After a week of unending hefting and carrying heavy things in either the office or ex-shop I had the great joy of celebrating my first Saturday off in quite a few years... and I was absolutely stumped as to what I should do! So much to do.. so little enthusiasm to do anything.

The evening was much better however when I finally got round to seeing HOT FUZZ with Owen. I must admit it wasn't as immediately enjoyable as SHAUN OF THE DEAD but it wasn't long before I was laughing out loud - so rare in a film comedy these days.

Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is a dedicated policeman whose arrest record is so staggeringly high that his superiors transfer him to the sleepy country town of Sandford. There he finds it difficult to fit in to the lazy pace of the town and the lacklustre policing but when several leading citizens die in suspicious circustances Nick realises that country life can be just as violent as in town.

Edgar Wright mines the cop-out-of-water territory for all it's worth in the first hour then goes all-out for the all-action finale with thudding machine guns, explosions, blood-splattered wounds and yes... the cops firing guns as they jump sideways in slo-mo! Simon Pegg is almost too good as the dour Angel making it hard to sympathise with him until he is 'humanised' by his friendship with his amiable well-meaning but oafish constable sidekick Danny - played of course by Nick Frost. Frost is wonderful, not over-playing the bumbling oafness and portraying Danny's wide-eyed admiration of Angel with touching sincerity.

Thanks to the success of SHAUN... Edgar Wright obviously has assembled the supporting cast of his dreams and all of them play it straight down the middle to excellent effect, a little too good in fact - I would love to have seen more of Billie Whitelaw (how good to see her on screen again!), Edward Woodward, Anne Reid, Kenneth Cranham, Peter Wight and Julia Deakin. Yep... I am making space on the shelf for the dvd already...

Owen pointed out this evening that my iPod had 3434 songs on it.

It seems a good excuse to let you know what the last 10 tracks played were:

LOOKING FOR THE RIGHT GUY - Kim Weston
TAKE ME - Donna Summer
FAMILY - "Dreamgirls" film soundtrack
SO WHATCHA GONNA DO - Martha Wash
I'M STILL HERE medley (live) - Barbra Streisand
GIVE HIM A GREAT BIG KISS - The Shangri-Las
IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT - The Neville Brothers
SWITCH - TLC
THE MONKEY - The Velvelettes
DREAMY LADY - T.Rex

In case you're wondering where the usual suspects of Madonna, Kirsty MacColl, Dusty Springfield and Beverly Knight are... I am loading my cds backwards through my collection (no, I don't know why either!) so far I have done from The Streets to Yazoo and my compilation cds.

I will do a more extensive iPod breakdown when it's a bit more representative of my collection!

Year Zero. Day Three.

Despite my deepest waking nightmares last week the actual get-in to the new office went very smoothly largely thanks to the expert Pickfords moving team headed by Rick who looked like Daniel Craig's uglier brother (steady Andrew...) and by the winning combination of myself and Martin at the office, quickly emptying the crates as they arrived and keeping plenty of walking space around the piles of stock. Even if we did manage to get ourselves locked out on the balcony when the fire exit door blew shut behind us! Luckily the sons of Pickford arrived about ten minutes later *note to self...*

So this is what the door and relevant corner looked like before Hurricaine Flashbacks hit...

Same corner after the end of Friday (aka Moving Day #1):
(clicky for biggy)

And this is how it looked at 12.30 Saturday afternoon after we had sorted the final delivery:

And here is me so you have an idea of the width of the poster pile:

Special thanks go to Owen for bringing Martin and I victuals at the end of the first day and Guy Thomas for helping with the last delivery although the hung-over eejit was actually supposed to have been at the shop helping Richard get the stuff to us about 2 and a half hours earlier!

Now comes the sorting, putting shelves up, watching shelves tumble down, getting phone line activated, getting the Broadband switched to the new address... you know, all the real FUN stuff. Oh and getting to know the neighbours... can't wait to meet them two doors down in the headquarters of Torture Garden!

Well it's over... I worked my last day at Flashbacks: The Shop today. What a strange experience.

We opened in 1986 - when Challenger and Chernobyl went bang, Phil Lynott and the Duchess of Windsor died, Boy George appeared on "The A-Team" and The Smiths released "The Queen Is Dead", Madonna released "True Blue" and the Pet Shop Boys released "West End Girls", Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson and Suzy Lamplugh went to meet a client.

Even taking into account the 5-odd years I worked with the actor's agent that's a lot of "Hello Can I Help You"s, making change, wondered if the customer would nick the pen after writing their cheques or drummed my fingers waiting for their credit card to be verified.

