After the gales on the weekend, now comes the rain. What a lovely way to start a week - squishing one's way through leaf-and-sycamore-seed slime.
Never mind, eh? On this Tacky Music Monday, let's cheer ourselves up in the company of our Patron Saint of Grrrowling (and Dubious History) Miss Amanda Lear and her musclebound safety gays!
Have a good week, dear reader.
"A blustery day", said Pooh. The wind is bringing the bastard Sycamore* keys down like a blizzard upon the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers today. I could weep at the encroaching blanket of evilness that's subsuming all our lovely plants...
Never mind, eh? How about a little selection of the "newer" music that has caught my ear of late to take our minds off it?
Let's kick off, shall we, with an "Elton John lookey-likey" throwing a tantrum? It's rather catchy, actually...
Take a bit of Kazaky, mix it with a touch of Trans-X Living On Video, add a bitch on heat, and what do you get? This!
Speaking of "on heat"... Call him slut? Call him whore? OK then, I will!
Bringing a bit of much-needed class into the proceedings after all that lascivious behaviour, something jazzy and joyful:
Something a bit mysterious from Austria:
And finally - saving the best for last, another absolute banger from Our Princess Kylie!!
As ever, let me know your thoughts, dear reader!
[*I just found out that in the You-Ess-Ay, "Sycamore" is used to describe what we know as Plane trees, and over there this benighted batard weed is referred to as "Sycamore Maple". "We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language." - Oscar Wilde]
Flying for the first time in a helicopter, she observed: "I never thought I’d look down between my legs and see Guildford."
As Desdemona to Laurence Olivier’s Othello, he, in full black make-up, criticised her pronunciation; she faced off to him with a stentorian "How, now, brown cow!"
On completing her most famous role after six series: "I think the wig I wore in Downton is more tired than I am!"
As Serena McKellen has it, "Maggie's got a tongue on her."
Here are just a few of my favourite clips of the great Dame in action, from her long and brilliant career:
And, of course...
“If you have been around long enough you are an icon. A rather dusty icon... or a national treasure.”
There will never be another like her! RIP, Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, CH, DBE (28th December 1934 - 27th September 2024) PS Just one more slice of genius...
Maggie Smith once went with Kenneth Williams to Fortnum & Masons to buy a bra. Upon being told the price, she replied "Seven Guineas! It'd be cheaper to have your tits off!"
The weather's utterly foul, cold and miserable. The gales have brought every leaf on every weed tree in the neighbourhood down onto our garden. Our home wi-fi has been playing up (I lost the internet completely last night). But at least it's the weekend!
...and we have a little "gathering of the clans" tonight for History Boy's birthday, so it is indeed time to start planning the party!
Given his utter obsession with all things Doctor Who, this is probably the only song to play, really:
Thank Disco(?) It's Friday!. Have a good one, peeps.
Everyone is still talking about Oasis, but did you know these other bland 90s bands are already touring again?Cast
A band whose most famous song perfectly describes their very best material: Alright. Bandleader John Power was previously in The La’s, which is a bit like Michelangelo finishing the Sistine Chapel and then dedicating the rest of his career to drawing cocks on toilet doors. Unbelievably, Cast released their seventh album in 2024, making a mockery of the phrase ‘practice makes perfect’.Kula Shaker
Covid destroyed much that people loved while leaving evils unscathed. As a case in point, Kula Shaker’s most recent albums were released in 2022 and 2024. If their post-pandemic comeback passed you by, it’s because their brand of Eastern-tinged psychedelia is as fun to listen to as small children banging saucepans at 8pm on a Thursday evening.Shed Seven
Imagine tickets going on sale for a Britpop band’s tour but with no colossal queues or dynamic pricing scandals. You’ve just imagined the Shed Seven 30th anniversary tour. These chancers actually reformed way back in 2007 and have even released a couple of dull new albums. If only you’d known – you could have not gone to see them all over again.The Bluetones
These guys hit the big time with that song that sounds really like the Stone Roses but not as good. They staggered on until 2011 when they eventually split up, probably out of sheer boredom. Then they selflessly reformed four years later after realising their only value to society was giving pissed middle-aged people a fleeting pang of nostalgia by playing their only recognisable song. You know the one, it’s really like the Stone Roses but not as good.Puressence
Manchester’s Puressence were the ‘next big thing’ for about a decade. They had a handful of top 40 hits in the late 90s; you probably heard them on Radio 1 and forgot what they went like while listening to them. Songs like This Feeling and All I Want are so generic it proves that AI is perfectly capable of replicating human creativity. Their 2024 reunion gig at the 2,290-capacity Albert Hall was just big enough for everyone who gave a shit to get a ticket.Sleeper
Remember Sleeper? No? Sale of the Century? No? ‘We’ll spend the whole night making love on the sofa’? No? Female singer? No, not Elastica, they were good. Louise Wener? Fit but thick? Ah yes, now you remember! Fancy listening to their new albums and going to see them live just to hear Inbetweener? No? Fair enough.
