In the middle of lunch today at work I suddenly saw a new, dark floater in my eye that still has a vitreous. I knew immediately it couldn’t be ignored, so I called my eye surgeon. He wanted to see me right away, and he found a small hole in the retina. He patched it with a laser, and it seems OK now, but I’m prohibited from running until my follow-up appointment next week. I can’t imagine what could have caused this, other than watching the K3 videos. 😉
Just Another Mega Sunday
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!
Somebody should tell Yvonne “Batgirl” Craig about this!
More Downtime
Sorry, but iPower was down again. I’m not happy and I’ll make preparations to switch web site hosting services. I have a big secret project coming up, and although it may not happen for some months I can’t afford to have the site down every week for hours on end. At the moment BlueHost seems like the most likely candidate.
Wait! I’ve got it. Petula’s “Downtown” but called “Downtime”! Ooh, I like it.
K*3=!
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!
Three From Three K’s
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:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/JUN/FransLiedje.mp3]BBC Radio 2
The most enjoyable radio listening, by far, that I do these days is over the Net, playing BBC Radio 2. I first got interested because of Jonathan Ross, who did In Search of Steve Ditko. He does a Saturday show, and it’s so much fun, with such a fantastic range of music. Then I started listening to Steve Wright, because he’s supposed to have Petula Clark on as a guest soon. Again, I found the show to be fun, and I was really taken with the song mix. I have no interest in Rap, but Europop has a sound that I enjoy quite a lot. For example, this was one of the songs on Steve Wright’s program today.
[flv:/Video/2008/JUN/Spiller.flv 400 300]
This is “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)” by Spiller, with vocal by Sophie Ellis Bextor. I flip through Boston radio stations a lot, seeing if anything catches my ear, and almost nothing ever does, so it’s not as though I’m completely inattentive. So why is it I find so much on BBC Radio 2 I’ve never heard before that keeps me listening?