The Queen's Funeral

 

Pomp meets circumstance

We're watching and making history all the time of course, in small ways, and sometimes bigger ones. These past six years we’ve been privy to rather more history than most people get what with Brexit, Covid and a seemingly endless cycle of recessions. So, the death of a Queen, however long lived, may appear to be a smaller affair. Not a bit of it. Even the television coverage of Covid did stop sometimes for other matters but ever since Queen Elizabeth the second passed away BBC and ITV have had virtually non stop Royal programming. If you really wanted to you could even watch a live stream of the lying in state of the coffin, surely of all things this is something that if you wanted to see it the preference would be to actually attend? The big day though was today. Why is it even in this blog, you're asking? Simply because it is the largest event any of us are likely to see this year.

Top of the Pops 20 August 1987

 

Reviewed by Chris Arnsby. Steve Wright: “Hello!! Good evening and welcome to another Top of the Pops!! I'm the one who's not pregnant!! This is the one who is!!”

Janice Long: “Lots and lots of things to get in tonight. We've got Sinitta. We've got Spagna coming on the show. Bon Jovi are here. Loads and loads of stuff and this is Wax. They are Building A Bridge.”

[20] WAX: bridge to your heart. The keyboard player is doing more than 50% of the work in this two - person band. He plays the keyboard, obviously, but he also plays the saxophone and does all the singing. He's also found time to work out little illustrative hand gestures to match the lyrics. On the line “I don't know what the future's going to be,” he looks all around with one hand shading his eyes. When he sings, “written guarantee,” he makes a signing-the-cheque motion. The other bloke doesn't bring anything to the group except guitar playing, vocal counterpoint, and a faint resemblance to Howard Stableford from Tomorrow's World. (John- The keyboard player is the genius Andrew Gold, multi- instrumentalist, producer, singer -`Lonely Boy`, `Never Let Her Slip Away`-and the son of Marnie Nixon who used to secretly provide the singing for actors such as Natalie Wood in West Side Story. The guitarist is Graham Gouldman from 10cc)

Film Review: a-ha The Movie

 

Documentary shows the serious men behind a-ha’s skyscraping music

Given how majestic and serious a-ha’s music often seems it’s no surprise to discover it’s creators were serious young men back in the day and now over thirty five years later they are serious older men! It’s possible there were moments of unbridled joy during the band’s imperial period – there is definitely smiling and laughing in the old clips- but this interesting documentary suggests the trio have spent much of their career getting on each other’s nerves. That is when they’re not liking the band as a whole.

Top of the Pops 13 August 1987

 

Reviewed by Chris Arnsby. “Come on don't forget that applause.” It's BBC master tape shenanigans again, as the picture rolls in on a wide shot of the Top of the Pops studio with Five Star on stage; they seem to be dressed in Blake's 7 series four jump suits. The voice of God booms through the studio speakers while the crowd whoop and applaud, “come on don't forget that applause, more more!” Who is this cruel taskmaster? It could be Floor Manager Hilary Bevan-Jones but I think you can hear Hilary just off mike carrying out the traditional Floor Manager duty of giving a ten second countdown. So, who is this voice roaring like a lion? Could it be Producer and Director Brian Whitehouse himself? Whoever it is, they whip the crowd to a frenzy, and Five Star launch into a performance of Whenever You're Ready. The show proper follows afterwards.

Peter Powell: “Hi it's Thursday night! We're happening again! It's hit after hit! It's Top of the Pops!” Simon Bates: “I'll tell you what we have got. We've got a first time which is incredible for a band of this qualidy with this number of hits Def Leppard. On the Pops for the first time with Animal here.”

[9] DEF LEPPARD: animal. Excuse the odd typography but I've decided to copy Top Of the Pops's preferred caption format this week. It looks stupid. Will I continue with it? Who knows. Meanwhile, admire Simon Bates' ability to spout words which form sentences but need two or three attempts to parse. He's like a Chatbot jammed on stream of consciousness. And yes, he did say “qualidy”. I didn't think much of Def Leppard first time round, but time has softened me. I quite like the structure of the chorus, “an I want, an I need, an I lust, animal.”

 

The Queen

 

People are often cruel, judgmental or dismissive about the Royal Family in a way that they would never be about anyone else almost as if they didn’t think they are people. I’m not a Royalist nor anti- Royals it but the Queen has been a presence throughout my entire life in such a way that I feel like I know her even though I obviously don’t. Yes, I can smile at the number of times in the past twenty four hours the BBC has deployed their stock phrases (“mother of the nation”) in sombre tones and the way websites have unveiled their black livery but I do feel this all misses the sense of fun that the Queen herself preferred. After all, one of the last pieces of footage we have of her is tapping along on a teacup to `We Will Rock You`, the Queen playing along with Queen! Or the way she gamely engaged in a little James Bond fun a decade back for the Olympics. I reckon she’d prefer to be remembered like that.

Review Round Up- 13 Reasons Why S1, Kill Ben Lyk, Muse

 

One of the things of starting to stream stuff is the abundance of material available and though I subscribed to Netflix to finally see Stranger Things (some inevitable reviews will appear!) I’ve found some other gems knocking around including a series I’d always wanted to see 13 Reasons Why. Running from 2017-20 across four seasons this dark glimpse into the bruised psyche of American youth won many plaudits during its run and it’s easy to see why. While a lot of dramas take easy options when it comes to issues like mental health and suicide this is a programme that attempts a more grounded, less sanitised portrayal. It centres on the aftermath of the suicide of a girl called Hannah Baker. Her legacy is a series of cassette tapes, each one addressing the behaviour of one of the people she blames for her ultimate act. The accused have to listen to these tapes and the ramifications both of what she says and what people think happened runs across the whole season.

Top of the Pops 6 August 1987

 

Reviewed by Chris Arnsby. Gary Davies: “Hello again. Welcome to Top of the Pops. Something of a girls night out on the show tonight because we've got Sinitta, we've got Samantha, and we've also got Spagnia, but first we start with a song at number seven in the charts. Not only singing live but also playing live, here's New Order, True Faith.”

[7] New Order: True Faith. Now this is odd. Last week Gary Davies didn't mention who was hosting the show. Now, here he is again, but BBC Genome (who draw their information from the relevant issue Radio Times) describe tonight's show as “introduced by Peter Powell and Simon Bates.” They'll actually do the 13/08/1987 edition which the Radio Times describes as “introduced by Gary Davies”. Last time there was a short notice change of host it was because Janice Long cancelled because of her pregnancy. Here there's no obvious reason for the change apart from a brief game of musical chairs.

New Order are back singing live and playing live. Do you think that's wise? Remember what happened last time? Actually, this performance is fine. The only real point of interest is the mannequin set up at the back of the stage for some reason. Gary Davies claims it's a bloke called Terry, from France, who is also in the video. Gary, I think the band have been pulling your leg.

 

The Sandman Episodes 7 -10

Still loving Neil Gaiman’s responses to some of the more absurd criticisms of the series on Twitter. After one person slagged off a particular casting, Gaiman responded by saying they’d cast that actor specifically because that person didn’t like them! So its with respect that I open this post about the last four episodes by saying I’m not sure this show is really for me. That’s not to say it doesn’t have impressive moments but something is not connecting. Perhaps betraying that I’d not been paying enough attention to literally everything in this series I found myself a little disorientated by part seven `The Doll’s House`. I had to check I’d not accidentally skipped an episode because matters seemed to have moved on and there’s a lot happening,