Thursday, 29 July 2010
Sunday, 4 October 2009
Never enough!
After being dazzled by La Streisand's take on Ne Me Quitte Pas on BBC1 Friday night, here's Discofied Divas Squared from 1979, the year I graduated and Thatcher came to power. I was a baby gayer then and happy to sign up to the prevalent worship of both Barbra and Donna that was prevalent at the time in the gay world. Donna's gay-friendly reputation was briefly blotted by an interview where talked about her religious beliefs and said some unpleasantly anti-gay things but Streisand not only has a phenomenal voice but has been a stalwart champion of the gayers and has done a sterling job supporting the voice of American liberalism and the Democratic Party through the past three decades. But let's hear her duet with La Summer:
And here is Miss Streisand singing Brel (it was better live though, imho, on the Jonathan Ross Show where she gave a very well judged interview too).
And that holds its own, I think, with my previous favourite version of the song, by Scott Walker, which is a thing of great beauty.
And here is Miss Streisand singing Brel (it was better live though, imho, on the Jonathan Ross Show where she gave a very well judged interview too).
And that holds its own, I think, with my previous favourite version of the song, by Scott Walker, which is a thing of great beauty.
Saturday, 26 September 2009
Music to toddle to
Last night I posted the song Miracles by Jefferson Starship and a chum told me she really liked it but she was 4 years old when it came out. What a four year old made of the lyric I'm not sure, when it seems to be all ladies and gentlemen doing filthy things to one another with ecstatic results, including some rude words and noises slipped in which the censors possibly missed.
So I thought of what songs I had liked myself at the age of four. 1960! Before I started primary school, before The Beatles, before we had a tv or a fridge or a phone, before Dusty Springfield, before so much! I had a vivid childhood memory of loving Ronnie Hilton's A Windmill in Old Amsterdam in my infancy but it turned out that I was actually 8 when it was a hit. Late developer... So here are ten tunes I was enjoying at the age of 4! These were mostly 78rpm single recordings or 33 1/3rpm albums that belonged to my father or one of my mother's younger brothers (they were often off abroad in England or Egypt or Norway or the Gulf and would store their stuff in our loft).
1. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by The Platters
We had a 78rpm dinner plate of a record that we (me and my baby sister) played over and over but we had no idea who The Platters were or what they looked like. I now see that lead singer Tony Williams (above) was a bit of a shag.
2. Carmen Jones How my dad loved this film soundtrack. I could probably sing all the songs as soon as I could talk. I was ignorant of the story, of Bizet, of the politics, had never seen the film, but loved the songs. This is the anglicised lyric matched to the tune of L'Amour est Enfant de Bohème, which I learned to love afresh when I grew up and discovered the opera. For me though, the Bizet was never going to accrete the emotional load that the Oscar Hammerstein version had. I wonder why the lyrics are subtitled here? She's singing, magnificently and with great clarity, in English anyway.
3. Eartha Kitt and I Want to be Evil. My dad, I now know, had a very male adolescent relationship with sex throughout his life. I was impressed as a toddler that he thought Eartha was "sexy" although I really had no idea what that meant. But I liked the tune and the words and had seen her on tv (where I thought she looked a bit like my grandmother). In later life, I came to love her even more and once even saw her in the glorious flesh at the Edinburgh Festival.
4. Kaw Liga by Hank Williams.
In working class industrial-belt Scotland, there's a crossover between some Scottish folk and American country music. This was the original A Side of a disc that had "Your Cheatin' Heart" on its flip. As little kids, we loved this and felt deeply the tragedy of the wooden cigar store Indian with his knotty pine heart. Phrases such as "Native American" were then unknown to us and we had very confused, romantic ideas about "Indians".
5. Before I ever fell in love with Doris Day on film (as I certainly did!), I knew all the songs from Calamity Jane and, of those, The Deadwood Stage was my favourite. It was such a thrill, when I finally saw the musical, to see the songs in context, and Doris Day's performance cemented the love inculcated in me as a little boy for her breathy voice. I wonder if my folks knew this exposure to Miss Day was beginning the path to gay awareness for me?
6. The great Perry Como singing What Did Delaware? You seldom hear about Como these days but he was enormous when I was a tiny chap. We had lots of his recordings in the house but this was my favourite and I could recite all the puns in order in those days.
7. The Glenn Miller Orchestra and In The Mood. My dad would bang on about his National Service and play this but the bigger treat for my sister and me was when my mood-swinging mother would be a bit hypomanic and would teach us to jive to this tune. The man himself we never saw, just Jimmy Stewart playing him later in The Glenn Miller Story, which I must have watched a hundred times. I love the swagger of the purse-lipped pianist in this film. You see him in close up first about 30 seconds in. I've since seen (mostly American) marching bands performing this and it thrills me still, every time.
