Hollywood Walk of Flames.......

September 30^th – In the entertainment industry when do you know you’ve arrived? By that I mean what constitutes success? Not that fleeting, one-hit-one appearance on Big Brother kind of success nor the popularity gained from having a string of hits, they’re both just transient things; they’re what brings you in the money in order for you to begin to build a legacy (unless, of course, your fame comes from the aforementioned Big Brother appearance, in which case it’s just the wherewithal which allows you access to the watering-holes of sleb-dom from where you can stumble out at four in the morning pissed as the proverbial with your skirt round your arse or your dress-shirt covered in vomit as you plot a short-lived but highly reportable course towards oblivion). In honesty and not to put a too fine point on it, if the roll-call of the great is to be believed, you’ve never really arrived until you’ve gone…as in died.

On this day in 1991, Liza Minnelli got a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame and you’d be excused for thinking, well, there it was; there’’s the recognition that you’d finally made it. Well…yeesss-ish.

Ms. Liza was the product of a union between Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, and by all reports she had what can only be described as a varied and interesting childhood. Her mother’s life is and was the archetypal child star gone wrong story and with four marriages and several battles with alcoholism and drug addiction to contend with, we can only imagine how the young Ms. Minnelli survived it all. But for all the disaster area that her life was, Judy Garland has got to be the marker by which all other performers are measured, both child and adult. An absolute survivor until her untimely (and somewhat unexpected) death at just 47, she managed to pack in enough for several lifetimes; four marriages, Grammy’s, Oscars, Golden Globes, Tony’s, voted in the top ten all-time greatest actresses by the AFI…and she dodged a whole magazine of health-bullets in the process. Certainly made a huge figure for her daughter to climb from under, should she choose to enter showbiz…and why shouldn’t she, after all, it was really all she knew and what daughter doesn’t want to somehow become her mother?

The fact that Liza Minnelli became such a feted performer must in part be due to the high possibility that she not only gained some of her mother’s performing talent but also some of her life-grits too, for Ms. Minnelli not only beat the prognosis of viral encephalitis, which in 2000 had her destined for a wheelchair and the inability to speak again, but also came through her own wars with alcoholism and drug addiction relatively unscathed…relatively enough to still be a performing icon to be reckoned with. With Academy Awards, Emmy’s, Tony’s, Oscars and Grammy’s under her belt one would think she could say  she’d arrived and was able to  stand alongside her mum who, one would figure, would’ve been very proud of her daughter’s outstanding performance in the film of Cabaret (although, I personally believe Judy Dench did it the best, on stage in the 1968 original London production, but that’s just me being a pompous old theatre-slut…can I say that today after…y’know, after…? Well, whatever, it’s out there now so…).

So, there we are, finally you get the American showbiz equivalent of a Purple Heart, a star on the Walk of Fame and you can look all in the eye and say, here I am, I’ve achieved all that is required of me and am the equal to my mother…’cept…’cept mum has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame… (Yes 3) and time runs short…

On this day in 1955 a well known but little used actor had his future cut from under him when he was pronounced D.O.A. at the Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital after being involved in a motor vehicle accident. Achieving little but promising much in the way of greatness, a great deal was made of him after his one and only film release, East of Eden. He was so under the radar in his career that his demise attracted only 18 lines in the Tribune newspaper and only made the front page of the Paso Robles Press newspaper because he was amongst a weekend of accidents that the paper announced in its headline, WEEKEND CRASH KILL 2, HURT 14 – Dozen Accidents Take Heavy Toll. His family couldn’t have been less showbizzy. His father a farmer and later a dentist, his mother, who he was reportedly very close to, dying of cancer when he was just nine years old. He was packed off to his aunt by his father and had a childhood of mixed fortune, religion figuring heavily in his formative years…as did the advances of a priest who befriended our young man (good Lord, they get everywhere, in every country and in every decade don’t they?). Ursula Andress had an affair with him and Marlon Brando was fascinated by him, more on the virility front but also as an actor. As they both came from the same school of acting.

By now you’ve probably worked out who I’m sketching out? Yup, James Dean no less and yet had I have asked that before he had that fatal accident, would you have known? Honest? Unless you were a film-head or under 20 at the time, I doubt it. Now we do, but it’s only after 60 years of brainwashing that we recognised his supposed brilliance. It’s only posthumously that Mr. Dean achieved a level of greatness placed upon him by lovers of cool, becoming a fashion and acting icon of immense proportions to generations of method actors. His style (hair, clothing, hep-ness) has been used as a template for ranks of young men. A gay icon (the guy in the stone-washed Levis ad…a dead ringer for the persona of our lad Mr. Dean) his name crops up on the list of many an actor’s influenced by list and his poster can be found on the bedroom walls of every third confused young man. He has featured in songs (Don McLean and The Eagles) and his car, known lovingly as The Little Bastard, has entered U.S. folklore; there’ve been a number of documentaries about him and his life, all his work has been released or re-released, compilations of his television work released as James Dean box sets, biographies written and he has a posthumous estate that still turns over a half a million dollars a year…

With that as a resume, I guess you can say that Mr. Dean finally arrived by checking out.

Marc Bolan - Little Acts of Unkindness

September 29^th – You remember a couple of days ago, how I blathered on about little acts of kindness (LAoK)? Didn’t waste too much time on it ‘cos I reckon all who read these minor brain-scramblings of mine right to their end each day are pretty much the sort of people who do these LAoK anyhow and wouldn’t want me teaching grandmothers how to suck eggs, as they say…well, I do, you probably say;

“I know that, Peter, now shut th’ fuck up”;

Which amounts to much the same thing.

Well on that subject, I came across two separate but well connected events that each cover a facet of that very thing and I just wanted to pass them on, together with my usual dollop of self-serving waffle. This will allow you to read, inwardly digest and then see how long it takes before you say;

“Peter, that’s bollocks that is.”

