Without the state

Pete Postlethwaite RIP

 

A tearjerker moment at the best of times...

Kara Tointon Tango

Another stunning performance by Kara Tointon and Artem Chigvintsev, that I think deserved better marks, especially since the judges gave Pamela Stephenson and her partner a perfect score. How do you think they compare?

Still, at least Ann Widdecombe has finally gone. Although she could have probably made a fair living in the days of the Music Hall with her routines, this show is after all about dancing, not Music Hall.

Beauty on the dance floor

Hurling thunderbolts from the floor

Image by ibanda via Flickr

A beautifully lyrical article on the Tango from the NY Times.

The fundamental step is simply a walk, but a walk that links two people, apparently by destiny. The body’s weight is forward, over the front of the foot, and the dancers lean into each other.

...

Sometimes their bodies seem to touch all the way from brow to knee even as they march or glide along; sometimes there’s just enough space in their embrace for each to turn rapidly to either side,...

The embrace almost never breaks, and within it the gentle planting of a foot on the floor, toe first, can be like a caress. Or either dancer can simply, slowly sweep a pointed foot around on the floor to trace a semicircle.

via Fishnets and Fedoras

Sublime...

Image by ibanda via Flickr

I have to come out of the closet and admit to watching and enjoying the BBC TV programme "Strictly Come Dancing". Not the judges so much, although they are of course a key element of the show and certainly not the insane whooping and cheering of the audience or the booing of the tiniest critical comment. However last night saw something as near to perfection as I have ever seen with a stunning performance of the  Argentine Tango by soap actress Kara Tointon and her partner.

It doesn't hurt of course that she is a beautiful woman in a very sexy dance but this performance was superb. I don't know the technical terms, but the way her body shapes in the dance mirrored and complemented those of her partner, the crisp precision of her footwork, the elegance of her movement all added up to sheer poetry. For once even Bruce Forsyth was almost lost for words.

 

By contrast I thought the higher scoring (by one point) jive by her fellow soap star Scott Maslen was pretty tame, more of a routine from a musical show than a ballroom dance - and don't even think about Anne Widdecombe. Maslen can dance, as can the other top contender, Matt Baker, but taken overall, last nights Tango will take some beating.

Come On Strong...

I've always thought of Kylie Minogue as being your average pop star - she can carry a tune and does a good arena show but otherwise lightweight. Her performances on Jules Holland's New Year Special though have really changed my mind.

I was unexpectedly impressed. Her voice especially put me in mind of Judy Garland or Barbra Streisand and I had never put her in that league.

See also these:

I should be so lucky

2 Hearts

Johnny Cash

I have to confess that Johnny Cash has never been one of my favourites. I suspect that I was put off by such execrable stuff as ‘A boy named Sue’. However I was forced to think again by the issue of his record ‘Hurt’, not a song I would have associated with him, having previously been recorded by the band ‘Nine Inch Nails’. At the time, I compared it to the songs on the wonderful album by Billie Holliday ‘Lady in Satin’, recorded like ‘Hurt’ at the end of the singer’s life. I’ve now belatedly acquired the album from which Hurt is taken and my previous judgement stands. If anything I am even more impressed.

Both albums share some common characteristics; the voice is gone but that intangible quality that marks a great singer is still present at full strength while the material is not what one would have otherwise expected. In Billie’s case the lush string arrangements are at odds with her normal style and to a degree with the bitter quality of her voice. With Johnny Cash, the songs are an incredibly diverse selection, ranging from the expected like Marty Robbins or Cash himself, through Paul Simon, Sting, Ewan McColl and John Lennon to a song up to now indelibly associated with Vera Lynn!

Despite this the album becomes, in Cash’s hands, something so intensely personal and indeed painful, that it is impossible to listen to it without being profoundly moved. This is a man facing death, knowing it and facing up to it. Despite his obvious faith he takes no pleasure in it – there are no songs about returning to the arms of the Lord here. These are bitter, painful and bleak songs.

' Bridge over Troubled Waters', up to now inextricable from the sometimes sugary vocals of its writer Paul Simon and his partner Art Garfunkel becomes a song of aching melancholy so successfully as to call into question Simon and Garfunkel’s reading of their own song. He does the same thing with ‘Hurt’

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor admitted that he was initially "flattered" but worried that "the idea (of Cash covering "Hurt") sounded a bit gimmicky," but when he heard the song and saw the video for the first time, Reznor said he was deeply moved and found Cash's cover beautiful and meaningful. He later said in an interview, "I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore."

Ewan McColl’s ‘First time ever I saw your face’ is transformed from a romantic love song to one of loss and deep regret. The traditional ‘Danny Boy’ is rendered into a hymn to loss –loss of youth, loss of rootedness in a place. John Lennon’s ‘In my Life’ uses a very similar arrangement to Lennon’s, but Cash’s voice coupled with our (and his) knowledge of his situation give it a depth and poignancy Lennon never achieved.

Perhaps the greatest surprise, and to my mind the weakest song on the album, is ‘We’ll meet again’. Its failing is probably that it comes over as simply too perky and so is slightly incongruous in this setting. Even so the sense of loss that suffuses the album comes through.

Despite that all pervading melancholy however, one parallel theme comes through very strongly – many of these songs are also love songs to one woman, June Carter.

There are places I'll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends i still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life i've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When i think of love as something new
Though i know i'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know i'll often stop and think about them
In my life i love you more

Though i know i'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know i'll often stop and think about them
In my life i love you more
In my life i love you more

In my Life John Lennon

This album isn’t easy listening but as a portrait of a man unequivocally facing up to the end of his life it is without equal. One of the truly great albums.

Another video

This one was too big for YouTube so I have had to make it smaller, which will affect the quality.

It is I think much slicker than the last and used better quality and higher res image files. It is based on my Tango images (you can also see these on Flickr here) with a nice tango soundtrack, so after the Sex Pistols in the last one, you may need to turn the volume back up...

Let me know what you think.

 

Making video

EDIT: I'm probably going to delete this file from YouTube - looking at it again I think it just a bit too rough. If you think I'm wrong please let me know.

*

I've been experimenting with putting some of my digital images into video format. This is a very quick and dirty first cut around some images I did of cheerleaders. I'm not too happy with the quality - the original images were quite small and needed to be resized to do what I wanted, then the flash conversion at YouTube seems to have degraded it further. Even so for 30 minutes work I'm quite pleased with myself.

Misguided

I always knew many of the people at Samizdata were often misguided but this post confirms it, by equating the very attractive but essentially minor singer Diana Krall with the divine Ella Fitzgerald. At the risk of sounding a bit Meldrewish, I don't think there is anyone on the current scene who comes within a mile of the great trinity of Ella, Sarah Vaughan or Billie Holiday. If you know better please let me know because I would very much like to hear them.

She is good to look at though...