Whew! What a scorcher. Just in time to be that little bit too late, we are in a heatwave here in London [and I work in an office with NO aircon]!
Never mind, eh? We need some escapism - so here's a well overdue little light music interlude - and a gawp at some truly funky outfits - courtesy to the faboo Soft Tempo Lounge. Yeah, Baby, Yeah!
Wow.
[Music: Mike Vickers - Light 'N' Easy]
The time is now exactly "knock off work and drink five delicious pints in a beer garden o’clock", scientists have confirmed.With temperatures soaring to levels incompatible with working, senior and genuine scientists have agreed it is imperative that you put your out-of-office on and head to the nearest pub for several refreshing pints in the sun.
Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: “Just as the hands of the Doomsday Clock inch ever closer to an apocalyptic midnight, the heatwave has finally nudged drinking time to midday piss-ups. Enjoy.
“We’re long past staying hydrated by drinking water. Even the lightweight’s Pimm’s o’clock is in the past. The mercury hits 30C today which officially heralds the start of Greenwich Steamed By 3pm Time.“Don’t worry about falling behind with your work or getting rumbled by your boss. They’ve already installed themselves outside Wetherspoons and are knocking back pitchers of Candy Rosá.“Follow their example by quintuple parking yourself with ice-cold lager. Avoid salty crisps. They’ll only make you more thirsty which is dangerous in this heat. Far better to drink on an empty stomach.”Drinker Martin Bishop said: “See, science gets a bad rap with that climate change shite, but it can be useful.”
I wish...
Of course.
Monday, Monday, Monday. Sigh...
On this Tacky Music Monday - spurred on mainly by the combination of the terrifying thought that Bjorn & Benny's post-ABBA magnum opus Chess (the concept album, released before the show was ever staged) is forty years old this year, AND the discovery of the bizarre and unexplained array of "naked chess pieces" in the photo at the head of this post...
...here's the ultimate in camp duets - with all its high hairdos, neon, dry ice and shoulder-pads - to serve as our wake-up call. All together, now!
Have a good week, dear reader.
We had a lovely day playing host to Mother (and my sister and hubbie) yesterday - she loved the garden, I bought loads of cake, we went through dozens of photos from Eurovision, holidays and Pride, and just chatted en famille. I think she was happy...
Now it's time for a "monging-about" Sunday - and some appropriately "Sunday-ish" music, courtesy of our house band again...
Enjoy!
The Paris Olympics opening ceremony. It poured down.
And, from the bits I saw, it wasn't a patch on ours!
Needless to say, "Marvel geeks" John-John and I had a whale of a time when we went to see Deadpool & Wolverine on its opening night in Leicester Square last night!
It's perhaps not a film for the faint-hearted - true to the "Merc with the Mouth"'s previous movies, there's lots of blood and gore and fighting and swearing, but there's also also bucketloads of laugh-out-loud moments and innuendo. There's also some very clever digs at both 20th Century Fox (from whence the two characters originally got their big-screen spotlights) and Disney/Marvel (which recently bought Fox out) - and it's the latter's multiversal lore that provides the excuse to bring all the characters into the MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe]. There's not only a slew of familiar characters from Deadpool 1 and 2 and X-Men films, together with the "Time Variance Authority" from Marvel's recent Loki television series - but also a joyful raft of very unexpected cameos, indeed... All that, and a splendidly evil villainess with an (ahem) interesting massage technique!
I won't spoil any of the plot - I'll leave it to you to get your own cinema tickets, or not as the case may be - but suffice to say, at a crucial moment in the film a very familiar and beloved choon comes into its own.
Thank Disco Madonna It's Friday!
Have a great weekend, dear reader!
Today's kids, in addition to their bloody phones, can pick any fucking flavour ice-cream they want. When you were a child these were the options:Vanilla
To a generation, this was ice-cream. Bright yellow, simultaneously watery and oily, and in its soft-scoop version the invention of a young scientist named Margaret Thatcher, it tasted of nothing, was definingly bland, and was a top-echelon treat.Strawberry
Pink version of above. The strawberry taste was sickly and disgusting but it was a sensation. You knew you’d had it. You’d boast about it at school.Chocolate
Didn’t taste like chocolate but nothing chocolate-flavoured did back then. Drinking chocolate didn’t taste of chocolate. Chocolate biscuits didn’t taste of chocolate. Still, it was the right colour.Neapolitan
Vanilla and strawberry and chocolate, all in one tub? Astonishing and only for special occasions, like your parents’ anniversary or a neighbour’s divorce. Allowed you to confirm they were all essentially identical, and to mix them together for a sweet, grey post-war reward paste.Raspberry ripple
Blew minds. There are grown adults still reeling at their first encounter of vanilla ice-cream shot through – in picturesque ripples – with deep, flavoursome raspberry. How? Why? Was Thatcher involved again? Does eating this make me a scab? But God help me I cannot stop.Mint choc chip
Unavailable to the general public for decades, only sold through specialists, this was your mum’s ice-cream of choice. Green, sophisticated, containing real chocolate, as adult as smoking in bed, as luxurious as Imperial Leather soap. An After Eight in frozen form, you imagined Princess Margaret would have one, in a bath. Too raunchy for the Queen.
Of course.
Another snippets post today, dear reader...
[click to embiggen, or even better, right-click and click "open in new tab"]
And now, the weather: Muggy.
STOP PRESS:
Team GB diver Jack Laugher is getting very excited indeed about the games to come, it seems!
Sad news of the departure of the dance-floor diva Evelyn Thomas for the "Rush Poppers Room" in Fabulon yesterday sent me hurtling down a time-slip-wormhole...
...back again to the year when her only major hit was everywhere - the year of strikes, of Yuppies, of Space Shuttles and of Band Aid, the year of "Frankie Say" t-shirts and Hi-NRG music, the year I came out - 1984!
For me, this year forty years ago was one of the very best for music in that (or any other) decade!
What other year can you name, dear reader, that saw the debuts in the Top 40 of a clutch of world-beating and eternally influential artists of the calibre of Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Jimmy Somerville [with Bronski Beat], Gloria Estefan [with Miami Sound Machine] or Prince, or indeed the arrival of class acts like Scritti Politti, The Smiths, ZZ Top, Nik Kershaw, Sade, Alphaville, Van Halen, Propaganda, and of course Frankie Goes To Hollywood?
Making their first foray in the upper echelons of the charts in 1984 as solo artists were George Michael [although Wham! had a great year of hits as well], Alison Moyet, Freddie Mercury [Queen also had a huge resurgence that year], Philip Oakey, Limahl, Billy Idol, Malcolm McLaren and Ray Parker Junior. It was also the year that saw massive commercial success for a number of established stars such as Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Paul McCartney, Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, Lionel Richie, Deniece Williams, Billy Joel, Pointer Sisters, Spandau Ballet, Elton John, Duran Duran, Thompson Twins, The Specials (Special A.K.A.), U2, Eurythmics, Kraftwerk, Bananarama, The Cars, Style Council, Billy Ocean, Culture Club, Bob Marley and the Wailers and Depeche Mode.
So much of the very "gay-gay-gay" theme that year - be it Boy George and Marilyn's "gender-bending", an unapologetic drag star singing You Think You're A Man on Top Of The Pops, the Age of Consent LP, Pete Burns and Dead or Alive, or Relax - was forever underpinned by the aforementioned musical genre of Hi-NRG, with the likes of Hazell Dean, Divine, Maria Vidal, Fancy, Laura Branigan, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Fun Fun, The Weather Girls and their ilk all dominating the clubs and the airwaves.
So let's conclude with Miss Thomas's mega-hit, a classic if ever there was one - I can smell the Kouros and amyl nitrite as we speak:
RIP, Ellen Lucille "Evelyn" Thomas (22nd August 1953 – 21st July 2024)
We welcome with - ahem - open arms the world of work once again...
...to find another of those "you know you're getting old when..." moments.
For none other than the annoying "Violet Elizabeth Bott" from the Just William television series of my youth, the overly-effervescent Bonnie Langford is 60 years old today!
Nowadays possibly better remembered as one of Doctor Who's companions "Mel", or maybe as a contestant on Dancing on Ice, or perhaps for her role as "Carmel Kazemi" in EastEnders, she is actually a brilliantly talented dancer and singer on a variety of stages - with a lot of talent in her extended family, being the aunt of West End actresses Summer, Scarlett and Zizi Strallen - including in panto, and as the star of productions of Guys & Dolls, Chicago, 9 to 5 and 42nd Street, as well as taking her turn in the faboo Sondheim tribute gala Old Friends in 2022 [and we saw her at the Sondheim 75th birthday gala Children Will Listen in 2005]. A trouper!
On this Tacky Music Monday, here she is in fine form, with a bevy of safety gays:
Many happy returns, Bonnie Langford (born Bonita Melody Lysette Langford, 22nd July 1964)
Have a good week, dear reader.