Marc Bolan. Not a bad performer, I guess. As previously and briefly mentioned in this blurb, I was always of the opinion that he was too manufactured. IMHO I think he had a streak of competitive selfishness that was quite happy to trample on the hands of other ladder-climbers, and I wouldn’t argue with you if you told me that this sort of behaviour was and is necessary in the rock music business. That’s probably true to a large extent, maybe even more so now. But what sort of made Mr. Bolan’s rise to fame all the more distasteful for me was the roots he discarded once the siren whispered in his ear and convinced him he’d be better off, a lovely boy such as him, as a solo artist (bring the band on down behind me boys because…I AM THE BAND). When John Peel first played Tyrannosaurus Rex’s singles on his Sunday afternoon Radio One Show, even though I wasn’t that impressed (too much like the Incredible String Band for me who, in honesty, did it better) but he seemingly was holding true to his wizard time in Paris, and his arrival on the scene was also timed well with the upsurge of popularity of a little known work of fiction, Lord of the Rings…maybe that should have been a pointer ’cos I believe one of his earlier recordings…with John’s Children I think…anyway, I think it was used as the muzak to a toothpaste ad, so tenuous links right there of a commercial soul packaged in a right-on persona…maybe that was what he was trying to tell us in the words of Children of the Revolution, a sort of a double-bluff and a note that all was not as it seemed and we were foolish if we thought differently; that it wasn’t about the others but was about him…? Or maybe it was all just words put together to give the impression of being down widda kidz and the joke was on us…? As things went on Mr. Bolan’s career faltered (drugs, weight gain, bad deals, bad decisions, tax problems and such) and it would seem that one of the only really positive events was that he and his partner, Gloria Jones, had a son, Rolan.

Anyhow, whatever height he had regained on the perch of fame, as we all know, in ‘77’, with Mr. Bolan as a passenger, his partner, Gloria Jones drove their Mini into a tree, killing Mr. Bolan and badly injuring her (as an aside, Ms. Jones, although charged with DWUTI, moved back to the States and so never faced the full force of the law over the accident… although you’d reckon she’d suffered enough, huh?) Anyhow, back on topic, this incident brought about a LAoK but also highlights an area of rock fandom that is less than palatable.

Very shortly after the crash, in response to Mr. Bolan’s death, David Bowie set up a trust fund for Rolan so that the lad shouldn’t suffer financially through the loss of his father. Well, no matter the royalties and spin-offs that Rolan would inherit, no lad deserves to lose his father at just two years old so, I guess, very thoughtful of Mr. Bowie to do that. I know he had the money and all that but still… As an antidote to this it was found out that, very shortly after the crash, the whole area had been ghoulishly stripped bare of all and anything even vaguely portable by Marc Bolan fans as souvenirs.

My thoughts (as if you’re interested) are that this incident was the beginnings of the end for the privacy afforded to stardom that ballooned into the full-scale paparazzi indignities that we’ve become so inured to over the past forty years; that the fans, somehow and maybe unwittingly, colluded with the press to deglamourise glam-rock. Certainly (and possibly in repentance?) the years following his death have been marked by ever more strange gatherings being held and tokens being left at the crash site (things like a fluffy toy of Shrek hanging from the tree (?) – unfortunately by its neck – leaves from the tree being collected and pressed into scrapbooks (?) shrines and the inevitable floral tributes being built and left…shades of Diana…or were they putting something back at the site of the robbery in repentance)? So, and in typical miserable-old-git mode, the next time you see some Marc Bolan memorabilia for sale on e-Bay just spare a thought for how it might have been come by.

It doesn’t require much in the way of thought to decide on the right course of action. Like when, on this day in 1989, Bruce Springsteen doing an impromptu jam session at a bar in Arizona, happened to hear about the bartender, Brenda Pechanec’s health problems and, a couple of weeks later sent her a cheque for $10k to cover her medical expenses. Now I know, as with Mr. Bowie’s magnanimous gesture, Mr Springsteen had the money to do this…but he didn’t have to, y’know? It’s much the same as you or I, on the sort of wages we earn and on a rainy day in winter, buying an extra coffee for the person who sells the Big Issue or an extra portion of fish and chips to give to the person sat on a street bench with all they own in a carrier bag; we know where the lines of treating someone with dignity and indignity lie and which side of that line we should be walking. That if you don’t do it they’ll never know anyhow so it makes no odds, changes nothing; but that if you do…well, little pebbles in ponds and all that.

And yet at both ends of the spectrum of involvement, and not necessarily with the famous, as in the case of those who rummaged through the death site of Mr. Bolan almost before the body was cold, or the equally unedifying spectacle of watching family members squabble over the millions of say a Michael Jackson or a Frank Sinatra or a Jimi Hendrix. Leave them out of the equation and just be with ordinary folks for a second and remember where that line of dignity…compassion for want of a better word…used to be drawn and how it’s moved further to the side of callous.

Yup…the usual format of this daily stuff I write; as contradictory and possibly as unfair as ever. Apologies.

A Meeting: 'an event where groups of men keep minutes and waste hours' - Milton Berle

September 28^th – Disparate stuff today, much in tune with the way my head works.

There’s lots of useless conventions and conferences doing the rounds these days; I have to thank Jonothan Eisen for what is possibly the worst ever conference title: -

‘Science Conference – SPAM:ICEME 2011 on all engineering and metaengineering’

Now, if that doesn’t have them flocking in then I don’t know what will. I’d always thought the idea was to attract people to participate in a conference so that an exchange of ideas and a platform for future work would ensue. To achieve that end surely a snappy title containing an onomatopoeic attracter (‘WHAM!’ or ‘POW!’) would be what’s called for; apparently not. Hence the film titles like;

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Vampires

or the equally asinine;

The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain

have failed to attract the masses and break box-office records…and I’ll bet the decisions were reached by committee. What’s that saying;

a camel is a horse designed by committee?

