched all kinds
of people on the streets of New York We
have seen cold people gradually warm up to
us and beam."
"Sometimes I feel guilty making music
during wartime," says Callen, referring to the
AIDS epidemic. "But music is a political act.
It makes people smile and relax and think.
And it helps - temporarily - to put the war
aside."
Michael Callen
Michael Callen's Purple Heart is available
on LP or cassette by sending $10 (this
includes postage and handling) from
Significant Other Records, Post Office Box
1545, Canal Street Station, New York City,
NY 10013.
This article originally appeared in The San
Frandsco Sentinel dn Jiity 22,1988, and is
reprinted in Southern Voice with
permission.
- David Nahmod
Searching for
Alternatives
Gregg Allison doesn’t like flying to New
York, but in his position as founder of the
non-profit corporation Atlanta Alternatives,
a Buyer's Club (Atl/Alt), he has gone there
four times in the last six months, as well as to
San Francisco twice. As founder of Atl/Alt,
he is actively involved in helping to obtain
access to unapproved drugs and alternative
therapies for PWAs and PWARCs who need
the hope that these drugs represent By
creating an organization that offers these
alternatives and at the same time makes them
more affordable, he is helping other PWAs
and PWARCs take charge of their lives and
their future. Atl/Alt and an affiliated non
profit group called Atlanta PWA Health
Group (AP WAHG), have as their common
goal communicating to all people with HTV
infection that AIDS is not a death sentence,
that creativity and intelligence and active
pursuit of health alternatives can make a
significant difference in whether the infection
progresses to ARC or full-blown AIDS.
Allison became interested in founding a
buyer's club in November of 1987, when a
friend of his was dying of AIDS and was
desperate for hope in the face of his
worsening health. The friend died in
February of this year, too far into his illness
for any drugs or alternative therapies to help.
But Allison committed himself then to wotk
to make alternative drugs and therapies
available to PWAs before their conditions
have deteriorated so far as to make them
useless.
Important in APWAHG's mission is the
idea of alternative therapies and drugs going
hand in hand with changes in lifestyle that
work toward a goal of
natural healthfulness.
This includes things
like a good diet,
exercise, vitamins and
herbal medications,
safe sex, and
decreased use of
substances like
alcohol, tobacco and
caffeine, to name a
few. The people
Allison has met
through buyer’s clubs
have taught him a lot
about the ability to
alter your health by changing your attitude.
"There are a lot of people in buyer's clubs
who are actively working to make themselves
better.... pushing their doctors.... taking
charge of their illness." He believes all gay
men should anonymously determine their
HIV status and then, if positive, begin
treatments that involve lipids and various
other alternative therapies to forestall, perhaps
permanently, the decline into a full-blown
case of AIDS.
With the recent change in FDA policy,
which permits individuals to import any drugs
they choose for their own personal use,
Allison foresees an increase in the popularity
of buyer's clubs. "Now the only thing
preventing people from getting the drugs they
need is the cost That's where Atlanta
Alternatives comes in."
Services that
Allison hopes
APWAHG will also be
able to offer include a
meeting space where
well-known people in
the alternative
therapies area, such as
Louise Hay and Tom
O'Connor, could come
to speak to and
empower PWAs and
PWARCs around the
issues of taking charge
of their own health and
lives. Atl/Alt also has
access to certain alternative medical
treatments - Georgia Home Therapeutics has
donated to the organization four machines that
are used to administer aerosol pentamidine, a
treatment that has been found very effective in
preventing the onset of pneumocystis
pneumonia. Atl/Alt hopes to be able to
reduce the expense of this alternative therapy
to its members.
But the desperate need of the organization,
right now, is money. Allison, who has been
unemployed since his diagnosis with ARC in
June of 1987, cannot continue to pay for trips
to New York and San Francisco out of his
own pocket and he is reluctant to pass on
these costs to his buyers, whose needs around
money were one of his prime motivating
reasons in starting the organization. Atl/Alt
even has available office space, but no money
to hook up the telephone, rendering the office
useless. To help relieve the money crisis,
Atl/Alt has written a grant to the National
March on Washington for some of the excess
funds left over from last October, and is
looking for other grants to write. Atl/Alt is
also planning to begin a "scholarship"
program, where people donate money for the
support of an indigent PWA's or PWARC's
drug bill. Community support around this
issue is particularly important to Allison. "I
believe that we are providing the community
an important service, but we need community
support. I really wish there had been
something like this there for me when I found
out [about my condition]."
For many people, alternative therapies
have made the difference between life and
death, and an organization advocating and
simplifying access to such alternatives would
clearly be a valuable addition to Atlanta's
PWA services network. For information
about Atl/Alt or APWAHG, either to use their
services or to contribute to them financially,
call 233-0083.
•A1 Cotton
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