Sun is shining for a change, and I'll be spending a few hours this afternoon out in it, watering the garden again. No rest for the wicked!
Meanwhile, Our Patron Saint of the Vocoder Cher has been time-travelling - making surprise appearances in Mad Men, Red Dwarf, Sons of Anarchy, Secrets of the London Underground, and even singing karaoke with "Barry" in The Queen Vic in EastEnders over twenty years ago - as part of a relaunch/rebranding of cable channel UKTV as "U"...
It's faboo!
Sad news. A peerless comedy talent - whose deadpan delivery inspired generations of comedians who followed - Mr Bob Newhart has died, aged 94.
We never had any of his shows - radio or television - in the UK, as far as I am aware, but his "Best Of" comedy LP was definitely in our family collection when I was growing up...
...probably mainly for this immortal sketch of his (here - ahem - ably assisted my none other than Dino himself):
Utter genius!
RIP, Bob Newhart (5th September 1929 – 18th July 2024)
Hurrah! A weekend's in sight, and the sun is blazing out there. We have a quiet couple of days of pottering to look forward to (for a change), but there's always room for a party!
There was a bit of sad news earlier this week, as we heard that German DJ Thomas Brückner had departed for the rave tent at Fabulon [aged just 46] - but my, oh my! What a legacy he left behind with this banger - Thank Disco Tomcraft It's Friday!!
Have a great weekend, dear reader!
To the relief of many music lovers, Adele has announced she is going to take a big break from recording. Hopefully these artists will follow suit.
Taylor Swift
With the Eras tour and the Super Bowl and a ‘secret’ double album with a completely unnecessary 31 songs, surely we’ve reached Taylor Swift saturation point? Even if none of her latest songs are memorable in any way, it would make sense to at least cultivate some anticipation. A few decades would definitely be sufficient to make Swifties hungry for a dozen tracks about lame boyfriends with shit lyrics.Ed Sheeran
Sheeran released two studio tracks last year alone. Can’t he give the listening public a well-earned break by putting down his guitar and loop pedal until, say, 2050? He seems like a nice, reasonable guy, so if everyone tells him that a hiatus will give new acts a chance to flourish, he’ll listen. He’d probably even offer to mentor them, although the last thing we need is Sheeran clones churning out songs called Limerick Lady which are exactly as bad as that sounds.Madonna
There’s no denying that Madge’s discography contains many bangers, but they came out decades ago. In fact Holiday isn’t too far from a half-century. Seeing her still scraping along and churning out records is like watching an elderly shelf-stacker toiling away in the Co-op. She should be enjoying her retirement in peace, eating biscuits and not releasing tracks that will generously be remembered as ‘culturally irrelevant’.Liam Gallagher
There’s only one way people want to consume the music of Liam Gallagher, and that’s when he’s joined by his brother and belting out hits from 20-odd years ago. And since that’s never going to happen, he’s better off putting his musical activities to bed and finding some completely new interests. We’d all definitely be more interested to hear how his tomatoes are doing than listen to another instantly forgettable vanity project with John Squire.Kylie
Every now and then you think you’ve escaped the clutches of Kylie’s earworms, but then she unleashes another disco hit that will rattle around your head for weeks. Why does she keep releasing them? Doesn’t she have all the money she’ll ever need? The world has even moved on from her saucy videos. We have Dua Lipa for that now.Chris Martin
Yes, even cynics were somewhat heartwarmed by Coldplay’s epic Glastonbury set. But maybe that gig should have acted as a triumphant send-off, with everyone waving as Chris Martin disappeared into the sunset like a less-popular Shane. The vacuum his absence would create could then be filled by musicians with edge and charisma, or simply nothing at all. That would be absolutely fine compared to more Coldplay.
Of course.
The fact that it would have been the 110th birthday today of the celebrated soprano Miss Eleanor Steber has prompted me for a second time to re-visit an ancient post of mine [originally from my MySpace years, and relocated with all the others to my other blog Give 'em the Old Razzle Dazzle] from 2008. The original was in the immediate aftermath of a literary event I attended called "The Lavender Library", at which Mr Paul Burston had enthused about one of my own favourite books of all time, Queens by Pickles, from which I had just rediscovered...
...a passage from the chapter Cruising at the Opera in which "The Opera Queen" - who is "wild about applause, always yelling 'Brava' whilst all about him bellow their ignorance of gender" - has a bitchy conversation at the opera house with his friend:And, SIXTEEN YEARS on from the original post, I still hope you do...
