God knows why but I woke up with this song in my head this morning..and it seems to be sticking all day. Must have come up in a now-forgotten dream or summat.
Naturally I looked it up on the interwebby and as I learned of the correct spelling Gaudete (should've known that) I also remember it was made famous by Steeleye Span in the 70s, who sang it on TOTP once. Wikipedia also further informs that it's a Latin Christmas carol, from the 16th Century.
Maybe I was a monk back then and I was taken back to a previous life in my dream. or maybe it was my current fixation with 70s music which brought out the "Span" version from 1973.
Fact: the Steeleye Span single is one of only three top 50 British hits to be sung in Latin - can you name the other two?
Anyway, fingers on ears chaps and let's have a sing-along....we'll be perfect by Christmas.
Mesdames et messieurs...bonsoir! Things are heating up in Azerbaijan as the first semi-final of this year's Eurovision Song Contest reached it's heady conclusion in Baku last night. The qualifiers were: Romania - Moldova - Iceland - Hungary - Denmark - Albania - Cyprus - Greece - Russia - Ireland.
Sadly, Montenegro didn't make it through with the fabulously titled Euro Neuro.
Other surprise non-runners were Switzerland, Belgium, and San Marino with The Social Network Song (Oh Oh - Uh - Oh Oh) Austria also nul-points, or thereabouts, with eloquently titled Woki Mit Deim Popo, approx. translation 'Shake Your Arse' ..performed appropriately by Trackshittaz (I kid you not)
Euro-fun continues with second semi-final on Thursday, with the grand finale on Saturday. Stay tuned!
Meanwhile here's some fab nul-points nostalgia. It's Belgium's Telex from 1980, who so marvellosuly mixed stae of the art instruments with a touch of Belgian surrealism and a catchy tune. Nul points, naturellement..
Was pretty gutted to hear last night that singer Donna Summer had passed away aged just 63. She died of lung cancer which she blamed on toxic dust inhaled after 9/11 in New York. A tragedy within a tragedy.
Although still very active as a recording artist Donna was best known for her work in the 70s, practically inventing disco music as a genre and certainly breaking new ground with her more electronic based work with Giorgio Moroder. The epic Moog-fuelled I Feel Love is probably one of her best known songs, but let's not forget other gems such as Love To Love You Baby, I Remember Yesterday, the somewhat bizarre McArthur Park ("someone left the cake out in the rain..") and the classic disco-stomper Hot Stuff
Her raunchy, sexy style in the 70s disco phase under the Casablanca label, was somewhat offset with her becoming a 'born-again Christian' in the 80s. Although Summer spent much of the decade in musical obscurity, save for her
collaboration with Anderson/Vangelis on State of Independence, she
returned to the charts in 1989 under the Stock, Aitkin & Waterman umbrella with This Time I Know It's For Real and an album Another Place and Tim.
1991's Mistaken Identity album saw Donna try out a more urban style but with little success. The single Work That Magic failed to do just that. The rest of the nineties saw just greatest hits compilations and a live album, with Donna living on her legacy.
Crayons, an album of original material, was released in May 2008 with modest succes in the US although shifting very few digital units in Europe. An undeserving demise to one of our best female vocal artists and songwriters.
Ironic then that it was 30 years ago almost to the week that New Order issued their first electronic-dance orientated single Temptation which borrows heavily from the Summer / Moroder song Our Love from the ground-breaking Bad Girls album, as does their subsequent Blue Monday released in 1983 which started the electronic Hi-NRG dance and house music trends.
Regular readers will have noticed, perhaps with some disappointment, that LiM hasn't bothered to continue the tradtional 30th anniversary "I Love.." series as we did with 1980 and 1981. Possibly because as a matter of fact we don't love it much, or at least not as much as the previous 2 or 3 years, musically speaking.
That said, there was still some great new pop music being made and sold albeit a kind of 'second'wave' of new music with a bit more shine to it, thus lacking the gritty appeal of earlier post-punk/new wave tunes.
Duran Duran were a typical example - the short-lived "new romantic" (sic.) trend with the band and its music, influenced by both Bowie and Oxfam alike, developed into the smoother, smarter version of the Birmingham band, which would in fact bring them out of the clubs and into the big wide world. Their second album Rio was released thirty tears ago this month.
The transient single My Own Way at the turn of the year was a logical progression from their 1981 debut although Girls On Film from that album had already shown the way ahead. The 80s were going to be sexy. The first new single from '82, Hungry Like the Wolf, mixed pop-friendly guitar riffs, soft electronics and of course the catchy vocal lines making it a worthy figurehead for the album. The seminal Save a Prayer released some weeks later would take us nicely through the warmer months, thank you, while the album's title track would serve both as summer holiday soundtrack and memory-jerker for the chillier months ahead.
Whatever you think of Duran Duran there's no doubting the fact that they were very much an emblem of their time - the "who gives a damn" attitude of pop against a backdrop of rampant Thatcherism, the Falklands War and a brand new Princess for the People, perhaps unsurprisingly a "Durannie" herself.
