Tuesday 31 January 2017

You're still glowin', you're still crowin', you're still goin' strong



Sharing her birthday with Tallulah Bankhead, Franz Schubert, Mario Lanza, Jean Simmons, Johnny Rotten, Norman Mailer, Lloyd Cole, Anna Pavlova, Justin Timberlake, Derek Jarman, Minnie Driver, (the former) Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Philip Glass (80 today), it is - needless to say - our beloved Patron Saint Carol Channing who we choose to take centre stage today...

At 96 years old she is, remarkably, still the subject of rumours - the latest being that Bette Midler wants Miss Channing to do some matinees when the Divine Miss M brings her revival of Hello, Dolly! to Broadway this year. People pooh-pooh the idea, but stranger things have happened - after all, it is only four years since she was on stage with another "bombshell", Justin Vivian Bond!

And here, by way of an "audition" - or maybe just to show Miss Midler how it should be done - is the lady herself...

Oh, hello Dolly, well, hello Dolly
It's so nice to have you back where you belong
You're lookin' swell, Dolly, I can tell, Dolly
You're still glowin', you're still crowin', you're still goin' strong

We feel the room swayin' while the band's playin'
One of your old favourite songs from way back when
So, take her wrap fellas, find her an empty lap, fellas
Dolly won't never ever go away again
Many happy returns, Carol Elaine Channing (born 31st January 1921)

Monday 30 January 2017

Peculiar película



We may be back to work again, still wondering "what happened to that weekend" - but there is some light at the end of the tunnel, for us at least, as we start our countdown to our holiday in Spain on Saturday...

...and on this Tacky Music Monday, we have the extraordinary talents of Señorita Carmen Sevilla to start the ball rolling!

Lord only knows what this is all about, but it is apparently from an obscure 70s movie called La Cera Virgen ["The Wax Virgin"]:




¡Ten una buena semana!

Sunday 29 January 2017

A steam room tsunami, missing ceili dancers, visual poetry, a run through London and a unicorn


[photo: Justin David]

It was the first outing for "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari - proudly entering its tenth year in business - on Friday and John-John and I duly joined a whole host of familiar regulars in the audience (including Emma, Toby, sexy Lexi, Val Lee, Suzie Feay, Karen McLeod, Anya Nyx and the rest) to welcome it in.


[photo: Justin David]

Host Paul Burston - whose own latest novel, the mystery crime thriller The Black Path was published in the autumn - teased us with the suggestion that something "very special indeed" was planned for the tenth anniversary, then proudly introduced the evening's impressive line-up...


[photo: Justin David]

...opening with the lovely Chris Chalmers - another regular attendee and fêted author, "long-listed" for the Polari First Book Prize in 2013. For us, he read from his latest novel Light From Other Windows, an intriguing tale of how a family's secrets unravel in the wake of the dramatic death of the youngest son in a tsunami that swamps Tenerife. The boy had kept a meticulous blog that painfully exposes his insights into the character of each and every one of them, and shockingly reveals that he had a few secrets of his own.

In order to save us from the full trauma so early in the evening, Mr Chalmers focused in on one of the family members, gay Jem, a gym-bunny and - it would seem - less-than-faithful boyfriend, as he is tempted by the (low-hanging) fruit of another in the steam-room of a posh hotel. Phew!


[photo: Justin David]

Dampening our ardour after that little fantasy session was the task that fell to Ann Mann (who, as I observed when she last read for us back at Xmas 2013, was one of the original members of The George Mitchell Singers - aka The Black & White Minstrels - and stalwart of BBC broadcasting) gave us a rather intriguing snippet from her new book Arcanum. A mystery of dramatic proportions, the tale revolves around the disappearance without trace of an entire coach-load of Irish folk dancers, interwoven with the ghosts and superstitions, premonitions and magic that permeate the history of the Emerald Isle.


[photo: Justin David]

How does one follow so many layers of mystery? With an audio-visual extravaganza, of course! For every poem Mr Nathan Evans (for it was he) read from the anthology Threads, he displayed an accompanying visual by the ever-lovely Justin David (also our "official photographer" for the night) - some of them quite hilarious. The poems he read for us explored life, domesticity, observations on urban living and relationships - and here he is reading a couple at the book's launch in the autumn:


Grabbing the chance during the break for a drink and a fag and a bit of a catch-up on all the gossip, it was soon time to resume our seats for a brace of top-notch readers.


[photo: Justin David]

First up, the superb Rosie Garland (aka "Rosie Lugosi"), author of the darkly gothic novels The Palace of Curiosities and Vixen - and with another The Night Brother on its way, it's a wonder she has found the time to write poetry as well. However, an anthology of her own poetry As in Judy is out now - and, from the poems she read for us, it will be brilliant!

How about the dreams of a young tomboy?
When You Grow Up
At night, she leaps and does not land. Spreads her arms and soars
above the fenced and neatly weeded garden. Her dreams
are practice sessions where she lifts cars, sees through walls, fights

dragons. She is a pirate captain, a queen, a horse. She is neither girl
nor boy: the distinctions are irrelevant when her small body encompasses
male and female, human, beast. A turbulent child figure-heading

the prow of her beaked ship, she buckles on armour, rescues
princesses from spinning wheels and charming princes,
fearless of the shapes beneath the bed. Too soon

she hears the call: Breakfast! Now! Blinks this world into focus.
Hushes battle cries, sets her teeth against the summons
to dolls, dresses, a future sweet with happy-ever- afters

and you’ll change. You’ll see. She sheathes her sword
between the pages of her book. Every bedtime her mother tucks in
the sheet of husband, marriage, children: tucks it in tight.
Or in complete contrast - a unicorn?


Even our estimable headliner Stella Duffy OBE was full of enthusiasm for Ms Garland's performance. Praise, indeed, from the author of fourteen novels, fifty short stories, ten plays and numerous articles; co-director of the Fun Palaces campaign for wider participation in all forms of arts and culture; and winner (twice) of the Stonewall Writer of the Year award.

She also congratulated Paul on the longevity of Polari - with a dire warning to the assembled audience to treasure it and never to take such things for granted (referring to events across the pond): "rights can so easily be taken away in an instant".


[photo: Justin David]

Ms Duffy's newest work is the historical novel London Lies Beneath - based on the true tragic story of the boys of the 2nd Walworth Scout troop, who drowned off Leysdown on 4 August 1912. However, it from was the optimistic early section of the book that Stella read for us, as the exuberant boys run all the way from Trafalgar Square back home [and if you so wish, you can follow the route yourself]:
These lads want to go out, yes, see the world, but they want to come home as well. London is home.

London, but not this London, up town London. Home is the other side of the river. That's Big Ben ringing out the hour and so the three boys have their task - ready, set, go. Running now, along the Strand, dodging trams and carriages, swiftly round the copper who doesn't want dirty lads from the wrong side of the river running along his patch, doesn't trust them as far as he could throw them. A quick stop at St Mary le Strand, once round the church as they promised they always will, it would be cheating just to turn the corner to the river, then fast over Waterloo Bridge to the south, to home. Real London, the London that is beneath. Beneath the fancy shops of the north side, beneath the big white houses with their bells and whistles and servants upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber, beneath the lower lip of the river that swells full and rich with the tide, shrinking back to mud flats and dirty docks twice a day. Proper London, that's where our boy lived. Lived. Where he and his friends and their families lived, happily enough, scraping out a living but only just, crammed in tight one against the other, spreading out only on high days and holidays and then just for a day trip on the tram, back to the hearth come night, and the hearth cold unless they could scrape up a coin for the coal...

...Nearly there lads, nearly home. A swift sprint down Newington Butts, well and truly breathless by Draper Street, under the train lines, finally, finally, here's Heygate with the big synagogue standing at a diagonal on the corner, then the Cuming and the library, now the dog-leg that is Larcom Street. And here they are, home. Home. Red faces, chests pumping, bare legs stinging in the wind. Not quite three miles and they've done it in under half an hour if the Town Hall clock is right. Course it is, this is the Walworth clock, course it's right. Slap on the back, punch to the arm. Good mate, good lad.
Read in Ms Duffy's inimitable style, we were as breathless as "the lads" by the end. We love listening to her almost as much as we love reading her work.


[photo: Justin David]

And that was it - with only the "curtain call", the applause and our usual round of schmoozing with chums, it was time for the pub!

Our next outing is an LGBT History Month special on 24th February - featuring readings from Tim Murphy, Dr Sebastian Buckle, Leon Craig, Suzi Feay ...and Paul Burston himself!

Faboo.

Viva Polari!

Saturday 28 January 2017

So many cocks



Gong hey fat choi!

It is the Chinese New Year - and the Year of the Cock starts here! [How faboo...]

