Who knew (other than the hundreds of thousands who have attended over the last 17 years) that the Dinah Shore, the annual Palm Springs lesbian blowout that happened this past weekend was so … so … Girls Gone Wild?
(See first video below…)
And, please, do not read that as a prudish comment. I mean that in a “Watch out! White girls dancing!” way. Really. This clip, a mere snippet of an actual DVD (imagined target audience: “Look, there’s Pam and she’s grinding!!!“), makes me think the event might be better served in Alaska as a sidebar to the Iditarod. (Think: Parkas — and how much better that dancing would look under them.)
Now to cleanse, we present an altogether different Dinah Shore. Dinah Shore herself with Iggy Pop. (She calls him “Jimmy” — “James” is his given name — and is so freaking cute and maternal that I just want to hug them both.)
“They call him Mr. Pop.”
And yes, that is Mr. David Bowie on keys and (sometimes Austinite) Mr. Hunt Sales on drums. And of course, who (who lived through it the first time) could forget Bowie’s own appearances on the gracious Southern Belle’s shows?
Bowie’s time with Dinah is formative TV time for me. I clearly remember watching one of these interviews one afternoon in the mid-Seventies with one of my best buds and her mom and getting into a rather forward-thinking discussion about bisexuality — forward-thinking for the time and considering two of us were teens. (Not that it matters, but in hindsight, I think the discussion foreshadowed a bit about all three of us to some degree.)
I’d forgotten about this Lisa Robinson piece about the Bowie/Dinah taping in Hit Parader magazine; it provides an interesting view from that era (from the second paragraph until about the 23rd).
I adore Dinah, the late great star. The annual lesbotron fete is named for her because of its proximity to a golf tourney which also bears her name. A lot of dykes don’t know who she is/was, despite the fact that one of the largest lesbian weekends is named for her. I nominate these clips as another darned good reason (that Iggy & Davey are fabulous dancers, notwithstanding).
This article appears in March 30 • 2007.