There are plenty of challenges that come with parenting, but also many joys. One of which is introducing your kids to music you love and conversely them introducing you to new music.
Through my daughter I have learnt about Billie Eilish, Tyler the Creator and Kali Uchis amongst many others.
One of those is remarkably Lesley Gore, of course I knew “It’s My Party”, but through one of her playlists I have heard a number of other songs from her, many of which are simply wonderful. See link in comments for just one.
Her life story is interesting, she was apparently openly a lesbian for most of her career, achieved some success after her pop fame dwindled as a songwriter, but was another victim of the record industry and when she died of lung cancer in 2016 she only left $50,000.
Many years ago I was asked to provide the music for an 80’s themed party for a much younger gay workmate,. I gave him five or six 80 minute burnt discs of really poppy stuff from the decade like Respectable by Mel and Kim . He left the selections entirely to me, his only request was “You Don’t Own Me” by Lesley Gore. I told him it was from the wrong era and he said, “That doesn’t matter we really like it.”
Presumably KD Lang hasn’t made it onto the thread because she still walks among us
Your daughter introduced you to Lesley Gore! Give that girl a round of applause. I’m impressed.
She clearly knows her pop history!
When you two get playing favourite tracks for each other, it must get very interesting.
Her mother may have helped, no idea how she ended up getting into her
If you’re getting into music by miserable lesbians, dai, you might want to give Laura Nyro and Dory Previn a spin.
Dory Previn? Mythical Kings and Iguanas is the album you need!
I struggle not to say Dory Preview.
Laura Nyro? What a great idea.
What an extraordinary voice!
Now there’s another artist your daughter might enjoy, Dai.
I was going to mention Judee Sill but she’s like only half lesbian, and 50% miserable.
Aren’t we all?
I really like Judee Sill, probably the best thing I got from Andy Partridge/XTC.
But I find Laura Nyro hard work – I think it is her voice, as there’s a great tribute covers album from the 90s featuring the likes of Jill Sobule.
Talking of half lesbians… Jill Sobule. She’s great, and Jewish, but possibly not miserable enough (she’s really funny as well as depressed and anorexic). Check out her Pink Pearl album, which is a banger.
I know what you mean about Laura’s voice. But when she’s good, she’s excellent.
Completely agree about Jill Sobule. Witty and an excellent songwriter and performer
She was once in a band with Lloyd Cole: The Negatives. They made one fine album, toured and then that was it.
Shame they didn’t do more. Rockenomics I guess. Touring with a full band is an expensive business. Lloyd seem to have downsized these days, Still well worth seeing of course.
Gonna Take A Miracle? @fentonsteve
I need to give that another go. I have a twofer of Eli… and NY Tendaberry, and a posthumous compo of piano/vox demos, but I mostly play this covers album:
https://www.discogs.com/release/10119149-Various-Time-And-Love-The-Music-Of-Laura-Nyro
Getting back on track, here’s a sequel record to It’s My Party where she gets her own back on Judy …
Sorry about going off piste there.
A US number one hit at the age of 17!
This clip is very camp.
As is this guest appearance in Batman! Talk about blatant product placement!
Martin’s aunt. (citation needed)
Is the knowledge of You Don’t Own Me because its been used on a TV advert that seems to have had several rings in the past few years? That’s certainly what made me investigate LG more.
Is it okay to talk about chick singers who aren’t lesbians or miserable? I very much enjoy Laurie Styvers’ two albums, The Colorado Kid, and Spilt Milk. Underrated singer-songwriter with a winning voice. Probably on YewChewb.
Start a thread? You seem to have little problem doing that
Dai, I could add favourite Lesley Gore anecdotes (if I had any) or post interminable YouTube clips of her (for those who can’t be arsed to go to YouTube) or list my Top Ten Gore Greats (which I’d have some trouble with). Instead I choose to “add content” by mentioning four artistes whom you and your P.O. (parented offspring) might – if unknown to you – enjoy whilst gathered around the family gramophone for your Record Club evenings. Possibly they are familiar and already much-loved, but it is with the chance that the references might unlock a new source of enjoyment for thee and thine that I cite them here. You’re welcome.
The P.O. might also like Linda Perhacs, even though her Parallelograms album contains no hint of sapphism or slatey-facedness.
I basically realised I liked a few pop records from Lesley Gore. This surprised me. Thanks for your recommendations, I may check them out but I wasn’t really looking to get into a “miserable lesbian” genre.
I always preferred Annette Funicello, anyway. She famously spurned Gore’s advances and recorded this by way of explanation:
If she’d recorded an LP of British Invasion covers, she could have called it Gore Blimey.
Or done an album of country songs called Gore Tex
@jaygee
@sniffity
Well, I laughed!