...and we know a song about that:


All about the Year of the Cock

Friday 27 January 2017

I thought I told you to leave me when I walked down to the beach



Another weekend hoves into view - our last before we jet off to Spain a week tomorrow (yay!) - and, with the first Polari of 2017 to look forward to tonight, and the prospect of (slightly) warmer weather on the horizon, we at Dolores Delargo Towers are in the mood for a party!

The fact that it is founding member of New Order Miss Gillian Gilbert's (56th - gulp) birthday today provides a perfect excuse to play a real dance classic:


Take no notice of them. It's not really Blue Monday - it's Thank Disco It's Friday!

Have a good one...

Read my blogs about the genesis of this song, a rendition on 1930s instruments including the theremin, and the version by... Fenella Fielding!

Thursday 26 January 2017

Who can turn the world on with her smile?



We are saddened by the news that the remarkably innovative American television idol Mary Tyler Moore has departed for Fabulon...

Surprisingly survived by all three of her major female co-stars: Cloris Leachman, Betty White and the ailing Valerie Harper - and even by the venerable Dick Van Dyke - hers was nevertheless the persona that provided all of them with the springboard they needed to launch (or re-launch) their own careers.

Much, much more than just a former-dancer-turned-actress (she was certainly memorable in Thoroughly Modern Millie - and was even nominated for an Oscar for her role in the weepie Ordinary People), Miss T-M turned out to be a shrewd businesswoman when (with her ex) she established her MTM Enterprises (which, in addition to Mary's own "spin-off" series Rhoda, Phyllis and Lou Grant, was responsible for producing top shows such as Hill Street Blues, Remington Steele and St. Elsewhere ).

She was born for showbiz! And proved it often in the most unexpected way...


RIP Mary Tyler Moore (29th December 1936 – 25th January 2017)

Wednesday 25 January 2017

Fancy a dram..?









It's Burns Night again - Och Aye!

To celebrate, here's one of Scotland's finest - the dearly lamented Billy MacKenzie [RIP; this week 20 years ago] with the Associates. He's Waiting for the Loveboat:


Double your pillow
And feel obliged
Libido in a go slow
If I was you I'd hide

Waiting for the love boat
Waiting for the love boat
Knowing what you want and taking full advantage
Waiting for the love boat


Indeed.

Tuesday 24 January 2017

Beaux rêves


Cheerful pansies in our window box brighten up any day

Frost. Freezing fog. Dank air. Yuk.

Thank heavens for the marvellous Soft Tempo Lounge! Providing a much-needed "light music moment" as they whisk us off to exotic climes - it's You and I...


Ah, that's better.

Music: Sim - Mario Albanese & His Orchestra

Monday 23 January 2017

I don't care for wearin' silk cravats, ruby studs, satin spats



It's cold and frosty again, and we at Dolores Delargo Towers are getting heartily sick of it. The garden looks like something Queen Jadis would recognise, and we can only keep our fingers crossed that some of our "treasures" (such as Salvia "Amistad" and our less robust fuchsias) survive...

However, as we make weary preparation to slide off to work, there are some things worth celebrating - not least the fact that it is our Patron Saint Chita Rivera's (84th) birthday today. And on this Tacky Music Monday, we have a corker of a performance from the great lady!

Señorita Rivera was the star of the show in 2016's Broadway Backwards LGBT charity gala - where men sing songs originally written for women and vice versa - and, on this Tacky Music Monday, here she is as "Billy Flynn" (Chicago's smarmy anti-hero), with All I Care About is Love:


What a trouper!

Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero (born 23rd January 1933)

Have a good one, dear reader...

Sunday 22 January 2017

Devastating courgette riots


Nobody has starved to death so far despite a desperate lack of courgettes reaching British shores.

Authorities had predicted a complete breakdown of civilisation, but so far it appears that almost nobody has even noticed the lack of courgettes.

Professor Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies said: “We predicted a Doomsday scenario where there would be devastating courgette riots across the nation, only the strongest surviving, reaching home battered and bruised but triumphantly holding a courgette to be shared amongst the family.

“But instead it seems that people are bearing up surprisingly well.

“It now seems that we may avoid the bloody scenes in the Waitrose aisles brought about by last year’s hummus outage.”


Shopper Mary Fisher said: “I paid £150 for what I thought was pure courgette but when I got it home and sampled the merchandise, I discovered it was cucumber.

