Bananarama Christmas Countdown Bonus

For all of you who are ready to dance in your living room tonight, here's the recent Almighty full-bodied remix of Bananarama's "Baby, It's Christmas"!

To Russia with Love

привет, Russia!

I am so happy and thrilled with the high number of views I've had over the past weeks from your great country. I know you are struggling, even more than we are in the USA, with equality for gay men and women. Our struggle is one and the same and we are united. Keep up the good fight! I humbly hope to entertain you through your time of  making progress against repression. Through the struggle there must be joy. Time is on our side, remember.

любовь! ~~ Dj Buddy Beaverhausen

Dance for progress. I leave you with this song from Donna, remixed by Almighty in the UK.

мир!

Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" -- Almighty's Dance Cover

 It's a beautiful day here in New York. And I love this Almighty (UK) production of the Leonard Cohen song as a diva-driven dance tune. Enjoy!

Buddy B's Best Club Songs of 2011

2011 was a good year for dance music, showcasing some fine vocal talent and a slate of equally impressive remixers attached to their songs. The UK ruled with the 4-to-the-floor sound freshly reloaded by Bimbo Jones, Moto Blanco, Almighty, 7th Heaven and Digital Dog, to name a few. All are actually indebted, to one degree or another, to the classic Almighty style, while Almighty has stayed relevant by refreshing its formula and bringing in new remixer talent. This sound has enjoyed a true worldwide renaissance over the past few years, originating as the beat of classic disco and continuing as Europe's hiNRG sound. It's subversively re-uniting the world.

England's classic HiNRG producer/remixer Pete Hammond came back prominently this year, and American stalwarts like Tony Moran, Ralphi Rosario, Eddie Baez and Jonathan Peters held their ground in the brave new disco world before them.

Note my opinions are just that and, as such, highly subjective, but these are the songs that I enjoyed playing the most, and that inspired me to get up and dance and to party on down. Now, let's get to that list! Shall we?

My top-15 artists are in alphabetical order, starting with the ubiquitous Adele, who was felled only recently by throat surgery (from which I understand she's recovering quite nicely). Adele has had a few of her pop songs translated for the dance floor, both legitimately and not. Dance remixers did quite well by this talent regarding "Set Fire to the Rain," "Rolling in the Deep," and "Someone Like You" (my personal favorite, even if it didn't fare as well as the previous two).

Pattie Brooks is disco-diva royalty best known for her 1978 sensation, "After Dark." She garnered positive notice this year with "All About the Music." Pattie started her professional career in the chorus on The Smother Brothers Comedy Hour, and toured with people like Bobby Darin and Ann-Margret before signing as a solo artist for the Casablanca record label. "All About the Music" was mixed by a slew of remixers domestically, in England, and in Australia. It was originally produced by legend Paul Gianatos. An energetic tune that'll rouse you to the floor, it's nice to have Pattie back to dance to after dark. And nice to have Charo on the scene again, too, with the latter's "Sexy, Sexy."

"Sexy Sexy" showcases the Cuchi-Cuchi Queen in fine form, still with the laughable broken English (a put-on, surely, considering how long she's been speaking English) and camp lyrics. "Feel on me, dance on me, touch on me, creep on me," Charo emplores to a disco beat. Below, she performs the song (after her bawdy, knowingly self-depracating, drag queen-like patter, dubbing herself, "The Spanish Puta". "Viva La Puta!" one of the boys shouts back from the crowd). The show was filmed earlier this year at Splash, NYC. Charo is one hot mess, but an intentional one (I think)! And she's looking simply stunning, sweeties! Here's the video for your enjoyment (and wait till the posse of go-go boys arrives):


Two women who are always a pleasure to have back on the disco scene returned this year with top-notch numbers to showcase their voices: Deborah Cox, at the end of the calendar year with the Janice Robinson-penned, "If It Wasn't for Love," and Taylor Dayne, this past summer with "Floor on Fire." Two strong, solidly written and produced tracks for two great, distinctive deliveries.

The divas known as Erasure (Vince Clark and Andy Bell) made a wonderful and welcome comeback with "When I Start to Break It All Down" in the fall while Lady Gaga ruled dance floors with a new anthem. "Born This Way" had a great beat, positive and empowering lyrics you can dance to, and melodic structure that reminded many of Madonna's "Express Yourself." But that's not such a bad thing, is it? I mean, she could do worse in terms of a model to clone from. Call it an homage and it isn't a problem any more; call it plagiarism only if you care to be ugly about it. Recent remixes of "Marry the Night" (my favorite song off the album) also score big on this year-end tally.

Jennifer Holliday has been away from dance music for too long, so it's a warm welcome back to that belting voice as she re-emerges for the club crowd with "Magic." The Tony Moran-produced track from his album, Mix Magic Music is truly a stunner worthy of this great diva. Remixes have started to emerge in just the past month or so. It is a powerhouse club threat, and I am telling you I'm not going to have this off my turntables for some time!

While Laura LaRue has a current Billboard dance charter with "Un Deux Trois," her Gay Pride-timed hit, "San Francisco Is My Disco," made me smile... and dance, and won a place in my heart, and is consequently on this list as a dance fave of the year. Here's the original, non-remixed version, already designed for the clubs.

Two Martins make my chart for the year: Billie Ray and Ricky. Ms Martin (by which I mean Billie Ray) started as vocalist for the '90s electropop group, Electribe, then had her first international solo hit with "Lovin' Arms," famously remixed by Junior Vasquez in 1995. This German diva is freely inventive with a style I can only call "disco avant-garde," and when she gets it right, the results are amazing as in this year's "Sweet Suburban Disco."

"Deep grooves are overlaid with layers of sparse, cold, synths which are expertly counterpointed by Billie’s huge warm vocals and the best lyrical content we’ve heard in dance music for a while," raved electronicrumors.com. Just keep 'em comin', honey! Love ya!

Martin, Ricky, on the other hand, had a hit on the Billboard Dance chart with "Freak of Nature" (originally entitled "Mas"), going all the way to #7, propelled by the brilliant Ralphi Rosario remix. This really was one of the very best dance songs of the year, and I was championing it since back in the spring (check my blog archive for evidence). (It shoulda gone to #1, I tell ya!) Try not to dance when you put this on. Muy caliente!

Michele McCain, whose dynamic vocals are like a cross between Loleatta Holloway and Izora Whitehead, has never gone beyond cult status, unfortunately, despite a history of well-produced but definitely diva-driven club numbers. This year's "Make a Friend" made a friend of me and was easily one of my faves.

Kylie Minogue's "Put Your Hands Up" charted on Billboard's 2011 top-50 dance listing, ascending to #1, and certainly was adored by moi! Viva La Minogue! And Viva La Ono, as Yoko, at 88 years of age, scored not one, but two Billboard dance charters for the year: the brilliant "Move on Fast" and the even better "Talking to the Universe." She's the new Betty White, people, so look out! (Betty's duet with Luciana, "I'm Still Hot" was a fun dance track, even if it fell short of my fave list.)

And, rounding out my list is Kristine W. This girl has really lasted, thank God, and what a shame it is her name isn't a household word.

She's been a beacon in the world of dance music since the 1990s; one of the most reliably stalwart vocalists, and a great lyricist to boot, frequently taking dance music to a level of human emotion and thoughtfulness consistently paralleled only, perhaps, by the Pet Shop Boys.

So, there you have it, my favorite club songs of the year and the 15 artists who lifted me to new levels of pure joy throughout the four seasons. Wishing everyone a happy New Year, and even bigger and brighter diva-fueled hits for the 2012 dance floor.

Billboard USA's Club Chart, December 8, 2011

Beyonce's "Countdown" stalled, in this week's Billboard dance countdown, in the #2 position as Enrique Iglesias, featuring Pitbull & the WAVs, snatches the numero uno spot away from her ascendency to the top of the heap. Anjulie's "Brand New Bitch" is up at 3 followed by "Buy My Love" by the always-of-interest vocalist, Wynter Gordon, at 4.

The rest of this week's Billboard Top 25 Dance/Club Songs chart shows promise. Traci Lords scores a new hit as she makes rapid progress in six weeks of release with "Last Drag." This is not the first time at the rodeo for the ex-underage-porn star (hey, ya gotta start somewhere). In 1995, she scored big on the music scene with the house-music track, "Fallen Angel," which went to #2 on Billboard that year. Well, praise the Lords, she's back at it with a fresh new number to have us all in a twirl!

Right behind her is recent club fave Erika Jayne with "Party People." Ms Jayne has a number of hits under her garder belt, most notably "Rollercoaster" and (my fave) "Pretty Mess." Check her out online at www.erikajayne.com.

"Give," by LeAnn Rimes, reaches #17. Favorite mix for this one? The Almighty remix, of course. "Whenever," by Zarkana, is on my latest cd-r dj club promo ("Fagtastic Too"). Zarkana is a show by Cirque du Soleil, from which this is based, and it features both male and female vocals in a driving house production that'll make you shake your money-makers. You'll want the extended Ralphi Rosario remix, trust me. The song broke into the Top 25 at 22, jumping from 27 last week.

Laura LaRue, so entertaining around Pride time with "San Francisco Is My Disco," returns with the new "Un Deux Trois" (#23) and the fabulous Rosabel with Tamara Wallace round out the chart at #25 with "Let Me Be Myself" (hey, didn't Leslie Gore sing that line?), up all the way from 37 last week. So check out these artists and support them by legally downloading the songs that make you move.

Till next my chart chat, enjoy the music, come together. Love, peace, happiness, out!

Presenting Ms Gloria Gaynor

If there is a theme song for me at this precise point in my life, surely it would have to be Gloria Gaynor's eternal disco smash-hit, "I Will Survive." I've been through a significant number of personal tragedies and traumas in the past few months, but now things are finally starting to look up. I think I'd qualify to be on the old tv game show, Queen for a Day, if not for the gender barrier.

On that 1950s series, housewife contestants spoke, often through uncontrolled sobbing, about their recent financial, physical and/or emotional hard times. Their distress was gauged by the response on an audience applause meter. The deeper the tsuris, the more thunderous the applause! The "biggest loser," as it were, would become Queen for a Day, given a crown to wear, seated on a velvet throne, handed a bouquet of long-stemmed roses to embrace as tears streamed down her face, just like the reigning beauty queen in a pageant (or the Hunchback of Notre Dame at the Feast of Fools)! She also received prizes for being a hopeless wretch like a washer, dryer or a vacuum cleaner. It was a particularly sado-masochistic experience (the crown should have been made of thorns) and a forerunner of today's reality-tv shows.

For all us Queens for a Day, disco queen Gloria Gaynor is our patron saint when she belts out "I Will Survive." And that she did Saturday night at B.B. King's Blues Club in New York. "I Will Survive" is one of the best-known dance songs ever, a timeless international sensation and a celebration of inner strength and the ability to move ahead in the wake of adversity. Although literally about surviving the end of a love affair, it strikes a nerve with everyone who has ever gone through hard times and was made stronger by them.

The deluxe, extended version performed at the end of Ms Gaynor's set was extremely powerful and electrifying, worth the price of admission alone. GG virtually turned the packed house of seated patrons into a disco of enthusiastically dancing, prancing party people.

Ms Gaynor looked fantastic and quite youthful in basic black with a change of sparkly overlays. Her resonant, rich voice is practically a force of nature. She opened with her disco cover of "Going Out of My Head (Over You)" that was immediately engaging, and then launched into her Gay Pride fave, "I Am What I Am" (from the musical, La Cage aux Folles), followed by her 70s club and radio hit, "Never Can Say Goodbye." An awesome start!

Other highlights included songs from the Grammy Award-winning singer's brand new album, the 2003 club favorite "I Never Knew" and her encore, "Just Keep Thinking About You," a dance hit from 2001 that boasted an outstanding remix by our boys at Almighty in the UK, as well as a house music cover of The Supremes' "Stop in the Name of Love."

Known as a dance-floor diva, Glo naturally strives to show her versatility. It is here that she drops the disco ball, however. Throwing in well-worn ballads like "The Way We Were" and "Killing Me Softly" just don't live up to the rest of her set, no matter that she belts them out with flawless conviction and style. Meanwhile, beloved dance songs for which she's known ("Anybody Wanna Party?, "Honey Bee," "Casanova Brown," "Substitute" or her disco version of "How High the Moon") were disappointingly excluded from the night's set in favor of rather random pop tunes.

Ms Gaynor nonetheless ruled the stage with an easygoing, casual and smoothly professional presence and grace, accompanied by her band and back-up vocalists par excellence. It was an overall exciting and rousing night of entertainment. But she shouldn't shy from her disco dominance one iota. She is what she is, a disco diva on top of the mirrorball. Gloria Gaynor wrote the foreward to Johnny Morgan's magnificent book, Disco: The Music, The Times, The Era (described in greater detail in my blog entry, "Eye Candy"); she wrote it with wit, intelligence and an obvious love of disco as a musical genre. She is very much aware of her iconic status in that genre and, to paraphrase "I Am What I Am," what she is needs no excuses.

Gloria Gaynor has survived and she has resurrected the upbeat and all-inclusive joy of disco music for a new generation. She is not just Queen for a Day, but Queen for all time when it comes to the eternal beat of the dance floor.

Below, Ms Gaynor at the Crimea Music Fest earlier this year: