¡Olé! indeed. Just one more day of tedious slog to go, and it'll be time to slam that laptop shut for the next seventeen days!
As you are no doubt aware, dear reader - we're off to Spain for a week tomorrow (followed by - for me, at least - another week off to mong about, pottering in the garden, no doubt).
To mark the very welcome end of the week, how about a little bit of Spanish campery..?
Gracias Disco ¡Es viernes!
Have a great one, dear reader!
Almost there...
Just one working day and a Sondheim show to go [and you'll have to wait till I'm back in Blighty for any kind of post about that one], and we'll be off to the delights of the Costa del Sol again tomorrow!
Speaking of the joys of of the Costas...this!
Gracias Disco ¡Ya es viernes!
Have a good weekend, dear reader!
The sun is rising in a clear blue sky, the weekend is looming, and - after another tedious week in work - we need to start planning the party to celebrate!
As any sign of sunshine always brings thoughts of holidays in Spain, how about an old, old fave [it was in our charts - gulp - 47 YEARS AGO this week!] from one of that country's greatest exports?
Gracias Disco ¡Es viernes!
Have a great one, 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.
It's the final, final countdown - not merely the end of a week, but the end of a year!
Having depressed everyone yesterday by opening the "Book of the Dead 2021", it's time to (sort of) make amends - with a party. We shan't be hosting a real one again this year, more's the pity, thanks to fucking Omicron ["our gang" will be gathering via Zoom/Teams/wotever instead] - but let's get some dance choons lined up for a (solitary) boogie nonetheless!
Every track on this playlist is from someone who has departed for the ever-growing dancefloors of Fabulon this year - so let's raise a glass to the memory of each and every one of 'em, and Thank Disco It's New Year's Eve Friday!!
Have a faboo New Year, dear reader! Clink, clink. It can only be better. Can't it?
[* Scary fact: the boy in that classic "meme-y thing" is now 39 and living in Boston]
Gosh, our "1970s camp Disco icons" are dropping like flies this year. We've lost both Patrick Juvet and Raffaella Carra, and now comes that sad news that Maria Mendiola [the one in white in all the photos and videos], founder-member of the world-conquering Spanish duo Baccara, has died, at just 69 years old.
We at Dolores Delargo Towers are bereft again - but on a Tacky Music Monday, for a "wake-up call" as we return to the joys of work, I never need an excuse to pay due tribute to Spain's original "tacky music Queens"!
First up, of course, is their debut hit - which has sold an estimated 18 million copies so far [the best-selling Disco record according to the Guinness Book of Records, no less), and shows no sign of abating since it was adopted by (of all things) Scotland football fans as an "anthem":
Even more camp was their second hit [despite their cult status, they only ever had two hits in the UK]:
The duo produced a few more singles that were hits in Europe, and even entered the Eurovision Song Contest - before they finally called it a day in 1979 and split into two rival camps, both using the name Baccara, neither of which had much success. Let's revel in a few more from their back catalogue, opening with this eye-opener:
RIP Maria Mendiola (4th April 1952 – 11th September 2021)
Have a good week, dear reader.