I have made some fine friends, had some great customers and gone cross-eyed with boredom with the ones who mistook the shop for a drop-in centre. My part-timers included Martin Taylor and occasionally Steve O'Connor, the two friends I blogged about recently who have died in the intervening years.

I don't deny it was a strange feeling to look back at it just one more time before I hit the lightswitch and could feel my eyes getting hot and prickly. I say again I believe that the past is always swirling around one and it has felt like that a lot today.

I had my last lunch at the Carlton with Yolanda and here is the nice waiter bringing me my omlette and chips...
Dear God I wonder how much I have spent in there over the years??? Ah the waitresses I have seen come and go... dumpy Maria, fiery Olga, moody Yvonne, big Maria, blonde Asha - never an English woman knowingly employed.

Luckily the shop looks an absolute disaster area now so that saw off any sentimentality swamping me... it's hard to get nostalgic about things when you are forever banging your knees on packing crates and screaming O FUCK IT as yet another bit of brown sellotape sticks to everything but what it's supposed to. Yes the shop was always a hymn of praise to Boss Richard's 1970s commune retail style but now it looks like Ground Zero.

Bizarrely the more we have packed the stock up, the less room we have had to move - how can that be?? Here I am in the basement - I had just heard something behind me start to shift....and just before leaving it all got to me... luckily Owen was on hand to chronicle my last seconds as a West End Boy.
So goodbye Silver Place. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

But what a time I had.

As it was Owen's burpday we went to see Cirque De Soleil's ALEGRIA at the Royal Albert Hall. In their ten years of visiting London I can't say I had ever felt the urge to see them before, imagining it would be all mime and whimsy. I had a whale of a time! It's always nice to see a show that takes you by surprise. It was colourful, vibrant, imaginative and genuinely thrilling to watch.

My favourite acts were the female trapeze artist who despite the wire she had on still made me jumpy watching her swinging and spinning above our heads (maybe because I am so used to just looking across at the Albert Hall stage the use of all that space in the vault above was such a dizzying experience), the wincingly powerful handbalancing of Ukranian Denis Tolstov, the Russian Maria Silaeva who did some serious leaping and wibbling with the ol' stick and ribbon and metal hoops, Ken Futamura dizzying spins above the stage balancing a large metal cube and all the running, bouncing and pirouetting artists on the Power Track (2 intersecting bouncy runways), the gymnasts on the bendy Russian bars supported on the shoulders of others and finally the seven gravity-defying acrobats on the aerial high bar somersaulting off the metal rig high above the stage to be caught by the trapeze catchers beneath them. The only act that lost my attention were two Mongolian female contortionists which was a little too 'Freaks' for my liking.

I even enjoyed the clowns which is unheard of for me, the tall Brazilian one (who rode a farting hobby-horse at one point) and the chubby Spaniard he partnered had great fun with a paper airplane buzzed into the audience until one appeared with a massive one that nearly filed the stage and to close the first act was a puzzling though strangely poetic vignette featuring a Russian clown with John Lydon hair, a hung-up coat doubling as a lover, a railway track and snow... tons of snow! How this ends is an amazing coup-de-theatre (even if it's nicked from Slavka I think). The only downsides to the evening were the woeful bar arrangements at the RAH and the usual travel hell that invariably takes place when we go to that mausoleum. This time the Circle and Dictrict lines out of Kensington High Street were all up the muff.

Well done that Owen for having a birthday and wanting to see this show!

The obligatory "Oooo look at my road" shot after the snow!

I feel oddly sad at the news that Anna Nicole Smith has been found dead in Florida aged 39.

She seemed to be living out one of those all too familiar look-at-me lives that one suspected would end in tragedy.

I am remembering the exuberant Guess ads in which she first came to prominence in 1993, most of them loosely based on Jayne Mansfield images. She seemed a healthy antidote to the increasingly androgenous models who were appearing in print ads in the early 90s and I thought at the time "Ah we will hear a lot from her". Didn't we just.

Strange how the ghost of Mansfield seemed to never be too far away from her.

Tonight Owen and I went to see Boy George again, this time in the posh surroundings of Koko {aka The Camden Palace, The Music Machine, Camden Hippodrome etc} Somehow this was my first time going there and what a nice building it is.

