With all the excitement about Miss Kylie's return to stage and with her being ill with flu these past few days, I feel it's time to highlight her mother in the Australian camp sense - I'm not talking about Dame Edna but rather that angelic and always popular Olivia Newton John or as she was called in the eighties in her own raunch phase "Olivia Neutron Bomb"
Olivia was born in Britain, became a country queen in America, starred in hit movies, battled cancer, divorce and a missing lover - and she still managed to sing so beautifully through it all.
Olivia is a mixture of an English rose, a rough neck cow girl and a bit of a slut. She came to my attention as she did in most young gay men's lives as Sandy in Grease. We all liked her but preferred Stockard Channing until the camera panned up on those red open toed heels and you saw fierce makeup, tight trousers and permed hair pouffed out to Rydell High - from then on, it was all about Olivia. I even ignored John Travolta in that scene!
From then, I picked up some Olivia tracks such as "Take Me Home Country Roads" and "Physical" Kylie turned Physical into the song it was supposed to be in 2000 - a dirty lapdancing extravaganza rather than the semi tame video of Olivia getting fat slobs to work out in a dodgy gym. Some of her tracks are most played on my iPod. Check out...
MAGIC - 80's inspired midtempo song that gets me wailing along like a siren of the seas!
A LITTLE MORE LOVE - Get's the mouth moving but Olivia sounds delicious.
EVERYTHING I OWN - Boy George can't live up to Olivia hitting those impossible notes.
XANADU - Need I say more??
I then picked up Olivia in a crazy black comedy DVD Sordid Lives where she plays a lesbian country hick saloon singer - she eats tobacco and swears and wears lumberjack shorts and lets her roots show. She's timeless and classy and everything in between - when Mother Nature was handing out style and likeability, she handed it out in spades to Miss Neutron Bomb
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
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2 comments:
Hoorah! Nice post. I too am a fan of Olivia and am pleased to see you paying homage, Caress. You sum her up well!
Have to disagree with you about the Physical video though - although pretty dated and tame by today's standards it caused a bit of a sensation at the time. I love the way she punishes all of the fat guys and gets them into shape and the homoerotic ending is a hoot! Apparently the video was censored in the US, they thought it "wasn't terribly nice". And what was even more shocking was Livvie's change of image from nice, sensibly dressed demure girl into sex kitten in a leotard. With a Princess Diana haircut no less. (Although as you say Olivia got her first makeover in "Grease", which must have started off her transformation into sex goddess. Tell me about it, stud!)
However one video I like even more is the one she did for "Landslide". Have you seen that one? I was chuffed when all her videos came out on DVD...
Good choice of tracks for your iPod. I love the "Physical" album and just about everything on there is good. And as for "Soul Kiss" - just as good and very dirty with some hilarious 1980s production!
I have never seen "Sordid Lives", would like to check that one out. Livvie as a lesbian country singer?? Who would have thought it!!
All praise Olivia!!!
I need her to punish me as I have greatly expanded since the holidays!
And SORDID LIVES is an awesome low budget movie!
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