There's been so much raves and praise for the TV series "Breaking Bad", but when my friend Jas told me that this was a drama I just HAD to see, well , that was all the recommendation i needed! As the entire series had just ended and was all available for purchase, this was the right time to get off my duff and grab 'em! Costco was selling the DVD box set containing all Six Seasons for about 180.00, but when I realized I could buy the individual Seasons on DVD on ebay for about 13.00 apiece, I knew that that was the way to go! In just a few weeks, I had all the DVDs at my disposal, and the viewing began! Some have said that the show was "glorifying Drugs" while others claimed the show "silly and unrealistic", but for me, Breaking Bad, from the GET GO, seemed more like a really cool Graphic Novel in the vein of "Road To Perdition"or "V for Vendetta". In that context, the fantastic seems believable, the evil acceptable and the violence the razzle dazzle! MAN, what an awesome piece of WORK this show was!!! I don;t know HOW they did it, but this story of a Mild-mannered Science Teacher, who, when he finds out he has cancer, falls to a life of crime to support the expensive payments and to make sure his family is taken care of, was written and executed with such singular vision from the first episode of Season one all the way down to the explosive final episode in Season Six! Really, Breaking bad was like an EPIC Six-Chaptered mega-moive for the masses!
Way back in the early 90’s, my friend made me a mixed cassette tape opening with an extremely dancey pop song which he’d culled off of the Career Opportunities soundtrack which he’d recently picked up. This song was called Where Are You Baby, by a mysterious singer named Betty Boo, and I loved it so much, I needed to hear MORE from this artist!
Happily, my brother owned a copy of Betty Boo’s new release Boomania, an album which featured Where Are You Baby as its opening track, and my GOSH, all it took was one spin and I fell in love with almost every track! One after the other, the songs coming at me were sooo, sooo rocking and catchy, I just HAD to pick the album up for myself!
Back in the days before Wikipedia and such, there was really nowhere to learn more about Betty Boo- where did she come from? What was her “Deal”? Of course, now I know quite a bit about the former Ms. Alison Clarkson, but at the time, all I knew was what was provided in the CD liner notes. In fact, it wasn’t until months later that I even saw any videoclips of Betty, and I have to say it was quite something seeing her performing “Hey DJ/I Can’t Dance To that Music” for the first time- complete with 1960’s James Bond Secret Agent kitsch- what a conundrum she was!
Of all the songs, the stand out tracks for me are Doing The Do, Hey DJ (I Can’t Dance To That Music You’re Playing, Boo’s Booming, 24 Hours, Don’t Know What To Do (dreamy synth pop here) and of course Where are You Baby, the song that started it all! Though Betty Boo’s music is decidedly more on the Rap/R&B side, there is something about its that makes it seem more like alternative music than soul- at the time I reflected that her sound sounded a lot like Dance Pop Trio Dee-Light, with their song Groove is in the Heart…
Betty followed Boomania with a quirky album called “Grrr! It’s Betty Boo”, but after that, I didn’t hear much more from her. No matter, it’s Boomania that will stand the test of time, and in the years since its come out, I’ve introduced the album to many, MANY new fans and they all agree that Boomania is a snappy little masterpiece!