8. Here's one of the first songs I probably ever learnt to sing, at my grandmother's admonitory knee. Ye Cannae Shove Yer Granny Aff The Bus!. I loved my granny. I loved her sieved broth, her butterscotch puddings, her stories about the King and Mrs Simpson or The Great Strike. I was therefore not always comfortable with the suggestion of violence in this song. However, the granny I loved so much was my maternal grandmother and I didn't like the paternal one much, so I would join in with this when we sang it on long journeys or in the playground. This clip has extra verses we never sang but I remember lots of bus journeys like this one. It's very Scottish and I was surrounded by all sorts of Scottish music as a kid. Everywhere else in the world they have other words for this tune: She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain.
9. So, here's some tartan stuff, plundering the music hall image of Scottishness. Andy Stewart was a master of this genre and I could have chosen several of his tunes which the extended family would belt out at Hogmanay when they gathered at my Granny's house from all parts of the world. The Muckin' o' Geordie's Byre is an old Scottish folk song and Burns wrote a version too. This differs from those but we loved it as kids, particularly the section that mocks Received Pronunciation. So many of those old Scottish tunes we loved, I realise in retrospect, were about getting gloriously drunk. Doris Day may have made me gay but Andy Stewart made me a binge drinker. My first thought was to place the gruesomely sentimental A Scottish Soldier here because I remember how I used to weep over the poor soldier far from home as as tender little soul. It reaches dizzying heights of mawkishness and my, frankly, alcoholic and chain smoking old grandmother would play it and weep and think of her two soldier sons. It's as bad as Rolf Harris' Two Little Boys for the reliable jerking of tears.
10. The Three Bells by Edith Piaf et les Compagnons de la Chanson. This is a cheat. My granny, I'm sure, didn't have this Piaf version but the inferior American one by The Browns. Either would have me welling up but this one's classier.
Next week, I will rummage around in 1961. Or perhaps not, since this playlist plucks at my heartstrings a little too much.
So I thought of what songs I had liked myself at the age of four. 1960! Before I started primary school, before The Beatles, before we had a tv or a fridge or a phone, before Dusty Springfield, before so much! I had a vivid childhood memory of loving Ronnie Hilton's A Windmill in Old Amsterdam in my infancy but it turned out that I was actually 8 when it was a hit. Late developer... So here are ten tunes I was enjoying at the age of 4! These were mostly 78rpm single recordings or 33 1/3rpm albums that belonged to my father or one of my mother's younger brothers (they were often off abroad in England or Egypt or Norway or the Gulf and would store their stuff in our loft).
1. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by The Platters
We had a 78rpm dinner plate of a record that we (me and my baby sister) played over and over but we had no idea who The Platters were or what they looked like. I now see that lead singer Tony Williams (above) was a bit of a shag.
2. Carmen Jones How my dad loved this film soundtrack. I could probably sing all the songs as soon as I could talk. I was ignorant of the story, of Bizet, of the politics, had never seen the film, but loved the songs. This is the anglicised lyric matched to the tune of L'Amour est Enfant de Bohème, which I learned to love afresh when I grew up and discovered the opera. For me though, the Bizet was never going to accrete the emotional load that the Oscar Hammerstein version had. I wonder why the lyrics are subtitled here? She's singing, magnificently and with great clarity, in English anyway.
3. Eartha Kitt and I Want to be Evil. My dad, I now know, had a very male adolescent relationship with sex throughout his life. I was impressed as a toddler that he thought Eartha was "sexy" although I really had no idea what that meant. But I liked the tune and the words and had seen her on tv (where I thought she looked a bit like my grandmother). In later life, I came to love her even more and once even saw her in the glorious flesh at the Edinburgh Festival.
4. Kaw Liga by Hank Williams.
In working class industrial-belt Scotland, there's a crossover between some Scottish folk and American country music. This was the original A Side of a disc that had "Your Cheatin' Heart" on its flip. As little kids, we loved this and felt deeply the tragedy of the wooden cigar store Indian with his knotty pine heart. Phrases such as "Native American" were then unknown to us and we had very confused, romantic ideas about "Indians".
5. Before I ever fell in love with Doris Day on film (as I certainly did!), I knew all the songs from Calamity Jane and, of those, The Deadwood Stage was my favourite. It was such a thrill, when I finally saw the musical, to see the songs in context, and Doris Day's performance cemented the love inculcated in me as a little boy for her breathy voice. I wonder if my folks knew this exposure to Miss Day was beginning the path to gay awareness for me?