Friend: "Just look at those diamonds! Look at them! She must be rolling in it! She looks a bit like Margaret Dumont, don't you think?"Well, apart from being a brilliant observation of the interplay between queens - it could be Madam Arcati and I and our friends chatting - this set me thinking. Just who is/was Eleanor Steber? And could it be true that an opera singer (if that is indeed who she was) actually performed at the most notorious of the sex-club bathhouses in New York in the 70s? The home of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow (who started out as an act there)? So off I went on a web search to find out more...
Geoffrey: "Some women are so camp, aren't they?"
Friend: "What! They're hysterical! Talk about camp, dear - just give me Eleanor Steber at the Continental Baths! Have you got that album?"
Geoffrey: "Oh, I've tried everywhere. Everywhere! Deleted now!"
Friend: "Oh God, yes! I found mine in New York, actually. Ten dollars. I can't remember when I was so thrilled! Shall we have a little troll upstairs? You never know what you're missing in this place!"
Geoffrey: "I love walking up this staircase. It's so Joan Crawford, isn't it?"
Eleanor Steber, who died in 1990, was indeed an American operatic soprano - one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States. Before her, most of the biggest stars of opera were European. Noted particularly for her performances of Wagner, Mozart, Puccini and Richard Strauss, she rose to prominence in the 1950s with the Metropolitan Opera, and performed at Bayreuth.
A bit of a high-living party-loving girl, her voice suffered towards the end of her career, but not before she paid a tribute to some of her greatest fans - gay men - by performing at the Continental Baths in 1973. And to top the whole search, I have found a copy of the original recording online!
Listen to or download the whole album as an MP3
Eleanor Steber live at the Continental - track listing:
Edwin Biltcliffe, Piano; Joseph Rabb, Violin.October 4, 1973.
- Mozart: Zeffiretti lusinghieri (from Idomeno), Ach, ich fuehl's (from Die Zauberfloete), Come scoglio (from Cosi fan tutte);
- Charpentier: Depuis le jour (from Louise);
- Puccini: Quando m'en vo (from La Boheme);
- Massenet: Scene and Gavotte (from Manon);
- Sieczynski: Wien, du Stadt meiner Traeume;
- Kreisler: Stars in My Eyes;
- Lehar: Medley from The Merry Widow;
- Puccini: Vissi d'Arte (from Tosca).
It is strange listening to this very old and very camp recording of a bygone gay era - before AIDS and the hysteria it whipped up closed bathhouses like this forever.
In particular, I found it very interesting how much Ms Steber's speaking voice must have influenced Bette Midler when she created her character Vicky Edie (from whence came my own epithet "Dolores Delargo the Toast of Chicago!").
But those reflections aside, I most enjoyed finding this beautiful vocal performance intact and online. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Eleanor Steber (17th July 1914 - 3rd October 1990)
Groo. Another weekend just whooshed by...
By good fortune, it would have been the ground-breaking lyricist Dorothy Fields' birthday today - the woman who broke the "glass ceiling" back in the early 20th century, writing dozens of songs with the likes of Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein and Cy Coleman for musicals ranging from the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers era to Annie Get Your Gun to Sweet Charity.
On this Tacky Music Monday, what better way to wake us all up than a bit of tap-dancing, courtesy of the lovely, leggy Tommy Tune - and one of Miss Fields' splendidly upbeat numbers?!
Have a good week, dear reader.
Madam Arcati and I concluded our "choral triptych" - we saw Faure's Requiem in March, and Verdi's Requiem in June - at the Cadogan Hall last night, with the biggest and most OTT of the lot, William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast.
Famously, the piece requires a huge vocal ensemble (last night's production had two choirs - Epsom Choral Society and the Barnes Choir), and just about every instrument in the orchestral canon. Indeed, the renowned wit and esteemed conductor Sir Thomas Beecham (who was very sniffy about the work as it was about to receive its premiere) said to the young William Walton: "As you'll never hear the thing again, my boy, why not throw in a couple of brass bands?" So he did.
It's impressive, that's for certain, if not exactly my "cup of tea" either. It's based upon one of those dramatic Old Testament stories full of smiting: the Jews are in exile as slaves in Babylon and the tyrant Belshazzar commits sacrilege by taking their sacred vessels for his guests and concubines to use at a lavish feast, bringing damnation upon his head. It includes the original source of the phrase "the writing's on the wall" - "You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting." Belshazzar's subsequent death and the fall of his empire become the cause of great celebration for the Jews. Noisily.
