Time, oh give me time

"...I’ve always been positive. I wouldn’t still be here if I wasn’t. I think you’re always who you are, but life distracts you, particularly because of fame – everybody treats you different, therefore you end up with a distorted idea of who you are. Don’t you think that life’s about growing into yourself in a funny kind of way? You’re looking for answers and I think as you get older, you realise there aren’t really answers. You just have to kind of get on with it. Life is kind of like clinging to a rock, isn’t it? We’re all clinging to a rock, and some people have got a better grip than others. Some people look bedraggled, and other people look like Jerry Hall dressed as mermaid on that Roxy Music album cover.”

Oh, lordy! You know you're getting old when...

...you realise that Boy George is 65 years old today!

Time flies...

Culture Club - Time

Hot Since 82 & Jamie Jones feat. Boy George - Body Control

Many happy returns, Boy George (born George Alan O'Dowd, 14th June 1961)

Música nueva

Still in a bit of a lazy mood, catching up after the holiday...

...but there's always time for some of the "newer" music that has caught my ear of late!

First up, the welcome return of an old crush of mine...

MIKA - Jane Birkin

One that I have adored ever since Mr DeVice first featured it a while back:

Bright Light Bright Light - You Want My...

It doesn't get much gayer than that - or does it?

Pet Shop Boys - Loneliness

Now, here's a lad who knows how to dance all that sadness off!

Conan Gray - Lonely Dancers

Speaking of welcome returns, here's an utterly faboo new number from our favourite Bristolian belles:

Bananarama - Supernova

Apparently Radio 1's "Hottest Record of the Year" 2023, this is a catchy little number indeed (though the singer could do with a good diction coach)...

Nothing But Thieves - Welcome to the DCC

This dancy choon sounds like a remix of a Kraftwerk track from the late 70s/early 80s - with the freakiest video imaginable!

Camelphat & Ali Love - Compute

Saving the best to last, however...this!

Ariana DeBose, Boy George, Nile Rodgers - Electric Energy [from Argylle]

As ever, dear reader, let me know your thoughts...

Where were you?

Purple is the colour this year...

It's "Gay Xmas Eve", dear reader - and we at Dolores Delargo Towers are definitely going to be in the mood for a party!!

To that end, here are two old faves (both on a similar theme) to get us up and running - and Thank Disco Pride It's Friday!

Hot Since 82 & Jamie Jones feat. Boy George - Body Control

Le Grind - I Was There (Where Were You?)

Enjoy tomorrow - it's our day!

Avant-garde, never fade

Easter. If the shops weren't still closed thanks to the continued lockdown, they'd be shut anyway today. And it's getting colder again, so the garden's a less-than-enticing prospect.

There's nothing for it, but to entertain ourselves - how about a little round-up of some of the "newer" music that has caught my ear of late? That'll do nicely...

First up a little apéritif courtesy of Mr Boy George! He was there. Where were you?

Hot Since 82 & Jamie Jones feat. Boy George - Body Control

Here's someone from RuPaul's Drag Queen UK [I wouldn't know; this bloody Drag Race thing seems to have been going for a hundred years and I have never watched it] with an "amusing" name, and a rather good choon:

Tia Kofi - Outside In

Courtesy of Ana Matronic's Dance Devotion show on Radio 2 [again!] is this very weird little number from a band from... Totnes:

Metronomy - Salted Caramel Ice Cream

From the ridiculous to the sublime - an oddity from Brazil:

Carolina Lins & Os Planatos - I Predict A Riot [from Kaiser: The Greatest Footballer Never To Play Football]

A cool little number from one of our favourite Ukrainian hunks, with a most magnificent video:

Max Barskih with Yulia Zivert - Bestseller

and finally...saving the best for last [and speaking of Drag Race, a bit of a team up between our beloved "house band" Steps and RuPaul's "right-hand woman"!

Steps & Michelle Visage - Heartbreak in This City

Enjoy! And, as ever, let me know your thoughts...