6. The great Perry Como singing What Did Delaware? You seldom hear about Como these days but he was enormous when I was a tiny chap. We had lots of his recordings in the house but this was my favourite and I could recite all the puns in order in those days.
7. The Glenn Miller Orchestra and In The Mood. My dad would bang on about his National Service and play this but the bigger treat for my sister and me was when my mood-swinging mother would be a bit hypomanic and would teach us to jive to this tune. The man himself we never saw, just Jimmy Stewart playing him later in The Glenn Miller Story, which I must have watched a hundred times. I love the swagger of the purse-lipped pianist in this film. You see him in close up first about 30 seconds in. I've since seen (mostly American) marching bands performing this and it thrills me still, every time.
8. Here's one of the first songs I probably ever learnt to sing, at my grandmother's admonitory knee. Ye Cannae Shove Yer Granny Aff The Bus!. I loved my granny. I loved her sieved broth, her butterscotch puddings, her stories about the King and Mrs Simpson or The Great Strike. I was therefore not always comfortable with the suggestion of violence in this song. However, the granny I loved so much was my maternal grandmother and I didn't like the paternal one much, so I would join in with this when we sang it on long journeys or in the playground. This clip has extra verses we never sang but I remember lots of bus journeys like this one. It's very Scottish and I was surrounded by all sorts of Scottish music as a kid. Everywhere else in the world they have other words for this tune: She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain.
9. So, here's some tartan stuff, plundering the music hall image of Scottishness. Andy Stewart was a master of this genre and I could have chosen several of his tunes which the extended family would belt out at Hogmanay when they gathered at my Granny's house from all parts of the world. The Muckin' o' Geordie's Byre is an old Scottish folk song and Burns wrote a version too. This differs from those but we loved it as kids, particularly the section that mocks Received Pronunciation. So many of those old Scottish tunes we loved, I realise in retrospect, were about getting gloriously drunk. Doris Day may have made me gay but Andy Stewart made me a binge drinker. My first thought was to place the gruesomely sentimental A Scottish Soldier here because I remember how I used to weep over the poor soldier far from home as as tender little soul. It reaches dizzying heights of mawkishness and my, frankly, alcoholic and chain smoking old grandmother would play it and weep and think of her two soldier sons. It's as bad as Rolf Harris' Two Little Boys for the reliable jerking of tears.
10. The Three Bells by Edith Piaf et les Compagnons de la Chanson. This is a cheat. My granny, I'm sure, didn't have this Piaf version but the inferior American one by The Browns. Either would have me welling up but this one's classier.
Next week, I will rummage around in 1961. Or perhaps not, since this playlist plucks at my heartstrings a little too much.
Friday, 25 September 2009
My Favourite Record OF ALL TIME!
I haven't checked the date stamp on this but it transports me instantly to University Halls of Residence in first year, Edinburgh, the only gay in the village near enough (or so it seemed) but making a big splash!
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Pink Prada Purse
Our Lady J is celebrating 20,000 hits on Pink Prada Purse on YouTube. Let's add a few more!
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Duckie Report
Another absolutely splendid Duckie!
We went down to Peckham to have food and drinks and fun with some friends, at an event organised to exploit the presence upon these shores of a friend from Iowa. Despite the torrential downpour that suddenly broke over us, we all managed to make it to Duckie to maximise our friend's enjoyment of London. Five of the Duckie Six were there and Simon was very sharply suited as if to make up for the absence of the legendarily well tailored Father Cloth.
We had two cabarets and the second was a German chap called Noisy Pig who had lots of multimedia stuff going on: pumping eurobeats, projection of images behind him, comedy eyewear. It was fine. But the first of the cabarets was venerable septuagenarian Bette Bourne reminiscing about Quentin Crisp, apparently an old friend, and giving us some of the great man's lines, delivered with the same withering crispness. I was fortunate to have met Quentin years back and to have seen him do his own show and I have to say Bette did an exemplary job, in my peripheral opinion. You could have heard a pin drop in the RVT and that doesn't often happen at Duckie. Marvellous!
Our friends had all gone the other side of the Activity Island to have a fashion model makeover from Amy, celebrating 25 years of British Fashion Week or something. Amy worked fast and everyone came away even more glamorous than before. The only downside was, for me, that I had recommended the Norwegian Nazi Zombie horror film Dead Snow to Kim Phaggs in the past and he had since watched it and found it wanting! I love his musical tastes but clearly that doesn't correlate with our respective film tastes. I really liked Dead Snow! Hey ho.
