Entertainment For Lively Minds
Twilight of the Dogs?
Posted by Archie Valparaiso on 20 November 2008 - 6:45pm.
1. Take one far-from-now-'n'-happenin' New Wave keyboard player.
2. Marry him up (hi, Mr H!) to a French psychoanalyst.
3. Get them to write an opera together, as you do.
4. Call his former boss and the world's foremost exponent of the Neo-Tantric Madrigal and get the pair of them to star in The Work alongside a proper opera diva.
5. Ensure that Former Boss's wardrobe is inspired by Tommy Cooper in The Long Riders.
6. Struth.
Quote of the Month
"It is important sometimes to get outside your comfort zone just to see what happens" (Lord Sting of Roxanne)
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Where *did* you find
that picture of John Bonham?
Haven't
those two twats got anything better to do?
AV,
you really need to get a day job.
I'm in belated mourning today, just found out Rick Griffin is pan bried.
beginners start here - http://www.myraltis.co.uk/rickgriffin/
Prog doesn't seem so bad...
..now, does it?
meringue
I think you have meringue, as we say in Glasgow
Progressive Rock (Yes, ELP, Trace) is fine by me, Trucking by 'The Dead' (any version) sounds like a pub band warming up for a soundcheck.
Their covers and posters are a very different beast - I wore a Dreadful Grate t-shirt or two back in 77, even though I preferred The Clash.
and still do
Sounds great
If I was a famous rock star with more money than I knew what to do with I'm pretty sure I'd do something completely outer space rather than just plodding around the enormodromes playing all the old hits again.
Why does Sting get slagged off for his lute playing? He knew it was never going to be a big money spinner but he did it because it excited and interested him. And have you ever seen a lute? They're incredibly difficult to play. Especially seeing as he's a bass player.
Can anyone imagine the Gallagher brothers having the imagination and wit to take a risk on soemthing as bonkers as this? No of course not and that's why i'd much rather go and see this opera than go to an Oasis gig (unless you could gaurantee someone was going to push Noel off the stage again).
Paris remains unmoved
Last night was the first night of a five-night run in a relatively small theatre. Tickets are still available for the last two nights (I just checked). Neither Le Figaro nor Le Monde have bothered to review it on their sites this morning.
But Niks does raise an interesting point about Sting-sniping as a national sport. Elvis Costello himself has surely done just as much, if not more, to merit widespread derision. Exhibit One: the breathtaking conceit of going to Nashville and hiring an embarrassingly unimpressed Billy Sherrill to dash off some arrangements by numbers for the usual fee (and even so, 30 years on, Almost Blue remains his best-sounding album). Exhibit Two: The Br*dsk* Qu*rtet. Exhibit Three: that Charles Aznavour cover (good only for one thing: giving Stevie Riks what is probably his finest hour to date).
Does it just boil down to Elvis, for some reason, being officially cool and Sting, for some other reason, being officially not?
Fame
isn't it just because Sting is a much bigger star and has had his unfortunate pontifications aired more widely? Personally I deride the both of them and this sounds like essentially a vanity project, and my idea of hell. The idea that they can just go ahead and do opera seems absurd and deluded to me. I thought this was some kind of elaborate spoof when I read it.
I don't have a problem with Sting doing these diverse projects..
but I have a problem with the way he does them. I always feel like I'm being talked down to by the most sanctimonious, smug person on Earth. Instead of waving his Tantric sex wand around and blabbing on about it, he should look up the word 'humility' in the dictionary as he stares at himself in the mirror...