TOP OF THE STAIRS MUSIC

She literally glided onto the stage, in a body fitting, full length, black dress and open sandals, it's as if her feet did not touch the ground such was the serenity of her entrance. Made all the more staggering due to her huge weight loss, this is someone who has lost more than half her body weight and looks absolutely transformed. With it came a new Moyet, someone who just did not stop smiling. I kind of missed the first few songs as I couldn't get past the new transformation.
Her voice is better than ever, richer, deeper, and she sings with much more expression - pushing the emotion to the limits.
This was a retrospective of 25 years so the set included songs from Essex, The Turn and Hometime and some Yazoo stuff as well as a stunning rendition of 'If You Go Away' sung in it's native French.
My only dissapointment was that apart from her backing singer, the band seemed to be on another planet and did nothing to enhance her golden vocals. Their arrangements seemed old and tired with a drummer just going through the motions, the keyboards were tinny and the base player dominated the sounds. Such a shame.

Taken at last night's gig:-

Nov 13th at Warwick University was quite an event. At 8.15pm Seasick Steve literally ambled onto the stage to rapturous applause announcing 'heard you got caught up in the traffic'. So started a homely banter between him and the full capacity audience that lasted the night, and it was a long night - he just did not want to leave the stage.
With home made string instruments such as he now famous 3 string, cigar box guitar and a banjo like contraption made from 2 morris-minor hubcaps [and it sounded great by the way] and a world weary and wise voice, he took us through his catalogue of bluesy, simple but powerful, home-spun philosophical songs; my favourite title being 'I started out with nothing and still got most of it left'. A large part of the set was from his new album Man From Another Time. In my mind his best yet.
With his black, amp box sitting on a dining room chair he amplifies his guitar playing to an earth shattering volume of distortion which you just cannot help but love, and he can play, taking every piece to an extreme ending. How there was not smoke coming off his fingers I'll never know.
He strolls off the stage and roams the audience, right up to the back rows, walking amongst the seats chatting and singing. Here's a guy who has short stories to tell and loves telling them and the Brits have taken him to their hearts to a degree where he's an honorary 'national treasure' making his name known before his own country Knew he was alive.
A mention must go to his drummer, they have obviously worked together for quite some time as they meld into one, he was brilliant and funny, helped by the fact that he looked a little like Bill Bailey.
Only blight was Steve being a little too generous with his son who had his own spot of about 5 songs, and dirgey and angst ridden they were too with him practically swallowing the microphone so that not one word was recognisable. They were too far from what his dad was doing that it just did not fit.
Power to the guy in the vest and John Dere baseball cap, with a beard down to his chest strumming 2 hubcaps.

Click on and have a listen:
http://www.seasicksteve.com/splashpage.html

Below is my playlist for Filmic 4 going out at 9pm BST 26th November on www.radionowhere.org OR you can download as a podcast OR you can listen to it now by copying and pasting the following link into your web browser:-

http://www.radionowhere.org/12.Nov.2009%20F.mp3

Had fun doing it. If you like it and you have a fave piece of film music or a fave song from a movie, let me know and I'll play it for you. Email me at ley.bricknell@radionowhere.org

TRACK COMPOSER/ARTIST FILM
The Colony/Harry Gregson-Williams & John Powell/Antz
C'est Si Triste/Traditional/ Divine Secrets of the Fa-Ya Sisterhood
Main Title:The Long Good Friday/Franci Monkman/The Long Good Friday
A Lot of Secrets/Clinton Shorter/Disctrict 9
Aint That Always The Way/Paul Quinn/Letter To Breznev
Main Title: the Last of the Mohicans/Trevor Jones/The Last of the Mohicans
The Siamese Cat Song /Peggy Lee/Sonny Burke/The Lady and the Tramp
Candyman/Philip Glass/Candyman
Journey to Transylvannia/Alan Silvestri/Van Helsing
Miami Hotel/James Newton Howard/Duplicity
Opening Theme: Ruby Cairo/John Barry/Ruby Cairo
Michael's Theme/ Maurice Jarre /Ryans Daughter
Blade Runner/Claudio Simonette/Blade Runner
The Pink Room/Angelo Badalamenti/Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
The Philadelphia Story /Franz Waxman/The Philadelphia Story
Main Title: Where Eagles Dare/ Ron Goodwin /Where Eagles Dare