Boy George was, I suspect, feeling no pain tonight. He was fine while singing but he was all over the place during the links, garbling his sentences so quickly that only he I suspect knew why he was laughing. The band - including longtime song-writing collaborators Kevin Frost and JohnThemis - was loud and good, his new found dancehall style still gives old numbers like KARMA CHAMELEON a thorough shake-up and the set-list included all the ones I liked from last October at the Pigalle. There was also a good one I think called HUMAN NATURE about Asylum Seekers. Oddly despite backing singer Lucy having a fair old hefty belt to her voice - she certainly nailed Helen Terry's lines from CHURCH OF THE POISONED MIND - his recently 'released' aka downloadable single TIME MACHINE with the thankfully-absent Amanda Ghost was not featured.

By and large I enjoyed it although it was marred by George's jittery mood, the deliberately obscure and back-of-the-stage lighting - is he still obsessed about his double-chin? - and the lack of spatial awareness of several vile females.

This has not been a good week for a serious Motown fan...

Last Friday Billy Henderson of The Detroit Spinners (as they were known in this country) died aged 67 from *gulp* complications arising from diabetes and

Joe Hunter who was the first keyboard player in the Motown session band known as The Funk Brothers (and immortalised in the documentary STANDING IN THE SHADOW OF MOTOWN) died aged 79

while on Sunday the impossibly glamorous singer/actress Barbara McNair died aged 72 of throat cancer.

I'm off to play IT'S A SHAME, YOU'VE REALLY GOT A HOLD ON ME and I KNOW BETTER as a tribute to them respectively.

Over the weekend Owen and I went to the Barbican Hall to see one of the tie-in concerts with the new BBC series on UK soul called SOUL BRITANNIA, this one billed as the Soul Britannia All-Stars and what an odd night it was. As the years being covered were the 70s suffice to say the audience was nearly all our age and as usual was predominantly white.
The evening started on a high with a segment celebrating The Queens of Lovers Rock namely Janet Kay and Carroll Thompson who were joined onstage by actor/singer Victor Romero Evans for back-up vocals. They sung about 3 songs each, Evans sang his "At The Club" and they exited on a Bob Marley cover to an audience on their feet and dancing. It actually made me want to investigate these artists further. And yep, Janet can still (just) hit those skyscraper notes on "Silly Games".

After a chance to catch up with the old married couple Angoose and Clive in the interval, the show recommenced with Pauline Black - and her cut-glass diction - introducing Carol Grimes. Imagine Hazel Blears' mother as a pub jazz/soul singer and you're nearly there. Actually she was very good, I'd vaguely heard of her before but had never actually heard her singing to the best of my knowledge. After her the mc for the evening - the frankly awful Root Jackson of unknown funk band FBI - called up a member of Gonzalez to do a number - sadly not "Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet" then it was time for four songs from Hamish Stuart of the Average White Band - all of them worthy but seemingly endless. Despite finishing with "Pick Up The Pieces" the evening seemed strangely becalmed.

The much-awaited appearance of Madeline Bell promised to kick-start the evening back to life but after a few ok songs from her "This Is One Girl" album, which I used to have on cd before passing it down the eBay chain, she was taking her bow and was gone. No Blue Mink? Even more puzzling was no mention of her long association with Dusty Springfield - surely a candidate for some kind of mention in an evening dedicated to UK soul.

No time for reflection though as Linda Lewis came on next. It was great to finally see one of my favourite performers from the mid-70s but again no sooner was she there than she was waving goodbye! She deserved more time but gave us "Rock A Doodle Doo", "Sideway Shuffle" and "Reach For The Truth" and O and I have deceided to definately see her the next time she headlines a show on her own. The final act of the evening was two members of the Brixton collective Cymande joining the onstage band for a couple of numbers which were ok but not all that.

So all in all it was a real curate's egg of an evening which sadly didn't succeed in pressing the claims that UK soul from this period has been unfairly neglected.

The purple star means I have now 500+ positive feedbags on eBay.
I'll try to not let it change me.

Oxford Circus has been having a major overhaul and in their excavations and steam-cleaning they have uncovered a whole load of posters from the early to mid 90s.

How nice to see the 4-sheet for Boy George's cover of FUNTIME from 1995 again.

Some art director would charge a fortune for this 'distressed' look now!

Oooo it's Harry Potter in the nip! Daniel Radcliffe publicising his role in EQUUS at the Gielgud Theatre soon... I hope he doesn't get put off by the binoculars catching the lights...

A new wonderful Madonna dvd/cd of her Confessions Tour from London was released today so I was there this morning to buy it.

As a fan must, on the morning of the day of release... I do so love being a fan. There are traditions that just Must be upheld. Luckily Owen was there to record the event - and to make sure I didn't faint in HMV when I saw them on the rack.

