The Delmontes

The Delmontes were a Edinburgh indiepop quintet active between 1979 and 1983. Original members were Mike Berry (guitar), Gordon Simpson (bass), Bernice Simpson (drums), vocalist Julie Hepburn (nee Hogg) and keyboard player Gillian Miller.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The roots of the band lie in an earlier outfit called Strange Daze, with a keen interest in The Doors, although Mike and Gordon's burgeoning interest in garage and psychedelic music soon expanded to include the 13th Floor Elevators, Seeds, Electric Prunes, Red Crayola and Golden Dawn, along with the seminal Nuggets compilation album. Along with Ronnie Gurr and John McTernan, Mike Berry and Gordon Simpson were also responsible for punk fanzine Hanging Around, a cultural mix reflected in Strange Daze's valiant attemps to fuse vintage psychedelia with contemporary post-punk.

 

 

 

 

 

The band's progress was enhanced by the recruitment of accomplished keyboard player Gillian Miller, complete with vintage Farfisa organ and handy backing vocals, and by the end of the year Strange Daze had become The Delmontes. Much of 1980 was spent rehearsing, and playing live dates around Scotland with the likes of Orange Juice, Fire Engines, Revillos and The Associates, at venues including Teviot Row in Edinburgh and Paisley's celebrated Bungalow Bar.

The band released just two singles on indie label Rational Records: Tous les Soirs (1980) and Don't Cry Your Tears (1981). Boasting a poised avant-retro sound and vision (three of the five band members were female), the band anticipated several later indie trends, including C86, Creation, Sarah and TweeNet. Both DinDisc and Zoo Records competed to sign the group, who completed a full UK tour with the Teardrop Explodes, but sadly this potential went unfulfilled, and The Delmontes split at the beginning of 1983.

Mila Jam

Mila Jam is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, actress and LGBTQ activist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jahmila Adderley, known as Mila Jam, was born in Aurora, Illinois, on February 22, 1989. Before continuing her career in New York City at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, she performed in several national stage productions and televisions commercials. She performed as the popular YouTube impersonator Britney Houston. She is known for creating parodies of popular videos and posting them on YouTube within days of the original videos' releases. She began creating her parodies while in the national touring company of Rent.

 

 

 

 

 

For her parody of the Pussycat Dolls' song When I Grow Up, Jam recruited four drag queens to serve as the "Britney Cat Dolls".[17] She choreographed and starred in the 2008 MTV original television pilot Newsical, which was not picked up. She recorded the song "And The Crowd Goes", which was written and produced by Jonny McGovern and released on his compilation, The East Village Mixtape 2: The Legends Ball, and is working on an album of original material. The song also features NYC-based LGBTQ rapper Jipsta. Mila has toured internationally with the Broadway musical RENT, has performed alongside James Brown, Mark Ronson, Laverne Cox, Travis Wall, Jody Watley, Lady Kier(Deee-Lite) & Natasha Bedingfield. She has appeared on the BBC's The Lilly Allen Show, MTV and MTV NEWS, and featured in special articles in The Hugffington Post, Billboard, BOSSIP, MTV.com, OUT.com and Perezhilton.com. Mila has also been a frequent host of the original YouTube talk show series titled I’m From Driftwood.

Mila Jam's video Faces was released to coincide with International Trans Day of Visibility and she was joined in the video by Laverne Cox, Tituss Burgess, Candis Cayne, Geena Rocero, Peppermint, Transparent's Zackary Drucker, Trace Lysette and Nathan Lee Graham. The song has been called an anthem for the LGBTQ movement and focuses on one's self acceptance, inner beauty, and sense of belonging.

Qamar-ol-Moluk Vaziri

Qamar-ol-Moluk Vaziri (1905 – 5 August 1959), born Qamar Khanum Seyed Hosayn Khan, commonly known as "Qamar", was a celebrated Iranian singer, who was also the first woman of her time to sing in public in Iran without wearing a veil. She is known as "the Queen of Persian music".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She began her career in singing at age 19 in 1924 when she performed at the Grand Hotel in Tehran. When she performed she was among men and without the veil. During another performance at the Palace Theater in Tehran, again without the veil, she was accompanied by Morteza Neidavoud, who she had met when she was 16, just a few years earlier. He encouraged her to study music under his tutelage and she studied and performed in 1924.

 

 

 

 

 

Vaziri and Neydavoud worked a lot together during her 3 decade long career and in 1956 accompanied her for her farewell performance. Her existing birth certificate, issued in Tehran in 1925, legally records her first name as "Qamar-ol-Moluk" and her last name as changed from "Seyed Hosayn Khân" to "Vazirizâdeh", a name she chose for herself in honor of the musician and theoretician of music Ali-Naqi Vaziri.

Vaziri retired from singing in 1956, having worked for over 30 years with songwriters and poets in Iran and having been recorded on several gramophone discs. 

 

 

Vaziri died in 1959 in Shemiran. She is buried at Zahir o-dowleh cemetery.

Christiane F.

Christiane Vera Felscherinow (born 20 May 1962) is a German actress and musician who is best known for her contribution to the 1978 autobiographical book Christiane F. (original title: Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo), and the film and television miniseries based on the book. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christiane Felscherinow was born on 20 May 1962 in Hamburg, Germany, but her family moved to West Berlin when she was a child. She became best known as Christiane F (though she has also used Christiane X as an alias) after publishing her autobiographical book Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo (1978). Her life story became widely known when it was turned into a movie in 1981, with a soundtrack by David Bowie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trying to capitalise on the movie's success, Christiane F released a couple of records shortly after. Her first LP Gesundheit! was released in 1982 on Posh Boy and on the same year she released a 12" EP called Final Church.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the early 1980s, together with Alexander Hacke, from the German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, she collaborated in the Sentimentale Jugend project. They also appeared together in the 1983 German film Decoder, which also featured William S. Burroughs and Genesis P-Orridge.

 

 

In 2003 she released the 12" EP Wunderbar / Health Dub. In 2013, Felscherinow published a second autobiographical book titled Mein Zweites Leben in which she writes about the second part of her life.

Strawberry Switchblade

Strawberry Switchblade were a Scottish new wave/pop duo formed in Glasgow in 1981 by Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall, best known for their song "Since Yesterday" from 1985.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rose McDowall and Jill Bryson were part of the bohemian art scene who adored the New York Dolls and who followed Scottish punk band Nu-Sonics (later Orange Juice) during their career, with McDowall playing and recording with Paisley punk band The Poems. Bryson studied for four years at the Glasgow School of Art where she achieved a BA honours degree in mixed media. The band's very first incarnation, an all-female 4 piece, recorded one demo at Glasgow's Hellfire Club and played a handful of gigs. Friends Janis Goodlet and Carole McGowan completed the line up on bass and drums respectively.

 

 

 

 

 

Strawberry Switchblade played at a John Peel gig in Scotland, and he invited them to record a session for his BBC Radio 1 show in October 1982. They also recorded a session for David Jensen's Radio 1 show three days later. On both sessions the band were augmented by James Kirk from Orange Juice on bass and Shahid Sarwar from The Recognitions on drums.

The band's first single, "Trees and Flowers", was released in July 1983 through 92 Happy Customers, an independent record label run by Will Sergeant from Echo & The Bunnymen, and sold over 10,000 copies. It was featured at number 47 in John Peel's 1983 Festive 50. In late 1984 their second single, "Since Yesterday", was released. Having been given a large marketing push over the festive period, it became a UK top ten hit in early 1985, peaking at number 5, and also met with success in Europe and Japan.

In March 1985 they released their next single, "Let Her Go". Following the release of their eponymous album in April, in May 1985 they released a further single, the ballad "Who Knows What Love Is", one of two tracks on the album produced by Phil Thornalley of The Cure. Their fifth single, an electro-pop cover of Dolly Parton's "Jolene", was issued in September 1985 in the UK and Japan. Although their commercial success had waned in the UK they remained popular in Japan and two later singles, "Ecstasy (Apple of My Eye)" and "I Can Feel", were only issued in that country. By early 1986, the group had disbanded.

McDowall continued in music, playing with many neofolk bands and performing in and around Glasgow, alongside old and new friends associated with her current representation, Night School Records – such as Michael Kasparis; Proficient cellist Jo Quail and her son, Bobi Lee. In July 2013, after a break of almost 30 years from music, Bryson returned to songwriting in a new band called The Shapists (named after the fictitious art movement in the film The Rebel), that includes her daughter Jessie Frost.

Lena Horne

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American dancer, actress, singer, and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned more than seventy years, appearing in film, television, and theatre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the fall of 1933, Horne joined the chorus line of the Cotton Club in New York City. In the spring of 1934, she had a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade starring Adelaide Hall, who took Lena under her wing. Horne made her first screen appearance as a dancer in the musical short Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935). A few years later, Horne joined Noble Sissle's Orchestra, with which she toured and with whom she made her first records, issued by Decca. After she separated from her first husband, Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940–41, but disliked the travel and left the band to work at the Cafe Society in New York. She replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC's popular jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. The show's resident maestros, Henry Levine and Paul Laval, recorded with Horne in June 1941 for RCA Victor. Horne left the show after only six months when she was hired by former Cafe Trocadero (Los Angeles) manager Felix Young to perform in a Cotton Club-style revue on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood.

 

 

 

 

 

Horne advocated for human rights and took part in the March on Washington in August 1963. Later she returned to her roots as a nightclub performer and continued to work on television while releasing well-received record albums.

She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than 300 performances on Broadway. She then toured the country in the show, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, retreating from the public eye in 2000.

Horne died of congestive heart failure on May 9, 2010. Her funeral took place at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue in New York, where she had been a member. Thousands gathered and attendees included: Leontyne Price, Dionne Warwick, Liza Minnelli, Jessye Norman, Chita Rivera, Cicely Tyson, Diahann Carroll, Leslie Uggams, Lauren Bacall, Robert Osborne, Audra McDonald, and Vanessa Williams.