“I swear to God if I don’t get some courgette soon I’m going to turn to crack, or chard, whichever one’s cheaper.”
The Daily Mash

Of course.

Here's an appropriate song, methinks, courtesy of the Brighton Gay Men's Chorus:


The "real" story.

Saturday 21 January 2017

Don't leave me hanging on the telephone...



Tom Daley has admitted that an explicit six minute "snapchat" video of him is out in the interwebs somewhere, after he had cyber-sex with another man while he and Dustin were apart...

The best I can find is a 9-second clip here, dammit!

Tease.

If anyone finds the rest of it, be sure to let me know, sweeties!

Friday 20 January 2017

Run, run, run but you sure can't hide



Here at Dolores Delargo Towers, we are steadfastly ignoring anything that might be going on "over the pond" today.

Instead, we look forward to the looming weekend, and, as always, we mean to party! Here to play us in, with their super-flared red and yellow matching ensembles, jazzy graphics and fancy footwork, it's the Temptations with Ball of Confusion...

Thank Disco It's Friday!


Segregation, determination, demonstration, integration
Aggravation, humiliation, obligation to our nation

Ball of confusion
Oh yeah, that's what the world is today


Indeed.

Have a good (teeth-gritting, if you're American) weekend, dear chums!

Thursday 19 January 2017

The perfect gift...



...for Miss Tippi Hedren's 86th birthday!



Nathalie Kay "Tippi" Hedren (born 19th January 1930)

Wednesday 18 January 2017

Sex shop causes a furore...



...but a most unexpected one:
When a sex shop opened its doors in the middle of a quaint cathedral city, one might have thought that residents would be the first to complain.

But after the owner of Erotica-Belle in Salisbury was ordered to cover up his windows, he received some surprise support.

Locals rallied around Jonathan Spencer, claiming that the store’s display, which often features seductive outfits and erotic toys, was one of the best in town.

...Typical displays at Mr Spencer’s store, which also boasts a “discreet rear entrance” at the back, are understood to have included suggestive posters and phrases, as well as erotic toys and lingerie.

One display was based on a seaside theme, with “Ahoy sexy” and “Hello sailor” stickers in the window.

Speaking after the order was made, Mr Spencer said: “My shops operate within the law. We seem to be demonised by the council and looked down upon like we are some illegitimate business. They are restricting my human right to earn an honest living.”

He has now been backed by residents who said the displays had “cheered up a very dreary end of Fisherton Street”.

One resident praised Erotica-Belle online and said the shop had been “producing lovely seasonal window displays for the past three years”. [Another said] “I would go as far as saying the best dressed shop in the town. They have always been really good at being tastefully provocative.

“I want to complain about the complainants trying to bring everyone down into their grey view of the world and stop this bloke making a living.”
The people of Salisbury have a delectation for sexy knickers and erotic stimulators, it would seem.

Tuesday 17 January 2017

It's your outlook on life that counts



Another day, another Patron Saint's birthday...

Yes, it's Betty White Day again! And it is a very special one indeed - the great lady is 95 years old today - so let's hope she is celebrating in style!

"I've enjoyed the opposite sex a lot. Always have. Always will."





"It's your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don't take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humour in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver."





"I really don't care with whom you sleep. I just care what kind of a decent human being you are."





“I have no regrets at all. None. I consider myself to be the luckiest old broad on two feet.”





"I may be a senior, but so what? I'm still hot."


"My muffin hasn't had a cherry since 1939!"



Miss Betty Marion White Ludden (born 17th January 1922) - we at Dolores Delargo Towers salute you!

Monday 16 January 2017

We're gonna go through it together



It's a new week - boooooo!

It's also the Patron Saint of "Belters" Ethel Merman's birthday, bitches!. All hail.

On this Tacky Music Monday - a slot to which she is admirably suited - in an effort to wake us up in the most alarming manner, here is Miss Zimmerman herself in the company of the old charmer Signor Crocetti - with a Broadway Medley...


Have a great week, folks!

Ethel Merman (born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann, 16th January 1908 – 15th February 1984)

Sunday 15 January 2017

"Urine trouble"



That famous American Melania Trump dampens some recent leaks about her husband's proclivities:


It is so faboo to have Charlie Hides TV back in business!

The "singer's singer"



I fear that even this early on in the year, the "Dolores Delargo Towers Book of the Dead" is already beginning to fill up a chapter - with the news that the marvellous Buddy Greco has finally joined his Rat Pack chums in that eternal casino in the sky...

