It’s a busy time for me just now, so this week will see five very short posts, all dedicated to bringing you the joy of a mixed-sex duet, the first of which will feature two singers brought together especially for the purpose while the others will see someone come in and guest with the band.
mp3 : Deborah Harry and Iggy Pop – Well, Did You Evah!
A song which was written 80 years ago by Cole Porter, initially for the Broadway musical DuBarry Was a Lady, it is best known from its inclusion in the 1956 hit film High Society, in which it was sung by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.
Fast forward to 1990 when the Red Hot Organization, a not-for-profit international organization with the aim of using pop and entertainment to dedicated to fighting AIDS, decided that the first of its efforts should be Red Hot + Blue in which modern-era pop stars did cover versions of Cole Porter songs. It was the a fine idea and for the most part it worked well, with something for everyone within its 20 tracks.
Deborah and Iggy are clearly having a swell and elegant time on this one. It’s fun with a gigantic capital F. The lyrics are reasonably similar to that written all those years by Cole Porter, but there’s a fair amount of hamming improvisation as well that just adds to things, with digs at LA scenesters, a ridiculous amount of flirting between la Harry and le Pop and the final sign-off where the man in the leather trousers is told to sling his hook.
Most of the songs on Red Hot + Blue had specially shot promo videos thus enabling the album to be promoted as a documentary feature on television stations the world over.
This particular promo was the work of Alex Cox, the UK director who had made a name for himself in the 80s initially through the cult classic Repo Man (for which Iggy Pop had supplied the title track) and then at the helm of Sid and Nancy, the biopic that told a version of the tale of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 