Of course.
More "snippets" today, dear reader...
And the weather? Foul, gloomy and wet.
Monday again - and the torrential rain last night has meant it's all a bit of a swamp out there! And there's more to come. Deep joy.
Rock fans are no doubt wetting their leather pants today in celebration of the 75th birthday of the gravelly-voiced multi-million-selling superstar Bruce Springsteen. Me, I'm ambivalent. He's had some good songs, but most of his stuff is not really my cup of tea. However, as a songwriter - well, that's a different matter!
Blinded by the Light by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Fire by The Pointer Sisters, and (of course) Patti Smith's "magnum opus" Because the Night – they were all given away by The Boss.
As was, on this Tacky Music Monday, this slice of nonsense!!
Have a good week, dear reader.
I'm having a bit of slow day today, having only arisen at 2.30pm! [I blame the equinox - now the nights are longer than the days, it's all downhill from here...] I didn't miss much, as it has been pissing down all day - after a joyful week of balmy weather it was inevitable, I guess, this being Britain...
Here's another rather faboo slice of "Sunday Music" for your delectation to take our minds off it, dear reader, courtesy of our "house band" (again) - with some rather fantabulosa vocals from their latest guest singer:
Stunning!
"Parker" in Thunderbirds...
...and "Brains"...
...and (several of) the Daleks:
...he voiced them all!
RIP, the mellifluous and multi-talented voice actor David Graham (11th July 1925 – 20th September 2024).
Whoo-ee! After another long, busy and tiresome week, hope is in sight...
Time for a party! So let's don our best beaded silver lamé outfits and a couple of monster masks, and get the party started with a "sci-fi swing" - just like the (ahem) supremely talented Ganymed - and Thank Disco It's Friday!
Have a good weekend, dear reader!
Another snippets post today, dear reader:
The weather? Rather lovely at the moment...
The late, great "Shirley Bassey of Spain", our Patron Saint of Big Hair Señora Rocío Jurado would have celebrated her 80th birthday today. If you listen carefully, you will probably hear the sound of hundreds of thousands of Spanish queens across the world wailing, rustling their mantillas and knitting their rosaries as we speak - such is the adulation that the lady they called La más grande ("The Greatest") commanded.
After her death, her body was laid "in state" in her home village of Chipiona in Andalucía:
"...More than 10,000 people paid their respects at the local church, La Regla, where her body lay overnight. At the service, the Bishop of Jerez, Juan del Rio, described her as “a woman who enjoyed life, who sang to live.” Jurado was later buried at a private family ceremony.In Madrid, 22,000 people are estimated to have paid their respects at a wake in the space of eight hours, amongst them film director Pedro Almodovar and musician Emilio Estefan. The Spanish film-maker said she had the “biggest voice in Spain” and described her as, “a generous, sincere and affectionate” woman. Estefan called her “a great singer and a great person”, while President Zapatero expressed condolences to the family of a “great artist”."
We can but hope to receive a send-off like that...
I have, of course, featured this magnificent lady regularly, but here are two of her emotionally-draining (and camp-as-tits) numbers, for your delectation:
[Why she's singing to a stole is beyond me.]
[Which could easily be mistaken for a Jennifer Saunders parody.]
María del Rocío Trinidad Mohedano Jurado (18th September 1944 - 1st June 2006)
Sigh. The sun is shining and there's some warmth in the air, and it's forecast to be much of the same over the next few days. Just in time to be back in work...