We’re all clinging to a rock

“It feels like the mainstream has been hijacked by hit-makers, people who are really good at writing songs that all drop in the right places, they’re all pleasant, but there’s not many people who really give of themselves, if you know what I mean. When I was 19, there was still the mystery of rock’n’roll, there was still the wizard behind the curtain. Kids now, they know how to make records, they know where to get their clothes. They don’t have to walk to Deptford High Street to look at the platform shoes in the window, they can go online and get them from Asos, whereas we had to dream about it: is this possible? Now, it’s like: ‘Yeah, you can be famous, you get on this show, you do that, you do this,’ but I think the thing is, I don’t think it necessarily means that much. I’m glad I had that exciting first part of my career in a decade when you could make a cultural difference of sorts, you know?

"...I’ve always been positive. I wouldn’t still be here if I wasn’t. I think you’re always who you are, but life distracts you, particularly because of fame – everybody treats you different, therefore you end up with a distorted idea of who you are. Don’t you think that life’s about growing into yourself in a funny kind of way? You’re looking for answers and I think as you get older, you realise there aren’t really answers. You just have to kind of get on with it. Life is kind of like clinging to a rock, isn’t it? We’re all clinging to a rock, and some people have got a better grip than others. Some people look bedraggled, and other people look like Jerry Hall dressed as mermaid on that Roxy Music album cover.”

Boy George, interviewed by Alexis Petridis for The Guardian.

Culture Club - Time

Don't put your head on my shoulder
Sink me in a river of tears
This could be the best place yet
But you must overcome your fears
In time we could've been so much more
But time is precious I know
In time we could've been so much more
The time has nothing to show
because
Time won't give me time
And time makes lovers feel
Like they've got something real
But you and me we know
We got nothing
but time

First there are kisses, then there are sighs

Many happy returns to a true original, a living embodiment of "gender-bending" long before it became somewhat fashionable - Mr Boy George!

Much has been written about the great Mr O'Dowd, his triumphs and adversity, his vocal genius and troubled relationships, so let us, on this grey Sunday, celebrate the Boy at his very best - here's The Crying Game...

Boy George - The Crying Game

George Alan O'Dowd (aka Boy George, born 14th June 1961)

Push aside those that whisper never

From the BBC website comes an intriguing piece of news:

Re-formed 1980s band Culture Club feature among a line-up of concerts with the BBC Philharmonic designed to broaden the appeal of orchestral music.

[The band], who announced their comeback earlier this year, will revisit their acclaimed 1983 album Colour by Numbers accompanied by the 90-strong BBC Philharmonic.

The record featured their chart-topping hit Karma Chameleon and songs Church of the Poisoned Mind and It's a Miracle.

I can't wait to hear this!

One song in particular - my favourite of the whole album - should be an absolute treat:

Culture Club - Victims

Colour By Numbers Wikipedia entry.

Pop potpurri

Time for another round-up of some of the newer music that has caught my ear lately...

Let's get this one out of the way first. Our favourite Spice Girl, Miss Geri Halliwell has made a rather half-hearted attempt at a comeback with her new self-penned single Half of Me. Not likely to put a dent anywhere near the charts, methinks. Bless 'er!

Geri Halliwell - Half of Me

A far more classy musical comeback has been in our hearts, minds and ears all year - that of David Bowie! Here's his latest, Love is Lost - with a new "Hello Steve Reich Mix" by James Murphy that pays glowing tribute to the classic Ashes to Ashes...

David Bowie - Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix)

A word from our sponsor... Here's a trailer for the new album Quicksilver from our friend, the "macabre" Mr Marcus Reeves (whose launch show I hope to get to see at the Lost Theatre in Wandsworth on 22nd November)...