It is, of course, another phrase from that original story [later repeated in one of the Psalms] that has become even more famous in popular culture - not least in this eternal classic. I couldn't possibly imagine two more polar opposite pieces of music - but hey, that's the way my mind works!
PS
It's France's greatest day of celebration, Le Quatorze Juillet (or Bastille Day)...
...so here's some coq gaulois, for your delectation:
Ooh, la, la!
It's Saturday, it's grey and humid, and it's time for a little sojourn into some of the "newer" music that has caught my ear of late...
First up, something (relatively) new that is actually really quite old! It's also quite appropriate, since one of its creators Pino D'Angiò died last week. This track was originally produced way back in 1990, became a worldwide hit when it was remixed by Jam'n'Spoon in 1992, and has gone on to become a trance classic, with perpetual remixes and re-workings - right up to 2022, with this one:
In complete contrast, here's a faboo "fusion" between the traditional music of Kenya and Western musical genres, released at the turn of this year, but - despite the fact that Madam Arcati's been raving about it for months - it's taken me this long to actually feature here:
Veering back towards potential chart territory [whatever that actually means these days, in a world where merely watching a video on YouTube can actually count towards a place in the charts for the song it is promoting], here's Our Princess Kylie in collaboration with some lesser mortals (on what is, tbh, not much of a song, but I am prepared to give it a few more listens...):
I was strangely drawn to this rather stylish lady, with her modern and rather glittering tribute to one of our fave genres, Disco...
Miss Katy Perry pleases feminists everywhere by singing a song about female empowerment while jiggling her breasts at a camera:
"Big Willy" is back! - with a rather jolly choon [for a change]:
And finally... Saving the best to last, Dame Sophie of the Ellis-Bextors deigns to help out one of her continental acolytes - with spectacular results!
As ever, dear reader, I'd love to know your thoughts...
We're almost there, folks...
As another weekend looms, it's grey and murky again here in London, just in time for the big outdoor events: the finals of Wimbledon, the British Summer Time festival in Hyde Park (Stevie Nicks tonight, Our Princess Kylie tomorrow), the Wireless festival closer to us in Finsbury Park (Nicki Minaj tonight, Doja Cat on Sunday) - and the football final in Germany...
Us? We're going to Cadogan Hall again tomorrow, for William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast!
Meanwhile, let the celebrations with which we always greet the end of a week commence - starring the magnificent tonsils of Edwin Starr ["born in Tennessee, found fame in Detroit, died in Nottingham"], a pair of dead-eyed dancers with crispy flicks, and a song that was actually in our charts this week 45 years ago - and Thank Disco It's Friday!
Have a great weekend, dear reader!
Happy National Bandoneón Day! [If you happen to be Argentinian...]
Forgive the esoteric reference, dear reader - bandoneón is merely the local version of what we know as an accordion. Not normally an instrument of interest, given its corny association with buskers, fiddle bands and gypsies, nevertheless it has been a contributory factor to quite a few choons of which we are very fond.
Like these:
...and - I really cannot believe I have only ever featured this all-time house fave here at Dolores Delargo Towers once!
[Every time we have a house party, this one of the mainstays on the playlist - as our whole gang does (or attempts to) do all the dance moves along with those lovely Pierre et Gilles models...]Squeeze that box, folks!
You know you're getting old when...
...you realise that the godlike genius that is Mr Neil Tennant is (scarily) 70 years old today!!
All hail...
Here are just a few of our favourites from his long and estimable career:
The one that makes me cry:
And finally, the one that started it all:
"You should always celebrate your successes because someone else will celebrate your failures."
"An issue I've had is: is it possible to be a pop star without selling sex? And ultimately I think to have mass selling pop music it is not possible to do it without selling sex. That's why I think we're not as successful as I think our music could be."
"We do politics through satire. I think when you get activist pop, that's the problem."
"A lot of what used to be known as gay culture - broadly speaking, homoeroticism and being camp - has been brought into mainstream culture. I think we should be moving to an era where it's just sex."
"The first club I ever really went to was this club on Neal Street, in London. It was a gay club – we used to pronounce it ‘Shag-o-ramas’, but it was spelt Chaguramas. It’s the name of a Spanish sheep or something."
"It's fundamental that what we do only exists in our own universe. When you like Pet Shop Boys, you are in our world."
Neil Francis Tennant (born 10th July 1954)
