Retour aux années quatre-vingt!

Among another miscellany of fellow celebrants, including Cecil Beaton, "professional weirdo" Faye Dunaway (who is 80), Richard Briers, Bebe Daniels, Warren Mitchell, Steven Soderbergh, Jack Jones, Sir Trevor Nunn, Pierre Loti, Emily Watson, Billie Jo Spears, Yukio Mishima, Nina Ricci, Mark Antony, Dave Grohl and - erm - LL Cool J, it's the 65th birthday today of Étienne Daho, one of France's most popular (and coolest) singers of recent years - he was even immortalised by Pierre et Gilles (with a parrot), as above!

By way of celebration, let's let the man himself whisk us away to his heyday (and mine), the 1980s...

Etienne Daho - Tombé pour la France

Etienne Daho - Week end à Rome

Reminder to self: must dig out that pirate shirt, sixteen-pleat two-tone pegged trousers and pixie boots...

Bonne anniversaire, Étienne Daho (born 14th January 1956)

Spin that disc...

Once more, it's time for a little update on the newer music I have discovered recently, and once more it's a little trek around the world...

Opening the whole shebang is the brand new single from Israeli geniuses The Young Professionals (whose fantabulosa version of D.I.S.C.O. I featured back in July) - the superb 20 Seconds, its video once again featuring the marvellous gender-bending Uriel Yekutiel:

The Young Professionals - 20 Seconds

A constant source of inspiration to all bloggers everywhere, the lovely Thombeau over at form is void has been on a bit of an Etienne Daho kick recently, which inspired me to seek out a little more of the French musical genius than I already knew.

And so it came to pass that I discovered this catchy little number that the great man released just recently in France. Featuring a lady by the unlikely name of Calypso Valois, here's the rather fabulous Amoureux Solitaires!

Etienne Daho and Calypso Valois - Amoureux Solitaires

Travelling North, here's a rather good new Swedish artiste - Emmon, with her Siouxsie-esque new single Slottet. [It means "castle" apparently]:

Emmon - Slottet

Back to Blighty. I have really tried to persevere with the new Erasure song When I start to (Break it all Down), but it has not yet hooked me in. It just doesn't sound Erasure-ish enough! Thank heavens for Steve Smart & Westfunk...

Erasure - When I Start To (Break It All Down) [Steve Smart & WestFunk Remix]

And to finish we're off to Spain! [Not literally, more's the pity...] with one of that country's top DJs Sak Noel with his bizarrely catchy Loca People (What the Fuck):

Sak Noel - Loca People

Enjoy!