It's like an engram of musical memories, mostly mine :)

Sunday, August 1, 2010

I'm A Sucker For Girl Groups !!



I'm a sucker for girl groups!
The term girl groups can be used in two different ways:
  • Any musical group consisting of entirely young female members, especially in pop music, who sing but do not play any musical instruments.
  • A genre of music from the early 1960s United States, when pop-soul groups made up entirely of women found a large audience, especially among teens; these girl groups were closely associated with a few record labels and producers, especially Phil Spector and his Wall of Sound technique.


"The Revelations are a British based girl group formed in 2005. The members are of British, Swedish and Portuguese extraction, consisting of the blonde Annika Magnberg, the brunette Sarah Vitorino, and the redhead Louise Masters."







Question: Which one of these is the 18 year old songwriter, Phil Spector?


OK. I'm not gay, but I'm really a sucker for ballads sung by girl groups & "girl lead singers" in the 1950's- 1960's! ( As a kid, many nights I fell asleep listening to WMCA New York or WKBW Buffalo on a 6 transistor radio with a crystal earphone in my ear ! )



The original hauntingly beautiful teen anthem, "Angel Baby" written by the 14 year old Rosie Hamlin in 1956 and recorded in a two-track "recording studio" in an airplane hanger in San Marcos (north of San Diego) California.


Perhaps The Best Remembered "Girl Group"


Supersized Body Sculpting



After a two year visit to the United States , Michelangelo's David is returning to Italy . . .  





His Proud Sponsors were: 

Take Me Down To Funky Town



This song is featured on a TV commercial for Areva Energy, a Canadian energy company ( this is the French Canadian version, which explains perhaps, why the English is so unintelligible ;-)


Areva Energy - Funky Town on Video.ca


The lyrics are so distorted by using electronic synthesizers. Since the melody sticks in my head I had to find the song's origins. So off to YouTube I go ...

"Funky Town" - Lipps Inc.



Is this the last disco song to hit number one in the USA ?? The one hit wonder from the group "Lipps Inc." ( pronounces like lip sync ). Taking you back to 1980...



"Funky Town" - Alvin & The Chopmunks"



From the movie Alvin and The Chipmunks, released December, 2007:


Alvin and Chipmunks sing "Funkytown"

Lyrics For Funkytown


Alvin & The Chipmunks Lyrics - Funkytown

Gotta make a move to a town that’s right for me
Time to keep me movin’
keep me groovin’ with some energy

Well, I talk about it, talk about it
talk about it, talk about it
Talk about, talk about, talk about movin’

Gotta move on
Gotta move on
Gotta move on

Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town
Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town
Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town
Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town

Gotta make a move to a town that’s right for me
Town to keep me movin’
keep me groovin’ with some energy

Well, I talk about it, talk about it
talk about it, talk about it
Talk about, talk about, talk about movin’

Gotta move on
Gotta move on
Gotta move on

Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town
Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town
Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town
Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town

Come on every body
sitting up and down
lets get up and go
in the funky town
with ya hands up high
now take it down low
come on everybody
it’s time to go!

Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town
Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town
Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town
Oh yeah .. won’t you take me to
Oh yeah .. funky town

Shopping For Some Earphones

Accompany with bongos, like with a beat era poet, man ...


Today I walked into the holy cathedral of electronic gadgetry on the top of the Miracle Mile attended by fellow mortgagors embracing second and third mortgage proceeds and economic stimulus checks, and yay, we beheld the glory of the plasma TV screens made offshore and sold by the square foot like some drywall at Home Depot.

Congregation: Say Hallelujah and repeat, Amen.

I was led down the aisle of computer bliss and freely discussed RAM, Terabytes, Gigahertz, and solid-state drive capacities with the minimum - waged choir boy geniuses. Yay, they spoke in the secret tongue of computer - ease like they all had PhDs in software engineering!

All I wanted was a cheap pair of computer earphones, but the choir boys chanted to me: "Buy Bose -- top of the line!"

Congregation: All say Hallelujah and repeat, Amen.

And me, reaching for my credit card, was suddenly raised up in a blaze of glory like some rapture. I beheld a vision of some future Frys selling inexplicable and imponderable devices, where the personal physical transporters are on sale today, and you can get a holographic round trip ticket ( really cheap ) to some alternate Universe where the inhabitants don't waste their precious life force energies escaping reality ( whatever that is, but what a concept ), and the holders of holographic tickets leave the Earth at warp speeds armed only with digital sight, digital sound, instant messaging, and some bug spray.

Congregation: All say Hallelujah and repeat, Amen.

To all travellers on Earth - bound vessels: verily I say unto you ( I want you to know ) that I am doing penance and ask your forgiveness as you observe humankind standing on the crossroads of either embracing the life force or destroying ourselves.

Congregation: All say Hallelujah and repeat, Amen.