Legs & Co. – MacArthur Park

19 October 1978 Legs & Co. dance to Donna Summer’s MacArthur Park.

Thanks to ASmK for the YouTube post.

From the old blog: Monday, 24 February 2014:

He’s another BBC4 repeat upgrade for a routine originally posted in UK Gold VHS form. Legs & Co. dance to Donna Summer’s version of “MacArthur Park” written by Jimmy Webb and originally a hit for Richard Harris.

A suitably weird bit of choreography for a weird song: Pauline, Gill and Lulu start are dressed up as branches of a huge tree that Lulu dances around, waving a literal cake about, in full cutey-pie mode with a big white bow in her hair. The yellow dress is a bit more lyrical literalness, though the yellow dress the song refers to is cotton, while Lulu’s appears to be some sort of sparkly stuff. Lamé perhaps?

Things get a bit less weird once the disco beat kicks in after a minute or so, and everyone but Lulu appears sans branches in a bit of video overlay.

If you enjoy Jimmy Webb’s brand of baroque pop weirdness, I recommend Richard Harris’s performance of “The Hive“: it still gives me the shivers. “In the parking lot, they’re lettering a sign…”

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