a division of the Chersonian Institute
The Lost Living Proof interview
An interesting example of how Cher and her publicist Liz Rosenberg coordinate a radio interview and the general tone of it. Seems awkward and unpleasant.
Also floating around the Internets: a list of unreleased Cher songs: http://wikibin.org/articles/unreleased-songs-by-cher.html
Who do you suppose compiled this?
It’s a handy wish list for the fantasy box set.
Or new to me rather.
R.E.M. vs. Cher – “Losing My Believe”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6kY3o5TjnQ
Cher vs. Alice Deejay – “Better Believe Alone”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nZ1o-ypo2M
Both are top notch. “Better Believe Alone” actually works like a call and response, one song arguing with the other.
These are actually my favorite of all the “Believe” mashups (so far); but seriously, who do we have to f*%k to get a mashup of “Gypsies Tramps and Thieves?
A Cher-Renovated Home Sells
I wonder if these Cher-houses have some kind of Cher-seal on them (maybe over the front door). You know, like an Oprah-selected book.
Cher has auctioned her newly designed home at Hualalai Resort in Hawaii for $8.72 million. Cher bought the land in 2009 for $2.9 million. Ka-ching!
Hold me closer, tiny bathtub:
Luxury his and hers:
Come on in! We're playing board games!
Lawn chairs in the pool:
The story: http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2010/01/22/cher_s_hawaiian_home_auctioned_for_8_7_m
More photos: http://www.kitv.com/slideshow/entertainment/22306436/detail.html
Burlesque Song Leak!
From the paparazzi hanging around the movie production to the constant news stories on comments from the stars to the “leak” of this Christina song the week, hype about Burlesque is HOT. Is it just the accidental zeitgeist of a cast and storyline we love or is rather good public relations? Who knows.
In any case, here is a hodge-podge of online commentary that surrounded the leak:
“Spotlight,” a new track for the Burlesque soundtrack, made its way to YouTube in full today after floating around for about a week as a very short snippet.
The track has a retro, throw-back feel much like Aguilera’s last studio album, Back To Basics, with big horns and finger snaps throughout. She teases with one catchy line stringing the movie and song together: “Get your ass up, show me how you burlesque!”
It’s a throwback to the 40s, spiced with touches of jazz, pop, blues, swing, and big-band. It isn’t new ground for Aguilera like it was back in 2006. But her voice fits those stylized retro songs so well.
“Spotlight” does, however, pique our curiosity about Burlesque — what decade is it set in? Will the film’s soundtrack will span various musical genres (as did Christina’s last major movie vehicle, Moulin Rouge)?. In any case, we’re stoked for November 2010, the movie’s scheduled release date…
… people involved in the making of the soundtrack is top-notch producers Danja and Christopher "Tricky" Stewart as well as singer/songwriter Sia Furler.
One story: http://top40.about.com/b/2010/01/27/christina-aguileras-spotlight-from-burlesque-leaks.htm
Most of the song links posted yesterday have already been taken down after studio pressure. Far be it for me to incur the wrath of that big business. But here’s the bad news for them: in the Internet century, once something is out, it’s pretty much out for good…like a sneaky little moth, that's hard to catch and pretty soon you have a zillion baby moths all over.
Search, my Cher-fan comrades, and ye shall find.
The Atlantic box set Atlantic Records: Time Capsule: http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1609217
Artists featured on the set include Ray Charles, The Coasters, The Drifters, John Coltrane, Booker T. & The MG’s, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sonny & Cher, Aretha Franklin, The Bee Gees, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Rolling Stones, Yes, Genesis, Hall & Oates, Stevie Nicks, INXS, Rush, En Vogue, Tori Amos, Stone Temple Pilots, Collective Soul, Matchbox Twenty, Sugar Ray, Lil’ Kim, Brandy, Kid Rock, Sean Paul, Staind, Death Cab For Cutie, James Blunt, Gnarls Barkley, T.I., Panic! At The Disco, Paramore, Flo Rida, Jason Mraz, Shinedown and tons more.
Has anybody heard anything by Death Cab For Cutie?
As Sonny says in Good Times, everyone's a critic today!
Seriously, mostly people sigh wistfully for the woebegone days of Cher’s fake-nakedness. This guy, Johnny Dee, blames Cher for the slutty stylings of today. But we all know pop culture was slutifying long before Cher came along with her navel-sequins and scandalous arm pits.
Porn meets pop: Cher has a lot to answer for
How did a basque and fishnets become the uniform of girlie pop? It all started in 1989…
So Cherkids, I’m leaving. And I’m going to be gone for a few weeks…like a few weeks meaning three. Three whole weeks. Please don’t forget me when I’m gone. Please don’t buy an overabundance of Olivia Newton John albums. And please don’t take any wooden nickels. Just be good. Be safe. Is that too much to ask? I’ll getting married. By some miraculous stroke of universe functioning. So just keep it cool for a little bit. Okay?
But before I go, I do what to leave you with two small Cher items for discussion in your own small groups and committees:
I received this note from my friend Coolia a few days ago.
Subject: Top 40 1989
I was just listening to a countdown by the original VJs on Sirius radio from the top forty of this week in 1989. Cher came in at 38 with just like Jesse James and 35 with turn back time. The VJ said that turn back time reached #3. I thought it hit #1, no? Also they had a quote from Cher saying she didn't like Jesse James because it had too many lyrics
So I wrote back saying TBT, although one of Cher’s iconic hits, only made it into the top ten, reaching #3. Although it did reach #1 on the Adult Contemporary Chart and it did hit #1 in Norway allegedly although I wasn’t there to confirm this. So why did it stall out at 3? Does anyone want to put forth a theory?
This also passed my desk this week: David Bowie and Marianne Faithful singing IGUB.
I dig this crazy version, I really do…including the ending guitar riff, the nutty backups and Marianne’s muck ups.
…but “We won’t find out until we go?” Does he mean until we kick it? What are your thoughts?
Please discuss all Cher-matters with civility and respect for all diva-creeds. Larger things are happening in the world…like my wedding. 🙂
Feeling out of the loop in Cher list news and down and tired in the midst of editing processional music in music editing software I was learning, I went to ebay for the first time in quite a while to cheer myself up with Cher goods.
Wait a minute. I just realized I’m looking for a break out of my wedding obsession with my celebrity obsession…that’s not good.
Sigh. It’s all relative I guess.
Anyway, I found some Caesars’ brochures and the new Caesars Players Vegas magazine out with a new Cher spread and interview. And it's the best new interview in a long while – great layout (although I miss a magazine's original Cher photos; why must they capitulate to using Cher's PR photos?).
The Chrome Hearts fashion label is again quoted prominently.
There's some good info here. Cher has an iPhone with some calendar feature where she seems to be adding spontaneous messages to Sonny. I wondered if this worked somewhat like a diary but I have yet to get my iPhone (can't wait!) so I'm not exactly sure what she was referring to.
Cher remembers that Chas helped the show behind the scenes during the last Caesars run of the late 70s. I remember pictures of her in the 1979 People Magazine looking quite helpful. Cher went to the gun range with her brother-in-law and fired a 9-millimeter and an automatic rifle, and that she likes to try things she’s afraid of. Which is a good thing. My bf talked me into taking a gun-firing class a few years ago. You never know when you’re going to need those odd skills. Cher wants to take tennis lessons too…all her friends play. She says she loved sports in school and was real tomboy.
To keep in shape it's weights, running, ballet, yoga, and the occasional hike on mountain trail with the aforementioned iPod. Cher loves to sing outdoors to the tunes of Springsteen, Bob Seger, Hall & Oats, “all the old people” she says.
The reporter states “the stage of her show in essence doubles as a runway.” And I think it helps to frame her show in this way. Which is why I feel Cher would be so awesome on Project Runway as a dual guest with Bob Mackie.
Cher says, “On a given night, a song will be more fun to sing or seem newer and I sort of forget I’ve done it hundreds of times.”
Their filmography of her does claim Drop Out in 2010 and Burlesque in 2011 (wah! Long wait). This confirms with JimmyDean posted a week or so back from his sleuthing at the Cher Store. Cher says she picked the film Drop Out because she loved its 14-year old humor…it made her laugh. She liked Tropic Thunder for the same reason.
The discography only covers Cher albums with the exception of the Allman and Woman album; and All I Really Want to Dois completely out of order, listed as her 3rd album in 1966. Backstage is called Cher Backstage. She delayed working on a new album because she chose to vacation during her last break. Tough titties for us, huh?
Here another fun pics I found on ebay last weekend: the original late 70s Caesars program!
This has been a busy week of weddingness: we assembled and sent our especially designed invitations, my dress came in and I had my first fitting, we met with the photographer and walked around our venue looking for photo shots. So I didn’t have much time to contemplate Cherdom this week. However, something pretty amazing happened, Cher-related.
So I’ve been a Cher fan since I was about four or six years old (1974-1976). I’m not really sure when I started exactly. I do remember it was one of the first aesthetic decisions I made, but the timing is so hard to place, looking back. I remember watching the first variety show with my parents when we lived in Albuquerque — so that must have been in 1974 (I would have been four). I loved both the show and the two records my parents had (Look at Us and All I Ever Need is You). My Albuquerque friend Stacy got the Cher doll before I even knew there was one. This must have been in 1976. I was mildly outraged and discouraged that someone who was as passionate as I was about Sonny & Cher was not the first one on my block to get the doll. So I petitioned for it for Christmas and got one with a handful of outfits. I remember thinking that a fan of my caliber should have all the outfits. This is how it has always been you see. I took that doll to show-and-tell in first grade and, along with Stretch Armstrong, it was the most popular show-and-tell toy. Both dolls were broken that show-and-tell day as a result of their being so manhandled. Cher’s hands were broken off and Armstrong was punctured until his innards started oozing out.
I got the S&C TV Guide cover soon after, which I adored. Until my oldest brother told me I should stop slobbering over it because S&C were divorced. Tragedy of all tragedies! Why hadn’t anyone told me! Then we moved to St. Louis (and I think this is where I got the idea that moving was a diversion to heartbreak) just in time to watch the second variety series when my parents agreed to let me stay up past my seven-year-old bedtime once a week in order to watch it. But those good times were all over before I knew it (cancellation) and I was left to lick my wounds with that awful 1979 Solid Gold special which launched the very lame lip-synching series of the same name. I think it’s right around that time when gold started to lose its luster for me.
For Christmases and birthdays during the brief era of 1977 to 1979, my parents purc
hased Sonny & Cher albums as gifts for me. And when I was sick with the stomach flu in 1979, my mom bought me the famous Cher People magazine cover issue with the hole-fit and the pink boa.
But this is all a long, long backstory just to say that SINCE THEN my parents have definitely not approved of my Cher obsession, and certainly not long after I learned how to drive and immediately chose to cruise across town to used record stores for Cher lps. Enough was enough already. Normal kids don’t have celebrity obsessions and if they did, they were more current acts like Duran Duran and Don Johnson (God help me—you see what I had to choose from?).
Flash forward to this year. These are the songs I picked as choices for my wedding’s father-daughter dance: “Take it to the Limit” by the Eagles (which was nixed because my brother and father interpreted it to be all about sex), “I Hope You Dance” by Lee Ann Womack (which my father didn’t love), “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armtrong (kind of clichéd, I felt), “Heavenly Day” by Patty Griffin and “IGUB,” which did come up but was controversial because it was sweet as a father-daughter dance but essentially a couple’s song. Between the two of us, my father and I didn’t agree on or couldn’t find anything on the many online lists of father-daughter-dance suggestions full of maudlin and sappy sentimentalities. One big problem I found was that most suggested songs were for younger brides (“everything she owns I bought her”) and in my case, I’m more the mature bride, not the fresh-faced innocent depicted in country songs.
Last weekend, my father ended up considering a pretty obscure Sonny & Cher song of all things (well, mostly a Cher song on a S&C album), a song called “Turn Around,” one I had suggested actually but not the S&C version which I didn’t even remember. I was trying to find a Harry Belafonte version (he wrote it) and found many other recorded versions by Kenny Loggins, Rosemary Clooney, Danny Kaye, and the soundtrack of a famous Kodak ad eons ago. My dad maybe saw the S&C version listed on iTunes – I’m not sure. But I was frankly shocked when he suggested it.
Friday, August 14, I received a field report from my friend Christopher who loves to peruse online videos:
Mary–
Okay, so people make fun of this "Walking in Memphis" remake [mostly, our other friend Coolia makes fun of it], but it one of the best remakes of all time. And this video, as you know, is such great fun.
And she looks GORGEOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So natural and alluring. PERFECT hair–the hair that any woman would be covetous of. And her legs look phenomenal. And all this at 50!
My favorite moments are at 2:13-2:16 and 3:41-3:43. What a beauty!
If we agree that the rightful top of the pantheon is composed of Cher, Bette Midler, Vanessa Williams and Barbra Streisand–all of whom have had sustained, massive and well-respected successes as both singers and actresses, only Cher and Vanessa also got blessed with beauty, and Cher alone has exoticism.And have you seen the mash-up that was always meant to be?
3:03 = M'am/Man I am tonight!!!
ENJOY!!!
Christopher
Well, you know I love Cher’s old lips but she is really beautiful in this video as both herself and Elvis Presley. I love this video for four reasons:
I flipped out watching the mashup video. Totally awesome editing…both musically (artfully swaying between two entirely different records) and visually (lovely overlaying of Marc Cohn and Cher). I LOVE THIS FAN ART!! Pinch me!
No, don’t pinch me.
Besides "Walking in Memphis" mashups, here’s something else I love to death, Sonny & Cher singing "Stagger Lee" on The S&C Comedy Hour. I used to play this song over and over on my cassette player (as recently as 2002 when I was still walking around Marina del Rey with my walkman and my old dog Helga (RIP). I adore the S&C version. It’s so 70s-cool.
My bf and I (with the help of the video-editing skillz of my father) are making videos for our wedding reception. Lots of wedding drama ensued this week – both good and bad – from guest-list drama, to invitation-envelope drama, to dress drama. Meanwhile, my bf and his mom are picking through Mickey Gilley songs for their special dance (Gilley is his moms fav artist and she goes to see him in Branson all the time).
To get a video started, my dad sent me Gilley’s version of “Bring it On Home to Me” which I love and wish they would dance to. However, my bf is stuck on "A Room Full of Roses" but this is kind of a depressing song and his mother prefers "True Love Ways."
Listening to them all I came across Gilley’s version of "Stagger Lee" which reminded me to look up and see who all recorded it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagger_Lee_(song)It’s). It's allegedly based on a true story about a cab-driving murderer from, of all places, St. Louis, Missouri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagger_Lee_Shelton.
Anyway, the S&C show version ROCKS and I wish there was a YouTube clip o that.
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