It’s Friday And I Need To Dance!

There is a place near my home called the Zoom Room. They offer classes for dogs (and their owners). Obedience training, agility training, etc. I took my Ringo there for Shy Dog class. After five weekly sessions he was more confident and outgoing than when we started, and he has gotten much better at socializing since.

The Zoom Room also hosts Doggy Disco®. Per their website, these parties are for Bark Mitzvahs, pet commitment ceremonies and other special occasions.

They describe Doggy Disco thusly: Our Doggy Disco® pulsates with glamour, revolving mirrored ball, professional lighting effects and a great sound system with deliciously danceable tunes. A ceiling-mounted laser light show projects a dizzying array of colors and patterns on the floor, perfect for pooches to chase.

Why I haven’t gone yet is beyond me! I must do so soon. For now, my doggies and I will dance around the condo, for it is Friday, and Friday is dance day ‘round these parts.

Our weekly dance party kicks off with George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog.”


Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour

New Music!

Greetings!

Today I present to you twenty current songs I’m listening to. Feel free to let me know what good ones I am missing.


Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour

A Hint Of Mint – Volume 13: The Rolling Stones

In this installment of A Hint of Mint, we’re celebrating Mick Jagger’s birthday with a Rolling Stones playlist. As 8tracks must limit the number of songs per artist, we’re including covers of Stones hits done by members of the LGBTQQI and SA populations.

[8tracks width=”300″ height=”250″ playops=”” url=”http://8tracks.com/mixes/6683013″]

Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour

Steph and Ringo

It’s Amelia Earhart’s Birthday And I Need To Dance!

Today is Amelia Earhart’s birthday. She was born on July 24, 1897, and for all we know she is celebrating her 118th birthday with a glass of Chardonnay and a cannoli.

During a 1937 attempt to fly around the world, aviator Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. Women. Am I right, fellas? Of course not.

Earhart went off the grid before “going off the grid” became part of our everyday vernacular. Maybe not everyday, but our at-least-twice-a-year vernacular.

Sometimes I contemplate going off the grid, but it seems the rewards of doing so are not worth the efforts.

This would have been a good week for me to be off the grid. It started out good. Sunday morning was the fourth and final day of an entrepreneur conference I attended whereat I got educated and motivated and met many cool people with inspiring stories. On my way home I got into a car accident. I’m fortunate I came out unscathed. My car? Not so much.

When I arrived at home I called my insurance company, then set about to make some lunch. I put my food in the microwave and set it on high for six minutes. When the machine beeped the food was still frozen. I know I’m fortunate in that I had a microwave that served me for 17 years, but did it have to die at that moment?

My car got towed to a body shop. They emailed me forms to sign and return. I couldn’t print them, however, as it turns out my printer and microwave were having an affair and the printer decided she could not go on without the microwave in her life. Women. Am I right, fellas?

Feeling a bit depressed about the turn my week/life had taken, I found it difficult to focus on the tasks at hand. Then I saw a videoclip of a colorblind young man who, thanks to new technology, experienced vibrant colors for the first time. His joy in seeing a patch of grass or a container of Clorox put things in perspective.

There is so much beauty in the mundane, and so much that I take for granted for which I should be grateful. My toaster oven, for example.

I have a music consulting business. I love my clients. I love that I can choose with whom I wish to work. I love the projects I’m handling.

I think I’ll stay on the grid for a while.

Steph and Ringo
Friday is dance day at Tunes du Jour. Kicking off this week’s playlist is Stephanie Mills with “Pilot Error.”


Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour

A Hint Of Mint – Volume 12: Royals

A playlist of songs about princes, princesses, dukes, emperors, kings and queens. Lots of queens.

[8tracks width=”300″ height=”250″ playops=”” url=”http://8tracks.com/mixes/6647013″] Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour

Dion + Winston

Ten Facts About And Twenty Songs By Dion

Dion + Winston
Ten Facts About Dion:
1. In 1957 Dion was signed to Gene and Bob Schwartz’s Mohawk Records. The Schwartz brothers soon took Dion and his backing group The Belmonts to their new label, Laurie Records. I am not related to the Schwartz brothers. Not those Schwartz brothers, anyway.
2. Including his hits with The Belmonts, Dion has hit the US top forty 21 times.
3. In 1959 Dion & the Belmonts were part of the Winter Dance Party Tour. After a performance in Clear Lake, Iowa, some of the acts on the tour chartered a plane to take them to the next tour stop. Dion didn’t want to pay the $36 the flight cost so he traveled by bus. That plane crashed, killing everyone aboard – Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper and the pilot.
4. His hit “Runaround Sue,” which he co-wrote with Eddie Maresca, is about a real girl named Roberta.
5. “Runaround Sue” knocked Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack” for #1 on the pop chart in October 1961.
6. Dion married a woman named Sue, who likes to tell people “Runaround Sue” is about her.
7. The follow-up single to “Runaround Sue” was “The Majestic,” but the single’s b-side got more attention. That song, “The Wanderer,” peaked at #2.
8. Two rock artists appear on the cover of The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – Bob Dylan and Dion.
9. In 1975 Phil Spector produced an album for Dion. It was withdrawn by the producer shortly after its release, to be reissued a year later only in the UK.
10. Dion was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.

BONUS: Dion Francis DiMucci was born on July 18, 1939 in The Bronx, New York. Here are twenty career highlights.


Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour

EWF + Ringo

It’s Friday And I Need To Dance!

Friday is dance day at Tunes du Jour. This week’s dance playlist kicks off with a song that, per its writer, is “about someone on the brink of self destruction who goes to these [dance] clubs to try and find more, but is at least aware of the fact that if there’s something like true love, that is something that could kind of drag them out of the abyss.” Allee Willis, who wrote the song with Jon Lind, told songfacts.com that the song was inspired by the film Looking for Mr. Goodbar. “I got kind of fascinated with people who did go to clubs every night, whose life was kind of falling apart, but they lived for the night life, though it didn’t seem to be advancing them as humans in the end.”

The song’s first verse is “Midnight creeps so slowly into hearts of men who need more than they get. Daylight deals a bad hand to a woman who has laid too many bets. The mirror stares you in the face and says, ‘Baby, uh-uh, it don’t work.’ You say your prayers though you don’t care; you dance and shake the hurt.”

The chorus expresses the hope that “All the love in the world can’t be gone, all the need to be loved can’t be wrong, all the records are playing and my heart keeps saying ‘Boogie Wonderland.’” Per Willis, Boogie Wonderland “was this state of mind that you entered when you were around music and when you danced, but hopefully it was an aware enough state of mind that you would want to feel as good during the day as you did at night.”

EWF + Ringo

Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook.
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour

A Hint Of Mint – Volume 11: France

A playlist consisting of songs with lyrics in French, songs about the French capital, a song by Nicki French, et plus! Includes David Bowie, Janet Jackson, Pet Shop Boys and Culture Club.

[8tracks width=”300″ height=”250″ playops=”” url=”http://8tracks.com/mixes/6608820″] Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook!
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour

PSB + Ringo

It’s Neil Tennant’s Birthday And I Need To Dance!

In 1983, a writer for the UK’s Smash Hits magazine, along with a friend he met two years earlier in a music shop, inspired by such disparate sources as a James Cagney film, a T.S. Eliot poem, and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five’s “The Message,” recorded a rap tune contrasting two parts of London and people’s need to escape the pressures of everyday life.

The song, released on Bobcat Records, got some attention in Los Angeles, Canada, Belgium, and in dance clubs in parts of Europe and North America.

PSB + Ringo
In 1985 the duo rerecorded the song for their new label, EMI. This time around, “West End Girls” became a worldwide pop smash.

Today Neil Tennant turns 61 years old. Tunes du Jour kicks off its weekly dance party with the biggest British rap hit to hit the U.S. charts.


Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook.
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour

Jack + me 1069915_10151751737788582_422945744_n

I Prefer The Seven Nation Army

Every December the Salvation Army mails me at least a half-dozen solicitations for a financial donation. Every year I write on the envelopes “RETURN TO SENDER. I DON’T CONDONE BIGOTRY,” and yet they continue to ask for my money.

Perhaps you’ve heard that the Salvation Army has a history of homophobia. Google “Salvation Army homophobia” and read about people allegedly turned away by the charity due to their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity, people allegedly fired from the organization for their sexual orientation, efforts made by the Army to keep LGBT people from having the same rights as their non-LGBT neighbors, allegations of a hostile work environment, their efforts to not be subject to anti-discrimination laws, and bell-ringers refusing donations from people who support LGBT equality. Their explanation has been that they’re a Christian organization, and you know what the Bible says about charity and thy neighbor and minorities in the workplace.

On the surface, the organization appears to have tempered some of their views about LGBT citizens over time. However, there are many organizations that help people in need who have no public record that needs defending. My charitable donations go to them.

So why am I bringing up the Salvation Army today? It’s not because I’m doing my holiday shopping now. Hanukkah doesn’t begin until early December; therefore, Hanukkah shopping doesn’t begin until mid-December.

Jack + me 1069915_10151751737788582_422945744_n
Today is Jack White’s fortieth birthday. When he was a child he thought the Salvation Army was called the Seven Nation Army. As an adult, he used “Seven Nation Army” as a song title for his duo The White Stripes.

Here are twenty of Jack White’s finest moments.


Click here to like Tunes du Jour on Facebook.
Follow me on Twitter: @TunesDuJour