Spotify have been generous to put this up for listening. It's a strange album with little direction but great production and some gems in there.
It can't quite find it's way but I like it because of that, each track is different and it doesn't match up to a whole. Bodies stands out as the only single really but it is worth buying for other tracks.
It's got disco, ballad and string arrangements making it more mature than his other albums.
Have to say though that the lyrics smack of sitting down for hours with a rhyming dictionary plus some bizarre stuff like: 'Microwave yourself tonight' and 'I'm the genius behind me' and a couple of references to god.

Weakest track is Won't Do That.

Best tracks are Bodies, Deceptacon, Starstruck and a lovely little filler lasting just over a minute called Somewhere.

Love the Steve McQueenesque cover too.

Went to see Diana Krall this week on her first night at the Royal Albert Hall. This is the 2nd time I have seen her live and this time she was much more relaxed and out to have fun which she did. She had more patter and was very funny and obviously a woman totally in love and enjoying her children. As for the music I will leave it to www.londonjazz.blogspot.com and their much more musically savvy review below. For me it was superb and flawless with a range of contemporary [fab version of Joni Mitchell's A case of You], standards and then all the in between pure jazz stuff that is rarely recorded and makes the ticket money worth it all.

REVIEW FROM Londonjazz.blogspott.com:
Krall was clearly in a mood to enjoy the first of her three evenings back in London, in what seemed like a near-capacity Royal Albert Hall. For such a huge venue, the atmosphere was surprisingly warm. Krall was, understandably, agreeably taken aback by the whoops of delight from the audience in response to completely inocuous lines such as "I'm from Canada" or "Andy Pandy says 'time to go home.' "

The band bounced onto the stage and pounced gleefully on what has become a Krall staple, Peggy Lee's I Love Being Here with You. Fifth gear, crotchet 280, hold on tight...(the version above is tame by comparison) . Krall played a full part in it, but she was also duty-bound: she needed briefly to pose, to grin, help out the dozen or so queuing photographers to catch the shots they needed of a trademark bare shoulder or a resplendent and swirling blonde mane. But duties over, it was back to making good music with a great trio, and to having fun. She was punching bright accented sounds like a woodblock from the very top notes of the Steinway, closing the number with a muttered calming mantra "Ray Brown Ray Brown."

Irving Berlin's Cheek to Cheek had loads to enjoy. A reverie of introductory patter on the themes of Rosemary Clooney, rosaries and vodka (don't ask!) ; a cleverly sleight-of-hand Fats Wallerish intro; a playful raised semitone repeat phrase bar; the best solo of the evening from Krall, leaning back into it, and just -that word again- enjoying it.

The thirteen numbers contrasted well. There were quotes being slipped in all over the place. References to Isn't She Lovely fitted neatly into Let's Fall in Love. The introduction to I don't know enough about you meandered around childrens' songs and boogie-woogie. Soft statements of All I want is a Room Somewhere from My Fair Lady inhabited the intro to I've grown accustomed to her face." The most reflective moment came in a delightfully hushed Joni Mitchell A Case of You. Another excursion into pop ballad territory was a beautiful closing number....[UPDATE: a kind LondonJazz reader tells me it's Departure Bay.]

Krall's piano playing is mostly light touch, hardly any pedal except in a searching intro to Bacharach's Walk On By. Regular collaborators Anthony Wilson, Kareem Riggins and Robert Hurst are all top players. Krall delivers as musician, as singer, as entertainer, as celeb. The tickets are not cheap, and at £10 for a programme, none of the sellers had a mob to deal with. It's the second time I've heard Krall this year, and - let's break the rules, I want use that same word a fourth and last time- I've enjoyed both.