Sunday, May 15, 2005

Musical unanswerables

Just got back from the HFStival a few hours ago. Actually, the HFStival was yesterday, but it was in Baltimore, Maryland, which is a bit of a haul from my house.

I'll work up a full-fledged entry on the show - which was excellent - later. For now, I need to throw out a few music questions that are defeating my meager research skills:

1. There's a song from the early 80's, a boppy little synthesizer-driven Brit-pop/New Wave song with a chorus of "A little tenderness, a little tenderness." It's not by Otis Redding, Three Dog Night, Rod Stewart, Eden's Crush, or Jimmy Durante. It's also not by Erasure or PIL* or Roxy Music, but it sounds a lot like them. But who the hell is it???

UPDATE: I believe the answer to this is "Tenderness" by General Public - which explains my confusion with John Lydon's Public Image Ltd. The lyrics do not include the "a little" part, but instead say "Tenderness, where is the Tenderness?"

2. Who did the sexy female backup vocals on Billy Idol's "Eyes Without A Face"? I heard that on the way down to the show and fell in love, even though the owner of the voice is about 25 years older now. At the show the lyrics were sung by the bassist, who was a large, burly 30-something man, and didn't really mesh with my mental image of the woman behind the voice.

UPDATE: From a comment left by (I'm assuming) one of my many new visitors from the Billy Idol Fan Club (WELCOME, Billy Idol fans! I should have thought to ask you guys first! Thanks for coming by, thanks for the information, and thank you, broadbroad, for the plug!):
The woman singing on Billy Idol's Eyes Without A Face was his girlfriend at the time, Perri. She is also in some of his videos, including White Wedding. Eyes Without A Face is probably my favorite Billy Idol song.
The base player in his band is Stephen McGrath, and he is a biker friend of Billy's.

3. While we're on Billy Idol questions, who played "Devon" in the "Rock The Cradle Of Love" video? She was the naughty schoolgirl who came over to the hapless yuppie's apartment to play a cassette on his stereo system, and proceeded to thrash seductively to the song through the rest of the video. She would be about 15 years older now.

UPDATE: From a comment left somewhere on this site on 7/30/2005...
Who is the actress in the Cradle of Love?

The girl in the video is called Betsy Lynn George.
We don’t have any other information about her, as management no longer hold her file.
You might like to try this link taken from the Internet Movie Database

http://us.imdb.com/Name?George,+Betsy+Lynn
(or http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0313355/)

Above from Billy's fan site.

Billy Idol fans are the best!

4. Another video question: Who was the blonde-haired dancer in David Bowie's "Fame '90" video, the one who does a flip over him? The answer isn't on davidbowie.com, or on his greatest hits DVD. She, too, would be 15 years older now.

UPDATE, 8/5/2005: The answer is: Louise LeCavalier!

Any answers would be appreciated! All unanswerables are now answered!

*Definitely not PIL. Who the hell am I thinking of? XTC, maybe? Arrrgh...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

harold, you did not tell me they did ring of fire. that must have been awesome.

a guy you saw play at my wedding is recording his own cd and i believe he told me he is doing a rendition of that.

hard to believe these young guys into the man in black.

makes me believe there is hope for todays youth. :)

Anonymous said...

the woman singing on Billy Idol's Eyes Without A Face was his girlfriend at the time, Perri. She is also in some of his videos, including White Wedding. Eyes Without A Face is probably my favorite Billy Idol song.
The base player in his band is Stephen McGrath, and he is a biker friend of Billy's.

I was at the Hfstival. I had already seen and meet Billy at his concert at the Norva in Norfolk, Virginia, so I knew he was going to put on the best show there. Interpol is very good, your sister has great taste. Even though they cut their set short due to some kind of sound or mic problems. They sounded alright to me, but I saw them in concert a few months ago and they sounded perfect. Another act I liked and wanted to see was The Bravery.