It’s like the UK’s 1990’s drive to give everyone a degree from a university; whether they wanted one or not. To that end Technical Colleges (that’s places of semi-educative ability where the working classes could learn a trade, say, engineering, and so keep the power-brokers and conglomerate billionaires fed with sufficient manual labour to generate ever more profits) were drafted into the university circle, upgraded and rubber-stamped with the authority to grant a 2:1 to any Cro-Magnon degenerate who walked through their hallowed portals. You may think that it’s being a bit premature, giving someone a grade at the start of the academic journey? Not so. It got to a point where, in some pseudo universities, the grade as decided within the first three weeks of a student’s first lecture, all that had to be done then was to fabricate and mould the course and outcomes to accommodate this. So it was that strange courses began to appear on the enrolment forms for our newly-created houses of learning. Degrees in The Phallus or David Beckham Studies to name but two. This was all part of the no-one should come second doctrine that the Labour government pedalled back in the 90’s so  we had a downscaling of school sports days and inter-house competitions; for a short while no-one lost anything, everyone was winner and we ended up with the possibility of a land peopled by non-achievers and non-tryers.

Things changed (thank goodness) when we realised that competition is actually a good thing; it’s the cheating or unfair advantage found in competition that’s iniquitous, that damages self-esteem and puts holes in the safety-net of fairness that people living in a Democracy rely on in order to be and attain a certain level of success. Along with this foolishness of the no-one should come second ideology there developed a verbal smokescreen that was eagerly picked up by politicians, especially as they sought to wriggle out of difficult situations (remember the F1-tobacco-£1m donation, people being economical with the truth, words like redaction and phrases like We’re better than this and Lessons have been learnt?)…as an aside, I’m assured by Uncyclopedia that there are three main components that make up a politician. They are, in no particular order;

24% rancid donkey piss

82% elephant shit

31% mind control instincts

67% incompetency

10% Krupuk – (deep fried, Indonesian prawn crackers)

99% conniving, thieving self-interest

62% delusions of grandeur

500% math skills

44% leech-ism

69% addicted to wealth and power

One of the finest phrases of smokescreen politics I’ve come across was said by Gov. Bryan Millar at an arm’s fair (there’s that smokescreen in action again; arms FAIR…? In common usage but wrong on so many levels). Gov. Bryan Millar said, as he ogled a stand-mounted, 50-cal machine gun;

“Fifty calibre weapons are not made to shoot people, they’re made to destroy targets.”

Great. OK. That’s alright then. Thanks for clearing that up, Bryan. While we’re on the subject, there was once a chance that a congenital idiot might make it to the White House. However, having fucked-up that opportunity, still I have to hand it to Sarah Palin for putting the argument about US gun laws even more succinctly when she said:

“Liberals can take my gun…if they can dodge my bullets.”

Sorry, sidetracked, back to education.

Conferences on International Rude Hand Gestures

on

The Role of the Sausage in Popular Culture’ (no ‘sausage role’ jokes, please)

venues that are;

Druid-Friendly

and oxymoronic titles;

How to be an inspiring bioethics teacher

All pale into insignificance when we discover that, on this day in 1997, the 103^rd annual convention of the Audio Engineering Society was held in New York. The fact that it was the debut of the DVD audio format falls secondary to the following, astounding revelation. Not only was there such a conference consisting of men (the sound world is peopled mainly by men) all huddled in corners discussing tweeters, woofers, the merits or otherwise of under-attenuation in the 46.2 hertz band, the relative suitability of ribbon microphones against an SM58 when recording a donkey farting through a tissue-paper-wrapped toothcomb. No. The astounding thing is that there had been 102 previous conventions before it.

Bono's botoxed performance persona...

September 27^th – On this day in, U2, performed two songs from their new album. Nothing new in that until you discover that they did it (seemingly for free) on the roof of Dublin’s Clarence Hotel (more later) and I thought;

Well, there’s original (not)

and that’s what got me to thinking…

Mud sticks, and so does the residue of a good deed; in neither case is it always deserved. What follows is my own take on things, it’s not perceived wisdom or fact just my musings and feelings of the events as they happened…and my take on things may well be up shit-creek without a paddle but this is before the iTunes download debacle.

The band, U2, have come up before in this daily spiel of mine and not always for the best of reasons. I still think their opening to the title track of their album, The Joshua Tree is amongst the best; it features in my top ten f’ goodness sake. But composing a blistering opening to what is, essentially, a pop song is insufficient in guarding against the slings and arrows that have come U2’s, and in particular Bono’s way, over the past few years.

Although no one person is the band (many would have you believe that they are; I’m here to tell y’s: not true. Some may be the focal point of a band – Andy Fairweather Lowe – Jeff Beck – Jimi Hendrix et al – but trust me, it’s the musicians around them that made the sound that gave the impetus and opened up the musical air for these supposed leaders to perform within; just that sometimes these supposed leaders forget, start to believe their own press cuttings and usually crash and burn in a series of ill-advised and ill-thought-out solo projects). It’s fair to say that Bono, closely followed by The Edge (where do they dream these names up from; the toss-pot fairy?) is the recognisable face of U2 (can you name anyone other than those two) and Bono’s’ kudos was nothing if not enhanced when he sang a line on the Band Aid single Do They Know It’s Christmas? way back in ‘84’ alongside Midge Ure, Bob Geldof and a host of also rans.

His contribution to that recording and his undoubted promotion of the ethos behind that track and the subsequent Live Aid concert at Wembley in ‘86’ (U2 were part of the Wembley/JFK link up) has to be applauded…but it’s always been, for me, tinged with a feeling that at some point in the process beyond Live Aid that Bono began to lose the plot a little; the ZOO TV tour was the turning point as far as I could see. Conceived as a more light-hearted stage show (much they had done before had been fairly angst-ridden) it seemed to me that the characters Bono portrayed on stage (caricatures, if you will) entered his psyche, became the add-ons he loved and loathed about the business – like a shadow of Bette Davis in All About Eve’ – didn’t David Bowie do something similar...?

