Tomorrow is Dave's film night. 7.30pm start. Da has promised to re-enact the gross acts at some point in the evening. He will be wearing a t-shirt. When he removes it - run for cover!
Thursday, 16 July 2009
David's Film Night
Tomorrow is Dave's film night. 7.30pm start. Da has promised to re-enact the gross acts at some point in the evening. He will be wearing a t-shirt. When he removes it - run for cover!
Heart of Gold
This grainy footage is proof positive that Da does have a weekly residency at the Egypt Cottage, where he enjoys a fiercely loyal fan base. This week some young gun toting an alto sax turned up and tried to blow Da off stage with some middle-of-the-road jazz. Da was dismissive - 'he'd go down well on X-Factor' - he sneered. After the boy's set, Da returned to the stage to play a plaintive version of 'Ukulele Women'. The place erupted and jazz boy scuttled out the door.
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Sail On...
BRIAN WILSON AT THE SAGE
Published Date: 15 July 2009
By Terry Kelly
THIS concert by Beach Boys founding father Brian Wilson was more a musical celebration of the California sound.
A party atmosphere prevailed throughout, with the capacity crowd on their feet and dancing for much of the three-hour gig.
Billed as the Greatest Hits Live Tour, it pretty much delivered on that promise.
Brian and his superb 10-piece band of multi-instrumentalists kicked off with the timeless California Girls and never let the pace slacken.
Sitting centre-stage at his trademark and mostly unplayed keyboard, Wilson seemed to be enjoying himself, even if his intros and quirky hand movements do often seem by rote, while the former Beach Boys genius introduced the emotional In My Room as In My Little Room.
Wilson led his adoring Tyneside audience through his incredible back catalogue, with pop classics like I Get Around, Little Deuce Coupe and Barbara Ann leaving fans bopping in the aisles.
The second half was the more memorable, with the occasionally overdone party atmosphere subsiding long enough for what was for me the concert highlight.
That was the back-to-back God Only Knows and a truly spine-chilling version of Midnight's Another Day, from last year's That Lucky Old Sun album.
It was also great to hear the title track of Brian's solo outing Imagination, plus Add Some Music To Your Day, from the 1970 Sunflower album.
A great gig, but a few more reflective numbers would have made it even better.
From http://www.shieldsgazette.com/livereview/Brian-Wilson-The-Sage-Gateshead.5461643.jp
BRIAN WILSON AT THE SAGE, GATESHEAD
SUNDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER 2009
SET LIST
First Half:
Our Prayer
California Girls
Girl Don’t Tell Me
Dance Dance Dance
Happy Birthday Sue (Levinson)
Surfer Girl
In My Room
Salt Lake City
Custom Machine
409
Soul Searchin’
Desert Drive
Don’t Worry Baby
Row Your Boat
I Get Around
Do You Wanna Dance
Marcella
Do It Again
Second Half:
You Keep A Knockin’
Then I Kissed Her
Your Imagination
Add Some Music To Your Day
When I Grow Up
All Summer Long
Little Deuce Coupe
Little Girl I Once Knew
Sloop John B
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
God Only Knows
Midnight’s Another Day
Lucky Old Sun
Goin’ Home
Southern California
Good Vibrations
Encore:
You Keep A Knockin’
Johnny B Goode
Help Me Rhonda
Barbara Ann
Surfin’ USA
Fun Fun Fun
Love & Mercy
Percussionist Nelson Bragg played the Cluny on Monday night with Anny Celsi - see http://www.myspace.com/annycelsi
The photo of Brian at the Sage is by David Wala, a locally-based photographer whose work now graces the cover of the new edition of Ralph Ellison's great novel, Invisible Man.
His site is at http://www.davidwala.com/index.html
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
Bringing Up Baby - how it was done
Although 'baby' did sometimes actually appear with Grant and Hepburn, a number of special effects were also used to create the illusion of the actors sharing the same space as the leopard. Of course, once it's pointed out, it's easy to see the reflection on the glass partition. Grant, apparently, was less than keen to work with the actual leopard!
