Tracks from Nick Lowe and his band Rockpile are on the playlist for today, Lowe’s 75th birthday.
Follow Tunes du Jour on Facebook
Follow Tunes du Jour on Twitter
Follow me on Instagram
Your (Almost) Daily Playlist (9-20-20)
Inspired by the September 30 birthdays of The Avalanches’ Robbie Chater, Thompson Twins’ Alannah Currie, Was (Not Was)’s Sweet Pea Atkinson, The Feeling’s Dan Gillespie Sales, The Beautiful South’s Dave Hemingway, Sin With Sebastian, and Sophia Loren.
It’s Fred Schneider’s Birthday And I Need To Dance!
The B-52’s 1980 single “Private Idaho” made Pitchfork’s list of the “500 Greatest Songs from Punk to Present,” present being 2006. In his capsule review, Nitsuh Abebe wrote “Those who dismiss the B-52’s as silly or kitschy should live in fear of the frenzied last half-minute, which sounds like it’s out to track those people down, lock them up in cages, and make them go-go dance until they cry for mercy.”
Every Friday, Tunes du Jour tries to make you dance to welcome in the weekend. This week’s dance playlist kicks off with The B-52’s’ “Private Idaho,” featuring the vocals of Fred Schneider, who turns 65 today. (By the way, the B-52’s first performed in Idaho in 2011.)
Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour
Follow me on Instagram: @GlennSchwartz
It’s Irene Cara’s Birthday And I Need To Dance!
Fame! I’m gonna live forever! Baby, remember my name!
Though she hasn’t had a hit song in more than thirty years, people still remember Irene Cara’s name. Between 1980 and 1984, she had more hit songs than the two you can name off the top of your head.
First came the song “Fame,” taken from the movie Fame, in which Cara played Coco Hernandez. “Fame,” written by Dean Pitchford and Michael Gore and featuring backing vocals from Luther Vandross and Vicki Sue Robinson, hit #4, and won the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. In addition, Cara’s performance in the film earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.
Also vying for the Academy Award for Best Original Song that year was “Out Here on My Own,” written by Michael Gore and his sister Lesley. Also performed by Cara in the film, it became her second consecutive top 40 single.
She didn’t appear in the movie Flashdance, but her theme song, “Flashdance…What a Feeling!,” was #1 in the US for six weeks, and won Cara, one of its writers, the Oscar for Best Original Song. “What a Feeling” also won Cara the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance – Female and a nomination for Record of the Year, which she lost to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” (fair enough!). The single topped charts around the world.
Given the song’s massive success, Cara found it odd that per her record label, her royalties from sales of the record amounted to $183. In 1985, following a few more hit songs (“The Dream,” from the movie D.C. Cab, in which she played Irene Cara; “Why Me?,” and “”Breakdance”), she sued the head of that label (which had since gone under) for $10 million for breach of contract. Eight years later, a jury awarded her $1.5 million. By then, her time in the spotlight was long over. She never hit the charts again after filing her lawsuit.
Take your passion and make it happen, but make sure you have people you trust looking after your affairs.
Today, Irene Cara turns 57 years old. Tunes du Jour’s weekly dance party kicks off with “Flashdance…What a Feeling!”
Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour
It’s Friday And I Need To Dance!
I knew I was in trouble when the doctor walked into the examination room, looked at me, and said “Mrs. Garcia?”
Unfortunately, I was forced to change health care plans this year. By doing so, I could not longer see the doctor I’ve been going to for the past eleven years. Of those affiliated with my new insurance provider, I selected the doctor who was closest to my home.
I went to his office today because of my eyes. My eyelids are itchy and flaky, and beneath my eyes is swollen and red. I asked him how I should treat them, and he answered “I don’t know. I’m not a dermatologist.” Per the rules of the plan, I had to see him before I could go to a specialist, which seems to me to be a silly waste of time. He took a photograph of my eyes, instructing me to close my eyes for an effective photo. I didn’t go to medical school, but I could have figured out on my own that the best way to photograph my eyelids is for me to have my eyes shut. He’ll send the photos into headquarters, who will then contact me with the name of a dermatologist I can see. Until then, all I can do is scratch my eyelids until they bleed.
On the plus side, the doctor said I’m not pregnant. That calls for a dance.
Tunes du Jour’s weekly dance party kicks off with Neneh Cherry’s “Kisses on the Wind.”
Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour
The Supreme Court Ruled And I Need To Dance!
– Justice Anthony Kennedy
Friday is dance day at Tunes du Jour. We kick off today’s party with birthday boy Mick Jones of The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite, who turns 60.
Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour
It’s Pete Shelley’s Birthday And I Need To Dance!
In 1981, Pete Shelley reached #14 on the US Dance chart with “Homosapien,” a keyboard-centric single that sounded much different than his work as the lead singer of punk band The Buzzcocks.
“Homosapien” did not get much airplay in Shelley’s native England, as the BBC took exception to the lyric “Homo superior in my interior.” Shelley said the song was not intended as a “gay song;” rather, it’s about homosapiens falling in love with other homosapiens. That may be so, but the opening line is “I’m the shy boy, you’re the coy boy / And you know we’re homosapien, too,” so there is more than a little homo in this sapien.
Shelley lives as the homosapien of his song, eschewing labels because “there doesn’t seem to be a word for ‘having relationships with people,’” regardless of gender, which is where Shelley sees himself.
It’s Friday and I need to dance! It’s also Pete Shelley’s birthday (he’s 60), so we’ll kick off our dance party with “Homosapien.”
Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour
It’s Jellybean’s Birthday And I Need To Dance!
John “Jellybean” Benitez, along with Arthur Baker, was the pre-eminent remixer of the 1980s. If I saw his name on a 12-inch single, I knew I was going to get something good. He worked with many big names in that decade and beyond. Artists whose work he remixed include Talking Heads, Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac, Paul McCartney, Donna Summer, Santana, ZZ Top, Billy Joel, Afrika Bambaataa, Whitney Houston, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Sting, Bangles, A-ha, Cher, Shakira, Bonnie Tyler, The Romantics and, most famously, Madonna.
These days Jellybean deejays parties around the world and is the Executive Producer of Sirius XM’s disco/dance station, Studio 54 radio. A couple of years ago, while I was working at Warner Music, Jellybean and I were discussing a project he wanted to do. I was very into the idea and told him I was confident I could get the big names he wanted on board. We also talked about a radio show he conceived for the Sirius XM channel in which new mixes of classic dance songs were played. To help him with that show I sent him a package with some modern mixes we had done of disco classics by Chic, Ashford & Simpson and others.
He never said thank you. I sent him a follow-up email to be sure he received the package, but he didn’t reply. Oh, well. So he is lacking manners. That doesn’t affect the joy I get listening to his classic remix work. (By the by, he never got around to launching the project he wanted to do about which I was excited.)
Today is Jellybean’s 57th birthday. Many of his mixes are not on Spotify, so today’s dance playlist consists of some of his mixes that are, of Madonna, David Bowie, Irene Cara, The Pointer Sisters, Shalamar and Whitney Houston, alongside other records I love to dance to.
You’re welcome.
Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!