doggies + New Edition

It’s My Birthday And I Need To Dance!

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doggies + New Edition
Every April, to coincide with Tax Day, my former Sony colleague Rich Appel creates the IRS countdown. In this case, IRS stands for It Really Shoulda, as in It Really Shoulda been a top ten hit. People vote for songs that they feel should have but didn’t make the top ten of Billboard’s Hot 100. Rich collates all of the entries and comes out with the Top 100 IRS songs.

Today is my birthday. Usually on birthdays, Tunes du Jour creates a playlist around the music of the birthday boy or girl. As Friday is dance day in these parts, I decided I would take inspiration from Rich’s IRS countdown and present to you a playlist of songs that I love to dance to that didn’t crack the pop top ten. Here are fifty such IRS tracks. (Actually, fifty-one, not because that’s how old I am but because the Diana Ross entry is two songs.) It’s my birthday and I need to dance!

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doggies + Radio Head 2014-10-07 11.09

Precious and Phew! (And Radiohead)

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I need to do more cardio. I am presently at 19% body fat, which is fine compared to the general population, but in the gay world that makes me Precious.

I like doing cardio. I made a great workout playlist (lots of Robyn, Prince, The Partridge Family and Pet Shop Boys) and I have excellent headphones. I invested in a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort noise-cancelling headphones. When I have them on all other sounds are blocked, so I can get lost in “When Doves Cry” or “I Think I Love You” and not be distracted by people asking me how much longer I’ll be on the elliptical or by the music the gym pumps, which is often Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull. I can’t listen to Pitbull for health reasons. I’m lactose-intolerant.

The headphones are great on planes as well. I recently flew to New York and boy, are my arms tired from throwing them in the air to the rhythms of my great travel playlist (lots of Beatles, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Bay City Rollers and Pet Shop Boys). Even with the volume relatively low I couldn’t hear the plane engines or the hysterical woman next to me.

She seemed fine when the plane took off, but at some point when I was lost in “Paperback Writer” or “Midnight Train to Georgia” or “Rock and Roll Love Letter” or “Go West” she lost her shit. I only noticed because a flight attendant tapped me to see if I’d like to buy some crackers (as if I could afford those extra calories!). When I pulled off the headphones to say “What?,” I heard my fellow passenger crying hysterically to two other flight attendants, between sobs saying “I’ve got to get off this plane. Now!” They tried to calm her down, even offering her free crackers, but she retained enough of her wits to point out that crackers do not alleviate a fear of heights or enclosed spaces. She went into the bathroom and everyone sitting in the last seven rows could hear her screaming. It was very sad – nobody else had noise-cancelling headphones so they had to endure her hysterics. I put my pair back over my ears. “S-A T-U-R D-A-Y night!”

doggies + Radio Head 2014-10-07 11.09The only Radiohead I have on vinyl

One group not on my workout playlist but on my travel playlist is Radiohead. (How’s that for a segue?) Did you know they got their name from a Talking Heads song? Yep. Today is the birthday of lead singer Thom Yorke, who released a new solo album, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, last month. Today’s playlist consists of twenty songs not on that album.

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doggies + James Brown 2014-07-04 10.41

It’s Friday The Fourth Of July And I Need To Dance!

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On July 4, 1982, I went with my then-friend Robin to see Diana Ross in concert at Giants Stadium. I hadn’t been to the stadium before, but I figured on a typical day it was about a half hour drive from my home in New Jersey. As this was a holiday, I assumed there would be a lot of traffic, so I allowed for extra travel time. I didn’t want to be late.

We got to Giants Stadium five hours before show time. We parked right by the stadium entrance, went in, and found our seats. It was a beautiful sunny day, so we tanned as we waited for others to join us.

After a few hours other people showed up. The stadium was mostly full when the first opening act took to the stage. The band’s lead singer introduced them. “We’re Frankie Beverly and Maze for all you white people who don’t know who we are because you don’t listen to black music.” He sure knew how to charm an audience and win over new fans! I was momentarily ashamed that I spent my money to see and hear the white music of Diana Ross.

After Maze, Miles Davis performed. Would it have killed him to finish writing the songs before he came out? And hello, the audience is over here, not behind the curtain.

While Davis was playing, the couple sitting next to my then-friend Robin and me snorted cocaine. I’d never seen anyone do that before. They left after Davis finished, skipping the Diana Ross show altogether. That’s all I needed to see to keep me from ever doing coke. I don’t ever want to get to a point where I lose control over my thoughts and whereabouts and miss Miss Ross.

Finally, the main event. Diana Ross. Live. She performed all her big solo hits, except “Love Hangover,” and 30+ years later that still irks me. She did a medley of Supremes hits. She changed her clothes a few times. It was great!

doggies + James Brown 2014-07-04 10.41
Friday is dance day at Tunes du Jour, and while I could open today’s playlist with “Love Hangover” (Why, Miss Ross, why didn’t you preform that song???), I’m going to go with a more traditional 4th of July choice, James Brown’s “Living in America,” one of the very few Brown hits that the man neither wrote nor produced. Happy holiday!

It’s Friday And I Need To Dance!

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In 2003, Rhino Entertainment moved me from New York City to Los Angeles to head up their Licensing department. I miss Manhattan’s energy and fashion sense and anything-at-any-hour way of life, but most of all, I miss my friends. And I miss our Bad Movie Days.

Not only do I love a good bad song; I also enjoy a good bad movie, as do a core group of my friends. We would meet at either my place or Kathy’s place every few Sundays and stay in, even if it was beautiful outside, and enjoy Glitter or Staying Alive or Body of Evidence, followed by a second feature, usually Showgirls.

