It's warm and muggy in London and, despite the threat of disruption at the airports, many people are looking forward to getting away from it all...
...via "Soft Tempo Lounge Airways", perhaps?
The only way to fly.
[Music: The Flying Dutchmen (Pete Moore) - Sunday's Child]
A pair of false eye lashes and a tube of cheap lipstick
A pair of worn out high heel shoes and a dress doesn't fit
These are all my possessions all I have to my name
And a record played in my home town is my only claim to fame
Bless.
Back to the grind again, dear reader...
...however, this is the start of a very significant countdown - it's the first Gay Pride in London for three years this Saturday!
Who could be more appropriate on this Tacky Music Monday to lead the fanfare than our beloved Patron Saint of questionable history, Miss Amanda Lear herself?!
Have a good week, folks.
A gathering of the clans took place yesterday - as friends old and new, from far and wide (including Surrey, Essex and France) assembled at one of his favourite haunts The Dog House in Kennington to honour the memory of one of our dearest friends Alistair, who sadly died in February.
Alistair and Madam Arcati were particularly close - they'd been friends long before we even met - but Al touched the lives of many of those present in a number of ways. We'll all miss his cynicism, his crankiness, his laugh, his love of the obscure and the tacky, his fearsome intellect, and his great company.
Here are just two of his fave songs - polar opposites in every way:
Phil Starr (with Maisie Trollette) - The Old Bazaar at Cairo:
RIP, you old curmudgeon. Life's not the same without you.
Look out Glastonbury - Miss Ross is on her way!
Yes, the living legend that is Diana Ernestine Earle Ross will be occupying the much-vaunted "Legends" slot on the Pyramid Stage at Worthy Farm, only three years after she was first announced [thanks to the dreaded 'Rona]! Ahead of tomorrow's appearance, however, the great lady has been touring the country as part of her "Thank You" tour, not least two nights at the capacious O2 Arena (formerly the Millenium Dome) this week...
From the review by Mark Beaumont in the Evening Standard:
...As her brass fanfare reached crescendo and broke into I’m Coming Out, she flung off her voluminous shawl of curly tangerine frills with such a flourish that her microphone had to be rescued from the front row. One way or another, this Motown legend’s vocals would be a knockout......With the first of three gown changes – various sequinned spectacles and one lime green Scarlett O’Hara – she launched into Chain Reaction, Upside Down and Take Me Higher, freshening her throat with a spray she dubbed “Entertainer’s Secret” and encouraging camp dance-offs in the aisles. Though some of the livelier tunes smacked a little of karaoke, Ross’s voice felt reborn on piano-led ballads such as If We Hold on Together and Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To), and positively powerful by the time of her showstopping take on Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, backed with visuals of Ross in her glory days. Whenever she struggled, as on I’m Still Waiting, the crowd carried the melodies, swept along on a communal will to share such classic songs, and the moment, with this still-gleaming star...
...Six decades in, she continues to relish her music, and remains ravishing in performance. Glastonbury, where she plays the legend’s slot this weekend, should break out its dancing galoshes.
Gawd bless 'er - let's hope [much like our own legend and Patron Saint Dame Shirley Bassey, who appeared in the same slot way back in 2007] she packed some suitably jewel-encrusted wellies!
Yes!!
Another weekend is in view at last...
True to form, the hot and humid weather we had again this week looks likely to give way to a more overcast, unstettled couple of days - but hey ho; we can always rely upon the divine Ritchie Family to lift our spirits!
Thank Disco (and Bob Fosse, on the 95th anniversary of his birth, no less) It's Friday!
Say, wouldn't you like to know what's goin' on in my mind, dear reader?
Probably not.
Have a good one!
Consuming alcohol in large quantities can unleash talents you never knew you had. And may possibly want to forget. Skills such as these…Eating unimaginable crap
You always considered yourself a fussy eater, but after eight pints or a few bottles of Prosecco anything goes. Never mind wolfing down the dodgiest takeaway anus-and-tendon burger, you’ll have no problem demolishing a ketchup and Nutella Weetabix sandwich when that’s all you can find after getting in from the pub.Boundless confidence
Usually you don’t say boo to a goose. But after enough Stella you’re strutting around like a pimp’s pet peacock, oozing George Clooney charm, giving excellent advice, informing others of your stimulating opinions and offering sexual experiences to grateful ladies. Although in reality you’re just being a massive twat. And even if you somehow get lucky, you’re about to showcase your talent for brewer’s droop.Losing stuff
Despite normally being quite responsible, throw in some vodka shots and possessions start magically disappearing. Where have your house keys gone? Did it have something to do with swinging your handbag round your head in drunken excitement? What did you do with your phone? You can’t have lost that – you were taking utterly pointless identical pictures of pissed people all night with it.Talking utter shite
In everyday life you keep your cards close to your chest, until a gallon of booze has you gobbing off witlessly like Piers Morgan. The only problem is if someone well-informed disagrees with you. Luckily shouting, personal attacks and changing the subject are all great ways of winning an argument. You’ve got alcohol to thank for that.Looking your absolute worst
You may have spent hours carefully perfecting your look for a night out, but you’ve got a talent for transforming into Worzel Gummidge in minutes. Hair everywhere, make-up like a tearful clown, one shoe missing – which you somehow didn’t notice. At least your doner kebab won’t judge you. Shit, you’ve just dropped it on a filthy pavement. It must be a new talent for watching the calories.
