Having become mightily pissed off lately with the crazy contrasts of our two preferred choices of daytime listening (while I'm working) BBC Radio 3 [which, just when you think it's safely in the zone of playing some nice classical music, veers off into the territory of some modern Czech composer's atonal dirges or, worse, Choral Evensong] and Classic FM [a constant "loop" of themes from films like Harry Potter or Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, snippets of the same composers they play every day, banal shouty adverts and, now we're almost in the dreaded Festering Season, Xmas carols], and following the announcement that the axe is falling on "our kind of music" on Radio 2, I went searching for something else to listen to...
...and found a new thing called Serenade Radio!
An online-only volunteer-led station, its promise to satisfy the "appetite to hear those great songs from that golden era of song writing...Not just the occasional treat, buried in a sea of pop mediocrity, but all day every day" certainly lives up to that remit. With a vengeance! Where else on earth would the listener expect to hear the very lightest-of-light music from the likes of the Ray Coniff Orchestra, Dinah Shore, Perry Como, the Tremeloes, Vic Damone, Helen Shapiro, Doris Day, Lyn Paul, Geoff Love Orchestra, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney or even Val Doonican (among many others of that ilk) these days? It's like Smashie and Nicey's fictional "Radio Quiet", writ large.
Nonetheless, we did make a rather interesting discovery courtesy of this so-laid-back-it's-almost-asleep station's playlist - a new (sort-of) diva, no less! She's described in her own website's biography thus:
Wherever Laura Fygi appears, she’ll be perceived as a veritable vision of exotica. In her home country the Netherlands she’s known as the woman raised in Uruguay as the daughter of an Egyptian belly dancer; in the Far East she’s seen as the emancipated lady many aspire to be. But no matter which country she visits, her most striking quality will always be that instantly familiar voice which has won her fans around the globe.
Count us as your newest fans, Miss Fygi!
Very stylish, indeed.
However, on delving a little further, I've found that this was not always the case...
Way back in the 1980s, it would appear that Laura Fygi formed one-third of one of those trashy Dutch girl groups I so regularly love to feature in my Tacky Music Monday pick-me-up slot. This lot didn't merely follow that familiar Euro-pop-by-numbers sound, however - they actually stripped while singing it!
Only in the Netherlands.
Blimey! I don't think any amount of cattle rustling or prancing around in a courtyard with a tromboning man will detract from Ms Fygi's pop strumpteting past!
ReplyDeleteWhen you hear a trumpet, bump it like a strumpet! [With apologies, of course, to Mr Sondheim for the misquote.]
DeleteJx
Oh dear What a shock. I rather liked her but I can't unsee her in last video nasty. She is now Tarnished, tainted and has fallen from our favour.
ReplyDeleteI think we should inform Coma Radio to take her off the play list.
I can imagine the collective clutching of pearls among Serenade Radio's listenership as they discover one of their mellow songbirds was a strumpet!
DeleteMind you, they do play Diana Dors... Jx
Oh my goodness, they sound like a strumpet version of Bananarama!
ReplyDeleteSx
Most Dutch girl bands of that era sound like strumpet versions of Bananarama. I wonder how they felt about the "tribute"? Jx
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