Mr Greco - whose 90th birthday we celebrated in August - was a real trouper, keeping that swinging sound going right to the very end. He was still performing (in the UK) in 2014, and made an appearance on stage in Las Vegas in November last year to be inducted into that city's Entertainment Hall of Fame.

His version of Lady is a Tramp is an enduring classic - see here - and in this clip Mr Greco is the consummate showman, as he joins Trini Lopez and Andy Williams on the latter's show:


Now, that's what I call "Sunday Music"!

RIP Buddy Greco (born Armando Joseph Greco, 14th August 1926 - 10th January 2017)

Saturday 14 January 2017

Thinking of indulging in some sports..?



...here's a range of exciting sportswear to choose from!


Faboo.

Friday 13 January 2017

I'm gonna burst your bubble; the fun has just begun



Sad news has arrived of the death of Larry Steinbachek [he with the - ahem - large talent, on the left of the above photo], keyboardist of the fabulous Bronski Beat. He was only 56.

To round off a hectic working week, and to get us in a party mood (for what promises to be a rather wintry weekend), what better than the boppy combination of the Bronskis and our Patron Saint of Purr-fection, Miss Eartha Kitt?

You'd better give her those Cha-Cha Heels!


RIP, Larry.... and Thank Disco It's Friday [the Thirteenth - gulp]!

Thursday 12 January 2017

Hurry, hurry, step right on in



Well, my dears - it's our first "timeslip moment" of 2017...

Our rusty old TARDIS has wheezed its way down to January 1977 - the Silver Jubilee year - an era when Punk was supposed to be "the big thing", but in reality things had not really changed a lot: big hair, big flares, big lapels and double-denim were all still very much in evidence, and the closest we came to "anarchy" was an outraged complaint letter in The Spectator expressing "dismay" that the magazine had begun "to give space to advertisements which serve to promote homosexual purposes"...

In the news this week forty years ago: IRA bombs hit the West End of London (thankfully with no fatalities); EMI sacked the Sex Pistols for saying the word "fuck" on ITV's Today Show (the presenter Bill Grundy was also dismissed); the (remarkable at the time) new Sinclair two-inch screen television set went on sale; there was a breakthrough in science as a previously unknown bacterium was identified as the cause of Legionnaires' disease; in the ascendant were Apple Computers (newly incorporated), the new Ford Fiesta (which became the most popular car of the year in the UK, and remained so for several years) and incoming US President Gerald Ford, but Home Secretary Roy Jenkins (the man who a decade earlier had steered the legalisation of homosexuality through the UK Parliament) resigned to take up the Presidency of the European Union; and devastating 40-mile-an-hour lava flows erupted from Mount Nyiragongo in the Congo, killing seventy people. In cinemas: Sweeney! (the film spin-off from the TV series), Carrie and King Kong. On telly: Wings, Children Of The Stones and Robin's Nest.

And in our charts this week in January 1977? The lovely David Soul was at #1 with Don't Give Up On Us, and following in his wake were (the recently-deposed) Johnny Mathis, Abba, Showaddywaddy, 10CC, Julie Covington, Tina Charles, Mike Oldfield and Smokie. But the highest climber of the lot was this (almost) "one-hit wonder" - Mr Barry Biggs [Whoooo?] with his Sideshow:


So let the sideshow begin
Hurry, hurry, step right on in
Can't afford to pass it by
Guaranteed to make you cry
Let the sideshow begin (hurry, hurry)
Hurry, hurry, step right on in
Can't afford to pass it by
Guaranteed to make you cry


Indeed.

Wednesday 11 January 2017

Another award-winning film where Hollywood sucks its own dick


Golden Globe-winning musical La La Land is fast becoming the film you will go to any lengths not to watch in 2017.

The film, which has also received 11 Bafta nominations and is tipped for Oscars, has been named by movie-goers as the one film they will desperately avoid but end up seeing regardless.

Martin Bishop of Stafford says: “Great, another award-winning film where Hollywood sucks its own dick about how fantastic it is.

“Big musical numbers about the life of an actor? Heartbreaking ballads about the struggle to make it in Tinseltown? Boy, as a self-employed mechanic in the East Midlands I sure can identify with those universal themes.

“But you just know it’ll win everything and the wife’ll want to see it and even if I dodge it at the cinema it’ll be on streaming or DVD and even if I avoid those it’ll be shown on a plane.

“Fuck. This is 'The Artist' all over again.”