Of course.
Cheers!
Not one, but two centenaries to celebrate on this Midsummer's Day, dear reader!
Born this day in 1922 were the inimitable Mollie Sugden, most famous, of course for her "battleaxe" roles as "Mrs Slocombe" in Are You Being Served? and as "Sandra"'s mother in The Liver Birds...
...and a woman for whom Sondheim's beloved lyrics "First you're another sloe-eyed vamp, then someone's mother, then you're camp" could have been written - Miss Kay Starr!
Go, girl!
Enjoy the sunshine, dears - it's all downhill from today...
Typical, isn't it? We in the UK had searing 32C heat on Friday. All weekend while I was home, it's been grim - cold, wet and miserable. Today, it's sunny once more - just in time to go back to the grind...
Hey ho, on with the celebrations.
Sharing her day with a raft of not-otherwise-connected "names" such as the glorious (and dearly missed) Olympia Dukakis, Errol Flynn, Mickie Most, Anne Murray, Lionel Richie, Nicole Kidman, Martin Landau, Brian Wilson [80 today], Wendy Craig, Jacques Offenbach, John Taylor of Duran Duran, Lillian Hellman, John Goodman, Stephen Frears, and - erm - Jean-Marie Le Pen...
...it's the 75th birthday today of The Crystals long-term lead singer Miss Dolores "La La" Brooks!
On this Tacky Music Monday, we have a whole cavalcade of Divas joining forces to pay tribute to the lady's greatest hit with the band - Martha Reeves, Lesley Gore, Mary Wells, Shirley Alston, Freda Payne, Brenda Lee, Ronnie Spector, Belinda Carlisle and Grace Slick!
That's what I call a line-up..!
Have a good week, dear reader.
Apropos of nothing at all - merely because the faboo Liza Tarbuck opened her Radio 2 show with it yesterday - here's a tune that makes me smile whenever I hear it.
All together, now!
All the nice girls love a sailor
Bright and breezy, free and easy
Ship ahoy, ship ahoy!
All the nice girls love a tar
For there's something about a sailor
Well, you know what sailors are
He's the ladies' pride and joy
Falls in love with Kate and Jane
Then he's off to sea again
Perfect "Sunday Music"...
A little trip down memory lane today, dear reader...
Although my recall of the exact timeline is understandably a little hazy after all these years, at some time in the early 1980s after I left school (probably 1982 - forty years ago), I and my school-friend Shane first ventured out to a pioneering club event - the "Bowie/Roxy Nights" at Newport's swanky and up-to-the-moment nightclub Lazers:
Obviously the quality is a bit shonky, given that this film dates from 1984, but this was the laser light-show that opened every evening of dancing and debauchery at Lazers nightclub...Within a fairly short space of time I became a regular punter (as did my sister). I really had found my niche in the emerging world of the "New Romantics", and - although I had a few years yet till I officially came out - I dressed the part: twelve-pleat pegged trousers in two-tone teal and amber, "Adam Ant" waistcoat, pirate shirts, pointy shoes, henna-ed back-combed hair, jewellery, the lot!
Among the classics such as Sound and Vision, Virginia Plain, Kraftwerk Das Model, Giorgio Moroder From Here To Eternity, Cerrone Supernature, Grace Jones Private Life, post-punk icons like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Toyah, Simple Minds and The Cure, and all the emergent New Wave/electro pioneers such as Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, OMD, Human League, Yello, Heaven 17, John Foxx, Visage and so on, one song really sticks out - one that instantly transports me back four decades to a very different world indeed.
No GDM (Dedicated to Quentin Crisp) by Gina X Performance was (and still is) unlike anything else I had heard. A song sung in totally cold, deadpan Germanic tones over a synth-heavy beat - yet with tantalising lyrics that blatantly mentioned "queer" and "lesbian"..? It's no wonder that it didn't take very long before first discovering this mysterious other-worldly music that I also "discovered my true self"...
