Tag: entertainment

British Rock Meets a Soul Queen – ‘Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook’ – Bettye LaVette

Track Listing:
The Word (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
No Time To Live (James Capaldi/Stephen Winwood)
Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood (Bennie Benjamin/Gloria Caldwell/Sol Marcus)
All My Love (John Baldwin/Robert Plant)
Isn’t It A Pity (George Harrison)
Wish You Were Here (David Gilmour/Roger Waters)
It Don’t Come Easy (Richard Starkey)
Maybe I’m Amazed (Paul McCartney)
Salt Of The Earth (Michael Jagger/Keith Richards)
Nights In White Satin (David Hayward)
Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad (Eric Clapton/Bobby Whitlock)
Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me (Elton John/Bernard Taupin)
Love Reign O’er Me (Peter Townshend) [BONUS TRACK]

Released 2010

When different musical genres mix, it doesn’t always work.  Sometimes, it’s a mess and fans of either side of the fusion are left dissatisfied.  So, what happens when veteran soul singer, Bettye LaVette, takes on rock and pop classics from the British canon?  The result is superb.  Hers is the voice of smoky clubs at midnight.  At 64 years old, it’s not a fresh voice but one that oozes experience of loves won and lost. Imagine if Tina Turner, Mahalia Jackson, and Aretha Franklin morphed following a night on the bourbon and you get the idea.  She takes these songs where they have never been before.

Don’t be put off if you are not a fan of the originals.  This is a Bettye LaVette record through and through and I suspect she would make a Julie Andrews song sound sexy. She may not be a well-known face in the UK but she’s on the must have list for historic gatherings in America.  Her duet with Jon Bon Jovi on the Sam Cooke classic, A Change Is Gonna Come, was one of the highlights at the Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial.  LaVette has dipped her toes into rock and country before this release.  She’s recorded with the rock country band, Drive By Truckers and she performed the bonus track here, Love Reign O’er Me by The Who, at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2008.  Apparently, she made Pete Townshend cry.

This album goes further than Bettye’s previous rock outings with renditions of songs by psychedelic rock bands, Pink Floyd and Traffic, and stadium giants, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.  There is a bias towards the Beatles with one Beatles track and one cover each of Paul, George, and Ringo solo records.  Less surprising is the selection of the bluesy Nina Simone song, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, which was a hit for The Animals.  She doesn’t go for the obvious, preferring to perform the lesser-known Salt of the Earth by the Stones rather than (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.

LaVette strips each song down to its raw emotions and the musical arrangements are sympathetic.  This record neatly closes a circle, back to when white boys first played air guitar in their bedrooms in England to the American R&B blasting from their transistor radios.  They went on to become the ‘British Invasion’.  LaVette is simply returning the compliment and it’s a reminder that there are no boundaries that can’t be crossed.

 

 

 

 

What it takes to be a Superstar

Being a Superstar is much like being a King (or Queen, sorry feminism) in that more often than not there can be only one true head of popular culture reigning supreme, providing a template to emulate and later a deterrent for the hipsters to flock from. Alas, like King William and Queen Mary; some lucky buggers have been nice enough to share the treasured cradle, but not always. So in essence, what actually does make a modern musical icon? I hustled my two beautiful brain-cells together for this almighty of questions, and this is what I got.

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Don’t be a f*cking Pisshead

Original Pogues’ frontman and a beauty to behold, Shane McGowan (pictured left) according to rumour first drank stout at the age of six – and due to his unending thirst for his face on a piss strewed backstage urinal, the man has yet to quell his drink habit – and subsequently regain any mass public sympathy (or recognition for that matter). Although the likes of John Bonham, Jim Morrison and Amy Winehouse have gone on to reach quasi-legend status, the fact they couldn’t keep their proverbial hands out the cookie jar has solidified them as rock n’ rolls tragedies. After all, addressing your pop-culture subjects entails a working mind, and a pulse.

Be the complete opposite

With cliché rhetoric like “What doesn’t kill you makes you makes you stronger’ and an origin story that makes the U.S Consitution look like Gaddafi’s history of sexual encounters  – Kelly Clarkson embodies the clean-cut, democratically elected pop-star that epitomises the ‘oh-so nice’ ‘girl next door’ appeal that’s needed if you’re gonna hold a legitimate claim to the crown of popular music. If Clarkson’s family friendly aura isn’t initiating any sign of nausea, Jessie J’s “Just DO IT LIKE A DUDE, forget about the PRICE TAG, STAND UP for the love. Remember, NOBODY’S PERFECT and always be true to WHO YOU ARE” are sure to have to dashing for the nearest Oasis album, you’ll always need your music insulin to keep your rock n’ roll glucose levels in balance. Next.

