Entertainment For Lively Minds
Ulla...
Last night, I spent a magnificently enjoyable two hours watching a band that included Herbie Flowers, Chris Spedding, Justin Heywood and Chris Thompson. Despite the calibre of these musicians, I couldn't quite escape the feeling that there was something not terribly cred about the proceedings.
It gradually dawned upon me that it might have something to do with the giant fighting machine on stage, the ten foot high hologram of Richard Burton and the back projections of a CGI Martian invasion of Victorian England. That and the singers who came out dressed in the appropriate garb and mugged along. It was quite preposterous and yet it didn't really matter. If you still have sufficient fondness for the bombast of WotW with its famous "Dun dun derrrr....!!! (durdle-ud durdle-er!)" to pay forty odd quid to go and see it performed in an ice rink, then you've pretty much got to be either immune or inured to absurdity. I've never seen a show like this before and I can't imagine wanting to go again, but boy was it fun! I dropped thirty years and returned to childhood and my dad bringing home a review copy of this record and saying, "You might like this..."
That single action unquestionably influenced my music tastes and I probably ought to sue. But then there's something immensely satisfying about sitting in a crowd of other people and being swept by a Martian heat ray.
The chances of anyone else being prepared to admit to a liking for Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds are a million to one, but still I'm asking...
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admit to liking WOW
oh no Nathaniel....
Sums it up for me....
"my dad bringing home a review copy of this record and saying, "You might like this..."
Very modern and all that, but shouldn't that have been sufficient warning, as in hills, head for 'em..............
I don't understand
What's 'very modern' and why would a seven-year old think that he should mistrust his dad's gift?
See also podcast.
I presumed your dad was passing on his "good taste", always a dodgy move in my book, however much I try and have tried to do the same to my lad over the years. Modern because it seems the norm now, but I would only like Kenneth McKellar, Harry Secombe and the Seekers if it had always been thus, or worked.
Ah. Not really...
My dad wasn't anti it per se, but he was/is more into big band and Motown divas. He just knew I was mad for anything space-related; I was the perfect age for Star Wars.
I haven't heard it in ages...
...but I suspect I'd still like it...
The album cast a long shadow
Over me. I must have been 9 or so when Mum and Dad brought the album home and still have a very clear memory of my Dad and I building Darth Vader's TIE fighter whilst the album played for the first time. It was really scary, I didn't realise that sound could be so affecting. I was pleased that I could focus on the Airfix kit, otherwise I may have freaked.
Both my sister and I couldn't listen to the album again for years, as it just sounded..evil( we would hide in our bedrooms when 'ver folks played the album). Combine the sounds with THAT booklet and you have an assault on a young persons artistic sensibilities. It took me until the CD reissue to tackle it, and then I bought the 4 disc set..had to face my youthful fears!
Yes, it's a bit proggy, but it's stood the test of time.
Which is more than can be said for Wayne's "Spartacus".
Saw it three years ago...
...and off to see it again next weekend.
"Cred" is highly over rated and the stage show of WotW is hugely enjoyable. Really does the album justice (even if the CGI is a wee bit naffly cheesy!).
It was a treat the first time we saw it to realise that they'd got a load of the original musos like Herbie and Spedding back to be in the band. And hearing Justin Hayward singing "The chances of anything coming from Mars..." live on stage was enough to send a shiver down the spine.
Time to invoke the Word Massive "guilty pleasure rule" - and I just don't care. It was one of the first albums I went out and bought with my own dosh when it first came out and it still sounds great.