An industry spokesman said: “And don’t forget interminable arthouse films this awards season, like grief drama 'Manchester-by-the-Sea'. It really is as awful as it sounds.”
The Daily Mash

Of course.

Tuesday 10 January 2017

Down on my knees in Suburbia



As I embark on yet another of my "cross-London safaris" [thank heavens the Tube strike was yesterday!], this time to a meeting in the far southerly borough of Merton, it is - inevitably, on this poignant first anniversary of his death - to David Bowie I turn for solace.

Here's a fitting song (from that marvellous 90s drama series of the same name) - it's Buddha Of Suburbia:


Living in lies by the railway line
Pushing the hair from my eyes
Elvis is English and climbs the hills
Can't tell the bullshit from the lies

Screaming along in South London
Vicious but ready to learn
Sometimes I fear that the whole world is queer
Sometimes but always in vain

So I'll wait until we're sane
Wait until we're blessed and all the same
Full of blood, loving life and all it's got to give
Englishmen going insane

Down on my knees in Suburbia
Down on myself in every way

With great expectations I change all my clothes
Mustn't grumble at silver and gold
Screaming above Central London
Never bored, so I'll never get old

So I'll wait until we're sane
Wait until we're blessed and all the same
Full of blood, loving life and all it's got to give
Englishmen going insane

Down on my knees in suburbia
Down on myself in every way

Day after, day after day, day after
Zane, Zane, Zane, Ouvre le chien
Day after day, day after
Zane, Zane, Zane, Ouvre le chien
Day after


Wish me luck...

Monday 9 January 2017

Choreographed action



A "New Year Tradition" is upon us - no, not the January sales, nor the usual mounds of dead Xmas trees lining the streets, but yet another Tube strike. Thus, the opening throes of my week not only include the traditional sense of impending doom, but also the prospect of walking to the benighted office in the cold and damp...

Ho hum.

Never mind, on this Tacky Music Monday, I have a genuine item of wonder that ought to put a smile on our faces as we prepare to get out there into the gloom - the Belgian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1973. Of course.

It has purple bell-bottoms and matching platform boots. It has backing singers in proto-Golden Girls fright wigs. it's completely incomprehensible. It's Baby, Baby by Nicole & Hugo!


I don't think they had much of a career after that.

Have a good week, peeps...

Sunday 8 January 2017

I guess the season is on



From the utterly superb website of all things Bowie, Pushing Ahead of the Dame:
“Ironically, the lyric is something about taking a short view of life, not looking too far ahead and not predicting the oncoming hard knocks. The lyric might have been a note to a younger brother or my own adolescent self,” Bowie wrote of the song many years later, and in its most generous interpretation, Teenage Wildlife is Bowie’s bequest to his successors - be true to yourself, or at least to your favourite illusion; know that the crowd will mock your ambitions and will hunt you down if you have the bad taste to fulfil them.

Is fame even worth it, though? A kid with “squeaky clean eyes” is desperate for fame but he becomes a toy of commerce, just another ugly teenage millionaire, “a broken nosed mogul,” with nothing new to say. The “same old thing in brand new drag comes sweeping into view.” After that, all that remains is the fall: it’s a world of pop stars as a succession of Jane Greys, queens crowned and dispatched in a week.
Today would have been the 70th birthday of my idol ["singing falsetto"?], David Bowie.

With his eternal legacy, universal adulation - and of course, his most unexpected and untimely death almost a year ago - there is very little I wish to add to the reams and reams of articles, tributes, analyses, retrospectives, and reminiscences that many writers (not least myself over the years- just click the keyword "David Bowie" at the foot of this post) have put together about Mr Bowie's life.

Suffice to say, as my regular reader will know, I loved him deeply - and I especially revered his album Scary Monsters and Super Creeps (which provided a major backdrop to my own teenage years, and began my "relationship" with the great man). I am, as he was, also deeply cynical about the occasional flurry of activity that hits the media touting "the new Bowie", or that ubiquitous lazy journalistic tack of making a comparison between him and his successors to the top of the commercial tree - often on the most tenuous of bases, such as a "change of image".

No. There was, and ever will be, only one David Bowie.

And in this song (released in 1980 as the opening track of side two on the above album, in the midst of the emergence of the likes of Gary Numan, the "Blitz Kids" and eclectic post-Punk outlandish "dressing-up" street-styles - the first wave of people he often dismissed as "imitators"), Bowie made his own bitter reclamation of his position as a true original...


