Grrrr. Back to the grind it is, then...
Still coming down to earth after the feast for the senses that was Carmina Burana at the Royal Albert Hall yesterday [more on that later, no doubt], I am most definitely not in the mood for another five days of mundanity...
...on this Tacky Music Monday, only Mama Cher can save us now!
Thought for the day: did the Osmonds actually have penises? Can't see one.
Have a good week, dear reader.
Oh, how these weekends taunt us! The weather was glorious towards the end of last week, then descended to grey and murky all weekend. Now - as I head off for another sublimely fulfilling (ahem!) week in work - the forecast is for another upturn in temperatures. Sigh.
Hey, ho. Speaking of birthdays...
... today is also the 85th of that OTT creative genius Mr Bob Mackie, designer of choice for decades of ladies beloved of men-who-are-light-in-their-loafers including Mitzi Gaynor, Diana Ross, Bette Midler, Carol Burnett, Ann-Margret, and of course Cher!
"Glamour has to come from you and it has to come from confidence."
So what better way to kick off the week (in sparkling fashion as is our wont) on this Tacky Music Monday, than with Cher, Bette and Dame Elton John (and Flip Wilson), together, dressed in the most outrageous of Mr Mackie's creations?!
And here is a musical compendium of some of his famous costumes:
Robert Gordon "Bob" Mackie (born 24th March 1940)
[* and no, I don't think Dame Mary's ever worn a Bob Mackie creation!]
The weekend was a bit of a non-event - which was not unwelcome, given the rather hectic "social calendar" of late - thanks to the arse end of Storm Bert [basically gusty winds and showers that rather prevented any gardening; or anything, really]. Now we're back in "Groundhog Day" again.
Hey ho. How about a celebration?
That titan of power-pop, the late, dearly-departed Miss Tina Turner would have been 85 years old tomorrow! She always seemed to enjoy her collaborations with fellow entertainment goddess Cher - but, on this Tacky Music Monday, who invited the producer's Auntie to the dressing-up box??
Have a good week, dear reader.
Sun is shining for a change, and I'll be spending a few hours this afternoon out in it, watering the garden again. No rest for the wicked!
Meanwhile, Our Patron Saint of the Vocoder Cher has been time-travelling - making surprise appearances in Mad Men, Red Dwarf, Sons of Anarchy, Secrets of the London Underground, and even singing karaoke with "Barry" in The Queen Vic in EastEnders over twenty years ago - as part of a relaunch/rebranding of cable channel UKTV as "U"...
It's faboo!
Our Patron Saint of Outliving the Apocalypse Cher has been in overdrive lately, doing the rounds - even the Royal Variety Performance! - in an effort to promote her new Xmas album. From it, this (admittedly catchy) choon:
Nah. Bah Humbug.
As we sigh the blessed sigh of relief at the prospect of the next twelve ten days away from the tedium of work, let us instead hark back to a far more relatable, camp, kitschy Italian-Spanish-tinged number of hers to get our party started [our holiday in Benalmadena is only eight weeks away, after all!] - and ¡Gracias discoteca es viernes!
The Festering Season may be whooping up to a frenzy as the countdown to the madness begins - but at least with the Solstice today, Spring is in view!
Have a good one, dear reader, and (ahem!) enjoy the crowds at the tills!
It's come around too soon, again!
A bit of shopping, a bit of pottering in the garden, and here we are again in the wonderful world of work.
Never mind, eh? Here's something frankly sinister on this Tacky Music Monday from the saintly Cher (yes! her again) to help us with the wake-up call...
I'm never quite sure which is creepier - clowns or puppets.
Have a good week, dear reader.
Oh, dear. Poor old Dame Elton John's in hospital after a fall at his villa...
As it is my last day of freedom before the madness of work kicks in again tomorrow after a lovely nineteen-day break, we need something sparkly and joyful on this Tacky Music Bank Holiday Monday!
Fitting the bill in a most appropriate manner, here's the estimable combination of Cher and the Pointer Sisters with a "get well soon card" for Sir Elton!
