Wednesday, 1 May 2024
Tuesday, 30 April 2024
That's news to me
Another "snippets post" today, dear reader:
- Happy news: It's National Gardening Week here in the UK! Here at Dolores Delargo Towers, of course, it is "gardening week" every week of the year...
- Technology can't cope news: A 101-year-old woman keeps getting mistaken for a baby because of an error with American Airways' booking system!
- Know your history: Pizza isn't really Italian, and croissants aren't French...
- That'd take a lot of batter: The biggest freshwater fish caught on a rod in Britain, a whopping 143lb (64.4kg) catfish, was landed by an amateur angler after a 50-minute struggle in Maldon, Essex.
- Ophidiophobia news: Speaking of monsters - bones from one of the largest prehistoric snakes ever recorded have been discovered in India - measuring an estimated 36 to 50 feet long!
- And finally - a Terpsichorean triumph: Michael Flatley - whose Riverdance dance troupe stunned the world when they appeared as the interval act at the Eurovision Song Contest twenty years ago today - recalls being begged "not to embarrass traditional Irish dancing" by doing something that was not in their rules. The rest is history...
The weather? Suddenly, gorgeous again..!
STOP PRESS:
RIP, Reader's Digest after 86 years...
Monday, 29 April 2024
The woman who upstaged Anita Ekberg
As you will know, dear reader, there is nothing we like better here at Dolores Delargo Towers than to discover a new "diva"! Signorina Chelo Alonso is certainly a name I'd never come across before...
From IMDB:
If you remember those "sword and sandal" spectacles that became the rage of Italian cinema during the late 1950s and early 1960s, then you will certainly recall this torrid brunette bombshell. Invariably cast as the ambitiously evil queen or undulating dancer/temptress whose sole mission was to entrance the film's hero, Chelo Alonso's "peplum princess" prime would be surprisingly brief but her memorable moves and over-the-top histrionics were reason enough to place her on the international sex symbol pedestal and earn her cult status. While her acting contributions would certainly attract no awards, she did earn the honour of becoming "Italian Cinema's Female Discovery" early in the game...She first attracted attention with the film Sign of the Gladiator (1959) where her erotically-charged dance segment stole the thunder right from under the movie's top-billed sex star, Swedish siren Anita Ekberg.
Niche, perhaps, but, by heavens - she has all the right moves for a Tacky Music Monday wake-up call..!
[Love the queeny choreographer!]No wonder she was nicknamed the "Cuban H-Bomb" at the Folies Bergère!
Have a great week, dear reader.
Sunday, 28 April 2024
Adriatic?
The weather here in London's turned to shit again...
...but, to take our minds off such drear and murk, let's instead wallow vicariously in the sunshine with impossibly glamorous people cavorting in exotic locations, courtesy of the ever-wondrous Soft Tempo Lounge, shall we..?
Sigh. That's better.
[Music: Tony Kinsey - Malibu Beach; original film: The Sex of Angels (1968)]
Saturday, 27 April 2024
Keith at Smile
It isn't often, to be honest, that my attention would be piqued by the appearance in the obituary columns of a hairdresser - but, in the case of Mr Keith Wainwright, who has departed for the great "Blow'n'Go boutique" in Fabulon, he deserves recognition.
Not only was he a pioneer of the "unisex salon" in the Swinging 60s (when his clients included Roy Wood, The Move, Cat Stevens, The Walker Brothers and Elton John)...
...but, at his salon Smile, he also developed the formula for "unnatural" hair colours, which became wildly popular during the Punk era in the late 70s! Derek Jarman recruited him to style his films, and it was thanks to his work on Jubilee that he developed a life-long friendship and working relationship with one of its stars Toyah Wilcox - creating most of her outlandish hairdos during her chart-dominating era in the 1980s [a sample of which is featured above]. Read her tribute.