Well, how come you only want tomorrow
With its promise
Of something hard to do
A real life adventure
Worth more than pieces of gold
Blue skies above
And sun on your arms
Strength in your stride
And hope in those squeaky clean eyes
You'll get chilly receptions
Everywhere you go
Blinded with desire
I guess the season is on

So you train by shadow boxing,
Search for the truth
But it's all, but it's all used up
Break open
Your million dollar weapon
And you push, still you push,
Still you push your luck

A broken nosed mogul are you
One of the new wave boys

Same old thing in brand new drag
Comes sweeping into view, oh-ooh
As ugly as a teenage millionaire
Pretending it's a whiz-kid world
You'll take me aside, and say
"Well, David, what shall I do?
They wait for me in the hallway"
I'll say "Don't ask me, I don't know any hallways"
But they move in numbers and they've got me in a corner
I feel like a group of one, no-no
They can't do this to me
I'm not some piece
Of teenage wildlife

Those midwives to history put on their bloody robes

The word is that the hunted one is out there on his own
You're alone for maybe the last time
And you breathe for a long time
Then you howl like a wolf in a trap
And you daren't look behind

You fall to the ground
Like a leaf from the tree
And look up one time
At that vast blue sky
Scream out aloud as they shoot you down
No no, I'm not a piece
Of teenage wildlife
I'm not a piece
Of teenage wildlife

And no one will have seen
And no one will confess
The fingerprints will prove
That you couldn't pass the test
There'll be others
On the line filing past,
Who'll whisper low
I miss you he really had to go
Well each to his own, he was
Another piece of teenage wildlife, oh-oh-oh-ohh
Another piece of teenage wildlife, oh-oh-oh-ohh
Another piece of teenage wild...
Wild
Wild
Wild


RIP David Robert Jones (8th January 1947 – 10th January 2016)

Saturday 7 January 2017

Wij zijn dol op de bossen



Apologies to my regular reader for the lack of a "Thank Disco It's Friday" party-music post yesterday. However, having had to attend a family funeral in Portsmouth, I considered it less than appropriate to "go there"...

So, instead, it is "business as usual" here at Dolores Delargo Towers, as today we celebrate the birthday of one of our fave Dutch cabaret artistes, Missen Jasperina de Jong!

Here is a rare video of her performing a classic of its genre, a song we always sing when we're off to Amsterdam - De Wandelclub:


Jasperina de Jong (born 7th January 1938)

Thursday 5 January 2017

Sensual, delicate and vulnerable?


Nigel Farage will wear a white dress and heels to serenade Donald Trump at his presidential inauguration, it has been confirmed.

With many high-profile performers rejecting offers to perform, the former UKIP leader has promised a ‘sultry’ and ‘husky’ rendition of Happy Birthday.

Farage said: “I’m going to strike just the right balance between mainstream family entertainment and outright eroticism.

“As well as being sensual, I am delicate and vulnerable, like a bird in a gilded cage, and I want to bring that across.

“Paul Nuttall might to a bit on his banjo too, if there’s time.”


Farage believes that a successful performance could lead to some sort of courtesan role that involves feeding Trump grapes while wearing a leather uniform.
The Daily Mash

Of course.

Wednesday 4 January 2017

Heavens...



...I think Sir Bryn Terfel may have been appointed Britain's ambassador to the EU...
[Well, you've never seen them in the same room.]

Here he is, singing to celebrate the occasion...


The "real" story

Tuesday 3 January 2017

You wanna live fancy? Live in a big mansion?



Time appears to be going backwards today...


You want a hot body? You want a Bugatti?
You want a Maserati? You better work bitch
You want a Lamborghini? Sip Martinis?
Look hot in a bikini? You better work bitch
You wanna live fancy? Live in a big mansion?
Party in France?
You better work bitch, you better work bitch
You better work bitch, you better work bitch
Now get to work bitch!
Now get to work bitch!


I just want to go to the pub.

Monday 2 January 2017

Latch on to the affirmative



It's the last day of freedom, peeps...

Even though it is a Bank Holiday, however, it is still a Tacky Music Monday - and who better to provide the opening number of this New Year than our Patron Saint Bette Midler? Here she is (with Bing) paying tribute to those other icons here at Dolores Delargo Towers, the Andrews Sisters (one of whom, Maxene, would have been 101 tomorrow).

We'd better Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive!


Have a good week, folks!