He did nothing to endear himself to me when he schmoozed with Cassius Clay and a host of slebs and proto-politicians at a Jubilee 2000 funder (£1k a plate probably, y’know, so’s to keep out the riff-raff…y’know, all those people who marched and supported and demonstrated…those losers) and, IMHO, lessened the impact of all the work done by ordinary Joe’s by giving all those politicians attending, who should have been held accountable for the shit that Jubilee 2000 was set up to highlight, that event gave them all an escape clause…not helped by Bono’s bit of back-slapping of Mr. Clay; just seemed at that moment to be all about the $1,000 plated supper and slebritee and not about the message. I’m not saying meetings such as this don’t need to take place, but why do they have to be accompanied by a feast; a feast that was held to highlight the plight of the starving…excellent. I mean, can’t policy be decided over a sandwich and coffee, that way the mind is concentrated on the job in hand and not just something you discuss between courses…whatever…

All the work Bono has done for international relations (?) was rubbished when his less than supportive individual’s contribution to the upkeep of the social fabric of society (ie tax) arrangements became known. His offloading of his assets and wealth to an offshore account and out of Ireland (struggling with debt and needing all the tax money it could get) was, according to Bono and probably according to Mr MacPhisto (one of the characters in the ZOO TV concert) the right thing to do for Ireland. In a classic piece of politico-speak that could have been cribbed from a copy of George Orwell’s 1984, Bono said, in answer to a question about his questionable tax policy:

At the heart of the Irish economy has been tax competitiveness. Tax competitiveness has taken this country out of poverty.

closely followed by the masterly,

The Irish government will ultimately appreciate the band’s decision to offshore a share of its income through the Netherlands.

I’d leave you to work that one out but we don’t have that much time so I’ll just précis a Terence Blacker article which says it so much more succinctly than I could put it:

Rearranging your tax…in other words, is no longer a black and white issue. As with the pop star and his ‘tax competitiveness’…..there are many shades of grey, each one lightening the darkness of personal responsibility.

Well yes. I guess when your personal wealth stands at 600 million dollars you need every shekel you can lay your hands on.

That hotel we opened this chat with? The Clarence Hotel in Dublin upon which U2 did their original rooftop performance on? Situated on the waterfront in the Quayside district of Dublin, Bono and a group financiers own it and they’ve been pulled into a deep discussion with the archivists of the city over their plans to expand the hotel. To do this the consortium has purchased several properties of historical importance around the hotel and are planning to gut them, leaving just the facades, an expansion that has met with fierce opposition from historic preservation groups, one critic saying;

 The Clarence demolition is an old-fashioned money-driven, anti-environmental exploit. Bono is behaving like just another private-jet-addicted property speculator feeding on Ireland’s greedy.

I don’t know that I’d support the German anarchist’s placards that they waved as they chased him through the streets which read

MAKE BONO HISTORY

but I do think that The Fly - copyright ZOO TV Tour (oh really, but, didn’t Jeff Goldblum…? Oh never mind…) is becoming too much a part of Bono’s private persona and if he was to look into the reflection that is MirrorBall Man - copyright ZOO TV Tour) he just might have a revelation about the next mistake…before it happens.

Shakespeare's West Side Story

September 26^th – I like my Shakespeare fresh. Not that I don’t enjoy the doublet-and-hose type of production, for a good 70% of his plays my enjoyment is in the quality of the writing, but I would always choose an interpretation of his work, not a recreation.

That’s one of the hallmarks of his writing, that 400+ years later it still resonates with our lives and how we live, and that’s because it deals with the human condition. There’s no fancy gimmicks in the staging of the works, no need for CGI or elaborate sets, the stories stand on their own two feet because it deals with things that are ever in flux but also remain constant; us, our emotions and core instincts, our capacity for heroism in the game-changer that is love and hate.

I’ve done a production of Romeo and Juliet set in a mock up of the Big Brother house, a Macbeth set on a chess board and an Alls Well That Ends Well set in a nightclub and in each case the text crosses the void and sits well in locations so far removed from England of the 1650’s as to be another planet almost; and the fact it effortlessly straddles different genres and time-frames with such ease are what makes Bill’s work so enduring and so relevant: West Side Story (WSS) based on Romeo and Juliet is a case in point.

On this day in 1957 the musical opened on Broadway with no one being at all sure how it would go down with punters reared on a diet of Hollywood extravaganzas with familiar faces and recognisable, safe storylines; the one thing Americans like above all others in their entertainment is familiarity. It’s what drives the makes, remakes and re-remakes of the present day in new film releases; remember that phrase I wrote some while ago that came from the mouth of the new artistic director of a theatre I stage managed?

From now on I only want us to book shows that sell out?

That’s the Holy Grail of Hollywood. Let’s see how many musical performer names you can recognise: Cyd Cherise – Donald O’Connor – Ginger Rogers – Fred Astaire – Gene Kelly. Easy, huh? Now let’s see how many cast members you recognise from the original Broadway and London productions of WSS:

Larry Kert – Carol Lawrence – Chita Rivera – Don McKay – George Chakaris – David Holliday – Mary Preston

I’d lay money on only two of those names being familiar: Messers Rivera and Chakaris, and probably Chakiris only because of what he’s done since WSS. BTW, if you do recognise more than those two then I’d strongly suggest you need to seek professional help in drawing back the living room curtains and letting in a little light.

To say it was a groundbreaking musical in subject matter, choreography and social comment is an understatement. Much like Look Back In Anger, John Osborne’s warts-and-all drama of 1956 did in the UK, so WSS proved to be a watershed in what material the musical could tackle successfully. Unfortunately, as with all things good, the genre has now been twisted into X-Factor Lycra and anything is fair game for musical interpretation now, but back then it really was a significant piece of work and, dare I say it, still is. When the film musical of WSS was released, it, too, confounded all that had gone before, so much so that it won ten Academy Awards out of the eleven it had been put up for and, IMHO, has yet to be bettered even to this day; been equalled but not bettered.

I’ve had the pleasure of working on two stage productions of WSS and watched the DVD on countless occasions and it never fails to captivate and astound, never fails to move and inspire. Apart from modern additions, it’s remained a constant in my top-ten musicals ever since I put it together ten years ago…maybe I’m the one who requires curtain-help…?

Back to the England in the 1590’s. A young W. Shakespeare is in the throes of completing his first quarto of R&J and has high hopes that it’ll run the week, no doubt. What sort of reception it got we’ll never know, what we do know is that in 1662 Samuel Pepys saw it and wrote;

It is a play of itself the worst that I ever heard in my life

So I think we can take it that he wasn’t impressed. Not so the critical reception of the original WSS Broadway production. All were unanimous in acclaiming the work with words like exciting, captivating, breathtaking, hard-edged and provocative sprinkled throughout the first-night revues it was little wonder that WSS has gone on to become the standard against which all other modern musicals would be judged, the majority of them coming up sadly lacking; Mr. Shakespeare would be well pleased.