If she made an album of cheese songs, would it be called Cheddar Gore-ge
Yes, and the follow-up would be Red Lesley
Surely Gore-gonzola
Running through a U-shaped thoroughfare on the south side of Hyde Park covered in fake blood would be a case of Kensington Gore.
That would attract a fair crowd – a Gore draw in fact
Can I raise an objection here?
The subject matter may be the agonies of young romance, but It’s my party is a piece of joyous, bouncy, self-confident teen pop. There’s nothing miserable about it or about Lesley.
What nostalgia! From the days when pop songs were so straightforward.
And then those longhairs started writing songs about pinball wizards, interstellar overdrives, , stairways to heaven, starship troopers, golf girls, pinball wizards etc etc and things got a lot weirder and a lot more interesting.
A lot more interesting? Questionable really when you look back. Sounds a little disparaging of what went before. Some of those oldies can be quite strange and spooky or generally brilliant. Robert Wyatt said those bands like Soft Machine or other progressive, seventies groups thought they were doing something better than Heard It Through The Grapevine. He thought they were deluded in that regard.
Johnny Remember Me by John Leyton is a fk sight more cosmic than The Flink Poyd. It’s basically Solaris meets Hancock’s Half Hour.
No, it’s not. And no, it isn’t.
That doesn’t stop it being one of the best pop singles of all time.
Lesley Gore doesn’t seem miserable to me – she comes across as pretty well-balanced for a woman denying herself the natural fulfilment of a throbbing [hang on- Ed.]. But Billie Eilish isn’t exactly God’s little sunbeam. I do wish she’d get her hair done and find herself a nice young man.
People said that about you when you were her age. Look what good it did.
*strokes Moosey’s SIDE PARTING seductively*
For the last time it’s a SIDE PARTING.
Fascism is coming back, we’ll all have one soon.
…but then the Wilde Flowers started off trying to play soul and R&B covers, so Robert Wyatt was already inclined that way.
As an old proghead, I’ve never had any difficulty enjoying pop singles from the sixties – tunes that I must have heard when I was really young seem to have lodged in my head.
I’ll take Soft Machine 2 over Marvin Gaye any time. Funnier, for one thing.
Wow, really?
The Afterword – Even Marvin Gaye Is Too Black For Us
I’m with HP on that one, Moosey…
…although I’m not sure I’d endorse your tagline…
What’s black got to do with it, you great steaming snowflake? You are literally worse than Hitler.
Robert Wyatt hates you both. And he lives in Cleethorpes, so he knows all about hating things.
He was my favourite drummer and very nearly favourite person in the whole universe until he got kicked out of his own band. I am ashamed to say I immediately sided with the rest of them, fetching cups of tea for Mike Ratledge and comforting a sobbing Hugh Hopper. “Best in the long run, love! He had it coming, you ask me. Can I get you another cushion?”
I do actually like the Softs. It’s overgrown grammar school boys messing about but hey, here we are on the Afterword.
I like that Hibou Anemone piece. The rest of 2 is a bit hit and miss for me. Third I would probably play rather than that Marvin Gaye song, well two of the sides at least.
I would probably play Third rather than many, many other tunes ‘n’ songs.
Also, It’s time Fourth was reappraised – a much better album than it’s reputation would suggest, mainly because 1) it’s always in the shadow of 2 and third; and 2) beginning of the end for Wyatt (and he doesn’t get to sing).
Apologies – didn’t mean to hijack the Gore-fest!
It’s still quite Gorey. It helps when choosing music to select that which you never heard on the radio.
No this is Gorey.
“Gorey” is an adjective describing people who fly around the world in private jets lecturing everyone about climate change.
Bit political, bit political.
Of course there was a prog cover of It’s my Party. Was it as good as the original? Of course not (still made no. 1 though)
Just because the Other Dave Stewart played on it doesn’t automatically make it prog – hence the no. 1 placing…it wasn’t exactly Hatfields revisited.
Good enough for me
Course it is…
And Babs was a Northette for a while, too.
I bought the single, so contributed to the number oneness.
Babs was in Spirogyra, wasn’t she? Prior to being a Northette?
I beleive so – all before my time, or at least before my time at primary school.
Byron Ferrari did it on his first solo LP, IIRC.
Just to return briefly to Gotham City, here’s Lesley singing to a photo of the Boy Wonder!
Broadening the topic of Gore and teen movies out a little..
How did Beach Party Bingo and its ilk..
morph into Scream
Friday 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, I know what you did last summer, Final Destination etc….?
From enjoying films about joyous, carefree romps on the beach, why did teens all over the world want to see gory movies about psychotic serial killers?
There were such good vibrations when Anette sang with the Beach Boys!
I daresay those Beach movies were held in the same regard as Cliff Richard fillums…