Speaking of which... here I am last week at the Madonna night at Vauxhallville..

DREAMGIRLS - from stage to screen

This is going to be a long blog... I will allow you Constant Reader to go for a drink/pee/shaving break if needs be.

I first became aware of DREAMGIRLS when I watched the 1982 Tony Awards – oh for the days when theatre award shows were shown on tv – and was totally blown away by the clip of the show which culminated in Jennifer Holliday justifying her award for Best Featured Actress with a mind-blowing performance of the song “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”.  A few weeks later, while queuing early in the morning for tickets to that night’s GUYS AND DOLLS at the National Theatre with fellow front-row regulars, we got chatting to a New Yorker next to us in the queue. He fully understood our G&D obsession as he was a DREAMGIRLS regular and his enthusing for the show made me buy the cast recording and it was love at first hearing. So much energy, such great songs and of course.. that song and that singer. I patiently waited.. no London production. Jennifer Holliday launched a solo recording career and I got her to sign my DREAMGIRLS poster after an appearance on “Wogan” but still no London production. The theatre agent I later worked for tried with a guy who worked at the Society of West End Theatre to get the rights to stage the show for an AIDS charity performance here and finally we found out why there had been no London production… the woman who handled the rights felt there wasn’t enough good black British talent to carry the show.   Cow.

So I have never seen it on stage but I have HEARD it on stage! Paul in New York had a recording of the original cast taped through the theatre’s sound desk which he gave me a copy of *note to self… find tapes *! So just as I was reconciling myself to never seeing it I heard it was definitely being adapted for the screen which of course threw up the problem – how could I possibly enjoy it when I loved and knew every single note of the original? So well in fact that 5 years ago I got up on stage at the Piano Bar in Sitges and mimed the title song *note to self… burn photos*

So yesterday, 25 years after falling under the score’s spell, I saw the film with Owen at a special preview at the National Film Theatre. I tried, I really tried… but after about 5 minutes I gave in… and loved it! Bill Condon wrote the screenplay for CHICAGO which I never really warmed to but here he also directs and he does it with a wonderful sweep and élan which glides you through the story of Effie, Deena and Lorrell (Jennifer Hudson, Beyonce Knowles, Anika Noni Rose) and their rise from the humble Dreamettes to the glamorous and chart-topping Dreams. Starting out as backing singers for the ‘wildest man in show business’ James Thunder Early (Eddie Murphy) they are slowly groomed for stardom by their unscrupulous manager Curtis (Jamie Foxx) who realises they have what it takes to cross over into the lucrative pop market of the 1960s.

The Motown inference is bolder in the film – the location is changed from New York to Detroit, the visual references for Deena and The Dreams are blatant steals from both Diana Ross and The Supremes photo shoots and album art while Curtis also later manages a boy band who even Stevie Wonder would recognise as The Jackson 5. Of course the main area where the storyline veers from the Motown source is that the ousted Effie – based on Florence Ballard –after an initial struggle becomes a successful solo singer. For Flo there was no second act, forbidden by Motown to mention The Supremes in any solo publicity material and paid off with hardly any royalties, she struggled with a failing career, depression and addiction problems only to die from a heart attack at the tragically young age of 33. Indeed in one of the early workshops of the show, Effie’s character died but this was dropped when the production team saw what a star-in-the-making they had with Jennifer Holliday.

The performances on the whole are fine although Jamie Foxx is underwhelming as Curtis, his vocal on his song “When I First Saw You” isn’t a patch on Ben Harney in the stage version. Beyonce Knowles wasn’t as bad as I was expecting but the role of Deena is hardly the most dramatic as she reacts more to events than instigates them. She looks sensational though. I really enjoyed Anika Noni Rose as Lorrell who suffers from her one solo being the only song from the original score to be cut. She holds her own though with a feisty performance and Keith Robinson is fine as Effie’s songwriter brother who also becomes disenchanted with Curtis’ manipulations.

The two performances that shine out are in the best roles.

Eddie Murphy seizes the role of Jimmy, the wild and vain insecure star becoming more burnt-out and stifled by Curtis’ indifference and mines it for all it’s got. His response to Curtis’ dismissal of an obvious hit record is wonderful, his face etched with a pain beyond words. And then there is Jennifer Hudson. My love of the other Jennifer H made this the biggest hurdle for me but while not having the mighty church vocal of Holliday she is marvellous – an instant star and a natural on screen, even more amazing that this is her film debut. Her performance of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” alone should guarantee her the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. At its conclusion the audience burst into spontaneous applause which it also did when her name appeared at the end. So few recent musicals allow you to concentrate on the performer – what I hated about MOULIN ROUGE and CHICAGO in particular was the way the busy editing ruined any chance of sitting back and just being able to enjoy the singer singing. Here Condon wisely lets nothing gets in the way of Hudson.

