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Buddy Beaverhausen's Halloween Countdown kicks off this year with this lavishly and impressively produced dance-music single from the girl group Toto Coelo (a/k/a Total Coelo). They're best known for their break-out hit "I Eat Cannibal."
Halloween Countdown will include music videos, film clips and audio clips in the Halloween spirit. It will conclude on Halloween, Oct. 31.
"The moon was shining in the night. The hounds were baying under simple stars. And as you storm under the lights, I knew my heart would be at stake." Great lyrics, underrated song. Produced by Barry Blue. Hope this helps you get your Halloween on!
Kristine W talks like the girl next door with no attitude, no pretenses. She was utterly and disarmingly charming. A diva only when she takes to the stage, she was frank when she spoke with me about her beauty pageant days, her singing career (a multi-Billboard club music charter for three decades now) and her struggle with leukemia. I was happy to be able to get her talking with producer Bob Esty and have my fingers crossed we might see a collaboration. (Wouldn't that be divalicious!) It's all here in my interview. She will be performing this Sunday, March 15, at Saved, 175 MacDougal Street, NYC with Dj Escape and Dj/remixer/producer Hex Hector. She has a new club hit, "Love Come Home" and an upcoming new album for us to look forward to.
Ladies and gentlemen (and everyone in between and beyond), Ms Kristine W....
Buddy Beaverhausen: Thank you, Kristine for your time and for agreeing to do this Q&A with me.
Kristine W: Thank you, I'm happy to. Are you in New York right now? How's the weather?
BB: Cloudy but relatively warm, near 50.
KW: Well, I'm planning on bringing a lot of sunshine with me [from Vegas], so I'm conjuring that up right now.
BB: What can your fans expect when you appear Sunday night at Saved?
KW: We're going to do "Do What You Want" and just sort of check it out and see how everybody's doing. It'll be fun. And Escape wants to surprise everybody with what we're doing.
BB: You were born and raised in Washington state, am I right?
KW: Yep, farm girl!
BB: What kind of music did you listen to growing up and what influenced you?
KW: Oh, we had a really cool mix of ethnicity where I grew up, Tri-Cities, Washington. We had the farm people who liked Country, migrant workers who played Latin music, vacationing Seattle residents in the summer playing Rock and Easy Listening, Black railroad workers.... I was exposed to a lot of different types of music all the time. I was very rooted in soul and adored Earth, Wind & Fire.... Chaka Khan and Rufus.... My mom sang at a nightclub there. Standards, you know, like "You Light Up My Life."
When I first heard Donna Summer's voice, that's what got me really excited. I knew, when I was a kid, that's who I wanted to do. And she was very glamorous! The stage presence, the big hair, the eyelashes and make-up, the beaded dresses!
BB: I think I recall you being compared to Donna Summer, especially vocally, when you first started recording, am I right?
KW: Yeah, that was such a compliment to me because she was my idol!
BB: Talking about Donna Summer and glamor, what was it like to be a Miss America contestant and a beauty pageant queen.
KW: You know, it was never about the glamor. I was raised by a single mother with four kids, and this was a way to get scholarship money. It was a way out of my life back home; my ticket to move on. So I got my money and headed to Vegas where I got my Master's degree. I worked all the time. I sang in other people's bands and sang whatever type of music they did. Back home, I'd been in church choirs and sang in bands. At 13, I was, like, 5'10" so nobody ever asked how old I was or for my i.d. or anything.
BB: In your private life, do you consider yourself high-maintenance cosmetically?
KW: Not really. When I'm not doing a show, like today, I have my lipstick on. No eye make-up. But we slather it on big-time at showtime.
BB: You have a slew of top-ten dance hits on the Billboard club chart. How many at this time?
KW: I have 16 #1s right now.
BB: Wow!
KW: And I have twenty records that made it to the top 5.
BB: Incredible.
KW: And I didn't even know it until Billboard shared that with me now that "Love Come Home" has made it onto the chart.
BB: Let's talk about "Love Come Home." What made you decide you wanted to cover that in particular?
KW: Because it's sort of underground; not many people have heard it over here [in the US]. And because I sang on the background vocals with Frankie Knuckles when nobody knew who I was. I was ready to record "Do What You Want," but the back-up singers didn't show up on Frankie's song. I was so young then, I didn't ask for anything. I didn't ask to get paid, or for riders. I later did a duet of "Love Come Home" with Franke Pharoah, of all people, for Our Tribe that I loved!
BB: You write most of your own songs and they're not fluff. They have depth and are serious songs about life and deeper feelings, really, yet they're so dancefloor-friendly. How do you do that?
KW: I listen to what people have to say, and the serious issues about their lives. It touches my heart. It's just put it to a high number of beats per mnute, about 128 bpm or so. And the beat makes people happy and want to dance even if the song is dark.
BB: The only other dance-music artists who do that consistently, I think, are the Pet Shop Boys.
KW: Yes, I think that's right, too. And I love their music.
If Madonna had intended to outdo previous award ceremony wardrobe malfunctions, she couldn't have done a better job than tripping down the steps onstage at the BRIT Awards last week. It was quite a colossal fall, landing on her derriere with her head also hitting the floor.
Now it may have occurred to some -- though obviously not the 56-year-old pop diva ironically singing a song entitled "I'm Going to Carry On"-- that climbing stairs while wearing stiletto pumps and a floor-length cape might not be a wise idea. But, carry on she did, rather well, after that debacle during which the cape did not unhook when it was yanked off by one of her male dancers as it was supposed to do, and the star was yanked backwards down the staircase. Guess who I foresee getting kicked off the upcoming tour!
So, Madonna will do her Rebel Heart Tour sans cape. "No more capes. Cape
fear is over," Madonna declared. Luckily, though she sustained several
bruises (most of all to her ego), there were no injuries to her head.
(How could there be, really, with all that hairspray?)
Publicly, Madonna was not mad at her dancer, she was mad at the cloak! On Instagram, she claimed: “Armani hooked me up! My beautiful cape was tied too tight! But nothing
can stop me and love really lifted me up!" After beating her down as it were.
Well, Mr Armani was just not having all this when it came to his fabulous fashion accessory! Today, he told the press in the UK: ’Madonna can be very difficult."
Really? You don't say. A representative for Madonna told New York Post's Page Six simply, "Shit happens. Madonna loves Armani." Ain't that sweet?
Surely. 32--year-old Britney Spears must believe all men are pigs by now or at least be questioning her taste in them. TMZ broke the news that traveled worldwide in a nanosecond that the singer dumped her latest boy toy, David Lucado, after a video surfaced of him "making out with a woman and dancing with her." It was also reported in Star magazine that lothario Lucado was seen pawing, and dancing all night with, another woman at a club in West Hollywood. It's Britney, bitch! And she doesn't like the disrespect. Who can blame her?
While Brit posted "Ahhhh, the single life!" on Twitter, a representative for Lucado stated that the ex-bf is still "very much" in love with the superstar and hopes to get back together with her. Good luck, pal!
This all comes very shortly after news that Mariah Cary filed for divorce from husband Nick Cannon after discovering Nick was engaging in some extramarital activities, namely with two mistresses. Carey, reportedly devastated, wasted no time in seeking a divorce from the cad. Unrepentant and defiant, the loose Cannon claimed that as far as he was concerned, his marriage with Mariah was a mirage, as it was, in his opinion, "already over." Cheeky!
Ah, my divas! Too often you are victims of the very songs you sing, to paraphrase Candi Staton. All those adoring fans but can't find a man to love you as you know you deserve.
It ain''t over until the diva sings it's been said. Well, Britney and Mariah have just belted it out, boys. So, go, go out the door, don't turn around now, you're not welcome anymore. Do you hear your swan song?
Hot off the heels of Nick Lion's NYC club Icon's Night of 100 Marilyns, that Queens pleasuredome was hot again last night, despite the unusually cool August temperatures, as divine dance diva Masquerade was in the house. It was my pleasure to meet dance music's newest rising star who is signed to Inaya Day's new label, Ny-O-Dae Music, Inc.
Masquerade opened her three-song set, after midnight, with her chart-climbing new dance number, "Higher," an energetic, makes-you-want-to-move tune, to an appreciative and very packed house. She followed it up with two splendidly rendered covers: Rihanna's "We Found Love (in a Hopeless Place), that I liked better than the original, in fact, and a sensational interpretation of Robin S's "Show Me Love." Kudos to Barbara Sobel for arranging for Masquerade's appearance last night.
Dj Ian Ford was dj'ing and truly sparked a disco inferno, as the party people packed the floor. And, as usual, Nick Lion was the most gracious host with the most.
Here are some pictures I took of another fabulous, Iconic night:
