Page 33 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

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Jack Fritscher Chapter 1 15

CHAPTER 1

A MASTER’S THESIS
DRUMMER’S BIG BANG

Its Creation. Its Evolution.
Its Civil War. Its Culture War.
Its Origin Story.

A Popular Culture Magazine of Gay Gender Identity

Who Did What to Whom When Where and Sometimes Why
How the Leather Boys in the Band Played on

• Who Founded and Created Drummer? An Eyewitness
Narrative Timeline Featuring the Cast of Characters at
Drummer
• The Drummer Slave Auction, Saturday, April 10, 1976,
Publisher John Embry Arrested for the Crime of Slavery;
Val Martin, the First Mr. Drummer, Tells All
• How Los Angeles Drummer Became San Francisco
Drummer
• Blood, Fingerprints, and DNA: History Is the Internal
Evidence Printed in the Drummer Text
• Buyer’s Remorse and Seller’s Remorse; the Cloning of
Drummer
• Blood Feud: How the Second and Third Publishers of
Drummer, Anthony DeBlase and Martijn Bakker, Reviled
First Publisher John Embry Who Reviled Them Both;
The Contempt between John Embry and Larry Townsend

With its cast of writers, artists, and photographers, the mise en scene of
Drummer was important to gay identity because in its 214 issues over
twenty-four years, Drummer created the very post-Stonewall leather culture
it reported on. Drummer helped readers examine their boundaries, step into
the closeted heartland of their erotic identities, find the true north of their
homomasculine gender identities, and make their own new narratives.

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