Stevie Wonder Blunder

September 25^th – Oftentimes there’s a press announcement where you can’t quite get hold of the angle. You know, use of language where obfustication seems to be the main aim. In the realm of the Red Tops of the world that’s never an issue, of course; the strapline says it all, ergo:

The factual short shocker headline: -

‘BIGFOOT KEPT LUMBERJACK AS SLAVE’ – Weekly World News – which also had the lesser quote by the man’s ‘outraged wife’ ‘He’s no longer the man I married’. Really? No shit, Sherlock.

The ‘everything you need to know but were afraid to ask’ long form headline:- ‘WOMAN IN SUMO SUIT ASSAULTED HER EX-GIRLFRIEND IN GAY PUB AFTER SHE WAVED AT MAN DRESSED AS SNICKERS BAR’ – The Daily Record

The ‘would you believe it’ headline:- ‘ONE GAY MAN, TWO LESBIANS A THREE-LEGGED CAT AND A POISON CURRY PLOT’ – Daily Mail

The ‘double-entendre’ headline:- ELTON TAKES DAVID UP THE AISLE’ – The Sun

The ‘play on words’ headline:- ‘HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR’ – The New York Post

And my absolute favourite,

The ‘inside knowledge/popular culture reference’ headline

This one about football and the shock defeat of Celtic (1 goal) by Inverness (3 goals). Inverness were known as Caledonian Thistle but had the nickname, ‘Caley’, So the headline ran: - ‘SUPER CALEY GO BALLISTIC CELTIC ARE ATROCIOUS’ – The Sun

Hats off from me. Although there are some amongst us who consider the Ugandan Times headline;

‘PASTOR KEWEWEESI IN BUM SEX SCANDAL’

who then compounded the felony by seeking to explain any misunderstandings surrounding this strapline by adding;

‘BOY DRAGS FLASHY MAN OF GOD TO POLICE FOR TERRORISING HIS BUTTOCKS WITH MONSTER WHOPPER’

A candidate for fail.org I’d suggest.

Stevie Wonder; what comes to mind with that? Is it his hits, his overcoming of personal difficulties to become one of America’s most well-respected performers, his political activism, his support for charities, his stalwart support of peace initiatives, his Grammy awards (22) his Academy award, the amicability of his marriage break-up and his continued support for his children…what?

His music has never been an interest of mine, not because I consider it to be a lesser form, I don’t, its just that I’ve never been a Tamla-type, not even when some of the earlier bands I gigged with covered Tamla Motown hits as part of their show. Just never was my thing. However, as in many disciplines where I don’t actually connect with the source material, I recognised the talent Mr. Wonder displayed. The album, Songs in the Key of Life, released in ‘76’ really was a landmark recording with popular writing such as Isn’t She Lovely riding alongside standout and overtly political/racial statements such as Black Man and deeply personal songs like, I Wish; by that album alone he deserves recognition. All this goodness, then, only gives the threat of adverse publicity greater importance which is what happened on this day in 2012 when a couple of con-men, Messer’s Walker and Diaz, were sentenced to 9 months imprisonment. Their crime was that they had cobbled together some film footage and had then tried to blackmail Mr. Wonder, to the tune of $5m. The film footage would, in the words of the successful prosecution’s case, have shown Stevie Wonder in, a negative light.

That just started me thinking, what they could possibly have on that film, a film of what is, essentially, arguably, a pop-saint that could be SO derogatory to put him his career and all he has done in a negative light? I mean, it’s going to have to be something as tabloid-worthy as him dressed in neoprene whipping a fallow deer to death, or indulging in group sex with underage Yaks, hasn’t it? So I got to trying to work out what it could be and I landed on the tale; it was about him having said in an interview about Frank Ocean’s coming out and that was used as the story strapline;

‘SOME PEOPLE WHO THINK THEY’RE GAY, THEY’RE CONFUSED’ – The Guardian.

Wow! Talk about controversial, Stevie!

But then you go and spoil it all by immediately apologising, saying sorry if my remarks had made people misunderstand their love!

That sort of apologetic talk is a crime against tabloids and should be stamped out immediately, otherwise how can we justify our gutter-headline jocularity? I mean, with that apology you destroyed my headline, which was all ready to go: -

‘PLAY-A-GAY: STEVIE’S SUPERSTITION ON FRANK CALL TO SAY I LOVE YOU LEAVES WONDER UPTIGHT AND OCEAN ON THE HIGHER GROUND’

I thangyou…

Mornin' Dew - a tale of re-writing

September 24^th – Just a little bit of playing the music detective today; the name’s Re-Morse. Like a much poorer version of an Oxford defective that keeps harking on about old cases.

You’re all aware of my deep liking for Jeff Beck’s album Truth by now, I trust? It’s one of the seminal albums of the late 60’s and you can take that as truth (did you see what I did there) from a convicted rock-lover and blues-o-file. If you’ve not heard a copy then I’m here to tell you your education is sadly lacking; sadly.

For starters and as I’ve mentioned before, it was the last decent recording Rod Stewart did; it’s the one where he proved his blues chops and could (should) have gone on to greater things. He didn’t, I’ve covered it, move on.

The two sides of ten tracks just bristle with the collective of a band on a mission, they take no prisoners and each track is a gem from the fireworks of  Aint Superstitious and You Shook Me through to, IMHO, the stand-out track, Mornin’ Dew. It carries the blues territory and history on its back which Mr. Stewart unloads with a vocal performance of stellar quality and gravitas; it’s just spellbinding in its audacity and it has Jeff Beck and Nicky Hopkins as added zest.

Mornin’ Dew was a Bonnie Dobson original. Mr. Dobson, a Canadian folk musician with limited success, had been recording since the early 60’s and her penning of Mornin Dew, originally a sombre ballad, was heard by the guy who became associated with the song after he updated it, giving it a harder rock edge, and releasing it worldwide to great success; Tim Rose.