Such was his fame among the trend-setters, he was simply referred to as "Keith from Smile" - and was even name-checked by the Pet Shop Boys in this simply faboo track from their 2012 album Elysium [here accompanied by a most marvellous video compilation by a super-fan]:
I thought it was like a film
reviewed but never seen
where everybody played themselves
as a drama king or queen
The music was overwhelming
glittering and thin
solemn and shabby like a requiem
in denim and leopardskin
I visualised the flashbacks:
school, punk rock, success
parties, too much of everything
the clichés, the candles, the mess
Lucien in the scene with David
Bryan in a tux
A copy of Ritz in Zanzibar
Old Hollywood redux
Ossie’s last collection
Biba’s closing sale
A little more rouge on the powdered cheeks
but the base is pale
This is our last chance for goodbye
Let the music begin
Shining and soaring like a requiem
in denim and leopardskin
It ended with a motorbike
a search for evidence
poring over old photographs
to make it all fake sense
Glamorous in its own way
Shouting above the din
Solemn and shabby like a requiem
in denim and leopardskin
Johnny’s wearing brothel-creepers
Malcolm’s round the block
Adam’s in a Jarman film
The look is “Let It Rock”
A Johnson’s leather jacket
Hair by Keith at Smile
All you need to make it big
is sex and style
This is our last chance for goodbye
Let the music begin
Shining and soaring like a requiem
in denim and leopardskin
This is our last chance for goodbye
Let the music begin
Shining and soaring like a requiem
in denim and leopardskin
RIP, Keith Wainwright MBE (October 1944 – April 2024)
Friday, 26 April 2024
Don't jump before you look
You know you're getting old when...
...you discover that the elfin Andy Bell of Erasure was 60 years old yesterday!
How fitting, as the joyful prospect of the impending weekend hoves into view, that we have an excuse (as if any were needed) to start the party with one of the great man's crowning glories!
Thank Disco It's Friday!
We'll be together again
I've been waiting for a long time
We're gonna be, we're gonna be
Together again
I've been connected to the right line
We'll be together and nobody ain't never
Gonna disconnect us or ever separate us
Or say to us you've got to
Stop!
Stand there where you are
Before you go too far
Before you make a fool out of love
Stop!
Don't jump before you look
Get hung upon a hook
Before you make a fool out of love
We'll be together again
I've been waiting for a long time
We're gonna be we're gonna be
Together again
I've been connected to the right line
We'll be together and nobody ain't never
Gonna disconnect us or ever separate us
Or say to us you've got to
Stop!
Stand there where you are
Before you go too far
Before you make a fool out of love
Stop!
Don't jump before you look
Get hung upon a hook
Before you make a fool out of love
We'll be together and nobody ain't never
Gonna disconnect us or ever separate us
Or say to us you've got to
Stop!
Stand there where you are
Before you go too far
Before you make a fool out of love
Stop!
Don't jump before you look
Get hung upon a hook
Before you make a fool out of love
Utterly faboo!
Many (belated) happy returns, Andrew Ivan Bell (born 25th April 1964)
Have a great weekend, dear reader!
Thursday, 25 April 2024
The Prom, Prom, Prom! Where the brass bands play, "Tiddely-om-pom-pom!"
What do Daniel Barenboim, Doctor Who, Dvorak and Disco, Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, Benjamin Britten, Bruckner, Brahms and Burt Bacharach, Kirill Petrenko, The King’s Singers and the Kanneh-Masons, Sir Simon Rattle, Symphonie Fantastique, Sakari Oramo, Sarah Vaughan, Sam Smith and Smetana, Henry Mancini, Handel and Holst, Charles Villiers Stanford, CBeebies, Carmen and Clara Schumann, Antonio Pappano, Anne-Sophie Mutter, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Angel Blue, the Paraorchestra, the "Pathetique" (Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6), Purcell and Puccini, as well as Mendelssohn, Marisha Wallace, the BBC Singers, VOCES8, Fauré, Nick Drake, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Laura Mvula, Yo-Yo Ma, Stevie Wonder, Wynton Marsalis, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Verdi's Requiem, Florence and the Machine, Jules Buckley - and Rule, Britannia! - have in common?
Yes, of course - the mightiest musical "festival" on Earth, the BBC Proms Season has been announced, and every one of 'em is in the mix of delights on offer...
Read a basic guide to The Proms, its history and other associated bits'n'pieces, courtesy of Country and Town House magazine.
The comprehensive guide to the entire season on the BBC.
The Proms Season opens on 19th July, and the Last Night of the Proms is on 14th September 2024. Enjoy!
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