Johnny Gentle before politics — the Velvety Vocalists Guild and "Live Silence"

texture · background, ~turn of the millennium (late B.S. solar time)

• When: background beat, ~two decades before O.N.A.N.; recalled/parodied at the 8 Nov YDAU I.-Day screening
• What: Before politics, Johnny Gentle (né Joyner) was a lounge singer, teen idol, and B-movie fixture known as the "Cleanest Man in Entertainment," a Howard-Hughes-grade germophobe. As head of the Velvety Vocalists Guild he enforced "Live Silence," a seven-month performative strike — the Frankies and Tonies lip-synching to utter silence until the deprived casino audiences "became a mob" (n149) — that brought Management, and GE/RCA, to heel. It is the template for his later politics: a showman's grip on a mass audience's need. See the Johnny Gentle character material.