Wanna be a great dark man,
Being but a lesbian.
You are perfect, you are sheer,
If you are a red-haired queer.
That's life, one dies.
C'est la vie, ma cherie,
But it really doesn't matter.
No G.D.M.
No great dark man
No G.D.M.
No great dark man
There won't be a great dark man,
If I am a red-haired queer.
You are perfect, you are sheer,
If you are a red-haired queer.
C'est la vie, have a sniff.
C'est la vie, ma cherie,
But it really doesn't matter.
Yellow teeth between pink lips,
Eyeline shadow with a crazy look,
The jewel behind my lobe of ear,
Rouge on my face hides my beard,
Long violet fingernails,
I adore those magic tales.
I don't mind, I don't mind.
No G.D.M.
No great dark man
No G.D.M.
No great dark man
Wanna be a great dark man,
Being but a lesbian.
You are perfect, you are sheer,
If you are a red-haired queer.
That's life, one dies.
C'est la vie, ma cherie.
C'est la vie, have a sniff.
That’s life, one dies.
C'est la vie, ma cherie.
C'est la vie, have a sniff.
That’s life, one dies.
C'est la vie, ma cherie.
C'est la vie, have a sniff.
That’s life, one dies.
C'est la vie, ma cherie,
C'est la vie, have a sniff
That's life, one dies.
C'est la vie, ma cherie.
Ah, memories...
I utterly adore it to this day.
Footnote:
Lazers (which itself was previously known as "The Stowaway" club) finally closed in 1990, subsequently reopened as "Brooklyn Heights" and later "Heights 2000" before finally closing under the name "Zanzibar". In 2018, arsonists burned the whole thing and the neighbouring chuch to the ground.
Way back in 2015, I said:
...I'm in just the right mood for some tight-trousered, felt-hatted, open-shirt, Stud-soundtrack-worthy funk courtesy of the Real Thing...
...featuring Legs & Co AND Hot Gossip dancer Floid Pearce!
And guess what, dear reader?
I still am!
Thank Disco It's Friday!
Have a great weekend, folks - fingers crossed this hot'n'sunny weather lasts...
Fuck "mortal sin". Let's go to the movies - with a Tired Old Queen!
Oh, how we love a bit of melodrama - especially with our Patron Saint Miss Bette Davis chewing the scenery!
Mankind can travel into space and cure cancer, so how come so many straightforward minor inventions are useless and annoying? Like these…Cling film
Used for all manner of household tasks, from covering plates of food to dangerous sex games. That’s if you can find the fucking start of it then somehow peel it back in one piece. Instead it tears halfway, leaving you trying to wrap your sandwich in a two-inch strip which is already sticking to its bloody self. How’s your blood pressure, by the way?Fray Bentos pies
A meat pie in a tin that keeps it fresh for years. Genius! So long as you have an engineering degree to get into the fucker in the first place. Eventually you prise half the lid open but a load falls on the floor and it’s taken so long you’ve lost your appetite anyway. Which is no bad thing because they taste and smell like shit anyway.Squeezy mayonnaise bottles
Ideal if you like throwing away half of what you’ve bought because it’s stuck in the bottle. You’ll end up taking the top off and fishing around inside with a butter knife to salvage mayo from all the gunk stuck to the sides. We’ve invented Teflon so surely it’s piss-easy to give it a non-stick lining? Certainly compared to building an atom bomb?Egg cartons
Eggs are the most delicate thing on the planet, and prone to crack if you just look at them sternly. So what better receptacle then than a flimsy cardboard container with no real ability to prevent crushing by tins of beans and beer bottles? They’re not sealable and cardboard is porous so they’ll also helpfully leak raw egg over your bag of salad.Waterproof plasters
Waterproof plasters are indeed 100 per cent water resistant – right up to the point of getting wet. After you’ve performed the arduous task of successfully peeling the backing off and applying it while your cut finger drips blood, you can’t face doing it again so can’t wash your hands. Even if you’ve been for a shit. Don’t mention that to anyone.Disposable barbecues
Easily mankind’s most fucked-up invention ever. They’re so tiny they’re useless unless you’re a very sad bastard having a barbecue for one. Even then you’ve only got a three-minute window between it being fully ablaze and the meagre amount of charcoal fizzling out and going cold. At least the ‘disposable’ bit is dead right. Chuck it straight in the bin and save yourself the hassle of using it.
Of course.