Unlike a bad song, which I can enjoy in my solitude, a bad movie usually is more enjoyable with company. I’m not sure I would be able to sit through Skyscaper, in which Anna Nicole Smith starred as a hostage negotiator, if I didn’t have my friends with me to razz the screen, particularly during the scenes where Anna Nicole walked past an office and the film would dissolve to a flashback sequence of the time she had sex on that office’s desk.

I can enjoy a bad musical on my own. While my friends enjoyed Grease 2, with its extended production number about bowling, they were not as enamored as I am of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Still, when I watched Mamma Mia on HBO alone in my Los Angeles condo, I knew my friends would share my joy at this amazing cinematic feat, particularly when Pierce Brosnan sang “S.O.S.”

One of my favorite bad movies is Can’t Stop the Music. It stars the Village People. I’ll let that sink in before I go on. Ready? It also stars Bruce Jenner, in a cropped t-shirt and Daisy Dukes. And Steve Guttenberg and Valerie Perrine, with “special guests” (as they are billed in the credits) The Ritchie Family. The Ritchie Family, whose hits were “Best Disco in Town” and “Brazil,” get “special guest” billing. That’s how amazing this movie is. But wait, there’s more! The film was directed by Nancy Walker. Ida Morgenstern. Rosie, the Bounty Paper Towel shill. That Nancy Walker. Now you know you’re in for a treat.

Before I get into the movie, let me make clear that I LOVE The Village People, and not in a I love bad music way. I unabashedly enjoy their music. Not just the hits singles; there are Village People album cuts that have five stars in my iTunes library. I love this movie’s theme song.

As for the rest of the movie, well…. It’s sort of about the formation of the Village People, though 90 minutes into it you may ask “Will there be a plot anytime soon?” Then you’ll ask “Why is a Village People movie more than 90 minutes long?” We see the group’s auditions. I would have hired the guy in the blue jumpsuit who sang “Macho Man.” That said, I can’t deny the leatherman, whose profession we learn is toll collector at the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (talk about a macho man!), sings a mean “Danny Boy.” We see the guys shoot a commercial for milk. We see..I’m going to lift a line from this movie’s Wikipedia entry – “Initially reluctant, Helen seduces Steve with her kreplach and before long they’re negotiating the T-shirt merchandising for the Japanese market.” We see them perform for an ecstatic crowd in San Francisco (oh, um, spoiler alert. That’s how it ends.) Best of all, we see a “Y.M.C.A.” production number as envisioned by Busby Berkeley and Esther Williams while vacationing on Fire Island.

Every Friday is dance music day on Tunes du Jour. Today we kick off the playlist with the timeless “Y.M.C.A.” Because it is still LGBT Pride Month, I made our dance party extra gay. Twirl!

Ringo + Turtles 003

Your Day Of Happiness Soundtrack

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Ringo + Turtles 003
Today is the United Nations International Day of Happiness. Our soundtrack kicks off with The Turtles’ “Happy Together.”

Ironically, this is not a happy song.

Written by Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon, the song is about a one-way love affair. The singer imagines being with the girl to whom he’s singing. He’s in love with her and thinks if they were to be together the skies would be blue. He imagines how the world would be – so very fine – if they were a couple.

She doesn’t feel the same way. When this sinks in to our narrator, he makes small talk. “So how is the weather?” he asks, alternating that line with his repeated sentiment that they would be so happy together.

The song opens on a minor chord, which has a more melancholy sound than a major chord. The chorus – “I can’t see me loving nobody but you for all my life” – opens with a major chord, and the instrumentation is appropriately louder and joyous, the celebratory sound matching his feelings of ecstasy as he imagines his fantasy life with this woman.

For younger folks reading this, there used to exist public phones where one could insert a dime to make a three-minute long local call, hence the lyric “If I should call you up, invest a dime.” If the song were written today, this verse may go “If I should call you up, use up minutes from my cell phone plan / And you say you belong to me, I am your man / Imagine how the world could be, I’m hungry for flan.” Not as strong. Now I’m hungry for flan.

The Turtles recorded “Happy Together” in January 1967. Two months later it knocked The Beatles’ “Penny Lane” out of the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. It stayed on top for three weeks.

Enjoy your Day of Happiness. May all your loves be requited loves.

Ten Facts About Björk

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1. Her last name is Guðmundsdóttir.
2. Her first album, entitled Björk, was released in December 1977 when she was twelve years old.
3. Before forming The Sugarcubes, Björk was in the bands Spit and Snot and Tappi Tikarrass. The latter is Icelandic for “Cork the bitch’s ass.”
4. When they formed The Sugarcubes, Björk was married to the band’s guitarist. They divorced and he married a woman who became the band’s keyboard player.
5. The Sugarcubes’ biggest US hit is entitled “Hit.” It spent five weeks at number one on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart.
6. Her single “Earth Intruders” reached #84 on Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 chart. It is Björk’s highest-placing single to date on that chart.
7. She wrote “Bedtime Story” for Madonna. The 1995 single was Madonna’s first to miss the US top 40 since before her breakout hit “Holiday” twelve years earlier.
8. Her performance in the motion picture Dancer in the Dark won her the Best Actress Award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.
9. Her album Medúlla is mostly a capella. One song has a piano, one a bass synthesizer, and another a gong. The remainder of the sounds is created by human vocals.
10. Today is her birthday. I don’t know if she’s smoking cigars.