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I will be taking a sabbatical to see Fame the Musical at the Bournemouth Pavilion for my birthday next week, travelling the best part of 200 miles, and so I thought that I would start a thread on the woman who was famous for its signature tune - Irene Cara.
I associate Fame (and Cara herself for that matter) with the early 1980s craze of keep-fit, florescent leggings and legwarmers, and Weight Watchers-alike women who like a Ski yoghurt, a Slim Fast drink, a couple of Ryvita crispbreads for lunch and not much else besides. I have decided to do a bit of "revision" and watch some of the episodes of the TV series online (she played Coco Hernandez in the film version, did she not?), and also of course, the 1982 number one hit (which I found on an old C120 years ago with a bit of Tommy Vance's voice introducing it, so it must have been from the Sunday evening Top 40 back then). Glee and High School musical have been more recent attempts of being what Fame was in around 1982. And we even have The Next Step on the CBBC Channel - and the Kids from Fame for that matter.
Indeed, I can't help thinking about Irene Cara without thinking about doing regular exercises with Mad Lizzie on TV-am first thing on a mid 1980s morning. Cara's other hit Flashdance… What a Feeling also makes me think of that - in fact, I was almost going to go to Swansea to see the musical based on that song last year on that magical date, which has the title song which as far as I was concerned, and that was also infamous for the "take your pants off / pension" mondegreen. She was very much of her time as a performer of her time, and I think that her novelty status would have worn off after a few years.
Her music is very "time capsule"-esque, and very much of its time.
I associate Fame (and Cara herself for that matter) with the early 1980s craze of keep-fit, florescent leggings and legwarmers, and Weight Watchers-alike women who like a Ski yoghurt, a Slim Fast drink, a couple of Ryvita crispbreads for lunch and not much else besides. I have decided to do a bit of "revision" and watch some of the episodes of the TV series online (she played Coco Hernandez in the film version, did she not?), and also of course, the 1982 number one hit (which I found on an old C120 years ago with a bit of Tommy Vance's voice introducing it, so it must have been from the Sunday evening Top 40 back then). Glee and High School musical have been more recent attempts of being what Fame was in around 1982. And we even have The Next Step on the CBBC Channel - and the Kids from Fame for that matter.
Indeed, I can't help thinking about Irene Cara without thinking about doing regular exercises with Mad Lizzie on TV-am first thing on a mid 1980s morning. Cara's other hit Flashdance… What a Feeling also makes me think of that - in fact, I was almost going to go to Swansea to see the musical based on that song last year on that magical date, which has the title song which as far as I was concerned, and that was also infamous for the "take your pants off / pension" mondegreen. She was very much of her time as a performer of her time, and I think that her novelty status would have worn off after a few years.
Her music is very "time capsule"-esque, and very much of its time.
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