Never mind eh? Let's let the Nazis' favourite femme fatale of the war era lift us out of the gloom on this Tacky Music Monday (together with her ensemble of distinctly unmännlich dancers) - here's Fraulein Marika Rökk:
The biggest party of the season - the Last Night of the Proms - certainly lived up to its reputation! Yesterday evening's eclectic concert included a bit of everything - from Saint‐Saëns to spirituals, from powerful Puccini arias to the Pink Panther, from William Walton to Welsh nursery tunes (arr. Grace Williams), and from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's wistfully appropriate Summer Is Gone to the Match of the Day theme (part of a faboo new work Extra Time by Ian Farrington).
This year's soloist, US soprano Angel Blue charmed the pants off the Promenaders, not least with her wickedly flirtatious Al pensar en el dueño de mis amores (Carceleras) (from a zarzuela (operetta) Las hijas del Zebedeo by Ruperto Chapi) [no video of the night, unfortunately, but here she is performing it in 2016], during which she tossed flowers into the audience and even handed one to our conductor Sakari Oramo, who then proceeded to try and conduct with it (until it broke)!
Musical arranger and star pianist Sir Stephen Hough was also centre-stage and, as an encore, performed a hilarious and breath-taking arrangement of tunes from the Sound of Music mingled with bits of Beethoven and Ravel, as well as providing superb accompaniment to Miss Blue's gorgeous vocals.
Following the interval, it was time for the real event - as the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and BBC Singers launched themselves into the traditional opener by the Proms founder Sir Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs. Then it was time for Miss Blue to make her triumphal return - complete with Union Jack "joker hat" - for the first of the three songs that make up the finale [any of which could, and should, be our National Anthem], Rule, Britannia!:
...closely followed by a second, Land of Hope and Glory:
After that exhausting double-bill, it was time for Mr Oromo's conductor's speech - in which he compared the successes of the Proms season with the equally-triumphant-for-the-UK summer of sporting events, including the Olympics. Three cheers for Sir Henry, and it was on with the show! The triumvirate of flag-waving, sing-a-long numbers concluded with the classic Jerusalem:
With that, God Save the King, and Auld Lang Syne, it was all over for another year. After eight weeks of serious musicianship, and seventy-three concerts up and down the country, it was just what we deserved...
We're getting excited here at Dolores Delargo Towers, as the whole day on BBC Radio 3 has basically been a warm-up/coundown to tonight's Last Night of the Proms - the season-closing classical music extravaganza, flag-waving, sing-a-long fest at the Royal Albert Hall that we look forward to every year!
Meanwhile, in complete contrast...
...it's the 80th birthday today of one of the original "sex kittens" who took 1960s/70s US variety television shows by storm [and "Tacky Music Mondays" stalwart], Miss Joey Heatherton!
Here she is - replete with safety gays - on one of her suitably unsubtle numbers, by way of a celebration...
Many happy returns, Joey!
Phew! Another busy week is dragging its heels - but the end in sight... Despite the fact it is Friday the Thirteenth (ooo-er!), it's still time for us to start letting our hair down, to get in the mood for a party...
...and have a bit of a "timeslip moment", to boot!
The USS Enterprise-D has deposited us three decades into the past, in the nexus of 1994 - the year of the Channel Tunnel, the IRA ceasefire, the Israel–Jordan peace treaty, Nelson Mandela and the final end of apartheid, the final end of the Cold War, Edwina Currie's support of the lowering of the age of consent for homosexual relationships to 16 which was rejected and followed by the passing of an amendment which made it 18, Fred and Rose West and the "House of Horrors" murders, the ordination of women priests, Silvio Berlusconi, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sunday trading, Ace of Base, the so-called "Sharongate" saga in EastEnders, President Clinton, the sinking of the MS Estonia in the Baltic Sea with 852 deaths, Prince Charles' confession on TV of adultery with Camilla (and Diana wearing that iconic "little black dress" on the same day), Schindler's List, peace in Angola, the arrival of Tony Blair as opposition leader, Russian invasion of Chechnya, Mrs. Doubtfire, the "cash for questions" affair, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the Britpop "war" between Oasis and Blur, Newt Gingrich, Pulp Fiction, the arrest of OJ Simpson for murder, the Sony Playstation, genocide in Rwanda, Wet Wet Wet's Love Is All Around being at #1 for 15 weeks, Serial Mom, civil war in Yemen, "Life is like a box of chocolates", and the Michael Jackson-Lisa Marie Presley freakshow wedding...