I suggest you click on it a nd watch it on YouTube because you miss some of it here.
I suggest you click on it a nd watch it on YouTube because you miss some of it here.
Viagra Gum
Hamas says Israel dumping aphrodisiac gum on Gaza
Tuesday, July 14 05:06 pm
Hamas suspects that Israeli intelligence services are supplying its Gaza Strip stronghold with chewing gum that boosts the sex drive in order to "corrupt the young," an official said on Tuesday.
The Israeli military declined to comment officially on the allegations.
"We have discovered two types of stimulants that were introduced into the Gaza Strip from Israeli border crossings," Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan told AFP.
"The first type is presented in the form of chewing gum and the second in the form of drops," he said.
The Islamist movement that has run the densely populated and impoverished Palestinian territory for the past two years said it has detained members of a gang that helped to bring in the products.
"They admitted during the investigation they were linked to the Zionist intelligence services," he said.
One suspect said he had received the products from an Israeli intelligence officer at a cut-rate price "with the officer saying they did not want money, but to distribute the products among the young people of Gaza," Shahwan said.
"The intelligence services are aiming to corrupt the young generation by distributing these products among students."
The story came to light after a Palestinian man filed a complaint that his daughter had experienced "dubious side effects" after chewing the offending gum, Israeli media reported.
The Israeli military declined to comment officially on the allegations, which one military source termed "absurd."
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090714/tod-hamas-says-israel-dumping-aphrodisia-7f81b96.html
Tuesday, July 14 05:06 pm
Hamas suspects that Israeli intelligence services are supplying its Gaza Strip stronghold with chewing gum that boosts the sex drive in order to "corrupt the young," an official said on Tuesday.
The Israeli military declined to comment officially on the allegations.
"We have discovered two types of stimulants that were introduced into the Gaza Strip from Israeli border crossings," Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan told AFP.
"The first type is presented in the form of chewing gum and the second in the form of drops," he said.
The Islamist movement that has run the densely populated and impoverished Palestinian territory for the past two years said it has detained members of a gang that helped to bring in the products.
"They admitted during the investigation they were linked to the Zionist intelligence services," he said.
One suspect said he had received the products from an Israeli intelligence officer at a cut-rate price "with the officer saying they did not want money, but to distribute the products among the young people of Gaza," Shahwan said.
"The intelligence services are aiming to corrupt the young generation by distributing these products among students."
The story came to light after a Palestinian man filed a complaint that his daughter had experienced "dubious side effects" after chewing the offending gum, Israeli media reported.
The Israeli military declined to comment officially on the allegations, which one military source termed "absurd."
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090714/tod-hamas-says-israel-dumping-aphrodisia-7f81b96.html
Jimmy Forsyth RIP
HIS portraits caught the changing face of Newcastle for over 50 years.
Jimmy Forsyth, who has died aged 95, captured life through a lens with an uncompromising eye which turned the everyday into an art form,
He began using his camera in 1954 to record the West End communities around his flat in Scotswood Road – a world which was soon to disappear.
This was the time of Teddy Boys, corner shops, rag and bone men, tinkers, grimy kids on street corners, hula hoops and cowboy outfits, cobbled streets and flat caps.
For decades to come, Jimmy doggedly pictured demolitions of landmarks such as the Scotswood and Redheugh bridges and new developments which were springing up.
In 1960 he photographed John Dobson’s Royal Arcade which was soon to be flattened to make way for Swan House and its roundabout.
He also recorded incidents such as the hole in a bedroom wall caused by a runaway beer wagon in 1960. It was used by the Evening Chronicle, earning Jimmy seven shillings and six pence.
Until around 18 months ago, Jimmy lived in Cruddas Park in Newcastle before moving to Elswick Hall care home, where he died on Saturday. He would have been 96 next month.
After 20 years of picture taking, Jimmy came to the attention of West End librarian Des Walton, who staged exhibitions of his images.
