Roll on Mama!

Amen, sister!

Why can't the Blogger gnomes stop tinkering..?! Having spent the past few years "making improvements" that just serve to piss off their users - like the fact that if you make even a slight tweak to a recent post it shoots to the top of the Reading List, or the fact that none of the "widgets" that sit in the side bar have their "quick edit" menu any more - this weekend they've changed the way photos are uploaded, which makes flap-all difference to the way individual posts look, but means that there is no "thumbnail" of a featured picture in the Reading List (so now all the previews are just plain text). A minor irritation in this Omicron/Putin/Boris/storm-damaged world maybe, but it keeps the blood pressure at boiling point.

Sigh.

As we wearily open our laptops again for another jolly week in work, on this Tacky Music Monday there is always a saviour - who else but that triumph of art over nature, our Patron Saint Cher?!

Cher - Hell on Wheels

Nothing else matters now.

Have a good week, dear reader.

Racing the funicular

It's another grey and dull day out there, and I can't even break the monotony and go out window shopping, as the gnomes at Amazon have decided that a window of "3pm to 7pm" on a Sunday is a convenient time for a delivery...

Hey ho - time to wallow in the unfeasibly glamorous lives of beautiful people in exotic climes once more methinks, courtesy of the brilliant Soft Tempo Lounge:

Soft Tempo Lounge - Destiny

Ah, that's better. Although I am a bit concerned about his driving.

[Music: Reg Tilsley and Peter Fenn - Clean Air; film: Una farfalla con le ali insanguinate (1971)]

Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed

I have never liked the Festering Season, but I do recognise true camp when I see it...

The King's Men Cambridge - Santa Baby

Love it!

[I could think of an appropriate gift I could give that cheeky singer...]

A weekend recipe

The slow crawl towards the weekend begins - and for a change, the forecast is for temperatures to hit double figures by Sunday. Woo hoo - we need to get ourselves in the mood for a party!

But first, let's make the main course...

Take a little piece of this:

Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime

...a smattering of this...

Pink Floyd - Is There Anybody Out There?

...a pinch of this...

The Osmonds - Crazy Horses

...and a helluva lot of this...

Afrika Bambaataa - Just Get Up And Dance

...and you get this! How the hell can this choon be thirty years old?! How?!]

Bassheads - Is There Anybody Out There (1991)

Thank Disco The Bassheads It's Friday!

Have a great one, folks!

Hit that perfect beat beat boy

click to embiggen

I am afraid it's "back to the 80s" for the second time this week, dear reader. Two influential figures from the era have departed to join the ever-growing dance party in Fabulon...

Firstly, the brilliant reggae bassist and producer Robbie Shakespeare [on the right, pic #2 above], of Sly and Robbie fame, died aged 68 after suffering kidney problems. The duo's legendary status in masterminding a new "dub" sound launched a thousand dancehall club nights, and their work with experimental electronic beats led them to become a focal part of Chris Blackwell's Island Records music machine. They worked with just about everybody over the years, from Peter Tosh to Mick Jagger, Black Uhuru to Bob Dylan, Gregory Isaacs to Madonna - but to my mind, their finest hour came when they catapaulted this diva into the limelight where she belonged!

Grace Jones - Private Life

Grace Jones - Libertango (I've Seen That Face Before)

Also announced today - Steve Bronski [on the right, pic #1 at the top opf the page], founder of Bronski Beat has died, aged just 61. Bronski Beat were a real breath of fresh air in the ecelectic musical melting-pot of 1980s pop culture - combining the ramped-up in-your-face Hi-NRG sounds of the gay discos they frequented with some of the angriest gay rights messaging we'd ever seen or heard in the charts! Here's two massive choons from the Bronski back-catalogue, by way of a tribute to a great musical talent:

Bronski Beat - Why? (Top Of The Pops 1984)

Bronski Beat - Hit That Perfect Beat

RIP, both.

Janis Joplin didn’t start out on a CBBC show

I think that might be Rochelle from The Saturdays...

