http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsLUs91q1eg
How about those fashions? Bill's a stockbroker with suspenders, and Astrid's wearing a wretchedly loud houndstooth coat. I will give her credit for the quite hip Madonna lace gloves, though.
I found this clip of Animotion performing their classic 1985 Top 10 hit "Obsession" on American Bandstand...didn't know Bandstand ever featured anything this sexually provocative, or at least lyrics like "Who do you want me to be to make you sleep with me?" were provocative back then. Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsLUs91q1eg Does Bill Wadhams (the male singer) mime hitting Astrid Plane (the female vocalist) in time with the drum beat at the 1:42 mark?
How about those fashions? Bill's a stockbroker with suspenders, and Astrid's wearing a wretchedly loud houndstooth coat. I will give her credit for the quite hip Madonna lace gloves, though.
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I was in a '50s-themed burger joint with my girlfriend yesterday when "Mr. Sandman" started playing over the piped-in music. I know that sort of music was the "cheesiness" that rock and roll was suppoed to have supplanted, but I couldn't help but think how pretty a song it was with its TV-theme-like orchestration and those "bung bung bung" backing vocals. So, after consulting a Billboard reference book this morning and seeing that the song was popular 60 years ago this month in 1954 (in two versions, one by the Chordettes and one by Four Aces) I thought I'd turn it into a salute by seeing if there were any cool versions of it on YouTube. I was not disappointed. Here's an instrumental guitar version from Chet Atkins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-c66SJPuUI Instrumental again from another group, sped up, and with an accordion! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXyk_sAAfyo I thought The Supremes had cut a version, too. Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FamDsDXosM I have no idea where this came from. It's "The Karate Rap" from 1986, and it's a mutant mix of the "One Night in Bangkok" video and an aerobics workout co-performed by a Bonnie Tyler-esque singer and a backing band with Duran Duran hairstyles. It is both awful and awesome at the same time. Watch and learn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJSZ1TwjcsQ 1. I never knew there was such a thing as a "samurette."
2. The lyrics about the karate wife, kids and dog are the best. 3. Only in the 1980s could you rhyme "sensei" with "make my day." The Runaways were a mediocre '70s band primarily known for expelling group members Joan Jett and Lita Ford out on an unsuspecting world. Although they never had a hit single nor album, their legacy has been romanticized in our politically-correct climate because they were all female and wrote their own songs. However, judging from their mostly unlistenable output, you would never know that the future talents of Jett and Ford were trapped inside this bubble. One of the lesser-known members was Cherie Currie, whose fame primarily came from co-starring with Jodie Foster in the 1980 film Foxes after the Runaways all ran away from each other. I recently completed Currie's 2010 autobiography Neon Angel after reading Evelyn McDonnell's 2013 bio book of the band Queens of Noise in March. While McDonnell's book isn't perfect - she could use a little fact-checking on the histories of Cheap Trick and Steel Breeze - she excellently sorts out the different accounts of the Runaways' history and neatly summarizes the best parts of Neon Angel, making the reading of this book unnnecessary. Neon Angel moves quickly because of its lurid tales of sex, drugs and family dysfunction, but it becomes numbingly dull after awhile when the book becomes one episode of chemical abuse after another. I quit feeling sorry for Currie when she takes a limousine ride with a questionable stranger that leads to the most harrowing horror of her life. Secondly, Currie just isn't that interesting of a person. She portrays herself as an unremarkable basic blonde party girl with unadventurous musical tastes who couldn't appreciate punk nor the Talking Heads. If she had covered her current status as champion chainsaw-carving artist or discussed her former marriage to Airplane!'s Robert Hays for more than one or two sentences in the final chapter, I might've seen her as a multi-dimensional person. And third, it's disappointing and a rip-off to read a book where the author refuses to name the names of the celebrities she came in contact with. For the record, Cherie, I'm guessing the "teen idol" you slept with was David Cassidy and the "Latin singer" you had an affair with was Morris Albert of "Feelings" fame. Readers are probably more inclined to flock to Currie's book because it served as the basis for the biopic The Runaways, but I recommend McDonnell's work to anyone interested in the band's history. While McDonnell sometimes lets her feminism get in the way of her narrative, Queens is much more concise and interesting then Currie's dragged-out and drugged-out drama. Grade: D+
OK, all you rockin' retro readers, welcome to the weekend, today we got a fab find of some swingin' '60s janglin' jingles from Atlanta's own WQXI, 'cause Georgia's ALWAYS on my mind, so click on that too-hot-to-stop link below and get back to the sounds that preceded those groovy hit records' grooves! ALLLLRIIIGHHHTTTT!!!!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx0wDhfhKxo Those are pretty cool, although the computer-distorted voice on the first one sounds a little more early '70s to me - did we have the effects to distort vocals like that in the '60s? Otherwise, there's Flintstones-like brassy fills, the Fifth Dimension soundalike at :53 and the Nancy Sinatra tambourine-shakin' one on the end. And don't forget all the hip lingo like "What's new, pussycat?" and "You're alive! You're in!"
Long, long ago - around 1977 - there was a disco singer named Donna Summer. Disco Donna had already released two Top 10 singles in two years that had changed the face of pop and dance music - "Love To Love You Baby" and "I Feel Love." "I Feel Love" wasn't just a single, it was an aural delight born for headphone escapism that transported listeners to a futuristic world. Donna and her co-producers and co-songwriters Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte knew they needed to top it. But how? Their answer was to create a double album "disco opera" (my term, not theirs), a rock opera like The Who's Tommy that told a story. Their tale was a thin fairy story about a woman who finds an escape from the gritty city life when she meets her dream man. One track, "Now I Need You," even sounded like "I Feel Love" with an operetta-like chorus. Unfortunately, the record buyers were not as pleased with the resulting work titled Once Upon a Time... The album sold well and hit #26 but failed to generate a big hit single with only one Top 40 hit, "I Love You," that made #37. Disco Donna lived happily ever after the next year, however, as 1978 saw her scoring her first #1 song ("MacArthur Park") and album (Live & More) in addition to having a Top 5 hit with the disco anthem "Last Dance." The album's slight storyline does not detract from the music, and only the slow songs ruin the escapist experience. "Faster and Faster To Nowhere" adds the new word "daymare" (the opposite of "nightmare") to our vocabulary and probably serves an an accurate description of NYC '77, while "Fairy Tale High" was probably the coke-snorting soundtrack at Studio 54. "Fairy," "Working the Midnight Shift" and "Queen for a Day" have keyboard sounds that provide the missing link between disco and New Wave synth pop. Not surprisingly, Moroder would score Top 40 hits in the 1980s by collaborating with acts like Berlin and Limahl. GRADE: B+ Here's the album's choice cuts:
Here's Summer singing "I Love You" on The Tonight Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS4jtS_sNuE "Faster and Faster To Nowhere": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c51x39rfGzI "Working the Midnight Shift": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASYOPRpZOZA |
Walburgh's BlogMostly retro, mainly music, but generally whatever's on my mind. Archives
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