It's in the "bit in-between" - the pause for breath as the shops start to dispense with the tinsel and Shakin' Stevens and you start to wonder what to do with that mound of leftovers at the bottom of the fridge - that our thoughts turn to "reviews of the year that was".
Let's start with music.
I can't deny that 2014 was a bit underwhelming. Maybe it was just
me (what with the distractions of the two of us at different times being "at risk of redundancy",
and moving house in the middle of it), not keeping up with the newest releases - and certainly with all that was going on, I felt I rarely had the time or the inclination to listen to it all. However, there were some highlights...
Keeping up our long tradition here at Dolores Delargo Towers of live events, I did manage to tick off some significant musical "firsts", beginning with a marvellous evening with Miss
Mari Wilson in Soho in January, and ending with Mr
Adam Ant in November. We were humbled by the presence of the marvellous Chrissie Hynde with the Pet Shop Boys at the
Prom for Alan Turing in July, and overwhelmed with glitter by
Earth Wind and Fire at Proms in the Park in September.
On a much smaller scale, we had a fab evening of salsa courtesy of
Jesus Cutino Y Son de Cuba at the sparkling Hippodrome, the effervescent Al Pillay saved the day
at the end-of-LGBT-History-Month Ball, there was the fun of
West End Live with Daniel Boys and Jodie Prenger, the
"Evening with Noel Coward" courtesy of Stefan Bednarczyk, and Eve Ferret provided a showcase for the lovely
Andy Bell. We missed: Prince in Camden,
Kylie in Shoreditch, Dolly
at Glastonbury, and of course the hyped-up musical event of the year -
Kate Bush in Hammersmith. Hey ho.
But what of the musical world "out there"? Forty years on from
the birth of Blondie and of
Abba winning Eurovision? In a year where the charts were dominated by dross like Taylor Swift, Sam Smith, Ariana Grande and Ed Sheeran, a year when U2 mis-fired an album launch, Take That became a trio, Sinitta, Band-Aid and S-Club 7(!) made comebacks, and a Disney song (
Let it Go) became an "anthem", was there any sign of salvation?
Well, several of "our kind of Divas" - albeit very different in style - had new albums to promote, not least
Amanda Lear's tribute to Elvis,
Marianne Faithfull's tribute to London,
Dame Shirley Bassey's tribute to the songs no-one ever let her sing till she was old, and Kylie Minogue's tribute to... pop! To my chagrin, 99.999999% of all shopping this year has been focussed on improving our domestic surroundings here at Dolores Delargo Towers #3, and nary a CD nor a DVD has been purchased all year. In fact, since moving in we haven't even connected the DVD or stereo together. Most of our musical entertainment of late has been via the wonders of the interweb, and (despite the fact I was very, very lackadaisical about posting my usual "Pick of the Pops" musical round-up blogs during 2014) here are just a few things that piqued our interest...
We always love those sassy divas who
can actually sing (as opposed to that dreadful wibbly stuff that Christina or Beyoncé or any X-Factor-wannabee does, or that hideous pseudo-"street-cred" rubbish that comes from the charts), and providing us with a well-needed dose of just that (as I
featured in April) was Miss Kimberly Davis (with a significant degree of assistance from
"musical producer of the year" Dave Audé):
...and another diva (with whom I have had a love-hate relationship over the years) with a classy set of pipes, Miss Mary J Blige really caught my ear with
F For You:
Speaking of Dave Audé, his
Aftermath (Here We Go) for the aforementioned Andy Bell was an absolute joy:
Possibly the weirdest - and most infectious - of this year's clutch of choons had to be
I'm an Albatraoz by AronChupa (featured here
in November):
Providing a harmonic novelty as well as delightful amounts of young male flesh,
from July came the boys of Out of the Blue and their Shakira cover:
Speaking of totty, the ever-lovely Mika returned this year with a lavish video for
Boum Boum Boum - and in French, no less...
Dear old Auntie Beeb pulled out all the stops (and all the stars!) for their ensemble version of
God Only Knows:
Dance act success story of the year had to be the unpronounceable Kiesza, who seems to have captured the hearts and minds of critics and the buying public alike (most unusual these days) - here from
March is her marvellous
Hideaway:
Miss Róisín Murphy delighted us with her return early in the year, and she chose a magnificent tribute EP to some of our fave Italian crooners with which to do it:
On
our return from Spain in February, we just had to delight our audiences with the simply
filthy Sebastian Castro and his
Bubble:
Unfortunately not as massive a success as we may have hoped, Princess Kylie's utterly wonderful
Into The Blue needless to say remained a very welcome "ear-worm" for most of 2014:
Mr Jimmy Somerville's rediscovery of Disco with
Travesty - as
featured here last month - was not just one of 2014's most incredibly uplifting moments, but had the most brilliant video of the year, too:
There is, however, absolutely
NO CONTEST when it comes to the "Song of the Year".
In 2014, when we gayers experienced some of the most virulent homophobia we had heard in a long time - not just from the usual selection of fucking horrible African dictators, American evangelists and Islamic psychopaths, but thanks to a coldly cynical state-sponsored effort by the most reprehensible world leader since the dark days of the mid-20th century, Vladimir Putin - it fell upon the sequinned shoulders of a remarkable bearded drag queen from, of all places, Austria to provide us with the most rousing song of defiance of the lot. Bigger than Eurovision, bigger than the combined forces of GaGa, Queen Madge, Cher and Dame Elton put together - 2014 was the year of Conchita Wurst!
Let's hope the musical world can come up with another eclectic selection in 2015 (and that I can concentrate harder on musical discoveries of the newer kind to share with you, dear reader...).
More cogitations on the year 2014 to come - stay tuned!
