Friday Jukebox is Hoarse

I’m not going to sugar coat it at all, my voice is buggered, and has pretty much been non-existent for the past fortnight, ergo no April video log…and believe you me it is killing me because I have A LOT TO SAY, but the Benadryl tends to make writing it out not a dignified option. (See that pretty cloud, or is it the skylight? You get the idea.)

So in lieu of that, I would like to hype the comedienne Loni Love, whose first comedy special will be airing (in North America) on 8 May. I have no idea when—if ever—it’ll come down here.

Stop at Redfern for Birth Control?

A little interesting titbit (pun intentional) I picked up via Twitter.

For those who might not know, Redfern has a bit of a dodgy rep in Sydney. Yet, Redfern—or rather specifically, Redfern Station—features in an euphemistic expression for crude birth control according to the Urban Dictionary.

Sunday Jukebox Says “Only You Can Save the Quartet”

Continuing the trip down nostalgia lane, let’s take in a couple of clips from the quartet Circus.

First off, the very AM friendly Mr. Summertime. (This is their performance at Kouhaku 1978.)

American Feeling was the theme song that JAL (back when they weren’t haemorrhaging money) had for their COME TO AMERICA ‘79 campaign. This likely explains why this mob are pretending they are planes soaring above the clouds. (For some reason it reminds me mostly of the musical clips on The Great Space Coaster.)

 

Since the revival of boy bands and girl groups in the mid-to-late 1990s, the quartet has been a bit of a dying breed. Pop music seems to favour every combination except for four (bands excepted)…and mixed-gender groups (bands excepted)? Not outside of children’s television, thank you very much.

Bonus: Watch the Mr. Summertime clip again, and follow it up with the Turkish entry at Eurovision 1978.

If you’re thinking here comes a Eurovision retrospective, then you’d be right. That was the first of four quartet related clips.

This last one is a personal favourite of mine. It’s nonsensical and Gemini manage to the trick of harmonising while also looking stunned. (How those sleeves managed to not hit the two male members is a miracle.)

The quartet hasn’t died at Eurovision, but it’s a definite endangered species.

What is it about present-day pop groups having 3, 5, or 6 members anyway?

Ok, just the soothe >4 beast, here’s one another Eurovision quartet clip.

And Circus performing Mr. Summertime in the 1990s, smooth jazz style.

Won’t you please save the quartet?

Thursday Jukebox Loves Vintage Italian-Japanese Duos

Which pretty much comes down to Hide & Rosanna, who notched up a few hits in the 1960s-70s.

Interesting how present day pop seems averse to duo groups.

Bonus: It’s Eurovision next month, and here are some selections from the 1972 contest, which was chock-a-block with duos.

And the ultimate Eurovision duet (despite not winning) of all time:

What Great Migration?

I like to think of myself as a very worldly person, but periodically, some story about the US pops up in the Australian press which makes me, as an American, say “duh,” and I have to remember that I am in a foreign country.

ABC News has a story about how cotton has declined in Mississippi. It’s rather unremarkable for the most part, but what struck me most is that the story takes the tone of expressing shock that cotton has declined across the Mississippi Delta, as if it was only a short time ago that everybody was picking cotton galore.

Pardon the pun, but I just have to nitpick this article because it misses one of what I think is one of the most important events in American history: The Great Migration (actually there were several), where millions of American blacks moved from the former agricultural slave-holding states to the industrial states of the North and Upper Midwest.

This event helped shape the American economic engine just as much as the influx of immigrants into Ellis Island. (On a completely popular culture level, were it not for the Great Migration (mk. II), Oprah Winfrey would not have ruled Chicago, and by extension global daytime television.)

Yet, I remember it being glossed over at school, so is it that much of a surprise that it doesn’t feature into international studies of the US?

Sadly, not really.

Have Things Changed in 4 Years?

Several years ago, I wrote an article for AfterElton, where I discussed the relative invisiblity of gay black lives in film and television. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the state of gay black imagery is a subject of a panel at the Writers Guild (link courtesy of Mediaweek).