[2019 UPDATE: Needless to say (as a trailer), this is no longer on YouTube]

Guitar-based American "alternative" rock bands are not normally my first choice in music, but the band calling itself The Neighbourhood has a rather good choon out (and video - watch out for a flash of the lead singer's own "neighbourhood"!) - it's the hypnotic Afraid:

The Neighbourhood - Afraid

Another welcome return - the lovely Mr Boy George, who asks "What's the word on the street? Have I lost my crown, or will I be king again?". Judging by the excellence of his latest single King of Everything, he has little to worry about apart from dodgy facial hair:

Boy George - King of Everything

Something very new, now. Dropkick is the musical project of Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle regular Cusp, obviously a great talent in the waiting. Here's the remarkably Scissor-Sisters-esque Trapdoor - it's rather fab, actually!

Dropkick - Trapdoor (Original 77 mix)

While still recovering from the rumbustious cabaret provided by Miss Eve Ferret last Monday (and we're going to see her again tomorrow!), I looked up her erstwhile partner-in-crime from the New Romantic era at Steve Strange's "Blitz" club Mr James "Biddie" Biddlecombe, and came across this hilarious clip - I've Never Been In Boyz. I just had to share...

James "Biddie" Biddlecombe - I've Never Been In Boyz!

And finally, we may be a little late for Hallowe'en, but here is the latest ever-fabulous underwear advertising campaign from Andrew Christian. These boys can Suck...

Andrew Christian - Suck

As ever, enjoy! (And let me know what you think...)

There's a brand new talk, but it's not very clear

Listen to me - don't listen to me
Talk to me - don't talk to me
Dance with me - don't dance with me, no
Beep-beep (David Bowie, Fashion)

A gang of us traversed town to go the fantabulosa V&A last night for a much-anticipated evening with Boy George, talking about the influence David Bowie had on his own personal style and fashion. A great concept.

Unfortunately, we came away from it a little disappointed. For although Boy George: Bowie Style promised to be revelatory, in the company of interviewer author and journalist Paul Gorman the Boy was allowed free rein to ramble. I got the distinct impression that there was no strict running order of questions, and that somewhere along the line the crux of the matter was in danger of being lost among the cavalcade of seemingly random images.

George, it seems, was indeed a Bowie fan - but, tellingly, he developed his interests in "alternative" fashion independently, discovering the great man's music only late on when his older brothers had tired of it. Once he did develop a fascination for the Bowies - even camping outside their Beckenham home - it was evidently Angie (and the older Woolwich girls who dressed like her) who became the focus of his burgeoning campery. But it was Bowie's androgynous Hunky Dory "look" that eventually became the Boy's favourite of all.

Of course, Boy George is always charm personified, and listening to him ramble is still better than any number of inferior modern celebrity "interviews". Some of the anecdotes were excellent - such as the time Marilyn pissed Bowie off mightily by jumping into his lap uninvited, and the way that once Culture Club had become famous, George had no idea whether it was appropriate to behave like a "fellow celebrity" on the occasions he met David, or whether to give in to the temptations of his "inner fan" and just turn to jelly. He admitted he was pissed-off to have missed the opportunity - twice! - to appear in one of Bowie's videos (as had his friends Steve Strange and Princess Julia in Ashes to Ashes, and Eve Ferret in Blue Jean).

Altogether not as good an evening as the sum of its parts. Ange, Theo, Mark, Marcus Reeves, little Tony and I all enjoyed ourselves, however, and spent a rewarding few hours in the "Hoop and Toy" pub at South Kensington station afterwards (with the aforementioned Eve Ferret and some familar faces from Polari) dissecting it.



I came across this article by Bennett Faber from 6 Magazine, which does the job more succinctly:

"Plenty can be said about David Bowie’s fashion legacy. He is the style icon who inspired today’s style icons. He blanketed gender boundaries in a seductive, sexless fog. He nailed the orange mullet. Like any anointed style symbol, David Bowie was imaginative and fearless, but he was also more than the sum of what hung in his closet.

Though he had already achieved some chart success, David Bowie really arrived in 1972, when he released The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. It is his first classic record, a parade of air-guitarables like “Ziggy Stardust,” “Suffragette City,” and “Starman.” But it was the album’s eponymous androgen that turned it into something mythic.