Tabloids love a story about a former pop star in reduced circumstances. But it wouldn’t be the least surprising to see these fronting up the loo roll:

The Farm
Madchester-adjacent act known for Groovy Train and All Together Now, the good bit of which was by Johann Pachelbel. Still get on the bill at festivals but that’s in the summer, isn’t it? No harm in putting on the Santa hat and doing shifts at Asda. Northside are on trolley collection. That’s a rough gig in winter.

The Reynolds Girls
Stock Aitken Waterman act who looked like they still had their Saturday jobs in Dorothy Perkins while in the charts. Which would have been wise. They slagged Fleetwood Mac and the Rolling Stones while being fundamentally shit, in an unfortunate contrast. May by now have worked their way up to Dot Perks management.

Hear’Say
Mediocre manufactured groups don’t sell records without publicity, so a career in retail beckoned. Myleene Klass has stroppily clung onto minor celebrity status, and is berating the fishmonger at her local Waitrose about the lack of sea bass when she realises she recognises him. It’s that guy, from the band. Bloody hell, what was his name?

S Club 7
Live by the tweenie, die by the tweenie. Once kids grew out of this super-bland pop act they had little musical talent to fall back on, because rock heroes like Led Zeppelin or Janis Joplin didn’t start out on a CBBC show. Jo works behind the fag counter. She says it’s good money.

Ned’s Atomic Dustbin
It’s statistically likely that most of the thousands of members of short-lived late 80s indie bands ended up working for a big employer like Tesco. The Neds are restocking the courgettes even as you read this, while trying to chat up Miki from Lush on the fresh pizzas.

East 17
In the strange world of 90s boy bands, East 17 were considered more street than pretty boys Take That, and what could be more street than working in Tesco? Instead of flaring up at photographers, Brian Harvey could vent his anger by passive-aggressively pretending not to know where the Marmite is.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Bedsit-land, my only home

Timeslip moment again.

For the last time this year, we've hitched a ride with the Time Bandits all the way back to 1981 - the year of New Romantics, Bucks Fizz, Charles and Diana, the Space Shuttle, Brideshead Revisited, Ronald Reagan, John Lennon, Vienna, the "Yorkshire Ripper" trial, Danger Mouse, John McEnroe, Brixton riots, Ghost Town, The Humber Bridge, Kim Wilde, Bette Davis Eyes, London Marathon, Greenham Common, Toyah, Bob Champion, Gregory's Girl, Indiana Jones, Shakin' Stevens, Moira Stuart, Game For a Laugh, Ian Botham, Kenny Everett, Stars on 45, Chariots of Fire, the Sinclair ZX81, the Birdie Song, the NatWest Tower, Chi Mai, Bob Marley, IRA hunger strikes, Smokey Robinson, Aneka, Rupert Murdoch, Dynasty, the SDP, Hazel O'Connor, Coe vs Ovett, Anwar Sadat, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Adam and the Ants, Ken and Deirdre, me leaving school, and much, much more besides...

In the news headlines in December '81: the coldest temperatures and heaviest snow-falls since the 1870s across the whole country, the first cases of AIDS diagnosed in the UK, endless speculation about the death of Natalie Wood, the Penlee lifeboat disaster, the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador that left 800 dead, martial law imposed in Poland in resistance to the rise of Solidarity, and the election of Arthur Scargill as President of the National Union of Mineworkers. In our cinemas: Gallipoli; Lady Chatterley's Lover; The Fox and the Hound. On telly: A Fine Romance; The Borgias; Kessler.

And in our charts this week forty years ago? That old Latin smoothie Julio Iglesias was celebrating his first and only week at the pinnacle; also present and correct were Miss Diana Ross, Queen and David Bowie, Earth Wind and Fire, the naffest-of-the-naff Modern Romance, and (aargh!) Cliff Richard. But then, there were these classics:

A favourite wank fantasy shirt...

Haircut 100 - Favourite Shirt

...and an icon:

Soft Cell - Bedsitter

However... just crashed into the Top Ten was this one, destined to sweep all before it and grab the coveted Xmas #1 slot!

The Human League - Don't You Want Me

Ah, happy memories. I was eighteen.