 

Have a myriad of hits

Of course, nothing entitles to you to music super-stardom more than a list of hit albums and singles. Being a contender for the title usually implies a pretty hefty (and half decent) back-catalog, but many a star has gone without this most prestigious of prerequisites. Jennifer Lopez has yet to wash up a good solid record to show for her pseudo-iconic status in the American pop world, such cultural anomalies still allude me to this day. Worthy examples would include Beyoncé and the Princess of Pop herself, Britney. Both of which have contributed heavily to ‘the gay man’s top ten things that ever happened to this planet, ever’;  forget Adele’s amazing yet short stint in the eye of the globe – if you want super-stardom you better be prepared to be in it for the long haul. Or have your head shaved, either way.

 


Get a cause, any cause

Being a cultural legend means that merely by expectation you have to do something with it. Take Bono for example; “the face of fusion philanthropy” – a man whose sheer status as a pop symbol entitled him anything from a place at Bob Geldof’s Live Aid to chilling with the president of Brazil, all in the name of helping starving children of course. And who couldn’t mention Lady Gaga herself, a woman who managed to do a profoundly pretentious and over-hyped “concept album” about self-acceptance while simultaneously appointing herself PR Executive for the entire planet’s LGBT community. Blur bassist Alex James found himself useful in his band’s hiatus and became a neo-calorie crusader of sorts, gracing the pages of The Sun as their now resident Food Columnist; cringeworthy I know but brownie points for standing out. Oh wait, double brownie points – by actually championing our fatty favourites he’s become a culinary rebel. A foodie and a rockstar rolled into one, anything’s possible.

Film Review: School For Scoundrels

For me, the fact that this film stars Terry-Thomas makes it worth watching. Throw in the wonderful talents of Alistair Sim and Ian Carmichael and you have three of the biggest stars from Britain’s golden age of cinema. Terry-Thomas has always fascinated me, even when I was a child. Whether he was oozing villainous charm dressed and manicured as a perfect cad while fawning over some young lovely or blustering dastardliness as his suave persona fell apart when events turned against him he was and still is wonderfully entertaining. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the definition of the word “Dastardly” in any reputable dictionary said something about a Terry-Thomas character being up to his neck in some plan or other. In fact, the cartoon character Dick Dastardly from the Wacky Races kids TV show was essentially a caricature of Terry-Thomas.

The plot of the film is fairly simple. Ian Carmichael plays Henry Palfrey, a mild-mannered young man and ineffectual businessman who considers himself a failure. Everyone from his employees to his tennis club pals seem to take little notice of him and so he enrols in the “School of Lifemanship” run by Dr. Potter (Alistair Sim) who explains to his class of new students that “Lifemanship is the science of being one up on your opponents at all times. It is the art of making him feel that somewhere, somehow he has become less than you – less desirable, less worthy, less blessed.”

After the good doctor surmises that a woman must be involved when interviewing Palfrey, we see Palfrey recount in flashback how he came to meet the lovely April Smith (Janette Scott) by bumping into her getting off a bus and how his carefully planned dinner date was ruined by Raymond Delauney (Terry-Thomas). There’s a wonderful scene where Palfrey arrives with his charming date at the restaurant only to be refused entry by the maître d’ (a brilliantly snobbish turn by the marvellous John Le Mesurier) because of some mix up with the name of the booking. Unfortunately for Palfrey, before he acts on April’s advice that they go elsewhere to eat, Delauney saunters into the restaurant and, being a casual acquaintance of Palfrey through the tennis club, invites him and (more importantly) his date to join him at his table. Delauney then proceeds to spend the entire evening seducing April and in a perfect example of one-upmanship, reduces Palfrey’s fragile ego even further by getting him to foot the bill. Palfrey then makes several further puny attempts to impress his new girlfriend, including buying a car and trying to prove his tennis prowess against Delauney but fails on both accounts miserably.

Then the flashback ends and we concentrate on Palfrey’s time at the school and how quickly he picks up the art of gaining the upper hand in any given situation. The film then follows him using his newly-acquired skills as he gets his own back on pretty much everyone who had looked down on him earlier. Hilarity ensues as we see how easily he trumps Delauney’s caddish behaviour by becoming an even bigger and more skilful cad himself. However, it’s not all plain sailing for him and…at which point I’ll say no more.

School for Scoundrels is definitely worth checking out as it’s one of those charming black and white comedies that Britain made so well in the ’50s and ’60s. There’s also a wonderful sense of nostalgia to be enjoyed when seeing parts of London as they were half a century ago, when roads were clearer, trees were more abundant and social etiquette was still bordering on formal. That and three of the finest comic talents from the era. Absolutely one to be enjoyed. One final word of caution though: don’t suppose for a minute that the 2006 Hollywood remake starring Billy Bob Thornton will be in the same league.