Sugar, Sugar, Baby, Baby, I Do, I Do

One more time trying to put my appreciation of K3 into perspective. I once posted the Rubettes’ song “Sugar Baby Love,” but it was lost eighteen months ago when a bug-ridden WordPress plug-in allowed my database to be destroyed, forcing me to restore from a backup. Here again is “Sugar Baby Love.”

http://youtu.be/3X7PvU6qYEA

No, I never cared in the least for The Bay City Rollers, but this I love. If I were going to write and produce a pop tune, you can bet it would sound like “Sugar Baby Love.” Next, ABBA ranks right up there with the best of the 70’s sicky-sweet stuff.

Listen to the 15+ seconds that start at :45 into the song. That’s it! For me that’s the song. Perfection! The same bit is repeated at 1:45. (The song is over a little after 2:30, but they drag it out.) If you think my liking ABBA means I would be inclined to see “Mama Mia!” then you don’t get it. It’s the song itself. How it’s put together, and how it sounds, that I appreciate. Something that’s “based upon it” is of no interest to me at all. In the case of ABBA, the “how it sounds” aspect depended completely upon the girls, Anni-Frid and Agnetha.

And now K3, in a piece I can’t praise enough. “Hart Verloren” pushes all sorts of buttons in so many ways, even with the terrible quality of this video. And I’m speaking as a confirmed disco hater from the 70’s who favored The Ramones, Elvis Costello and The Clash.

http://youtu.be/sEackIhp-O4

The people who create this stuff really know what they’re doing. But the thing that I didn’t get when I first encountered K3, but I certainly do now, is that K3 is successful not because of the formula, but because of Karen, Kristel and Kathleen. Accept no substitutes, of which there are now two sets.

Finally, another reason why I push K3 so much is the fact they’re happening NOW. I caught them before they stopped having hits, broke up, or went into semi-retirement. Not everything I write should be about the pop culture I loved when I was 10-15 years old. There’s also the fact I can’t compete with the big sites that talk about the Beatles, Marvel Comics, etc., and here in America I have K3 practically all to myself as a topic.

Marianne Pasts in the present

Carol and I were at a post-New Years dinner party tonight, hosted by some friends. One of the guests is a Boston-based singer-songwriter named Marianne Pasts.

Marianne Pasts

She wasn’t there as a performer, but perform she did. The quality of Marianne’s voice is extraordinary, and she has to be heard live to fully appreciate it. Here is her song “The River.”

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JAN/TheRiver.mp3]

Is Astrid in AHDN?

It’s long been the assertion of D.F. Rogers that Astrid Kirchherr makes a brief appearance in A Hard Day’s Night with John Lennon during the discotheque scene. I’ve spliced it together, omitting the parallel sequence with Paul’s grandfather gambling, in a James Bond parody, with Prue Bury’s future husband, Terry Hooper, playing the croupier. I’ll post that later.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/JAN/Astrid.flv 480 360]

Mirrorview

We just got back from my sister’s house (not Jean, but the local sister) and I’ve got to get some wallpaper stripping done quick so our contractor can resize a closet door frame in the morning. So I’ll do something quick here and post an uncropped copy of Astrid’s famous self-portrait, showing the mirror frame.

Astrid Kirschherr