...the year Tom Daley, Harry Styles, Justin Bieber, the National Lottery, Friends, Yahoo, AOL and Amazon were born; and the year Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Peter Cushing, Roy Castle, Burt Lancaster, Fanny Cradock, Cesar Romero, Telly Savalas, Labour leader John Smith, Henry Mancini, John Curry, Kurt Cobain, Cab Calloway, Dan Hartman, Stephen Milligan MP, Derek Jarman, Dennis Potter, Harry Nilsson, Ayrton Senna and Doris Speed all died.
It was also a peak year in "The Decade of Dance". So let's load the "Club Classics" cassette into the Walkman, and with not one, not two, but three classics from that very year - Thank Disco(?) It's Friday!!
First up, some noise [and I went mad for this when I first heard it!]:
...some trance:
...and, from this very week thirty years ago [EEK!], this!
Have a great weekend, dear reader!!
They're dropping like flies at the moment! House favourite here at Dolores Delargo Towers, the marvellous multilingual singer, guitarist, star of 50s/60s variety shows alongside the likes of Dean Martin and Fred Astaire, and schlager legend in Germany, Miss Caterina Valente has departed for the glittering environs of Fabulon, aged 93...
...closely followed by the star of one of my favourite TV shows when I was a kid Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) - as well as Coronation Street, That Was the Week That Was and Carry On films - Kenneth Cope [above, top left]. Here's the fantabulosa theme tune:
And an old classic:
RIP, both.
Taylor Swift does not represent us, says League of Spinsters
Childless cat-owning women have decried Taylor Swift as not representative of their wizened, child-scaring community.
Hardcore crones, with as many as 16 feral felines in shadowy homes which they only leave to shout at the young, say they have been fighting for women’s bodily autonomy longer than any stripling of a 34-year-old.
86-year-old spinster Margaret Gerving said: “Well pardon me for having progressive views while cackling in a rocking chair. We can’t all have toned pins and sell out global stadium tours, you know.
“Swift barely has a wrinkle, has a mere three cats and far from being single and unwanted, she’s entertained a string of gentleman callers and is currently seeing a footballer. She doesn’t even know we prefer to be called crazy cat ladies.”
Susan Traherne, aged 90, agreed: “If I endorsed Kamala Harris it would carry some weight, what with my average weekly shop being 60 tins of Felix and a single loaf of bread. Those are heavyweight credentials.
“But her? Does her audience really care why she did this, or do they blindly like her Instagram post because she can belt out a tune in a skimpy outfit? I’m bitterly cynical by nature after my fiancé left me at the altar in 1954, but I’m inclined to believe the latter.”
She added: “I see Elon Musk has offered to impregnate her. He says the same to me every day. But when he’s in cat form.”
Of course.
[The "real" story]
Another snippets post, dear reader...
And the weather? November.
Where did that weekend go??!
Hey ho, here we go again - and, as it's the lovely Miss Dee Dee Sharp's birthday today (79), it's up to her (and Chubby) to provide the wake-up call on this Tacky Music Monday!
I'm knackered now, just watching it!
Have a good week, dear reader.
I spent another long day yesterday at John-John's, catching up with all the "Marvel geek" stuff I hadn't seen - the whole X-Men: 97 animated series and not one, but two of the original (20th Century Fox) X-Men films [which are not a patch on the cartoon, and quite half-arsed in comparison to anything Marvel's own studio has produced].
Deadpool didn't get a look in this time around, but I found the above spoof versions of the sort of advert that used to be in the comics I had when I was young, which are too good not to share, dear reader!
I got home (via Uber cab) in the wee small hours, just in time for the most tremendous thunderstorm!
Coincidence? Maybe.
Although all that's blown over, and today's weather's not that bad, I still think this old fave is appropriate...
...a track I previously described as "a battle-royal between Miss Viola Wills and Miss Lena Horne":
Faboo!