Have a great day, dear reader, whatever you do - it's the last bank holiday till Xmas!
Heavens! As we adjust to that fact that another weekend has just whizzed by and the bloody alarm's gone off again - on this Tacky Music Monday it appears that the mighty Cher has wandered into a gay sauna and decided to sing and dance some reggae numbers with the boys..!
Bizarre - but somehow entrancing...
Have a good week, dear reader.
After an eventful weekend - we went to a drag show in, of all unlikely places, the leafy and affluent suburb of Southgate (actually a stone's throw from here), on Saturday [more on that later, no doubt]; and yesterday I finally got a fully-functional set of venetian blinds up in our living-room, after a bit of a disaster with previous attempts.
Now it's time to go back to the grind, unfortunately. We need something completely OTT to wake us up on this Tacky Music Monday, and who better to fit the bill than not one, but two Patron Saints - last week's birthday girl [slap on the wrist for missing that!] Charo... and Cher!!
Campness abounds.
Have a good week, dear reader.
Bleurrrgh. Another busy yet rewarding weekend is over, and here we are again [even earlier than usual as I am interviewing this morning; gawd bless Inhuman Resources for arranging that on a Monday].
Let's jolt ourselves out of the slough of despond on this Tacky Music Monday, shall we - courtesy of our ever-reliable Patron Saint Cher (and her faboo friends)?!
Have a good one, dear reader. I won't.
Groo. Another lovely weekend is over - a visit from The Mother on Saturday (she loved our garden!), and a "chill-out" day gently pottering in the sunshine yesterday - and here we are again...
I think we should go completely OTT this Tacky Music Monday, methinks, by way of a wake-up call - in the glittering company of a cavalcade of stars: Cher, Bette Midler, Dame Elton, and - erm - Flip Wilson!
Have a good one, dear reader.
[I have, of course, featured this clip before, way back in 2014]
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?!
Nothing else matters now.
Have a good week, dear reader.
Amid an impressive "mixed bag" of fellow birthday celebrants including Terry Wogan, Jean Hagen, Steven Berkoff, Dolores del Rio, Gina G, Martin Sheen, Rupert Brooke, Evangeline Lilly, Stanley Baldwin, Tasmin Archer, PD James, Martha Stewart, Kirk Brandon, Nadia Ali of iiO, John Landis, Tony Bennett (95 today), Skin from Skunk Anansie... and my sister Hils - it's the centenary today of another of the great composers/lyricists of the classic era of musicals, Mr Richard Adler!
Among the great man's long list of compositions are these camp standards:
Love 'em all!
Facts:
Richard Adler (3rd August 1921 – 21st June 2012)
Among another miscellany of mismatched fellow celebrants including Stanley Baxter [who celebrates his 95th birthday today - see my tribute on his 90th], Queen Victoria, Kristin Scott Thomas, Priscilla Presley, Jim Broadbent, Lilli Palmer, Éric Cantona, Bob Dylan, Rosanne Cash, Prince Buster, Alfred Molina, Gene Anthony Ray and - erm - Jacob Rees-Mogg, it's the birthday today of the marvellous Miss Patti LaBelle!
What better excuse do I need on this groansome, grey and miserable Tacky Music Monday to play a glitter-, silver- and feather-strewn bombastic performance such as this..?
When divas collide, indeed:
Well, that woke me up!
Have a good week, dear reader...
"I've been called over the top. How silly. If you don't go over the top, you can't see what's on the other side."
The maestro Jim Steinman - who, it was announced yesterday, has departed for Fabulon (carrying a smoke machine and and amp cranked up to eleven, no doubt) - was renowned as the purveyor of the most excessive, high-camp rock odysseys this side of Freddie Mercury...
...such as these (for individuals who were not entirely unfamiliar with the concept of campery: Cher, Meatloaf, Bonnie Tyler and Andrew Eldritch)!