Glam rock already had some glittered ambassadors, but Ziggy Stardust was special. With designer Kansai Yamamoto acting as astral haberdasher, his wardrobe bristled with metallic knit body suits, satin kimonos, and sequin samurai pants. At his peak, Ziggy looked otherworldly, a fever dream in kabuki face paint and platform boots, mullet burning like Venus.

Bowie would later say that he “became” Ziggy Stardust. He showed up at interviews as he did on stage, clouding the distinction between the man and his creative image. It was a new kind of rock star aura, with Ziggy and Bowie became an endless source of fantasy, mystery, and inspiration.

“We used to go and stand outside his house in Beckenham,” said Boy George. “You had all these ideas about what was going on in there – that it was a real psychedelic, trippy household. It was kind of the idea of what they were like that was so fascinating.”

Living in this Gaga era, it’s easy to lose sight of just how daring Ziggy Stardust was. Until he sashayed onto Top of the Pops in a multicolour jumpsuit, male makeup wasn’t popular conversation. Teenage boys definitely weren’t posting up waifish, sexually ambiguous spacemen onto their bedroom walls.

The importance of fashion in Bowie’s music was rooted in his love of thespian weirdness. In the 1970s, while whirling across styles of glam, folk, and soul, he developed complex personas whose appearance augmented his sound. It’s hard to imagine Hunky Dory without its eccentric folkie, or Young Americans without its soul man, or Station to Station minus its spectral, coke-addled crooner.

And throughout it all, the clothes never wore him. Even at his weirdest, he was never gimmicky. His characters were manifest mood, serving as an extension of himself—or one of his selves.

We should honour David Bowie not only for doing it first, but also for doing it well. Plenty of musicians have gone on to build personalities outfitted in ballsy confections, but few besides Bowie have been able to merge music and closet with as much intensity, panache, and artistic integrity."

And here are some appropriate examples:

David Bowie - Fashion

David Bowie - Jazzin' for Blue Jean

Boy George: Bowie Style was organised as part of the (largely sold-out) David Bowie is exhibition that is at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) to 28th July 2013.

Yoko melts

"Yoko Ono is a fascinating artist, as are the collaborators she is bringing from all over the world.

"She's an energetic and inspiring peace and environmental activist and a champion for women's rights. It's a privilege to have her curating Meltdown's 20th anniversary." - Jude Kelly, artistic director at Southbank Centre

One of the highlights of this year's Meltdown Festival will be the first live appearance of punk icon Siouxsie for five years.

The Royal Festival Hall will witness the old and the new on 20 June when Iggy and the Stooges are supported by hotly tipped all-girl punk group Savages, while Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon will be performing at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with her latest incarnation Body/Head.

Elsewhere, 1960s singer Marianne Faithfull will team up with leading jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, while there will also be performances from Peaches, Patti Smith, Boy George and comedian Reggie Watts, with the full line-up yet to be confirmed.

Ono will bring down the curtain on the festival by joining a group of special guests for the first live performance of Double Fantasy - the last album recorded by her and Lennon, which was released just three weeks before the former Beatle's death in 1980.

I only wish I could afford tickets for all of it...

Read the whole article on the BBC

Yoko Ono's Meltdown is at the Southbank Centre from 14th - 23rd June 2013. Tickets go on sale to Southbank members tomorrow (9th April).

About a Boy

Apparently this week thirty years ago, a certain Madonna Ciccone released her very first record Everybody, and began her quest for world domination. It would, of course, take another couple of years before she was even heard of in the UK.

No, thirty years ago, the world belonged to a boy called George - whose appearance and amazingly catchy debut hit Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? was practically the only thing in the news in October 1982 (Cold War, Falklands fall-out, suppression of the Polish Solidarity union and the raising of the Mary Rose aside...). Something had changed in society, for good, with this single.

Culture Club - Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?

Culture Club official website

Georgie Boy

Happy 50th birthday today to the original, the best of the "gender-benders", the unique and never-to-be-repeated Mr Boy George!

His life in the spotlight is legendary, his problems and recoveries well documented, and, after everything we still love him...

