Friday, May 15, 2009

The Village People

Their music video was filmed aboard the USS Reasoner:



The song was a big hit in 1979, which is probably why the public affairs office cooperated with the record label and made a ship available to them for the staging of the video. Apparently the public affairs officers who approved the use of the Reasoner did not understand that the Village People were gay. But the Fleet did and the Reasoner was nicknamed "the USS Gay" (or worse) for years.

2 comments:

PhysioProf said...

Apparently the public affairs officers who approved the use of the Reasoner did not understand that the Village People were gay.Do you think that as they watched the video shoot they started to realize?

Jean said...

Actually, only one of the original members of the Village People was/is gay - the "Indian." The rest were and still are totally straight. They were "adopted" by the gay community, and became associated with that community. As band members dropped out because of age or simply wanting out of the insanity of being part of a popular music group, the new members were mostly gay.