Last night I watched Cyndi Lauper on the deliciously subversive Graham Norton show.  Any interview with Cindy that I’ve seen in the past has always made her look like a vacuous ditzy blonde, so it was with some pleasure that I heard her being interviewed by somebody who gave her enough time to expand on her answers. Cyndi Lauper is a very amusing raconteuse with a great, down to earth, sense of humour.

When I used to live in Vancouver, back in the early 80s, I used to regularly go to a nightclub called the “Love Affair” which probably had the best sound system in that city at the time.  I really enjoyed the New Wave music scene back then until it petered out with the self-conscious and dandyesque music of the New Romantics. Originating from those frenetic nights at the Love Affair so long ago, is my guilty pleasure of playing poppy synthesiser music from the 1980s, VERY LOUD.

When Cyndi Lauper’s ” Girls just want to have fun” was a hit, it was played to death on nearly all the radio stations to the point that I could hardly stand to hear her voice any more. A few other mediocre hits followed, and to my mind Cyndi Lauper faded from my consciousness as a one-hit wonder.  So it was with some curiosity, that I watched her on the Graham Norton show to see what she was up to nowadays.

Boy oh boy, did I get a surprise!

Cyndi Lauper was not only an interesting person to listen to when she spoke about some of the funny things in her life, but at the end of the show she got up and sang “Into the nightlife” from her album Bring Ya to the Brink

I was blown away!

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but here in Sydney Australia we get digital television with excellent sound and picture quality which is quite often broadcast in widescreen. The production values that the BBC put into the Graham Norton show is very high quality; and it was a real pleasure to listen to Cyndi sing her new dance hit at high-volume in surroundsound.

Her new song sounded new, but at the same time, definitely showed Cyndi’s roots in the 1980s. I was immediately transported back to the Love Affair. I just wish that these little videos from YouTube had clearer and better sound so you could really crank up the volume and appreciate the production quality that has gone into broadcasting her performance.

I went out today and bought the CD and what a pleasure it was to listen to in the car at full blast!