There’s a lot I want to post, including Hillary, and J.K. Rowling at Harvard this past week. As I write this I’m converting a video of Petula’s recent BBC TV appearance, which required a massive amount of editing to be put right from shaky source material.
But I want to say that I’ve been getting a lot of flak, mostly via e-mail, about the K3 posts. Sorry, but I’m just not going to back down on this! In fact, I’m going to push back even harder with another Flemish act for kids. Meet MEGA MINDY!
K3 from Belgium are Karen Damen, Kathleen Aerts and Kristel Verbeke. They started in the late 90’s, and they work with an outfit called Studio 100. They’re producing what I would call the Strauss Jr. waltzes of pop music.
I’m imagining myself as a Radio Disney executive, watching these videos of K3; one made in a studio, the other a live performance of the same song….
… and after watching these I would say, “Call Studio 100 and pay them whatever they want. We’ve got to have this.”
Disney would have to risk casting different women, because of the language barrier, although their English could be excellent, for all I know. I think the appeal of the three K’s themselves has much to do with their success in Belgium and the Netherlands, but Xuxa, considered a goddess in Brazil, failed terribly in her attempt to break into America with her broken English. The K3 sound is, however, so compelling to my ears that I’m surprised there hasn’t already been an attempt to import it to the US.
P.S. By the way, the song is called “Kusjesdag” — Flemish for “Kissing Day.” One and a half million YouTube viewers can’t be wrong!
Coming up will be Petula Clark’s recent appearance on BBC TV, but a couple of posts ago I featured a British pop music video by Spiller (who apparently is Italian). A girl group that really pushes the bouncy boundaries of Euro Pop is called K3, from Belgium.
Their language is Flemish, a variant of Dutch, but there’s some French in the lyrics too. These ladies don’t act their age, and in fact they do songs and shows for kids, but I still like this stuff, especially the catchy first song, “Frans Liedje.” Perhaps that’s because years ago Xuxa conditioned me, and before her it was ABBA. More about Xuxa later.
Here’s “Frans Liedje” in stereo. This song annoys my twin sister, and it’s a brother’s lifetime duty to annoy his sisters!
[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2012/02/HeyBoDiddley.mp3,https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2012/02/WhoDoYouLove.mp3|titles=Hey Bo Diddley,Bo Diddley – Who Do You Love]
Petula Clark’s UK tour starts Saturday. Details are here (look for “click here”). Dave Moncur, DogRat reader and resident of Scotland, will be seeing Pet live, and maybe he’ll share some details with us after the show.
According to the Petula Clark blog, Pet was scheduled to make a BBC Radio 2 appearance on Steve Wright’s show today (Friday), but that didn’t happen. Wright says in this audio clip that “starlet” (that’s cute) Pet will be “on soon.”
[audio:/2008/MAY/BBC2.mp3]
You’d think a savvy Brit like Wright would know Ms. Paltrow’s name is pronouced “GWYNeth,” and not “GWENyth.” The Petula blog also recently featured this new interview in The Telegraph, with her talking about vacations and travel. Pet certainly does a lot of traveling. I saw her in Connecticut just a few weeks ago!
If you happen to live in England, you’re in for a bit of good luck, because a new Petula Clark CD is about to be released, including five new songs! It’s called “THEN AND NOW – THE VERY BEST OF PETULA CLARK”, and it will be out on June 16th. It’s listed on Amazon’s UK site, but not yet here in America. The new songs are described here, on the new Petula Clark blog.
Petula fan Dave Moncur, our DogRat reader in Scotland, wrote to say that the Times Online has posted a new interview with Pet, Not Just Anybody: Petula Clark. The questions are funny and unusual, and I daresay some of them are the sort that only another woman would ask of her. Unfortunately, at the moment the dimensions of the photo of Pet on that page have been distorted. The JPG is here in its original and unmodified form, just like Pet herself, who assures us she’s never had any plastic surgery.