Mr. Rose was a jobbing musician who had also had limited success with his songwriting and performing until Mornin’ Dew came along. Mr. Rose first heard the song being performed by Fred Neil, a little known US folksinger in his own right but you’ll probably know him better for his penning of the film music track Everybody’s Talkin’ from the film Midnight Cowboy and possibly through his pioneering work with dolphins. Neil had heard the original by Ms. Dobson and used it in his repertoire and that’s where Mr. Rose heard it, reworked it then…claimed half the writing royalties for it.

As you can imagine that went down like a cup of cold sick with Ms. Dobson who, to this day, resents and denies Mr. Rose’s claim and involvement. Trouble is the loophole in the law allowed him to do that and he profited greatly by it, in fact made a habit of it. He also reworked the song, Hey Joe, the song that made Jimi Hendrix. This was what could be classed as a blues standard and so songwriting credit is virtually impossible to verify. A US band called The Leaves recorded it in ‘56’ but it wasn’t copyrighted until 1962 by two folk singers who both claimed credit for it…but they reckoned without Mr. Rose who re-worked it and also claimed writing credit for it.

It would seem that Tim Rose was very much a struggling songwriter for not only were his two best known, biggest earning songs seemingly written by others he also had the majority of his live successes working or guesting in other people’s bands. His struggles with alcohol must have surely compounded his health problems and he died in London on this day in 2002 aged just 62 after complications during surgery.

The meandering/man in places he shouldn’t be theme continued when he was buried in Brompton cemetery, even though he was born in the US and raised in Washington. He left behind no family and died intestate; he even featured on an episode of Heir Hunters’. I wonder if Bonnie Dobson put in a claim.

Lilith un-fair-ly treated

September 23^rd – Not in the slightest controversial today; all is harmony…you wish. We all know that ladies wash their hair more than six times a day and spend the rest of the time swinging their head about,  if the amount of adverts on TV surmises correctly.

Lilith. Now there’s a name to conjure with. See, I always thought that God made Eve for Adam by taking one of his ribs and creating a partner for him ‘cos, well, ‘cos he whinged on about being lonely and that, at the very least, he needed someone to iron his loincloth; but apparently not.  In the Hebrew/Jewish folklore it was Lilith who was his partner, and she was drafted in from a list of monsters and animals to become thus. The tale was softened somewhat to make better copy by having Lilith created from the same soil as Adam but she got seriously pissed off when he wanted her to become subservient to him. Why? I mean, someone had to be boss and by that end free someone else up to do the cleaning. I’d call it magnanimous of us chaps to take on that role. You?

What followed that little contretemps between A&L will be a familiar story to all those who watch any of the five-billion crappy soaps that fill our TV screens…when the shampoo ads aren’t playing that is… Lilith refused to come back into the Garden of Eden and instead went off and banged the archangel Samuel…and if that’s the source material you can wonder no longer why humanity’s in a hand-cart to hell and that equality is as distant from women as it was 5000 years ago.

Let’s face it, when you’re condemned to be the goddess of the night, banished forever into the company of jackals and satyrs who the Lord decrees

…shall possess her forever, and dwell there from generation to generation

well…lets just say that gaining equal pay for equal work is gonna be a big ask. Rock’n’ Roll: In the words of James Brown; it’s a man’s world.

Just like everything else…but not for long, buster.

might be the rejoinder to that.

What I’m trying to put into place here is why things turned out the way they did and why it seems to be such a struggle to turn these things around.  I mean, we’re not quite so believing in fairy stories now, are we? We do know that satyrs didn’t exist, that Adam wasn’t created by God out of soil and that EVE (Lilith) wasn’t the first woman created out of the same soil by the same God…we don’t still believe all that stuff…do we? Well, unfortunately we do, or at least our inner consciousness does and that suits the processes and the organisers of those processes fine.

Religion has been around since some smart arse wanted to seize power and then, to retain it, had to frighten people into submission with tales of the Booger-Man, and yet still, still, women (created out of the same soil by the same God and so equal in the eyes of God) are denied the opportunity to practise the religion of their choice at the highest order; still.

In a round-about way that was the central tenet of the Lilith Fair, founded by Sarah McLahlan and held for the first time outside of the US, at the Albert hall, on this day in 1998, but brought bang up to date and into the rock ‘n’ roll era. As pissed off as Lilith was about being expected to hold a subservient position when she considered herself to be of equal worth and so be held in identical respect, Ms. McLahlan set up this touring rock show in order to get around the unwilling, uncooperative, largely male dominated concert promoters and radio-show hosts who had, up ‘til then, refused to present two female performers in a row. Against all the advice she organised an all-woman concert, later named the Lilith Fair, and goofed them all with its success. In its first 3 years it raised ten million plus dollars for various US charities; so, a complete flop then? And what did the male promoters and agencies do in order to support what was 1997’s top grossing show? Why they did the only thing an intelligent workforce would do when confronted with a success story; why, re-brand it of course; they renamed it The Breast-Fest. See? Us guys, we know how to apply an intellectual approach to things that don’t fit the rules…our rules.

The Lilith Fair went on until 2010 but was discontinued after Ms. McLahlan considered the event had outlived its usefulness because the changing roles of women were no longer reflected in the festival’s format. So, after building it up against all odds she closed it down and took the huge amount of heat that came her way because of that…you know, like blokes do in the same situation………

See, equal world now; all treated the same, all goals met, all targets achieved, all pigs fuelled and ready to fly.

Irving Berlin Bombshells.....

September 22^nd – There’s many a rags to riches story that grace the annals of showbiz, many of them exaggerated by publicists in an effort to gain maximum coverage for their protégé, which is showbiz-speak for;

Someone with so little talent who needs all the help they can get, even if it does all come from sympathy.

One such tale that has no need of embellishment however is the start that Irving Berlin, who died this day in 1989, got to his song writing career. I quote from his biography by Laurence Bergreen:

As an adult Berlin admitted to no memories of his first five years in Russia except for one: he was lying on a blanket by the side of a road, watching his house burn to the ground. By daylight the house was in ashes.

Well, you gotta say, after that there really is only one way to go.