Sadly Jennifer Holliday has been getting a lot of press attention in the US bemoaning the fact that she was not asked to appear in the film – the stage ‘Lorrell’ Loretta Devine appears as a blues singer towards the end of the film – but I think this has been rather sad. There is no way she could play Effie now having lost all the weight she had back then and would probably have raised hell had she been offered a cameo. Down the years how many great stage originals have lost out when the film version is made?                                   

Most notably Ethel Merman in GYPSY, Chita Rivera in WEST SIDE STORY, Barbara Cook in THE MUSIC MAN or Angela Lansbury in MAME but those performances live on. It’s a shame she cannot see that the opportunity afforded Hudson is the same that Michael Bennett gave her in the original show. The film is dedicated to Bennett, the director/choreographer whose genius had already given Broadway A CHORUS LINE, who died 20 years ago this year aged 44 of an AIDS-related illness.

"Every man has his own special dream..."

Time to add my 2 Cents I guess....

over the Celebrity Big Brother implosion. When they all trooped in on that rainy night a week or so back I sat straining in eagerness for the housemate who would give us more bang for our buck. Amazing that this most dreary of line-ups has in fact given us 3 walk outs - damn even Jodie Marsh didn't flounce off last year despite the set-tos with Pete Burns, Michael Barrymore and George Galloway. So it trundled along it's samey little rut... until some bright spark decided to ship in Jade, her mother and toy boy. Now we have effigies being burnt in India and questions asked in the House of Commons.

Random thoughts:

Surely CBB should have been put to bed last year when we had the post-modern, HEAT-sent denouement of a non-celebrity winning the show by becoming famous just by being on it? But Channel 4 needs it's biggest cash cow... and I'm not talking about Jade.

For my part I don't think what's happening is racist, just nasty playground bullying of the worst order - oh for Richard from last year to be let in there to rename Jade, Danielle and Jo 'The Plastics'. It also makes for highly depressing and queasy viewing as it illustrates how vulgar, mean and debased the whole Celebrity/Chav culture has become and that is glorified in the yellow press that is HEAT, GRAZIA and any number of shite magazines which stoke and perpetuate this current breed of oxygen-thieves.

How strange that none of the other housemates - Jermaine, Ian, Dirk or Cleo - feel they can assert themselves in the face of the three-headed Hydra that is JadDanJo? Although I must say I am feeling kinder to Ian than even I could imagine.

Where do these people come from for a spontaneous effigy burning in front of the television cameras? Is there a 24 hour shop open which just sells old Guy Fawkes figures ready to be immolated at the drop of a hat? Likewise is there a shop in Muslim cities that sell Western flags for the weekly demonstration with the Swan Vestas?

How likely is it for Endemol to perceive Jade as the spanner in the works - when she has the same agent as Davina McColl, Dermot O'Leary and Russell Brand? Can't wait to see Davina's jokey "Oh Jade you are a one" interview when she is hopefully voted out... and now it's revealed Cleo Roccas is with the same agent which throws her role as 'peacemaker' into question.

I have been that knackered since Thursday I have been remiss in posting about the extravaganza that was Bearlesque at the Vauxhalla Taverna.

This was the third time I had seen Freddy's troupe there and this time they had the run of the whole show. The place was crowded - I wonder what Nathan who runs the regular Thurday evening Vauxhallville felt - and the beary lads had a rousing reception. I must say that I had my usual last-minute thoughts about going... yes I am getting old... but it was a fun night in the company of O, Lady Miss Coates, Poor Posh Paul and Don (who had forgotten to take his unimpressed medication before he came out) and college friend.

Yes their material was over-stretched to fit the time-slot and a little more rehearsal time would definately not go amiss - not all vaudeville should be Amateur Hour in Dixie - but they invariably leave one feeling hugely entertained and transported into their parallel bear universe. I must say watching Freddy command the stage and work the audience filled me with a fraternal glow... I burped the bitch after all.

So here are a few snatched shots of Bears Fred, Luke (who needs some proper plumes for his fandance... that pigeon must was well-rid of those ratty feathers), Justin (like a fat Tim Curry... oh...) and Ben in all their overripe glory: