Categories
Joe Gage music in gay porno pornoclips Richard Locke

Locke-apalooza! (GAGE edition)

Kansas City Trucking Co. (1976) intro – yes, the first 30+ seconds the screen is black and you vaguely hear, a radio? And soon enuf, the haunting them by Al Steinman – til this day still gets me excited!

El Paso Wrecking Corp. (1977) – again, black screen for first 1/2 minute or so – and this is the FULL intro, usually not seen on most VHS and DVD versions. What can you say, Fred Halsted & Richard Locke! and they never get it on – who does that (or doesn’t do that?) in a gayporno? Joe Gage, of course.

L. A. Tool & Die (1979) – for this trailer, the music is (but in the film, don’t recall if it plays, but otherwise, it’s Music by Al Steinman, Harmonica solos by Chuck Thatcher. ) from Isaac Hayes – Run Faye Run – from the Three Tough Guys soundtrack.

L. A. Tool & Die (1979) “I think you’re in the wrong place, buddy” Oh Richard! my fave scene with Locke – I just love the quotes, like: “And if there’s anything I like better than sucking cock, it’s kicking ass!” or during the fight, when he calls the homophobe “porkshop” – and before JohnnyLlama asks, I don’t (yet) know who Richard’s bearded friend is in the men’s room, or if he appears in any sex scene (would have to be group, otherwise I’d have noticed, or would I?)

Heatstroke (1982) “It’s 7.a.m., it’s 112 in the shade, and the temperature is rising.” – loves this trailer, but, if your kinda ladyphobic like me, be forewarned, there’s a good amount of Suzanne Tyson’s kinda nekkid body is this clip – and also, of course, Man Parrish‘s HeatstrokeTHE porno movie soundtrack song!

Heatstroke (1982) – Locke plays it straight!!! well…. first he offers Clay a beer, chats him up about Locke’s former / Russell’s current, girlfriend, then talks Clay into showing what his ex-girlfriend’s been getting, then, well, why not a handjob? then……

18 replies on “Locke-apalooza! (GAGE edition)”

I’ll try to keep this short (ha!) for me anyway. Re: LA Tool & Die, I’m not sure who Hank’s friend at the bar was either, and as you said he may have appeared as a headless dick or ass in one of the group scenes as a ‘Gage Man’ but I don’t know that. I do know five specific stolen songs that play, four of them with timestamps based on my copy of the film:

* Isaac Hayes, “Run Fay Run” [5:48 to 8:08] (after Michael Kearns gets Derrick Stanton off and everybody else in the room cums on him)
* Easy Going, “Baby I Love You” [8:48 to 12:15 and again from 14:09 to 16:16] (this is the disco song that plays inside the bar)
* Buddy Holly, “True Love Ways” [12:16 to 14:08] (when Hank goes outside and talks to Wylie in his van)
* Tommy Overstreet, “Fadin’ In, Fadin’ Out” [25:22 to 26:22] (refers to the signal strength of a faraway AM radio station, just before the Paul Barresi scene fucking the woman in the outhouse when somebody jacks off onto the graffiti wall of text)

Also when I had that yt channel I posted a few clips from this movie, and on one of them they dinged me with a copyright claim for a Doobie Brothers song called Steamer Lane Breakdown, but I don’t know when it plays. There’s bound to be more but these are the five I know.

I know you saw my soundcloud clip for this move because you left a comment, and I reviewed all three of the working man’s trilogy movies on reddit in 2021 so I won’t bother with any links this time. Suffice it to say that those three films are a brilliant representation of gay life in the 70s (or a porn ideal of it) and shoud be required viewing for anyone who says they dig vintage films.

Excellent post, c’est magnifique!

The closing credits of L.A. Tool say “at the bar” in El Paso, and credit Will Seagers as Wylie and a Joe Walsh as Barry. So I’d guess the bearded guy who says ‘now Hayyyynnnnk” was Joe, and highly unlikely it was the singer of the same name who was in the Eagles.

Doobie Brothers song called Steamer Lane Breakdown – it’s during the “van orgy” scene, “Oceanside,” – when Locke takes a rest on his way to find Will Seagers (about 52 minute mark, if that helps)

Cool, I’ll add that to my spreadsheet. Thanks! Like I said for sure there’s more stolen music in there (not to mention KCTC and EPWC), I just picked off the low hanging fruit.

I notice the music artists was lackadaisical about their music being used in porn films. For instance, in Grease Monkeys (1978), the opening song is The Pointer Sisters, “Happiness,” is used in the opening scene with Nick Rodgers, Lee Marlin, Kip Noll walking down LA. Grease Monkeys had a opening, yet the Pointer Sisters said nothing about their music being used in the film. Energy was released in 1978 as well & “Happiness” is one of their singles from the album.

This continued in the early 1980’s until about the Falcon Studios was established & they either used stock music or hired someone to write original music.

Some more of the stolen music heard in Grease Monkeys (though probably not all of it): Frankenstein by Edgar Winter Group; One More Minute by Saint Tropez; and I’m In Love With My Car by Queen, when Nick Rodgers looks like he’s having sex with himself (nice touch).

I could leave a longer comment but trying to keep it brief, two main reasons why gay films got away with this are as follows. One, before VCRs took off in popularity it was a lot harder to actually own porn movies, so much of it was seen in bookstore booths or cinemas. So studios were granted more leeway in terms of what music they used.

Second, specifically gay films had an advantage, as it was assumed it would be too embarrassing to go into a court, attach your name to a complaint and say that you actually watched a gay porn movie. This could be why it didn’t happen as often, or as long, in straight films as it did with the gay side.

A few studios were still doing it in the mid and even late 80s but by then VCRs had taken over so much that music companies started threatening to sue for copyright infringement, and that pretty much put an end to the practice. Al Parker, William Higgins and especially Steve Scott used a lot of popular music up until they couldn’t anymore.

Fascinating discussion about soundtracks and copyright. I’m not kidding. You guys know so much about the music in gay porn, something I’ve rarely paid much attention to myself. I love music, but I’m much more visually-oriented. Back when I was trying (and failing) to build a career in digital art, I took a class on interactive media and there was a section on copyright which was much more interesting that I would have guessed.

BJ, I appreciate the mention, and I do want to know about Hank’s bearded buddy, but as we can’t prove he was a sexual performer, my interest isn’t as burning as it would be. That said, if anyone notices a sex scene where he appears (I also think we’d have noticed if he was anything more than a dick) in ANY Gage film as a “Gage man” yes, God yes, let us know!

You know, as you guys were discussing, or more accurately, as I was reading your discussion and this post, I was thinking about how my introduction to Joe Gage was on VHS. My tapes are long gone, but I’m pretty sure they were all HIS Video releases. So, I am realizing for perhaps the first time (maybe not) that I may have never seen a complete, full length, unedited version of these films which I love so much and were so influential to me! Aaargh! Damn you HIS Video!

I guess I never worried about it too much because even my edited versions were just so incredible. Now that I think about though. I really want to see the complete versions. I’ll have to see what I have in the way of digital copies and try to figure out what version they are. It involves plugging in an outside drive, where most of the videos are stored, so it’s not as fun as it used to be when everything was on the hard drive. You guys have inspired me though! YOU PORKSHOPS! Wait, did he say porkshop? Or porkchop?

I love how he takes off his shirt as he’s fighting the guy. So sexy badass, that Richard Locke!

These clips are great BJ. I love Joe Gage, I love this post!

I thought I was the only guy in the world who gave a damn about the music in gay porn, for years. Then when I first stumbled on BJ’s version 1.0 of this blog in the 00s, and he mentioned some of the songs heard, well between that and the awesome pics and clips he has always shared, that’s what has kept me coming back for more.

From what I understand original videotape copies of the films that say ‘Gagetape’ on the package are quite rare now, and HIS and maybe other companies chopped the films up when they re-released them. BJ knows more about that part though.

funny you mention GAGETAPE – as I think that was pretty much packaging, as it was on the packaging that it was distributed by VCA – and when you load the tape, it has that green graph / HIS VIDEO as the announcer says “the following is an HIS feature presentation” – which is why the chopped up later versions get me so angry – they had the full version! they sold and distributed it!

so whatever the explanation – a friend of mine corresponded years back and got the “FBI raided us, and destroyed much of what we had on site” version – who knows – but it lead to me buying and hoarding,


Man, I’m going to have fun trying to figure out if I have cut or uncut editions. Thank you for your notes.