Think of any major recording star of the 40’s thro’ 80’s and I’ll bet a pound to a pinch of pig shit that Mr. Berlin has composed a song (usually a hit song) for them. Think of any of the great romantic pop songs of the 40’s thro’ 80’s and he probably had a hand in writing it. Think of any of the great stage musicals of the 40’s thro’ 80’s and he probably scored it. Think of any of the great film musicals of the 40’s thro’ 80’s and he probably wrote the libretto for it.

There should be a special Desert Island Discs programme where the guests get to choose their favourite Mr. Berlin piece from each discipline above and so, in the spirit of the suggestion, these are mine…probably…

Song: White Christmas – Just a perfect balance of nostalgia and pathos (without a hint of mawkishness) all wrapped up snugly with a blanket made of a longing for a simpler time.

Stage Musical: Annie Get Your Gun – A history lesson and a simple storyline rolled into one with songs like the tongue-in-cheek, You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun and Anything You Can Do together with showstoppers like There’s No Business Like Show Business…what’s not to like?

Film Musical: Really, really difficult this is…can I have two? No? Oh, OK, well, if I HAD to choose between Top Hat and Follow the Fleet I guess it’d be…erm…Top Hat. With Mr. Astaire and Ms. Rogers AND that Cheek to Cheek routine…or Isn’t This A Lovely Day To Be caught in the Rain…gotta be… Although, Follow the Fleet, with Mr. Astaire and Ms. Rogers AND the Let’s face the Music and Dance routine, the drama, those dresses…gotta be…although…with Mr. Astaire and Ms. Rogers AND the Top Hat, White Tie and Tails routine, the phrasing, both vocal and tap, the lyrics…and THAT shooting gallery…!…gotta be…although…

For those about to dance, Mr. Berlin, we salute you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZOJoV6H2UM

Cat Stevens, Kurt Waldheim; what's in a name...?

September 21^st – Two seemingly unconnected events today but both joined with a single, secretive thread.

Teaser and the Firecat? Anybody? OK, how about, Tea for the Tillerman?

Yup thought you’d get it from that. When he first made a name with I Love My Dog and Matthew & Son back in 1966, I thought Cat Stevens’ songs well-crafted and quirky but not of sufficient levity to attract me. It was only when I heard his two albums (above) that I latched on to what he was offering, and I still play those two albums to this day on a regular basis. The central tenet of his writings, his poetry, his interviews and his songsmithing encircle the human condition, the need for peace and tolerance and a search for spiritual contact to explain and help him fathom the mysteries of life; a very now thing back in the 70’s.

OK, I don’t want to get scratchy about this, it’s just my take on things and I’m not knocking the outcome either; I’ve written before, whatever you need hold on to to get you through it, as long as it doesn’t hurt others, then that’s what you hold on to. What I do note about so many religious conversions however is they tend to happen to folk in a time of personal crisis, when the heart is heavy and the soul weighed down by trauma or event, when the defences are down. Now that, in so many cases, might be the only way in for God, the way into a heart and mind that’s usually taken up with stuff and so has no room for contemplation and regard for things spiritual. It’s often a turnaround that mostly happens as people get older and they begin to understand the meaning of mortality…bugger me, this is cheerful stuff, innit? Won’t labour the point but you get my drift. Well it would seem that in 1976, Mr. Stevens had a brush with death in the sea off’f Marrakech and pledged himself to God, should he be spared. He was, and this near-miss linked into his search for spiritual meaning. It only took the purchase of the Qur’an (given as a present, it seems) to complete this search (which had brushed with Buddhism, Zen, I Ching and astrology amongst other enquiries) and to convince him, in 1977, to convert to Islam. Taking the name Yusuf Islam, Cat Stevens that was virtually retired overnight from the world of pop.

Now we know that he’s done recordings since and all that, but that’s not what interested me about the story so far. No, what it was, was the idiocy and ignorance that permeates our so-called secret services; those people who are supposed to be safeguarding us and who are supposed to have all the information on anyone of a suspect nature; why, they got everything SO right when Bliar and Bushit took us to war against an enemy who could launch chemical weapons at us in 45 minutes…so, what’s to worry about? Well, lots actually. We know that, as a population, we’ve sleep-walked our way through massive changes to our rights for privacy and fair treatment (the Snowden/Greenwald/Miranda events being the most recent reminder of what can be done to us with no redress to the victim and no fear of reprisal to the perpetrator) in the wake of the appalling 9/11 and 7/7 tragedies. All these changes have been at the behest of our political and security masters who’ve told us it’s all necessary so as to allow them the ability to protect and safeguard our lives and liberty. Their enactment of such far-reaching controls has allowed them access into our private lives unprecedented in modern times, certainly outside of World War conditions. So when, in 2004, Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens (a pop singer) with a public record such as his, was stopped from entering the US because he was on a terrorism watch list…well, you have to wonder, don’t you; you have to wonder whether their paranoia was brought to head because of a name, Yusuf Islam?

The Nazi era in Germany was an iniquitous time and, if you were of Jewish origin, even more so. The effect of having to live with yourself after either committing or allowing to be committed in your name such diabolic acts can only be imagined with difficulty, but many did and, as we all know, many of those at the upper-echelon of the inhumanities committed escaped capture and conviction; to evade capture and happily live out their lives in comfort and blessings in some warm, foreign country. Now, you’d have thought the records of the power-brokers, post WW2 would have held all the detail on those who were known to have assisted or collaborated in the atrocities, certainly one ruled by such a paranoid leadership as the Third Reich. So it follows, doesn’t it that those who came after must also have had access to these records? I mean, you don’t destroy documents that could bail you out of a crisis, do you? But, OK, so they did, they destroyed everything, not a scrap of paper left to identify anyone of anything. Well surely those who continued in power post 1945 knew the guilty individuals personally, I mean, you can’t wipe that away, so there should be no excuse for anyone to dodge the justice they are due…is there?

