If you wanna rock the rhythm with me babe all through the night

The weekend beckons, and the weather's already turned to shit - grey and damp is our forecast for as far as the eye can see (or at least as far as the Met Office can predict). Pah!

We have parties to plan (well, a Zoom catch-up with sister and Mother this evening anyhow) and sparkles to wear (in our heads mostly) - or else we can just get ourselves into some kind of jolly mood with a lttle "dance cock-a-tail"!

Take a large splash of this...

Double Exposure - Everyman (Has To Carry His Own Weight)

...and a smattering or two of this...

Loleatta Holloway - Hit And Run

...add the musical talents of a pair of canny London DJs - and, from way back in 2001, you get this...

M&S presents The Girl Next Door - Salsoul Nugget (If You Wanna)

...and Thank Disco It's Friday!

Have a great weekend, dear reader!

Ya see its a frightening thing when it dawns upon you

As I said way back in 2010, "International Coming Out Day"...to me sounds like (yawn) yet another American construct and and excuse for the greetings card industry to go into overdrive". It apparently took place a few days ago.

However, it is, completely coincidentally, a singularly important week pour moi. All this year on this very blog - as my regular reader may have observed - I have featured recurrent "timeslip moments" in music, mainly harking back to a certain milestone year, 1984.

For, sometime this week thirty years ago (gulp!), I finally put into words, out loud - in the middle of a drunken horde of fellow students (and to anyone who'd listen, to be honest) - that I, too was gay.



By way of celebration of this (slightly terrifying) milestone, here's a song that made its debut in the UK charts in this very week in 1984 - Shout To The Top, with its somewhat apposite lyrics:

I was halfway home, I was half insane
And every shop window I looked in just looked the same
I said, "Now send me a sign to save my life
Cause at this moment in time there is nothing certain in
These days of mine."

Ya see its a frightening thing when it dawns upon you
That I know as much as the day I was born
And though I wasn't asked, I might as well stay
And promise myself each and every day

That when you're knocked on your back and your life's a flop
And when you're down on the bottom there's nothing else
But to shout to the top, well we're gonna shout to the top
We're gonna shout to the top, we're gonna shout to the top
Hey, we're gonna shout to the top!"

And, because I couldn't choose between versions, here first is the original by the (then) cute Paul Weller and Style Council:

Style Council - Shout to the Top

Followed by a pounding House re-working of the song, featuring none other than the late, great and eternally-missed diva Miss Loleatta Holloway!

Fire Island featuring Loleatta Holloway - Shout to the Top

THREE DECADES?

Where do they go?

Farewell to the BIGGEST voice!

And so dear friends, we wave farewell to one of the all-time greatest vocal stylists in the history of pop music. For one of our patron saints here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Miss Loleatta Holloway is dead!

Miss Holloway was always undersold. Throughout her long and illustrious career, hers was the voice that "carried" star vehicle after star vehicle for other artists.

Yet without her tremendous tonsils, where would such classics as Relight My Fire (by Dan Hartman), Runaway (by Salsoul Orchestra), and of course Black Box's Ride on Time be?



Eternally sampled and remixed, her solo classics include the mega-tastic Love Sensation, Crash Goes Love, Hit and Run and Dreaming, yet surprisingly her biggest US chart success was with a ballad Cry To Me.



I have blogged about my love for Lolly and her Love Sensation before, so I thought I would treat us to something a little different, and appropriate, on this sad day - The Greatest Performance Of My Life. RIP, sweetheart...

Loleatta Holloway - The Greatest Performance Of My Life

And, so as not to make it too maudlin, here's another rarity - a less famous collaboration between Miss Holloway and Dan Hartman that showcases the incredibly powerful vocal gymnastics for which she became so admired:

Dan Hartman and Loleatta Holloway - Keep The Fire Burnin'

Loleatta Holloway obituary

More about Loleatta Holloway at Disco-Disco

Boogie with a suitcase, you're living in a disco

Ah, time for another Pick of the Pops, methinks!

Here's another selection of recent discoveries that have piqued my interest...

First, yet another remix (but a rather good one) of the marvellous Loleatta Holloway by a certain HiFi Sean:

Loleatta Holloway vs Noferini - Stand Up (Hifi Sean Gospel Bootleg) radio edit by Hifi Sean

An inevitable DJ concoction that mixes two top choons (Madonna Vogue vs Duck Sauce Barbra Streisand):

Madonna vs Duck Sauce - Barbara Streisand Strikes a Pose!

A remarkable discovery - Christina Aguilera can actually sing without wibbling! From the new film Burlesque, in which she stars alongside the almighty Cher, Miss Trembling-Tonsils does a passable version of Mae West's A Guy What Takes His Time:

Christina Aguilera - A Guy What Takes His Time

And a selection from the playlist at Dolores Delargo Towers wouldn't be complete without a couple of oddities (both courtesy of the lovely Henry over at MySpazz incidentally). Here's a catchy number from a cute French boy who goes by the name of Stromae - Alors On Danse:

Stromae - Alors On Danse

And finally, Denmark's latest answer to Cheryl Cole, Electric Lady Lab, with a remarkably dramatic mix and mash-up with a 90s classic from Snap!; it's You & Me:

Electric Lady Lab - You & Me

Enjoy!

That's MISS Holloway to you!

Twenty years ago the UK Top Ten - despite the great movements in House/Dance, Madchester and Electronic music at the time - was not particularly brilliant, as the first five prove:

• 1 Swing the Mood - Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers
• 2 Ride on Time - Black Box
• 3 I Just Don't Have The Heart - Cliff Richard
• 4 Poison - Alice Cooper
• 5 Toy Soldiers - Martika

The prize for the next few weeks was to go to Black Box - which was indeed the best track of the five - who went on to hold the Number 1 spot for six weeks.

However even back then I was annoyed with them, because I loved the brilliant Loleatta Holloway. I felt it was shameful that this gaggle of Italians were trying to pass off their skinny model "singer" as the actual vocalist, when it was blatantly obvious she had nothing to do with the recording at all and it was Miss Holloway's vocals that they used.

For the sake of a comparison here are the two tracks - first Ride On Time by Black Box:

Black Box - Ride On Time

And here is the original (which I am aware has by now had more outings than a nursing home):

Loleatta Holloway - Love Sensation (extended mix)