Another busy and stressful week is almost over - but we have a proper party to look forward to this evening - Our Sal's birthday bash!
Time, methinks, to grab a sparkly kaftan and a scarf, and to boogie on down with Sylvester...
Thank Disco it's Friday!
Hope you have a fantabulosa weekend, dear reader.
Another grey and miserable week drags slowly to its close (thank you, Storm Ciarán, for covering the garden from top to toe in a thick layer of slimy wet leaves - that's my weekend sorted...) - and it's time once again for a party!
So grab your best sparkly kaftan, and boogie on down with Sylvester and his Two Tons'o'Fun...
Thank Disco it's Friday!
Hope you have a fantabulosa weekend, dear reader!
Happy 40th Birthday! New Order's Blue Monday first arrived in the charts on this weekend in March 1983:
An all-time classic, way back in 2009 I decided to post a "recipe" of the "ingredients" that contributed to its composition, based upon a Sky Arts documentary at the time - and lo and behold, Alex Petridis in The Guardian has done the same. Some of the ingredients he used were the same as mine, but there are some interesting differences...
Both he and I acknowledged that this slice of Italo disco brilliance (which Bernard Sumner has always cited as one of his favourite songs) was a key element:
It's undeniable that Giorgio Moroder's groundbreaking collaboration with Donna Summer was a big influence on the band, but I chose the obvious number...
...whereas Mr Petridis suggested this album track:
It's undeniable that this one had to be in the mix, and our lists coincided again:
Although, inevitably, a soupçon of Kraftwerk had to be there, the "flavours" diverged - as Alex chose this:
Whereas I specified one that was a tad more familiar:
There was one more piece in the Guardian article that came as a bit of a "left-fielder", however. Apparently Peter Hook claimed the sparse riffs of Blue Monday were inspired by the twanging lead guitar in Ennio Morricone's score for For a Few Dollars More!
Whatever the ingredients, the resulting "dish" is delicious, indeed:
STOP PRESS:
The official lyric video...
Normally, on a Sunday I might choose to feature something typical of the sort of music BBC Radio 2 used to play; we call it "Sunday Music", indeed. You know the sort of thing - Big Bands, Dance Bands, crooners, Lounge music, general laid-back-ness.
Not this Sunday!
I have been so utterly pissed-off by the fact that I have had a fortnight's leave [admittedly relaxing, with lots of lie-ins, and all that] which was meant to encompass a picnic in Regent's Park (cancelled due to the fucking shit weather - which also meant any chance of lounging/pottering in the garden was out of bounds until Tuesday this week - and replaced by a drinking sesh in a Wetherspoons), a long weekend in my fave city on earth Amsterdam (which was cancelled due to onerous COVID restrictions) for my birthday, and to be topped-off with a mass gathering for our first post-lockdown live on-stage musical Anything Goes (which was also cancelled at short notice due to fucking COVID stuff), that this Sunday - my last day before returning to the joys of working for a living - I am determined to rave till my tits fall off!
A good enough excuse for a blow-out is the fact it happened to be the birthday yesterday of our "Patron Saint of Dance Music" Miss Ana Matronic - so in her honour, here's a collection of choons I either originally heard on her radio show or I know she has featured over the years...
Enjoy, dear chums!
Now THAT is how to end a disappointing fortnight's "holiday" - with a bang!
"An androgynous, cross-dressing, openly gay, African American, falsetto-singing, unapologetically flaming man-diva influenced primarily by church women, black blues singers, drag queens, hippies, and homos... Sylvester rode his marginality right into the mainstream: a star not despite the boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality he eagerly crossed but because of them.” - Joshua Gamson, The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, The Music, The Seventies in San Francisco
"His record label saw greater popularity for Sylvester’s stunning vocal skills, and pressured him to “butch up” his image. Defiantly, he attended meetings with executives in full-on drag." - Immortal Socialites magazine
"Despite the obvious magic he had with dance material, Sylvester never viewed himself as a disco act. You see, he really wanted to be Patti Labelle." - San Francisco Queer Cultural Center
"When people would ask him to label himself – gay rights activist, drag queen, etc. – he would say simply and proudly, 'I am Sylvester.'" - David Masciotra, Pop MattersIt would have been the 70th birthday today of the ultimate Queen of Disco!