Call me in Miami

You know you're getting old when...

...you find out that the DJ (at the legendary Sound Factory in NY), early member of the The House of Xtravaganza and seminal producer/remixer of the likes of Queen Madge, Prince, "Wibbler Whitney", Janet Jackson, MC Hammer, Paula Abdul, Cher, and even Pet Shop Boys is 70 years old!

By way of a tribute to one of the biggest contributors to the development and evolution of house, dance and pop music through the 80s, 90s and beyond, let's start with a clutch of his "vogue-y" numbers (the first two recorded under the pseudonym Ellis D)...

Ellis D (Junior Vasquez) - Got To Be A Drag (Free Your Mind) (feat Loleatta Holloway)

Ellis D (Junior Vasquez) - Just Like a Queen (Share the Throne Mix)

...and this, my fave:

Junior Vasquez - Get Your Hands Off My Man

...before we hit the one that was not only his greatest commercial success, but also sealed the final demise of his friendship and relationship with Our Glorious Leader:

Junior Vasquez ft Franklin Fuentes - If Madonna calls

Junior Vasquez (born Donald Gregory Mattern, 24th August 1949)

If you want what's forbidden, baby that's what I got

The Greek rustic fertility god and a protector of gardens, fruit plants, livestock and male genitals, Priapus is marked by his oversized, permanent erection, which gave rise to the medical term priapism. He became a popular figure in Roman erotic art and Latin literature... his sacrificial animal was the ass (but agricultural offerings such as fruit, flowers, vegetables and fish were also very common).

At the end of a lovely hot and sticky day (mainly in the garden), I think we should make an offering - and who better to deliver it than the much-missed Pete Burns?

Glam with Pete Burns - Sex Drive (Parralox Remix)

Indeed.

I got the boys to make the noise

The end of what has felt like the longest week of my life is in sight - and we have a three-day break to look forward to, including a visit by the Mother to Dolores Delargo Towers. It's predicted to be a hot one, too, so plenty of opportunity to give the extensive gardens some much-needed TLC after the neglect it's had, with the double-whammy of being disrupted by the presence of scaffolding and us being away. It's probably also the last real chance to get some rays on our skin...

I think we're in need of a celebration - and, in the hands of a "mash-up master", an unusual one. Thank - erm - Disco(?) It's Friday!

Kool & the Gang vs Quiet Riot - Bang Your Head (It's a Celebration)

Who'd have thought Heavy Metal could sound so jolly?

Have a good one, dear reader.

L'amours horizontales

As is to be expected after having been away from the grind for a fortnight, this bloody week is dragging. However, the forthcoming Bank Holiday weekend (which helpfully for once coincides with pay day) is predicted to be sunny and warm, so at least there's something to look forward to.

Meanwhile, let us once again wallow in the cavortings of impossibly glamorous people in exotic locations (in the case of the swinging lady in the accompanying video, the locations are mostly horizontal; tsk, tsk) - courtesy of the genius people over at Soft Tempo Lounge:

Soft Tempo Lounge - Kisses for Soledad

Ah, that's better.

[Music: Hammond Bossa by Silvano D'Auria; Film: She Killed in Ecstasy (1971)]

Twelve years before Stonewall...

I cannot tell you what it does to me to hear "pre-Stonewall". And even in our literature, even in the art, "pre-Stonewall", "post-Stonewall". I wrote three books pre-Stonewall and a dozen more post-Stonewall. There’s no demarcation. Gay history is centuries and centuries from the Romans to the Greeks to Oscar Wilde to all kinds of outrages. And those seem to be put back and "pre-Stonewall" is passive. "Post-Stonewall" is brave and dignified. I actually have heard things like that. I’ve talked, I’ve lectured and I’ve been invited all the way from Harvard to USC. And I talk about what it was like, what we had to survive.

Look, "pre-Stonewall" produced Alan Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Oscar Wilde, and I could go on. "Post-Stonewall" produced Bret Easton Ellis, who jumps out of the closet only now and then and then rushes back in, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, where we’re reduced to clowns for straight people. ...It embarrasses me, it embarrasses me very much because that’s what people expect a gay man to do, to be very precious, and that’s not what we are. A good solid queen I will protect forever, they are heroes. - author John Rechy, interviewed for LA Mag

A fascinating story emerged on the BBC website this morning - the unearthing of a set of photographs of what appears to be a "gay wedding" from 1957, a time when homosexuality was illegal on both sides of the Atlantic and persecution, bullying and discrimination were not merely rife, but state-sanctioned. Apparently, the photos languished in the archives of a photographic processing store in Philadelphia due to the refusal of a member of staff to process them - and when researchers came across their existence they embarked upon a quest to find any trace of the subjects of the photos (presumably with a view of reuniting them with the by-now-in-their-eighties couple) - visit the Our One Story website for more.

The story has only now hit the media over here because, of course, being in America, there are plans to make a "reality TV" show out of the quest. Groan. Do people not do documentaries anymore?!

Regardless, the very fact that such a ground-breaking ceremony took place at all in such a repressive era, and that photographic evidence of it survived, is indeed testimony to Mr Rechy's wise words above - there was a whole gay world, filled with rebels and non-conformists, long before the first handbag was thrown fifty years ago in downtown New York...

I got it from my Daddy

Ooh! Haven't done of these posts in ages...

...how about a little selection of some of the "newer" tracks we have stumbled upon of late here at Dolores Delargo Towers?

First up, a subversive Russian band with a remarkable back catalogue of songs with titles such as Dead Unicorn , Big Dick and Everyday I’m Drinking, and then - this one! Love it...

Little Big - Skibidi

How to follow that? With a song with lyrics such as this, of course:

I could not believe it, could not believe my eyes
The thing that I saw down there, down between your thighs
I can see it over, and over again
Rover at dollar, holy broke the skin
If I turn it over, would you make it work
When you plug it in, will you dig the dirt?

Fat White Family - Feet

Lightening the tone somewhat, some very odd French people:

The Pirouettes - L'escalier

Something usually to be avoided at all costs - the crabs...

Noisestorm - Crab Rave

And finally... something that completely defies all description:

PSY - Daddy

Phew!

As ever, dear reader - let me know your thoughts...

It's tragic

Oh, hell. Two weeks' worth of unabashed hedonism - basically doing what we please, with a superb weekend in Amsterdam in the middle of it - have come to a crashing end, with the inevitable realisation that our numbers yet again did not come up on the lottery, and that somehow the bills still have to be paid...

...so, to take the bitterness out of the return to work this morning [apart from the promise that the scaffolding will indeed be coming down today], let us return once more to the crazy world of Dutch pop - and, on this Tacky Music Monday, they don't come much tackier than the chesty "singer" and plastic surgery fanatic Cornelia Jacoba (Connie) Witteman, better known in the Netherlands as Vanessa!

Vanessa - La Di Da

Without a discernible shred of emotion, she (with her veiligheid homos) sings:

I look at you and see
A special kind of magic
But you don't know it's me, I'm out here on my own
It's tragic

You see emotion hiding in my face, now you're gone, aha
You disappear without a trace, now you're gone, aha

Ladidi
Ladida
Wanna be
Where you are

Ladida
Ladidi
I want you
Here with me
I do, you know I do

I got a certain kind of feeling
Every time I look at you
If I don't get to you the way you get to me
I don't know what I'm gonna do

I just can't stand to see you walk away, now you're gone, oh no
And when you I don't know what to say, now you're gone, oh no

Ladidi
Ladida
Wanna be
Where you are

Ladida
Ladidi
I want you
Here with me
I do, you know I do

Gawd - how I wish I were back in Amsterdam! Or anywhere.