Oh, fuck - not only is it back-to-work time, but it's also the dreaded Autumn Equinox!
Nights will officially be longer than days from now on, so it's all downhill from here, dear reader...
...and on this Tacky Music Monday, only Reg Kehoe and His Marimba Queens can save us now!
Have a good week, dears.
Sharing a birthday, as she does, with a whole host of randomly-assorted notables such as much-missed "national treasure" Dame Vera Lynn, the simply faboo Ultra Naté, the Roman poet Ovid, William Hurt, Henrik Ibsen, Holly Hunter, Sir Michael Redgrave, Hal Linden, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Theresa Russell, Paul Junger Witt, Carl Reiner, Spike Lee, David Thewlis and Sister Rosetta Tharpe...
... the sublime Miss Natacha Atlas is 60 years old today!!
A longtime favourite singer here at Dolores Delargo Towers - we have three of her albums in our vast collection, including the marvellous Ayeshteni as pictured above - Miss Atlas was born in Brussels to a British mother and Egyptian father, and hers was a bit of an esoteric "hippy" upbringing by all accounts (despite being brought up in less-than-exotic Northampton in the East Midlands). It was almost inevitable that she would end up in the entertainment industry, taking up belly-dancing and eventually becoming the core singer of the arthouse fusion music group Transglobal Underground - whose blend of techno and house with less familiar Asian, Arabic and African rhythms hit the zeitgeist of the late 90s amid a rise in popularity of "World Music".
She is probably most familiar to a wider audience for her collaboration with David Arnold on his Shaken and Stirred James Bond theme covers project, to which she contributed this:
Here's another couplet of familiar tunes of hers [I have featured both here before, bien sûr]:
This one is a perfect example of the "fusion music" style of Transgobal Underground (who produced it for Natacha's solo debut album Diaspora):
A fitting one for today, the Spring Equinox [it's all uphill from here, folks, as the days officially become longer than the nights!]:
And to finish, a bit of high camp...
Makes me want to whop me tablah out and get shimmying... Lord knows, I've got the belly for it!
Many happy returns, Natacha Atlas (born 20th March 1964)
It's the Vernal Equinox today, dear reader - and it certainly feels like the so-called "First Day of Spring"! Everything's either in bloom or bursting into growth; we've even been to the garden centre (my first visit of 2022), and bought some new delights for the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers...
We also have not one, not two, but three birthdays to celebrate among the doyens of "our kind of music". First up, someone I didn't even realise was still alive - Mr John Kander, who blew out 95 candles on his cake on Friday! With the late Fred Ebb, he wrote some of the greats of musical theatre - not least Cabaret and Chicago, two personal favourites - and, of course, their close friend and collaborator Miss Liza Minnelli sang just about everything they ever wrote. Like this one:
Tuesday is also a memorable day every year for the fact that two further musical theatre legends were born, Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber [who's a bit of a "Marmite" composer, but I do like his Sunset Boulevard]...
...and the late, great Stephen Sondheim! [Read the finale to my week of tribute posts to the great man on his death last year; it has an index of all the previous ones.]
Sunday music, indeed...
The sunshine is utterly gorgeous today - better make the most of it, however. For today is the Autumnal Equinox, and from here on in, the nights start drawing in!
The "season of decay" begins...
...but Miss Summer is still here to brighten things up a little:
