MARK LAHOGUE is grappling with 1970s-era lesbians.

The Record Finder owner was left scratching his head after sifting through thousands of records and stumbling upon a clutch of “women’s music”.

The pile of LPs includes Living with lesbians (1975), Lavender Jane Loves Women (1973) and Lesbian concentrate: a lesbianthology of songs and poems (1977).

Despite running the labyrinthine Fremantle record shop for 29 years, his taxonomy skills failed him, so he ended up creating a “lesbian records” section.

“I thought, is this politically correct?

• Mark Lahogue with LPs from his “Lesbian Records” section. Photo by Matthew Dwyer

Simpler era

“But then, some of the records have lesbian in the title and some of the tracks are exclusively by lesbians, for lesbians, so I found it hard to categorise it any other way. I guess the albums and songs come from a simpler era.”

New York singer-songwriter Alix Dobson, who released Lavender Jane Loves Women in 1973, claims her album was the, “very first album by, for and about lesbians in the history of the world”.

“From then until now, I have focused on the lives, concerns and perspectives of women who love women,” she wrote on her website.

“Most commonly defined as ‘music by, for, & about women,’ the category of women’s music has been entertaining and enlightening a vast network of lesbians, our friends and supporters at concerts, festivals, conferences, gatherings and parties, on vinyl, tape, disc, and songbook since the early 1970s.”

Dobson began performing in the Greenwich Village coffeehouse in 1962 and three years later married Sam Hood who ran the Gaslight Cafe, the famous hangout where Bob Dylan cut his cloth.

Dobson came out as a lesbian in the early 1970s—unusual for a high-profile woman at the time—and has since become a role model for lesbian culture and community through her music.

In the 1980s, comedians David Letterman and Howard Stern poked fun at the lyrics on her song View from Gay Head, taken from the album Lavender Jane Loves Women.

Now 74, Dobson’s memoirs were published in 2009 and she is a member of the Old Lesbians Organizing for Change steering committee.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK