Month: August 2005

Thursday’s Child…

Special lady bassist singer/songwriter, Gail Ann Dorsey, has been in touch about an appearance at The Michigan Womyn?s Music Festival next week. I need waffle no more as all you need to know has been said perfectly well in this press release…

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GAD AT MICHIGAN WOMYN?S MUSIC FESTIVAL 30th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION!
AUGUST 9th ? 14th, 2005 WALHALLA, MICHIGAN

Gail Ann Dorsey will be performing again this year at The Michigan Womyn?s Music Festival in Northwestern Michigan. Last year, Gail played bass with Asian-American singer-songwriter and activist Magdalen Hsu-Li, and performed solo in the festival?s ?Round Robin? event with artists including Jill Sobule and Gretchen Phillips.

This year Dorsey headlines her own set on the night stage in a spectacular Thursday night lineup!

Gail will be performing with a band for the first time in almost a decade! Band members include long-time friend and B-52 bassist Sara Lee on bass and keyboards, Bowie band-mate Catherine Russell on keyboards, vocals, and mandolin, and drummer Allison Miller of Toshi Reagon and Natalie Merchant. Gail will be playing songs from her latest CD release, I Used To Be?, as well as premiering two brand new songs from a new CD currently in the making!

In addition to her own appearance, Gail will take part in 30 Years Of Rock Chix Lix, a chronological feast and celebration of memorable female accomplishments in popular music history (or herstory!). This event is produced by BETTY bassist Alyson Palmer, and includes a fabulous line up of guest vocalists including Toshi Reagon, Rhiannon, and Catherine Russell, with backing band Julie Wolf on keyboards, Jen Leigh on guitar, Alyson Palmer on bass, and Allison Miller on drums.

Dorsey will kick off this event with her groovy rendition of the Helen Reddy classic “Angie Baby”, which Dorsey also plans to record for her next CD.

This year?s 30-year special celebratory line-up will also include The L Word stars, BETTY, Toshi Reagon & Big Lovely, and The Indigo Girls among many other extraordinary female artists and performers.

MICHIGAN WOMYN?S MUSIC FESTIVAL 30th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION30 Years Of Rock Chix Lix / Wednesday, August 10th, 2005 / 21:00Gail Ann Dorsey Band Performance / Thursday, August 11th, 2005 / 20:45For tickets and information visit www.michfest.com

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Sweet as a nut.

Do you remember a guy…

25 years ago, on August 1st 1980, David Bowie released the single that was to become his first legitimate UK number one hit with a new release…a mere sixteen years since his first release with Liza Jane and five years after the re-issued Space Oddity 45 which was his first actual UK number one.

The success of Ashes To Ashes, the first single from the forthcoming Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) album, proved just what a good luck charm Major Tom was…despite the maternal warning at the song’s fade out.

Though Ashes To Ashes instantly became one of Bowie’s best-loved songs among long-term fans and recent converts alike, sales of the 45 certainly weren’t hampered by the issue of three different picture sleeves (above) each of which could have contained any one of four sheets of nine Bowie-designed stamps (below)…thereby creating a dozen permutations for the serious collector to seek out. (It wasn’t easy…believe me!)

The single was backed by Move On from the previous album, (the criminally underrated Lodger) in Europe, and America got an extra taste of things to come with It’s No Game as the flip.

The promotion of Ashes To Ashes will also be remembered for the ground-breaking and quite brilliant accompanying Bowie/Mallet-produced video, which featured DB in full Pierrot costume along with wonderfully dreamlike sequences featuring many of the major players of the fledgling New Romantic movement that was distressing parents all across the UK.

When informed of the single’s success via a Trans-Atlantic telephone conversation with BBC Radio 1’s Andrew Turner, David responded thus: “I see that as very exciting, what can I say? I?m very surprised. God bless the English public is what I say!”

25 years? I remember it like it was the day before yesterday. Where does the time go?