Margarita Pracatan – Hello (wand’s mini-drama mix)
(right-click to download)
Spring/Summer 1996. About once a month, we would pile out of Trade on a Sunday lunchtime, then head down to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern to catch Adrella’s weekly drag show. Well before the Dame Edna Experience made the RVT what it is today, Adrella was packing the place out with her own loyal troupe, complete with their own set call-and-response phrases. (“Good afternoon Adrella, and how are you today?” “Oh, how vile!”)
Adrella’s top turns at the time included a coke-addled Liza, stumbling her way through Losing My Mind, a bouncy Gina G, flicking her tresses to Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit, and best of all, her take on the emergent starlet of the moment, the one and only Margarita Pracatan. Replacing Margarita’s keyboard with an ironing board, if you please, you had to peel the queens from the ceiling by the time Adrella had worked her way through There’s-a Nooo! Business Like-a Shooow! Business.
Imagine our delight, therefore, when this extraordinary handbag house cover version of Lionel Richie’s Hello appeared on promo. And imagine our disappointment when at the last moment, with a tiny handful of copies of the CD single already pressed, Margarita’s record company pulled the single from the release schedules, never to see the light of day. Tipped off by my DJ mate from Central Station in King’s Cross, I quickly grabbed a copy from probably the only shop in the UK which had copies for sale (Trax Records on Greek Street).
Rare as rocking-horse poop, this is. You lucky, lucky people. Prepare to be amazed and astounded by the genius that is… Margarita “Hello! I Love You!” Pracatan.
Hey – after making you suffer through Lionel Richie’s original version (see below), it was the least I could do.
troubled diva 