[That's Mr Steinman himself, doing the "Wolf with the red roses" schtick]Peculiarly restrained for him, he also co-produced the West End show Whistle Down The Wind with Andrew Lloyd-Webber - and this:
And finally... I don't care how many times I have featured it over the years - this version of Mr Steinman's magnum opus of camp never fails to make me smile!
RIP, James Richard Steinman (1st November 1947 – 19th April 2021)
There are very few certainties in life, but when it comes down to musical tastes, dear reader, you can be absolutely sure that no list of my "favourites" will ever include: whining gits like Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi or Coldplay; nor urban/rap/grime/whatever-the-latest-term-is for the likes of Stormzy, Drake, Megan Thee Stallion and so on; nor wibblers like Rihanna or Ariana or their newer competitors in the "ear-bleed" stakes; nor will there be much in the way of Country or Rock. No Taylor "Gwyneth Paltrow-lookey-likey" Swift, nor Harry Styles, Justin "somebody smack him" Bieber or the GaGa creature. Nor Captain Tom Moore.
Artists who did "tickle my fancy" during 2020 included Róisín Murphy, Shapeshifters, Jess Glynne, Doja Cat, Dua Lipa (well, one of hers, anyhow), Jaxx Jones and Martin Solveig - all featured (or linked to), among others, in Part 1 of this personal year-end round-up...
...and this lot!
Without further ado, here in Part 2 - these are the songs that I loved the most in 2020.
First up, a song that has had not one, not two, but three iterations in a matter of eighteen months - not least the Xmas version I featured here. However, this was the one that made me laugh out loud (and lord knows we needed it this year):
From laughter to tears. A superbly-arranged collaboration between some very big names indeed (to raise funds for Children In Need); you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by this one...
Changing the mood completely, despite the fact that (like just about everything) the Eurovision Song Contest was cancelled in 2020, this song - which indubitably would have won - remains an exercise in pure, understated genius:
What's this? Two bites of the cherry for "Little Miss Weeknd-without-an-e"? Yes. I adored this song for the whole of lockdown #1, and I love it still:
Our beloved Patron Saint of Belting Dame Shirley Bassey apparently hung up her sparkly frocks for the last time in November with a "farewell" album, much to our dismay - but from it came a boppy little number that has been receiving quite a bit of airplay on BBC Radio 2 ever since:
Speaking of Patron Saints and Divas, Kylie exploded back into our lives with her DISCO album, from which came first the sublime Say Something - and then, this!
Ramping up the camp-with-a-capital-C (as only they can), 2020 was also a busy year for the fantabulosa Steps, who released a couple of genuine earworms, Something In Your Eyes and, from the album of the same name, this house favourite here at Dolores Delargo Towers:
And finally, if there is to be an end-point, a pinnacle, a crescendo for such a list of remarkable numbers from an otherwise benighted year - here is the "Queen of the Lockdown" herself, with not only a brilliant cover of an all-time camp classic, but also with a poignant video that just about sums up our feelings about this "year of shuttered venues". Let's hope that by this time next year, we'll have a had few happier times on a dance-floor somewhere...
As always, let me know your thoughts, my leetle chums!
Our Patron Saint of Décolletage, Honolulu's finest, The Divine Miss M is - gulp! - 75 years old today!
We adore the woman.
By way of a tribute - among the many, many tributes I have paid to her over the years - here she is in partnership with a fellow Diva, paying tribute to her/their heroines of trash...
Many, many happy returns, Bette Midler (born 1st December 1945)
Praise be! Another weekend is looming, and the sun is out (at last)!
Today also happens to be the birthday of the marvellous Miss Crystal Waters, so to get the party jumping, here's an utterly faboo choon from her back catalogue [no - not the "la-da-dee-da-da-da" one]...
If, dear reader, you find the gyrations of those strumpets-with-trumpets is a bit unexpected of a blog of a homosexualist nature such as this, never fear...
Let's address the balance somewhat, with a bevy of boys - and Thank Disco Cher It's Friday!
That's better.
Have great weekend, my leetle chums!