Chris Evans (born 12th June 1981)
Måns Zelmerlöw (born 12th June 1986)
Eddie Cibrian (born 16th June 1973)
Aaron Taylor-Johnson (born 13th June 1990)
Buffet, anyone?
Yup. Here we are again, dear reader.
I've hardly had a chance to actually feel in a "weekend mood" - and BAM! Monday again...
On this Tacky Music Monday, I have a little something that will either a) wake you up with a jolt; or b) fill you with such a wave of nausea that the office will feel like a respite. You choose...
Me, I'm just amazed that somebody thought their granny's curtains might make nice trousers.
Have a good week, folks...
In the latest round of "why the fuck?" reshuffling at BBC Radio 2, another of our all-time favourite shows (presented by one of our all-time favourite Divas) has been axed - Ana Matronic's Dance Devotion!
Aside from her stint with the campest band of the past few decades, Scissor Sisters, Ms Matronic's musical influence and knowledge is far-reaching, and I have picked up many, many choons and/or remixes that I have never heard anywhere else except on her show - and, inevitably shared them here with you, dear reader... Back in August last year, I highlighted loads of such faboo tracks for which I owe the lady a great debt.
I am utterly pissed-off at this decision by Auntie Beeb, so, before she disappears to pastures new - let's have proper send-off party with another selection of highlights - tracks first heard, or on heavy rotation, on her brilliant show, for your delectation:
Now that's what I call a "leaving do"!
Ana Matronic's last-ever Dance Devotion show will be on Radio 2 on Saturday 18th June 2022 - miss it if you dare!
One last thing...
Ha-ha-honey!
We salute you.
At last! My sister has sent the photos of our gang's Jubilee Film Club party - only nine days late...
...and speaking of being "proud to be British", thanks to the cult teen mystery series Stranger Things (which I've never seen - being yet another "Netflix-thing" - but is set in the 1980s, so its soundtrack is filled with choons from the era), none other than one of my all-time favourite songs Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush has suddenly crashed the charts (it's already at #2; one place higher than its 1985 run), and appears to be a serious contender to knock Harry Styles off the top slot after a ten-week run - 37 years after its original release!!
Any excuse to play this classic (again):
I never tire of it - and now a new generation is paying due tribute to a work of genius...
STOP PRESS:
Happy World Gin Day!!
Clink, clink.
Oh. Thank. Fuck.
Just one more day to get through, and this most horrendous first week back in work [Is it really only a week? It's felt like a fortnight!] will be over - and the party can begin!
Here's a rather brilliant way to start any weekend - with an inspired video mash-up set to an old, old classic choon:
Listen! Can you hear me?
There's somethin' in the air
Hold me, get listenin'
There's music everywhere.
Touch me, I'm on fire
I think I've lost control
Warmin' deep inside me,
Burnin' in my soul
Love magic, Love magic
Don't fight the feelin', Just let it happen
Love magic, Love magic
Don't fight the feelin', Just let it happen to you
Danger when you're near me,
A feelin' I don't know
Warmin' I confide in,
Now I don't want to go
Hold me til the mornin',
I need to feel your love
Make it last forever,
Tonight is not enough
Love magic, Love magic
Don't fight the feelin', Just let it happen
Love magic, Love magic
Don't fight the feelin', Just let it happen to you
Love magic, Love magic
Don't fight the feelin', Just let it happen
Love magic, Love magic
Don't fight the feelin', Just let it happen to you
Thank Disco It's Friday - bottoms up, dear reader!
For some bizarre reason or other, while mindlessly surfing the web, I happened upon a really bizarre discovery.
Weird versions of otherwise familiar songs/choons being a favourite "obsession" of ours here at Dolores Delargo Towers (our collection is full of such eccentric stuff!), I went on a bit of a mission to find more from this conductor and arranger Waldo de los Ríos, and discovered that his "jazzed-up" versions of classical music were wildly popular in the early 1970s...
...to the degree that the BBC even used one of the man's creations for one of its (now sadly defunct) flagship programmes The Horse Of The Year Show:
So popular was Buenos Aires-born Señor de los Ríos in Spain, not only did he conduct the Spanish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1971, he even got his own show on Spanish telly - and, among his dancers were none other than Mayte Mateos and Maria Mendiola, who went on to become famous as... Baccara!
Utterly bonkers! I love it.
AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHH!
After a totally relaxing, hedonistic, suntanned, lazy and thoroughly enjoyable two-week break - it's time to get up and be back in the "real world" of work again...
It's just as well that on this Tacky Music Monday, I have Pan's People (and a couple of random safety gays) lined up to keep me sane!
Well, almost.
Have a good week, dear reader.
I won't!!