“Jimmy came in out of the blue with his albums. I was staggered to see what he had done,” said Mr Walton.
An exhibition followed at the Side Gallery in Newcastle, followed by a book of his photographs published in 1986 by Bloodaxe, called Scotswood Road, which became a local best seller.
In 2002 a second book, Out Of One Eye, was released by Tyne Bridge Publishing.
Jimmy, who was born in Barry in South Wales, had arrived in the North East in 1943 to help with war work as a fitter at ICI Prudhoe, but was blinded in his right eye in an accident four days after starting work.
Only last month Tyne Bridge released a new book, titled Jimmy Forsyth, featuring his pictures from the 1950s and 60s.
The gradual realisation of the importance of Jimmy’s vast archive saw him win the Halina Award for Photography in 1987.
Film director Mike Figgis cast Jimmy as a newspaper seller in his 1988 Newcastle-set film Stormy Monday.
Jimmy was even interviewed live on the Newcastle rock TV programme The Tube.
A display of a dozen of Jimmy’s classic pictures is currently on show in Newcastle’s new city centre library.
Anthony Flowers, who compiled the new book on Jimmy Forsyth, described how Jimmy’s work had been exhibited alongside that of major British professional photographers.
“Jimmy was a one-off, an incredible and unique individual. I have not come across anyone else who remotely approaches him,” said Anthony.
“He embarked on a mission to record people and places.
“He came from a relatively poor background but he was always interested in history and read and read and read.
“He was often thought of as being something of an eccentric, but he has left an enormous legacy. You can’t measure what he has left to the city of Newcastle and Tyneside. Jimmy photographed people as they really were, in their own surroundings, on street corners.
“They are really poignant pictures which have this gritty reality about them.”
Anthony recalls the opening of the Gateshead Millennium Bridge.
“People were lining up to be the first to cross the bridge and then the crowd parted, and there was Jimmy with his camera.”
Thousands of Jimmy’s photographs, in wallets and tartan albums, are now in the care of Tyne Wear Archives, where they will be sorted and catalogued.
His funeral will be held at West Road crematorium on Thursday at 2pm.
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-evening-chronicle/2009/07/14/photographer-who-captured-newcastle-dies-72703-24149045/
Some of Jimmy's pictures of the Scotswood Road in the west end of Newcastle are at: http://www.amber-online.com/people/21
- for example:
Saturday, 11 July 2009
.jpg)
Musical Doings in Ipswich
The East of England Co-op Tent
The Back Porch Band at Music In The Park
The Hofners at the Woolpack
A week in Suffolk
Friday, 10 July 2009
Da spotted at Central Station!
Stop Press! Rumours are circulating that Da has hit toon. Lock up your livers.
Mr E Guest
Mr E Guest
Thursday, 9 July 2009
DRINKING, ALEX AND ME (A drinking diary posted from Ipswich)
In the wee wee hours, in the midst of nowhere, I recall a moment which stopped my heart. Drinking had become my reality. But everything changed today at The Seal in Woodbridge. Alex took me aside and asked, out of nowhere: "Follow me." He took me to St John's Parish Church. As he kneeled, and I sat, he said: "How much longer?". I could not answer him. Home soon.
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
DRINKING, ALEX AND ME (A drinking diary posted from Ipswich)
Less than 48 hours to my salvation. I hope I make it. We got particularly ratted today. There's not much else to do in Nacton.
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
ARTHUR ASKEY MAKES SURPRISE APPEARANCE AT MICHAEL JACKSON MEMORIAL CONCERT
Controversy that Askey chose to perform 'Busy Bee' at the finale of the memorial ceremony over-shadowed the tribute. After the show, ex-'girlfriend' Brooke Shields, condemned the long-dead British comic. She said: "It was mean-spirited of Askey to promote his new material at a time of grieving. He had promised to sing 'Man in the Mirror' as a duet with Green Day. That would have been perfect."
DRINKING, ALEX AND ME (A drinking diary posted from Ipswich)
Another 9am start today. I stumbled at The White Horse in Kirton and grazed my knee. Alex strapped it up. He carries supplies with him. Then we went on our way, like Vladimir and Estragon. Weary.
HOW DOES HE DO IT?
Oddball Lib Dem politician Opik Lembit is reported to be dating page 3 girl Katie Green. She has been won over by his wit and wisdom, apparently. And his snazzy shirt.
Joni Boxed Set
From http://jonimitchell.com
"In November 2009, Rhino Entertainment will be releasing a Joni Mitchell box set. The 4 CD and 1 DVD package will have over 85 songs, from the mid-sixties up to Joni's last album "Shine". Several unreleased songs and alternate versions will be included, plus very rare and previously unissued video performances spanning Joni's incomparable career. Joni will be contributing notes to the package and overseeing the photo edit and design."
So far so good, but then you have this:
"Instead of traditional liner notes, Joni would like to invite the community to send in a statement of why they enjoy the music. It can be one sentence or a short paragraph and the best will be chosen for the liner notes for the project. It can be a personal experience with the music or why in general you like it.
An example of which might be...
"Joni, you make race-less, gender-less music."
"Girl, you make me see pictures in my head.""
Monday, 6 July 2009
DRINKING, ALEX AND ME (A drinking diary posted from Ipswich)
Today will go down in infamy. Alex committed an act so gross it is too disgusting to reveal in a family friendly blog. You'll have to wait until Friday - I want to see the horror in your eyes (*Bring the camera, Paul*). Suffice to say the act was committed in The Dove pub, one of 13 watering holes we frequented, including, if my memory services me well, The Woolpack, McGhinty's, Ransomes, The Cricketers, The Foxes, The Shipwreck, The Branthan Bull, Issacs on the quayside, the Duke of York, The Brickies, and back to The Cricketers. Alex has lined up a gig at The Woolpack for tomorrow afternoon. Friday seems a long way off. Oh mercy!
Sunday, 5 July 2009
But let's wait until September 7th...
"New" album from Prefab Sprout - or has Paddy dusted off some unreleased stuff? Ride and God Watch Over You exist as covers by other artists and some of the other titles have been mentioned over the years in connection with Sprout stuff that was never released. The album title has, in the past, been mentioned as a track too. But it doesn't appear to be on the album...1.Let There Be Music
2.Ride
3.I Love Music
4.God Watch Over You
5.Music Is A Princess
6.Earth, The Story So Far
7.Last Of The Great Romantics
8.Falling In Love
9.Sweet Gospel Music
10.Meet The New Mozart
11.Angel Of Love
Soundboard of the Sprouts in Tokyo, 1986: http://tincanpot.blogspot.com/
DRINKING, ALEX AND ME (A drinking diary posted from Ipswich)
Hi all from Ipswich.
Just thought I'd keep you informed on the progress of my liver. Spent all day yesterday - from 9am - in the Case is Altered (great name). It's a tiny little bar in Woodbridge Road. Despite not being enough room to spin a cat we managed to get in a fight with a local fishmonger! Apparently we were in his seat. To cut a long story short the bar manageress, a rather attractive redhead, had to intervene. It ended with handshakes all round, but I have a feeling it will not be my last adventure. I'll keep you posted.
Da.
Just thought I'd keep you informed on the progress of my liver. Spent all day yesterday - from 9am - in the Case is Altered (great name). It's a tiny little bar in Woodbridge Road. Despite not being enough room to spin a cat we managed to get in a fight with a local fishmonger! Apparently we were in his seat. To cut a long story short the bar manageress, a rather attractive redhead, had to intervene. It ended with handshakes all round, but I have a feeling it will not be my last adventure. I'll keep you posted.
Da.
WORSE THAN LARRY
We never usually stray into the murky world of politics - "the instrument of the devil" - but this is too good an opportunity to pass up. Palin really is barmy. Anyone who understands a word of this please post.
Saturday, 4 July 2009
The Tit Man Cometh
From The Times July 3, 2009
Rufus Wainwright's first opera, Prima Donna
Who would be the best contemporary musician to write an opera for the masses? The cheerfully immodest singer-songwriter has a clear idea
Stefanie Marsh
Is there anything we don’t know about Rufus Wainwright? He’s constantly being interviewed or singing his autobiographical songs about rehab and falling in and out of love, and his “story” is so well known that there are quite a lot of people who know much more about the man than the music. There’s his precocious childhood (he first performed at the age of 6) divided between America and the French part of Canada. His close but at times strained relationship with his parents, the folk singers Loudon Wainwright and Kate McGarrigle, who divorced when Rufus was 3, and didn’t like it very much when he told them that he was gay. His promiscuous early adolescence; the brutal rape in Hyde Park at 14 that pitched him into seven miserable years of sexual abstinence. A nearly fatal addiction to crystal meth, recovery; his obsession with Judy Garland and the re-creation of her concert at Carnegie Hall. And, of course, his favourite subject, stardom. To quote his critics he has a tendency to “overshare”.
We meet in a small boutique hotel in Notting Hill, where Wainwright is almost unrecognisable beneath an unflattering brown hooded leather jacket and a shaggy Ben Hur beard. He remains infectiously charming, however, puppyish, delightfully catty and, despite the “you knows” and the “likes” that pepper his conversation and the double entendres he can’t help making (every time he says the word “ballsy” or “blow” he starts sniggering), he is obviously bright and reflective, as well as rampantly (and self-confessedly) egomaniacal.
He looks a little wan and unhappy, though, because he is recovering, he says, from Elton John’s White Tie and Tiara Ball the night before, at which news had reached him of Michael Jackson’s death. “I’m a bit sad about Michael Jackson,” he says in that languid drawl that loads everything he says with pathos or light sarcasm. “It’s tragic that he ended that way, mangled and poor and dead and about to make this big comeback.”
But he brightens up quickly enough when a few seconds later he turns his attention back to the subject at hand: his first opera, Prima Donna, which is to be staged next week at the Manchester Festival. He is “elated” about his new project, describing it as “just a day in the life of a singer and the different things she does”.
Unsurprisingly, considering who wrote it, “there’s a scene in it where she [the main character, a fading opera singer, Régine Saint Laurent] does an interview and it’s kind of hilarious . . . If you replace the prima donna with me, it’s very, very revealing about my inner life and my experience in showbusiness and some of the extremes I have been driven to.”
He’s fishing to be asked more about these “extremes”, but when no question comes he continues undeterred: “It’s a bit like — I’m not in any way putting it on the same level as that — but, you know the Madame Bovary c’est moi’ Flaubert comment?” Then he lets out the first of many of his famous donkey laughs. Whatever you think of the man or his music, it’s extremely difficult not to like him in person.
Prima Donna was commissioned by the New York Met, which cancelled it when it emerged that Wainwright had written the libretto in French. (“They commissioned me without telling me it had to be in English.”) And because he is as businesslike a Grammy-winnning singer-songwriter as it is possible to be, and because his mother is fighting a protracted battle with a rare form of cancer, Wainwright simply cut his losses and started looking for other takers.
Nevertheless he never misses an opportunity to have a bitch about the Met: “Anything that gets done at the Met, you need to wait at least five years until it gets into the system and I don’t have that kind of time . . . for personal reasons.” By the way, his mother is “doing really well right now but it’s really been up and down for the past few years and . . . I know it’s kind of sick-sounding, but opera really is our baby. And I wanted her to see it and I’m sure she will be around for the next one and all of that but I couldn’t take that gamble at the time.”
Rejection by the Met caused Wainwright a great deal of disappointment and had almost fatal repercussions for Prima Donna, which seemed for a while to have been blacklisted. And although he’s been an opera fan as long as he can remember, writing an opera himself almost put him off for life, he claims, not entirely convincingly. “A lot of innocence was lost, shall we say, in the making of this project. I think I really placed a lot of elements of opera on a pedestal before this and the closer I got the more I realised that these people are extremely fallible and somewhat nasty.”
He says that there were moments when he wanted to walk away, go back to New York and hang out with Jaern, his German boyfriend of three years, and “never go to the opera again”. But, no surprise here, he stuck it out — he’s a pro after all — and having his own opera performed has been a lifelong ambition. Had the project fallen through, he says, he would have “died a miserable man” (Wainwright turns 36 at the end of this month).
The worst part, he says, was when he delivered the libretto and the production team didn’t seem to want to have anything more to do with him. “They kind of took it and now they’re going to do with it what they want and there was never a moment when they said: ‘We are really lucky to have this work’.”
He concedes that in fact they probably did say it — “a lot of this is in my head too. I was just so vulnerable and I really put myself out there. It was very traumatic and sometimes . . .” There is a pause. “I think the opera world is really used to dealing with dead people. And, really, I did feel dead at a certain point. It was handed over and it was like: ‘Why don’t you become Wagner or Verdi who’s, like, buried and we’ll do what we need to do.’ ”
What they had failed to realise, apparently, was the golden opportunity they now had to learn from a master of live performance: “I spent half of my time on stage; I’m dealing with audiences all the time; I have a certain gauge of a room as a performer — honestly, I don’t know of any other composer who has.”
Well, there is one other obvious candidate — Damon Albarn, who wrote the opera Monkey for the same festival two years ago. It was considered a triumph, visually if not always musically, but Wainwright is headed towards favoured territory now (himself) and we’ve already moved on to why he thinks the opera world needs to “evolve” and how “by getting a bunch of hot guys together and calling them Divo or whatever they’ve really gone for the really low Britney Spears kind of look to sex it up. And I think it’s such a tragedy and such a mistake for that world.” How would he suggest they rectify this error? “They should . . . take an example from my career. Heh heh heh! And keep it about the music.”
But there remains the problem of who, besides Wainwright, is qualified to bring opera to the masses. That’s a tough one, he says. And for a while he does a good impression of a person actually mulling the question over: “Somebody who is alive right now? You know, Paganini or Chopin, I mean they were all performers as well but, right now? The performer-composer thing is not that existent . . . It’s hard . I don’t know.” After a few more minutes of this he blurts out the inevitable: “I don’t think anyone could do it but me!”
There follows another round of delighted cackling. Is he an egomaniac? “That’s what it takes!” he says cheerfully. “I admit it! I’ve always had a ballsy outlook, being gay. Heh heh heh.”
He’s been called pretentious and arrogant but, actually he’s neither. Selfobsessed in a very upfront way, definitely, but, perhaps more significantly, terrified of being excluded. And, good grief, he’s competitive. As a trial run, he recently performed at an opera festival in Switzerland. First up was Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. “They got like 15,000 hits on podcasts.” Next was Wainwright, belting out, as he put it, “a couple of Mozart tracks. I got, like, 70,000 hits, you know. And I think that is an element which is intimidating.”
Prima Donna is at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, on July 10 (0844 8472275) 12, 14, 17 and 19 (0844 8154961)
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/article6625256.ece
Friday, 3 July 2009
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Maybe in return, she'll pay your gas bill...
Download free tracks from folk legend Linda Thompson. And help pay for her new album!
Jul 1, 2009, 10:30 AM by Clark Collis
Categories: Covers, Downloads and Streams, News, What the...?
Linda Thompson is a British folk singer who recorded a bunch of stellar albums in the ‘70s with her then-husband, legendary singer-guitarist Richard Thompson. She’s also one of my favorite all-time vocalists, and I had a pleasure of interviewing her a couple of years back when she released her last album Versatile Heart.
To be honest, I was expecting a shy folk siren, but instead discovered her to be a hugely entertaining raconteur, happy to recall the time she tried to kick Richard onstage during their last tour together or the many occasions she has been confused with one of Elvis Presley’s last girlfriends (they share a name) by tabloid journalists.
