Dysfunction, the Sixties and Italian Tweeters

I am no real fan of Cher nor would I suggest that she should go back to dysfunctional marriage, but I still feel that she and Tina Turner did their best work in the 1960s and early 1970s, especially Tina. What's Love Got to Do With It? Well, to me Tina was at her best when doing stuff on the order of "Sexy Ida", "Funkier Than a Mosquito's Tweeter" and "Flatbush City Limit".

Cher, I think, never topped "You Better Sit Down Kids" in which she sang the song from the perspective of a man leaving his wife. That was the first time that I realized the gender roles handed down to us up to the mid-1960s did not have to be sustained. And, boy, if the video above were not disturbing enough for the audio, what was up with those mannequins?

However, some of the stuff Cher and Sonny did in Italy around 1965 or so was the top of their form in my mind. The closest she came to ever getting back to that was with Eros Ramazzotti in 2001 with "Piu Che Puoi". I've never figured out what the hell he is doing under that underpath, but he looks damned fine doing it.



"The Beat Goes On", however, was best done in the version below by Mina Mazzini. It proves that back in the 1960s, Rome was far more swinging than London.