Are you saying the DVD of the trilogy released by Joe Gage Classic Release might be abridged or re-cut in some form?

Some more soundtrack related notes to add:

The final scene in “L.A.” (the finale between Locke and Seagers) has my favorite composition in the trilogy, a full band + strings ballad with a vocal solo. I was hoping this was Al Steinman’s work, because it makes a nice counter point to the main theme song, both featuring a full band and strings section. In reality, it’s from an Italian prog-rock record, called “Jenny e la Bambola” by Alunni del Sole, 1974: https://youtu.be/99nyan1ryUM?t=1320

In listening to the album, the theme piece that makes up the Locke & Seagers scene, is interspersed through out the whole album, reaching a climax at about 22 minutes in. (The youtube link is queued to start there.)

Hearing the theme by itself, I can’t help but daydream about Locke and Seagers… they are like poetry to me.

Continuing on the Lockepalooza theme, someone posted the movie version of Heatstroke by Man Parrish, which is different from the remix and album versions featured elsewhere (no backup vocals): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xECHBaw17ow

in regards to film lengths – I can tell you that
– KANSAS CITY – should be about 66 minutes; most version are 63 ish – missing the piss scene
– EL PASO – should be about 90 minutes – most version are anywhere from 65 to 75 minutes – most commonly the opening sequence is chopped up (shorter); the “The Motorcyclist and the Harvard Man” scene is choped up (shorter, missing the piss); “Fred Halsted, the BOY and His Dad” scene often completely missing (alleged incest, but “Dad” merely watches “Son” with Fred); and the orgy finale can often be 5-10 minutes shorter than the original
– L A TOOL – should be about 83 minutes – I don’t know of any shorter versions / missing stuff, from what I’ve seen

thanks for the HEATSTROKE – I thought I had this, but this seems to be a minute longer than any version I’ve got! yeah!

oh – trivia on the LOCKE / SEAGERS scene – they took several days to shoot – Gage wanted a good, romantic scene, different from the rest of the film and what he usually portrays –

Thanks for the running lengths on the tapes! That’ll make it easier.

Wow, Gage certainly did get a stand out performance!! I wonder if it was always going to end with the horse saddle.

Since there’s already so much about the music in the Gage trilogy on this post, I want to leave a link to an extended deep dive into the topic, from the subreddit where I’ve been leaving those reviews (hat tip to boy howdy as he is known above here):

https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageGayVids/comments/13k6bfj/playlist_of_unknown_music_from_joe_gages_working/

The audio clips that accompany the post are many of the unknown songs or compositions, that in most (if not all) cases even shazam couldn’t identify. Then there’s a large comment below with a lot of the known music, along with time stamps.

Did I tell you I decided to just put my master list of all the music I ever heard in porn out there for anybody to dig through and possibly add to? I decided to look at it more as open source than anything unique to me, besides there are big gaps and probably some mistakes baked into it at some parts. I was saving it all as a spreadsheet but recently turned it into one long text doc, which is MUCH better. And it’s always expanding, like Tonto’s head band from the L.A. Plays Itself second half. Anyway that list is spread out over three posts at the sub, part 1 through part 3 if you ever wanted to completely nerd out over it. You fellow porn nerd you ;)

Another hot take about the soundtrack, as mentioned in this post… I don’t think any Chuck Thatcher harmonica solos appear in LA.

As far as I can tell, all the harmonica solos in LA are from the soundtrack to A Day of Anger, by Riz Ortolani.

I know Chuck’s name appears in the credits, but unless he’s the harmonica player in Ortolani’s orchestra, it’s likely not him.

Chuck’s name does not appear on Kansas, and there is an uncredited harmonica solo in that one, during the post-cum close up of Boyd’s cock after he jacks it looking at a magazine in the truck, sitting next to Locke.

Such unending intrigue with these entries!

Leave a Reply to zephyr Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.