by Sandy Rapp
Review by Jack Nichols
(originally posted at GayToday.com, used with permission)
With a sixties kind of style.
Salt and pepper hair, and a
Vest and bluejean smile
These lyrics are from her new CD, Flag and the Rainbow , an album that evokes the spirit of an era that all fundamentalist religious loonies and Republican zealots despise. The conservatives of today continue to damn that period as a time when ordinary Americans questioned unbridled militarism, corporate malfeasance and sexual dogmas. GOP zealots hated the 1960s counterculture spirit because it eventually succeeded in unseating their creepy Republican hero, an unethical president who, to no avail, had insisted that he wasn't a crook.
This cyclical spirit of the 1960s lives in Sandy Rapp's songs. It is certainly the spirit of the Stonewall. This time around, no doubt, its rebirth has been proving a more painful process, but the piercing cries of the present - heard from coast to coast -will yet grow up, evolving into anthems such as Sandy Rapp herself has composed. They'll have their own militancy, grounded in a desire for peace, locked in a struggle against the fascist-corporate powers that be.
Sandy's performances have taken her to the National Women's Music Festival, the Gulf Coast Womym's Festival, and to National NOW rallies in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Seneca Falls. She has appeared at Atlanta's Existentialist Center, Manhattan's People's Voice, the Gay Veterans' Memorial Dedication in Palm Springs, California, and the Gay Millennium March on Washington. Her books and CDs are available at Amazon.com and through SandyRapp@aol.com Her website can be accessed at http://members.aol.com/SandyRapp/index.htm
Click here to return to Reviews Archives