We all ended up back on our roof terrace, fortunately only a short trot in slingbacks from Duckie, annoying the neighbours and draining the alcohol from the fridge. I went slightly mad with the cheese and mushrooms on toast but it was all eaten. What a great, great night! Still had one friend with us this morning. We went round the corner to The Oval Lounge for an English Sunday roast, with another friend from close by, and damn fine that was too. In bed early tonight and taking life easily after a mofo of a weekend! Brilliant though :)))
We went down to Peckham to have food and drinks and fun with some friends, at an event organised to exploit the presence upon these shores of a friend from Iowa. Despite the torrential downpour that suddenly broke over us, we all managed to make it to Duckie to maximise our friend's enjoyment of London. Five of the Duckie Six were there and Simon was very sharply suited as if to make up for the absence of the legendarily well tailored Father Cloth.
We had two cabarets and the second was a German chap called Noisy Pig who had lots of multimedia stuff going on: pumping eurobeats, projection of images behind him, comedy eyewear. It was fine. But the first of the cabarets was venerable septuagenarian Bette Bourne reminiscing about Quentin Crisp, apparently an old friend, and giving us some of the great man's lines, delivered with the same withering crispness. I was fortunate to have met Quentin years back and to have seen him do his own show and I have to say Bette did an exemplary job, in my peripheral opinion. You could have heard a pin drop in the RVT and that doesn't often happen at Duckie. Marvellous!
Our friends had all gone the other side of the Activity Island to have a fashion model makeover from Amy, celebrating 25 years of British Fashion Week or something. Amy worked fast and everyone came away even more glamorous than before. The only downside was, for me, that I had recommended the Norwegian Nazi Zombie horror film Dead Snow to Kim Phaggs in the past and he had since watched it and found it wanting! I love his musical tastes but clearly that doesn't correlate with our respective film tastes. I really liked Dead Snow! Hey ho.
We all ended up back on our roof terrace, fortunately only a short trot in slingbacks from Duckie, annoying the neighbours and draining the alcohol from the fridge. I went slightly mad with the cheese and mushrooms on toast but it was all eaten. What a great, great night! Still had one friend with us this morning. We went round the corner to The Oval Lounge for an English Sunday roast, with another friend from close by, and damn fine that was too. In bed early tonight and taking life easily after a mofo of a weekend! Brilliant though :)))
Sunday, 13 September 2009
District 9
Went to the pictures this afternoon, an appropriate entertainment for a day that had proven suddenly autumnal. Saw District 9, a South African sci fi film. It's great! It explains very little and shows you a great deal of fun stuff.
Like all the best sci fi, it takes themes from contemporary culture and presents us with metaphorical teasers. On the surface, this one is about race, about the othering and subjugation of millions of people. It's about the ways that political oppression is sustained and how easily we can all be hoodwinked by the powerful. It has so many more delicate touches in it too.
It works on every level, I think. The cinematography is great (it reminded me hugely of City of God), the sound is great (the click language of the aliens, the incidental music) and the effects are very well managed. The 'prawns' make the Cylon centurions look clunky and robotic. But the main thing is that it's a rattling good story that moves along at a fair old lick, and you can't predict every turn of the plot, right up until the ending where much is tantalisingly unresolved. I admired the ending very much. And the central figure of Wikus van der Merwe is played by a guy who's apparently never been in a film before: Sharlto Copley. He does a great job. You like him, he's funny, but even from the first he is seamlessly inserting crude racist epithets into everyday exchanges and he's no mindless mass-market Hollywood good guy.
I'm sure there's lot more to say but have to go cook some prawns.
Like all the best sci fi, it takes themes from contemporary culture and presents us with metaphorical teasers. On the surface, this one is about race, about the othering and subjugation of millions of people. It's about the ways that political oppression is sustained and how easily we can all be hoodwinked by the powerful. It has so many more delicate touches in it too.
It works on every level, I think. The cinematography is great (it reminded me hugely of City of God), the sound is great (the click language of the aliens, the incidental music) and the effects are very well managed. The 'prawns' make the Cylon centurions look clunky and robotic. But the main thing is that it's a rattling good story that moves along at a fair old lick, and you can't predict every turn of the plot, right up until the ending where much is tantalisingly unresolved. I admired the ending very much. And the central figure of Wikus van der Merwe is played by a guy who's apparently never been in a film before: Sharlto Copley. He does a great job. You like him, he's funny, but even from the first he is seamlessly inserting crude racist epithets into everyday exchanges and he's no mindless mass-market Hollywood good guy.
I'm sure there's lot more to say but have to go cook some prawns.
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