Phunk Investigation and Boy George - Generations of Love 2008

www.boygeorgeuk.com/

Uma bela voz

On first hearing Boy George's new single Amazing Grace, my very first thought was "who's that girl singer"? So I decided to investigate...

The very lovely Ana Lains is a sensation in her native Portugal. With her crystal-clear vocals she has mastered that most traditional of musical styles Fado with a style and grace all her own. She has won many awards for her music, and celebrates ten years in the recording industry with a new album Quatro Caminhos, released this year and available on Amazon.

Here is Miss Lains with the first (eponymous) single from that album, an exquisite number...

Ana Lains - Quatro Caminhos

Here she is singing her lovely tango-tinged mega-hit Pouco Tempo:

Ana Lains - Pouco Tempo

And here is the lovely lady providing magnificent vocals for Boy George on that single...

Boy George - Amazing Grace

http://www.myspace.com/analains

Where did you get that hat?

I have always had a "thing" for hats - whether those of Schiaparelli or Cecil Beaton, Philip Treacy or Mitza Bricard for Dior. Among my greatest style icons are people who can really wear hats - George Melly, Audrey Hepburn, Gloria Swanson, Molly Parkin, Grace Jones, Greta Garbo, Isabella Blow. So it was no surprise, really, that we had to go and see the exhibition Hats - an Anthology at the V&A before it closes tomorrow.

It was a sumptuous extravaganza - so many beautiful and bizarre creations I just wanted to try on!

Influenced by Cecil Beaton's 1971 V&A show Fashion - an Anthology and including 300 examples of millinery and its inspirations throughout history - from an Egyptian Anubis mask dating from 600 BC, a Coptic Fez (ca. 1100), a Tudor knitted beret and a silk and straw bonnet dating from 1807, to the most unusual creations of today - it was collated and artistically inspired by the wunderkind milliner to the stars Stephen Jones.



Born in 1957, Stephen graduated from London's St Martin's School of Art in 1979 and began to make hats for friends - just at the right time for the post-punk Futurist/New Romantic dressing-up world that heralded the early 80s.

At around that time he lived in a squat with Boy George, among others - and as the only squatter with a car, he used to drive the Boy around to the Blitz Club and other arty nights where they would parade their latest outrageous sartorial creations.

As his designs became wildly in demand amongst the uber-hip (Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Steve Strange) within a year of graduating he had his own shop in Covent Garden. Things really took off when Jean-Paul Gaultier saw George wearing one of Stephen's designs in the video for Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? and invited him to design the hats for his latest Paris show.

He went on to acquire the greatest accolade of the age when Princess Diana commissioned him to design for her, and his fame was assured - over the years he has worked with Vivienne Westwood, Claude Montana, Comme des Garcons, Marc Jacobs, Thierry Mugler and John Galliano, and his surreal creations have been worn by just about everyone including the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Marilyn Manson, Pink, Gwen Stefani, Alison Goldfrapp, Beyonce Knowles and Dita Von Teese.

Even renowned contemporary and rival surrealist milliner Philip Treacy learned his trade on work placement with Stephen Jones...

A genius - and a brilliant exhibition!

Hats - an Anthology

Stephen Jones Millinery

Norwegian Wood

Mischief strikes me again as the news headlines are full of the Boy George Norwegian whore blackmail story. So I just had to post this.

Culture Club - Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?

and this...

Monty Python - Norwegian Party

[NB Samtykkende" = "consensual" in Norwegian.]

Eek! Caption competition anyone?

I bet "Our Glorious Leader" wishes she'd put some slap on for her visit to the Kabollocks centre with her family...



More on A Socialite Life

But at least Madge isn't the only celeb in the rough-looking stakes:

Do you really want to hurt me?

General tabloid frenzy as per usual as poor mad old Auntie Boy George is arrested for allegedly chaining up a rent boy... But just read part of the article and see if you sniff a gold-digger:

"Mr Carlsen claimed he met the former Culture Club star on the website Gaydar, and agreed to go to his flat at midnight as a £400 photographic model. He denied he was working as an escort."

Hmmm...

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