This,
and then, this.
The sinking of the Titanic.
I guess it helped to… be there.
Same here; I’ve been a Titanic buff since the 7th Grade, where our school library had a copy of Walter Lord’s A Night To Remember.
I’ve of course heard of the actual meaning of the term since then, but to me, the first/foremost recall is the Titanic’s band.
The Ramdy Shilts book (and nothing else).
First thing that came to mind was “And the band played on as the helicopters whirred.
Drunk on the lawn in a nuclear dawn, my senses finally blurred.”
Apparently that’s the beginning of “The Drinking Song” by Moxy Fruvous.
The Randy Shilts book is the second thing I think of, and if you’d asked me back in the 80s or 90s, closer to the time the book came out, it’d probably be the first thing.
In college, I did a lot of AIDS activism. I remember when the “=” sign on people cars wasn’t just a generic gay rights thing, but part of the statement “Silence = Death.” I came out as bisexual when I was 21, and went to the GLB (that’s as far as the letters went then) group on campus, so I had a lot of gay male friends. I also had a lesbian friend who was HIV+ and had sex with one boy in high school in 1981. They were both virgins, but the AIDS counselor insisted he must have lied to her, and that was where she got AIDS, in spite of the fact that her last girlfriend was already dead from AIDS. The counselor said she (the girlfriend, that is) must have gotten it from a man as well, and it was just a coincidence that both had it. This was like, 1989. The bad ol’ days.
Love and Rockets cover of “Ball of Confusion”. (One of my favorite bands during college.)
My first thought as well. If I start to muse on why Shilts chose that particular title, an image of the Titanic would come to mind.
Titanic.
Ball of Confusion.
In my mind I hear the song and picture a ship sinking - not really the scene from the movie but my own vision of it. However *now *I have Ball of Confusion stuck in my head, so thanks all for that :dubious:
Another “vote” for Ball of Confusion. I’m surprised it wasn’t an option in the poll.
This.
The Randy Shilts book.
Thank you. That’s just the thing that first came to my mind, but I couldn’t figure out where it was from. The next thing that came to mind was the Randy Shilts book.
The Randy Shilts book, though I wasn’t really near the LGBT community. Honestly, I think It was more a shared outrage over the Neocons and the Reagan Revolution.
Ball of Confusion.
My first reaction, “Ball of Confusion”. I heard the original Temptations song for the first time ever last week, I’d always thought it was just Love and Rockets. (don’t hit me, I was too young for the original).
Me too. Never heard of any of the other choices that have been mentioned here.