Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio

All the hoo-ha in the "hip" media this week about the 40th anniversary of Unknown Pleasures, the debut album by Joy Division released this week in 1979, has paid dividends, it seems - for the first time since its release, it looks like the album is headed for the Top Ten in the UK.

This news just makes me wonder... if everybody's coming out of the woodwork to tell the press about how "brilliant", "seminal", "influential", [insert hyperbole here] it was, why did nobody buy a copy first time around?! On its release, it failed to chart in the UK and on its re-release after the death of lead singer Ian Curtis in August 1980 only peaked at the not-very-impressive Number 71 slot. Its successor LP Closer [a copy of which is in my vinyl collection at Dolores Delargo Towers] did much better...

Whatever, it gives me a perfect excuse (if any were needed) to play two of my favourite Joy Division tracks:

Joy Division - Transmission

Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart

Oh, teenage angst - I remember it well. Where did those decades go? And where's my long black trench-coat?!

Unknown Pleasures on Wikipedia

Cocktails and laughter, but what comes after?

"The craving to be famous is like an insidious disease, no matter how well known you become it's never enough, it never satisfies."

"I've never let myself dwell on what other people think of me. You can never change their minds so why waste time trying?"

"These days people seem to want to show every little thing about themselves, where is the fun in that? There is nothing wrong with a little mystery, is there?"

"Death is the price you paid for being born."

And so, farewell, then Miss Gloria Vanderbilt, heiress, socialite, model, painter, author and flogger of expensive jeans to the fashionistas of '70s America...

There is only one song I can play, really:

Noel Coward - Poor Little Rich Girl

Poor little rich girl
You're a bewitched girl
Better take care
Laughing at danger
Virtue a stranger
Better beware!
The life you lead sets all your nerves a-jangle
You love affairs are in a hopeless tangle
Though you're a child, dear
Your life's a wild typhoon

In lives of leisure
The craze for pleasure
Steadily grows;
Cocktails and laughter
But what comes after?
Nobody knows!
You're weaving love into a mad jazz pattern
Ruled by Pantaloon
Poor little rich girl
Don't drop a stitch too soon



Facts about Gloria Vanderbilt:

• Young Gloria’s paternal aunt Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney successfully sued for custody of “the poor little rich girl” in 1934, in a trial that exposed her mother's lavish lifestyle and indiscretions, and sparked a "tabloid frenzy".
• She became a top fashion model at the age of fifteen.
• Truman Capote is said to have based the character of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s on her.
• She married four times - to Howard Hughes' press agent Pasquale di Cicco, conductor Leopold Stokowski, director Sidney Lumet, and to Wyatt Cooper (father of US television "face" and gay rights advocate Anderson Cooper).
• Her Amanda jeans ("they really hug your derrière”) were an overnight success, and her company was valued at over $100 million at it height; she saw relatively little of the money, however - she flogged the company and her name as a brand, and ended up taking a succession of "advisors" who had fleeced her during that boom time to court.

RIP, Gloria Laura Vanderbilt (20th February 1924 – 17th June 2019)

Without shirt, without trousers

Oh, pook.

The sodding alarm clock has gone off again! It's grey out there again. I haven't won the Lottery - again.

As I reach for the coffee machine, with bleary eyes and furry tongue, only one thing can save us...

...a "new" wannabee-diva discovery, of course! So put your hands together, laydeez'n'genlmen, for Miss Rika Zaraï...

Rika Zaraï - Sans chemise sans pantalon

Oo-er, missus...

Have a good week, dear reader.

Nothing like a good spanky

A casualty of the recent storms, this branch of beautiful Campanula medium ("Canterbury Bells") has thrived in a vase for over a week; the rest of the five-foot plant is mostly still in bud.

Still grey. Still grizzly. June's weather is proving to be a right bitch at the moment!

Never mind, eh? If we can't spend the day pottering in the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers, we have the joys of BBC Radio 2 to keep our spirits up. Being Sunday, their usual "playlist" of dull young things like Jess Glynne, Lewis Capaldi, Jack Savoretti and so on gives way to showtunes, nostalgia and mellowness - and here's something that couldn't get more mellow if it tried...

Spanky & Our Gang - Sunday Will Never Be The Same

Ah. Sunday.

A word from our sponsors...

Weekend. Sorted.

I just can't describe it, oh no no

Right! Had enough of this rain now. Where is that "summer" we've been expecting?

At least it's the cusp of the weekend, we have party celebrations to plan - and who better to lead them than the loveliest person we know with a penis in their name, Miss CeCe Peniston?

With a mash-up with the Human League, and a remix by Parralox, get yer dancing boots on and - Thank Disco It's Friday!

CeCe Peniston vs The Human League - Finally, Things are Made of Dreams! (Parralox Bootleg Remix V2)

Have a good one.

RIP, Grace Jones

No!

Not that one...



Britain's oldest person Grace Jones dies at age of 112