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]:
...closely followed by a second:
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 this one:
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 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!
And so, farewell, Sérgio Mendes - the man who almost single-handedly made the Brazilian "New Wave" sounds of bossa nova into a cool, internationally-successful pop genre in the 1960s - who has packed up his piano, bongos and Cuica and departed for the "Tiki Lounge" in Fabulon. [To be honest, who even knew he was still with us?]
There is only one song to play, really!
Sérgio Mendes and Brasil 66 - Mas Que Nada (introduced by Eartha Kitt)
Mas que nada
Sai da minha frente
Eu quero passar
Pois o samba está animado
O que eu quero é sambar
[which roughly translates as]
Whatever!
Get out of my way
I wanna pass
Because samba is exciting
And I wanna dance [samba]
Descanse em paz, Sérgio Santos Mendes (11th February 1941 – 5th September 2024)
Yay! The end of the week is nigh...
Time for a boogie, dear reader - so, whether you choose to don your biggest Afro, or swathe yourself in feathers from headdress to knicker-line, let's get that party started...
...just like Miss Gwen Dickie and her boys in Rose Royce - and Thank Disco It's Friday!
Have a great weekend, peeps!
Happy 200th birthday to Anton Bruckner! He looks sooo cheerful on his birthday...
The man himself was rather an oddball, according to The Guardian:
It was only in his 40s in Vienna that Bruckner felt confident enough to embark on the symphonic project that would sustain the rest of his musical life. But in doing so, he had to face the wrath of his critics, who called him everything from "a drunkard" to the composer of "symphonic boa-constrictors" (that one was Brahms). He also had to put up with caricatures of him as a devoutly, credulously Catholic country bumpkin who propositioned teenage girls in his old age, and who once tipped a conductor with cash for getting through a rehearsal of one of his symphonies......he had a mania for counting the bricks and windows of buildings, and for counting the numbers of bars in his gargantuan orchestral scores, making sure their proportions were statistically correct...[he was also] "death-obsessed"...
Yet, for all his weirdness, the legacy of his music lives on.
Here's a lovely sample:
A touch of much-needed class round these parts, methinks!
Anton Bruckner (4th September 1824 – 11th October 1896)
Another snippets post, dear reader...
And the weather? Up and down like a whore's drawers.
Oh shit. Here we go again...
After a really pleasant weekend - warm sunshine, a meet-up with the Madam's cousin and his family on a rare vist to London on Saturday night, a bit of pottering in the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers - wham! We're back to work, and it's a Tacky Music Monday once more!
Here's something that is almost certain to wake you up out of your stupor, dear reader - even if it's only to switch it off, while screaming:
Vodka for breakfast? No, ta. I'll have gin.
Have a good week, dears.
[* "Se polkka taas menneitä mieleen tuo" = "This polka reminds me of the past" in Finnish]
On this beautifully warm and sunny late summer day, it seems fitting, methinks, for a wallow in some of the "newer" music that has caught my ear of late...
Let's open proceedings with something suitably sunshiney, its video featuring gorgeous young things cavorting in some exotic location, in various states of undress:
[the song samples Ennio Morricone - Dance On from the film Così Come Sei (aka: Stay As You Are) (1978), in case you were wondering]By complete contrast - a holiday road trip much closer to home, to accompany another classic-in-the-making from one of our favourite bands:
Here's a faboo discovery - weird, indeed:
Next, the return of not just one, but two house favourites!
This track apparently took four years to get finished! It's good, but what took so long?
To conclude, saving the best to last - when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, this happens. Love it!
As ever, I welcome your thoughts, dear reader...