Anyway, Thompson is looking to release another album, and has asked fans to help finance the CD, following in the footsteps of previous artists like Jill Sobule and British prog-rockers Marillion. She has even put together a list of incentives to encourage donations: For $50, you get a signed copy of the new CD and your name included in the liner notes, while $5,000 will buy you the chance to actually contribute vocals to the album.
"Don’t worry if you can’t sing,” Thompson writes in an explanatory note. "That’s what AutoTune is for. Just ask Britney." Finally there is the “$100,000 Pay Me To Go Away Level.” “For $100,000 I won’t make the record at all -- in fact, I won’t make a record for the next year,” explains the droll singer. “Imagine the rush, the power, the heady trip! It will be like being a record executive in the eighties all over again!”
More seriously, Thompson is offering a couple of free tracks to whet prospective investors’ appetites; one song is called “Never The Bride” and features her son, and solo artist in his own right, Teddy Thompson on guitar. You can also download her version of Gerry Rafferty’s “His Mother Never Liked Me Anyway.”
http://music-mix.ew.com/2009/07/linda-thompson-free-tracks.html
Jul 1, 2009, 10:30 AM by Clark Collis
Categories: Covers, Downloads and Streams, News, What the...?
Linda Thompson is a British folk singer who recorded a bunch of stellar albums in the ‘70s with her then-husband, legendary singer-guitarist Richard Thompson. She’s also one of my favorite all-time vocalists, and I had a pleasure of interviewing her a couple of years back when she released her last album Versatile Heart.
To be honest, I was expecting a shy folk siren, but instead discovered her to be a hugely entertaining raconteur, happy to recall the time she tried to kick Richard onstage during their last tour together or the many occasions she has been confused with one of Elvis Presley’s last girlfriends (they share a name) by tabloid journalists.
Anyway, Thompson is looking to release another album, and has asked fans to help finance the CD, following in the footsteps of previous artists like Jill Sobule and British prog-rockers Marillion. She has even put together a list of incentives to encourage donations: For $50, you get a signed copy of the new CD and your name included in the liner notes, while $5,000 will buy you the chance to actually contribute vocals to the album.
"Don’t worry if you can’t sing,” Thompson writes in an explanatory note. "That’s what AutoTune is for. Just ask Britney." Finally there is the “$100,000 Pay Me To Go Away Level.” “For $100,000 I won’t make the record at all -- in fact, I won’t make a record for the next year,” explains the droll singer. “Imagine the rush, the power, the heady trip! It will be like being a record executive in the eighties all over again!”
More seriously, Thompson is offering a couple of free tracks to whet prospective investors’ appetites; one song is called “Never The Bride” and features her son, and solo artist in his own right, Teddy Thompson on guitar. You can also download her version of Gerry Rafferty’s “His Mother Never Liked Me Anyway.”
http://music-mix.ew.com/2009/07/linda-thompson-free-tracks.html
STAYING POWER - NEIL SEDAKA
Date: 01 July 2009
By Terry Kelly
THERE cannot be many performers around who have enjoyed hits spanning more than half a century. But Neil Sedaka has proven his staying power, from the early days of rock 'n' roll to the age of the Internet.
At 70, the Brooklyn-born songsmith, who honed his songwriting skills at the Brill Building in New York with Carole King, remains a class act.
The concert began with footage of a stream of musical greats, from Elvis to Sinatra, who have covered Sedaka's songs.
Performing solo at a Steinway grand piano throughout, classically-trained Sedaka explored his impressive back catalogue, from early hits like Oh! Carol and Calendar Girl to 2009's You Are the Music of My Life.
For me, the highlights were moving versions of Going Nowhere, Betty Grable, the slow version of Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, and The Hungry Years, plus the song Michael Jackson told him was his favourite Sedaka song, Laughter In The Rain.
And there was still room for an encore of the recent massive UK charity hit, Amarillo (Is This The Way To), which had the capacity crowd dancing in their seats.
http://www.shieldsgazette.com/livereview/Neil-Sedaka-The-Sage-Gateshead.5417667.jp
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
