Entertainment For Lively Minds
Giffers and Guitars - Enough With The Elder Statesmen Of Rock...
...dressed in the off-the-peg template of: intimate, close mic'd album - a collection of reflective late night confessionals and contemporary covers, contextualised with low-key portraits and crag-faced character studies (usu: a'strumming and a'staring into the middle distance).
Johnny Cash's rebranding and 'Dark Knight Returns' career coda wasn't strictly believable, but it worked. Glen Campbell carries off the comeback as a weathered legend and salty ol' songwriter - but Neil Diamond! Nah, I'm not buying it, he's just Neil Sedaka with a guitar.
And now Richard Hawley chummying up with Tony Christie (who looks remarkably like Michael Douglas in profile)!
Can we put a (flat) cap on this now before a cast of other 'Saga' stars - David Essex, Englebert Hump', Roger Whittaker - get the moody makeover and frowny browed reappraisal treatment.
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Is that really Wilfred Brambell?
He looks so young..........
He looks a bit like the guitar stick player from the Mothers and King Crimson, I'm thinking.
He was only 49. . .
when Steptoe and Son began - only 13 years older than his "son". Like Clive Dunn, he specialised in "doing old".
Hmm. So I'm two years older than Old Man Steptoe. That's really made my day.
My thoughts entirely.......
My age is also 51.
But he was so bloody old when it was on in black and white.
And 49 was bloody old in the 60s, I suppose.
"just Neil Sedaka with a guitar"
If you think that's an unflattering comparison you have no soul, no fun, no sense of pop history, and no idea what makes a great single.
The Hump and Mister bloody woolly jumper whistling Durham Town are beyond the pale, I'll allow.
Anyone who stands comparison....
....with "just" Neil Sedaka actually is actually probably receiving high praise.
“just Neil Sedaka” indeed
Out of the two Neils
I much prefer Neil Sedaka - and he is a master craftsmen of pop tunage, but certainly on the Streisand, Manilow section of the record racks and I have no problem with that. My gripe really is about Neil Diamond (and similar) - why try to rebadge and rebrand him/them as some worthy journeyman.
Yes a few great tunes (although I prefer Elvis and The Monkees versions ) but typically bought by the same are crowd that are terrors for Chris de Burgh, Barbara Dickson and comp's of show tunes.
shouldn't you make a
'beep beep' sound when you're reversing like this...
It does sound like that doesn't it ?
but it's more to do with the same tired ol' template of 'the leathery legend' becoming an industry standard - no matter who the act is.
i'm only yankin' yer chain, Dave
your post did read as if you were dissing Neil Sedaka rather unfairly and that you backtracked on foot of comments made by others.
I think your original phrasing might have led to the misunderstanding more than 'owt else.
Keep it going
I'm waiting on Cliff to get the Rick Rubin treatment.
And how can you be so mean about Neil Diamond? He's the man who stole the show on the Last Waltz.
Or was that Van's cat-suit?
Given he is now out and proud...
...(he is, isnt he?), Cliff should embrace the pink pound and team up with the Pet Shop Boys.
He is? I missed that....
Has Sue Barker been told...
Could tell a hugely libellously story here, but won't....:o)
Please do
Development Hell have deep pockets...!
(no DON'T - Ed.)
But, but....
... the Tony Christie record is FANTASTIC!
Keep ’em coming
These albums are really good on the whole.
Time for some elder stateswomen. I’d love to hear a new “mature” Bobbie Gentry album.
Missed opportunity?
Tina Turner, who "retired" some year or 2 back, is back on the boards, as the advertising hoards are displaying. Now aside from her celebrated shrieking (OK, it can be very good shreiking), she has demonstarted quite as surprisingly good more conventional voice, on last years, "River- the Joni Letters"/Herbie Hancock. Given the image used on the hoardings, hair flying, mid screech (and aged 30 years younger than she is now) I suspect it wil be more crowd pleasing Nutbush City Limiting....
And of far gretaer paycheck no doubt, to Ms T, but it would be nice to hear Tina turner: the jazz album.
Bah humbug/this just in: so I check, on Amazon, the correct name of the Herbie Hancock above, and, lo and behold, what have they done.....Exclusive special edition, with 2 more tracks then when I bought it. One bosomed bastards!!!!!
Tina Turner
I felt she missed a trick not applying to Angus and Malcolm after Bon Scott died.
"Some of us are gonna try!"
I'm quite excited about the Tony Christie album, particularly as Hawley is involved. I've always loved TC's voice and his style, and I'd be sorry if there wasn't a least a little of his overdoing it in there. (Avenues and Alleyways is one of the greatest records ever made.)
Bottom line is that most of these folk know their way around a song and it's fascinating to hear them bringing their age into what they do rather than trying to pretend that it's irrelevant. If they can make it last, produce work of value that articulates something then I'm all for it.
I heard the latest Neil Diamond the other night and wasn't that impressed - it just seemed to be all the ideas he had on 12 Songs revisited. That said, I thought 12 Songs was splendid.
Randy Newman(again)....
....also has an album called "12 Songs".
I wonder what genius thought up the album name and then who stole it from who?
Must be the genius
who suggested Take That and Britney Spears release new albums on the same day and both shall be called Circus.
Oh Come on now
David Essex.
Won't have a word said against him. He used to drink in my local and the man's just a right on dude.
Rock on!
Diamond Geezer, no doubt.
Couldn't sing for toffee. I blame him entirely for that school of heavy breathing "singing", that he developed as he moved into musicals, latterly adopted by every singer ever on the West End stages, from bloody Michaels Crawford to Balls.
I sat thru' Mutiny. There nearly was, I can tell you. Didn't even see the promised Sinittas right boob!
Neil Diamond / Richard Ashcroft
Close your eyes and you can't tell them apart
Bet
You felt like a right t.....!
Purely in the interests of research.....
I listened to the latest Neil Diamond, Home Before Dark, his 2nd with Rick Rubin at the helm. OK, the fact that it was in the record library and I have several of the conceptually similar Johnny Cash records come into it to. Now I hate Mr Diamonds oeuvre and always have, even his appearance with the Band, last waltzing. I liked the Monkees Daydream Believer, having never heard his version until the execrable TV adverts for his recent (unwatched) TV prog, and right crap it sounded sung by him. Anyhow, allowing for this degree of open-mindedness I gave it a go.........
It was wonderful!
Bollox it was, it was every bit as dire as I had feared, with even the muted backing of Mr Rubins usual culprits, presumably Benmont Tench et al, failing to raise a tune that didn't ring of the dum-de-dummiest of showbizzery jingles. At one stage he starts a song, hooting out the word "song", making me fear he was about to re-invent and go the whole hog with "sung blue". Track 2 was bearable, if I must, but really!!!
I now await all the bloggers who are answering the guilty pleasures reveal to be citing Mr D, in the just started thread across the corridor........
Jeez, his hair even makes Terry Wogans look good!
You're right, Retro
There's one great track on there, Pretty Amazing Grace, but the rest noodle on & on unmemorably & tunelessly. And it's all so bloody glum.