Humanitarian crisis require swift and strong action by statesmen in order to avoid further suffering; such a one was the plight of the Vietnamese Boat People in the late 1970’s. Fleeing a war of proportions just as brutal as the ethnic cleansing of Nazi Germany, their flight and plight was likened to the boat, The St. Louis, which left Germany in 1939 just before the outbreak of war with 900 Jews on board and sailed from country to country only to be refused permission to dock at each harbour. Film and photos of these Vietnamese refugees show boats crammed (and I mean crammed) with people; boats ill-designed and ill-equipped to deal with such passenger numbers and such voyages; 200 to 400,000 didn’t make it at all. Several countries took on large numbers of these refugees, amongst them Germany who took in 40,000 souls. On this day in 1979 a request by the then UN Secretary General, Kurt Waldheim, for The Beatles to reunite and perform a benefit concert to help fund the humanitarian work was made. It did nothing but make headlines; shame as it showed the former Austrian President as a man of compassion with an empathy towards those in peril by persecution with his finger on the pulse of modern solutions to modern problems.

Where his magnanimity fell down, however, was that he was a member of the SS stationed in Yugoslavia in ‘43 ‘to ‘45’ signing papers to allow the brutalities and atrocities perpetrated against that country’s population to continue and, as he later admitted, knew they were being done. Now, do you think the secret services (and we’re talking about the crème de la crème of secret services here, the STASI, the CIA, MI5/6, the KGB) and the ruling classes of all nations who continued to work with him, who had access to and controlled the information those secret services held, the power-brokers, money-men and work colleagues who supported, voted for and worked alongside Kurt Waldheim, do you think that all of them had absolutely no idea about this? That he was so under the radar he could rise into the ranks of the rulers without anyone having even the remotest idea of his past involvement.

Mr. Stevens. Mr Waldheim. Funny how it works, innit? But then, you only have to read the transcripts of the Yalta Conference to know the meaning of the politics of pragmatism.

I leave the last words to Mr. Waldheim which should serve as salient reminder of how the minds of many of our rulers work.

I really don't understand why they make such a fuss about my signing for the correctness of the documents. And if I signed for the correctness, it does not mean I committed a crime.

Yeah, right, Kurt…

Beatle jusitce is different

September 20^th – If you were due to go into hospital for an operation on, say, your lower bowel and, just as you’re about to go under, after the pre-med, you were greeted at the doors of the operating theatre by a bloke in a boiler suit scrubbing his hands with a dishcloth who says;

I’m the chap that does the hospital heating. Know nothing about theatre procedure but I deal with pipes all day so, where’s the diff? I’ll be operating on you today, have a good one.

what would your reaction be?

Dunno ’bout you but if I’m gonna have someone rummaging around in the coils of my bowel I’d want someone knows the difference between a heart and a bladder and a more than passing grasp of the importance of good hygiene practice. That’s probably my biggest beef with people in government, as you know by now; that one where some bod who’s got two A-levels from Eton and a double first in classics from Cambridge can be put in charge of transport; a person who’s never been on a bus in their life and only ever travels first class on the railways…and then someone books the tickets for that. The old adage trotted out about how you don’t need insider knowledge in order to be a good manager? That’s bollocks that is. It’s just a phrase they fill airtime with to save other embarrassing questions being asked; the pitiful state of what was once our beacon of civilisation, the National Health Service, is a case in point.

What we once had was a self-governing, self-managing system, not perfect, not always smoothly operated but at least run by those who had to work in it. One of the early signs that things were awry was when private and public became confused, when the private establishments were allowed to use the public facilities as long as they paid for the time and staff; you’ll remember my rantings about how it only takes one shithead to ruin what is otherwise a peaceful or useful endeavour? A handful of consultant surgeons started to pop in the odd private operation onto the public list, pay nothing for the theatre time, staffing and equipment usage and reap the full profit for themselves ’cos, when you’re only earning 80+k per year from your day-job and picking up private consultancy work at £250 per hour…well, you need those few extra pennies, don’t y’; bless. Then the government started the whole tick-box/targets culture  and the PFI thing, going for outside suppliers (their mates, just check the register of knobs from the House of Lords who work for the pharmacy companies) going for the cheapest drugs, equipment, waste disposal, going for unqualified cleaners and ancillary staff and cutting frontline staff whilst putting in place managers who knew all about systems but fuck-all about medicine and all the time, as the health service spiralled and nose-dived into chaos, successive governments and ministers tinkered and faffed about with the damage that had been done from the last session of tinkering and faffing, spreading confusion and waste like a pig-slurry spreader on a windy day all the time knowing that this fucking up was deliberate so’s they could say;

Look at the state of the NHS! This is why it needs to go PRIVATE!

…and then on into the South Staffs debacle we ended up with last year…

Care Homes (there’s an oxymoron if ever there was one) have suffered the same fate. Hiving out the care of the elderly who became too ill or their symptoms too complicated to be catered for at home, to private companies (their mates) was just a recipe for disaster. And it’s no good saying;

It’s not all of these Care Homes, just the odd 10 per cent who get it wrong.

Well, that’s as maybe but to the person it happens to? It’s 100 per cent. And if I hear another person say;

Lessons have been learnt…?

Well, in both the above cases the systems are being run by folk who’ll never have to use them, not them or their own; private health care for them, pal.

Well, all of that guff leads on to my belief that, if there was someone sitting in judgement on me in a court of law, I’d be really grateful in almost every case, if two things were in place.

1) The jury was actually made up 12 unbiased fellow citizens who made their mind up on the merits of the case and

2) that the judge actually knew what the various components of the case were.

I’d rather not have the equivalent of the law-court’s boiler-man decide whether I was going to hang or not, if that’s OK with you…although, in the case of Queen versus Mr. McCartney it may have been useful to have an idiot on-board. On this day in 1972, Mr. McCartney was fined £100 for growing cannabis on his farm in Scotland. The interesting thing is that, by his own admittance, the judge had never seen a cannabis plant before the trial…that’s as in, not ever. Leaving aside the possible cultural and social gap that revelation throws up, which is as wide and as deep as the Great Blue Hole of Belize, he could’ve, in honesty, have been looking at flat-leaved parsley for all he knew then Mr McCartney could ‘ave said;

Here, judgey, take a taste. Now you tell me what’s that? Go well wi’ fish, eh, an’ they want to make it illegal?

You just have to play with that scenario in the other many other organisations that have an impact on our lives, like the management of health and education, defence and transport, utilities and the law, to question the sense contained in a phrase we use often in theatre;

Them as design it never have to tour it…