For I am a purist old fart. Also, ripping.

[burntcopper]

Listened to the Friday Night is Music Night Radio 2 whatsit for this week last night (ALW, so sue me) and twas a tad star-studded (Connie Fisher, Elena Roger, Lee Meade, etc). Technically I have most of these performances anyway, but not live... Does anyone know how to rip from streaming?

One other note : how a bad arrangement can absolutely *wreck* a song. Especially if that song's originally a several person one changed for one person. I've seen it done really successfully, but... oh god. 'No Matter What', from Whistle Down the Wind is fairly cheesy, but rather nice. When the musical was released, the Lord chucked it at a pop group so it got released in the charts for publicity purposes, which is standard procedure for ALW with a new musical. At the time, it was Boyzone, which wasn't bad - they've got decent voices, they can pull off cheese well, and the song's written for a group (the kids), so it worked well. Unfortunately, for this concert, they used Stephen Gately with a bunch of backing singers. You'd have thought no problem, right? He's sung it before as part of Boyzone, decent voice, the Lord clearly approves and trusts him with his music (cast him in Joseph) ... oh dear lord NO. It's awful. Completely wrecks the balance, and it becomes very clear that this sounds best with choral. Clearly needs a better singer or maybe it's never destined for a solo artist.

Went and poked around youtube for highly illegal sunset boulevard recordings one time, and found Dina Carroll's version of Perfect Year. Which is quite nice, and soulful, and.... completely and utterly bland and loses half the meaning invested in the song which it's meant to have. Seriously. When you get JB singing it out of context, it's so much better. And does not have all the sodding Mariah Carey-esque trills which utterly over-egg it.

Hmph. as I get older and observe more of this kind of thing in dance and singing, I get less tolerant of extra frills and fast-paced stuff done as addition and so-called 'improvement/updating'. Have learned that what's really fucking impressive is no-nonsense precision, hitting the mark each time, not how many tricks you can do on top - which end up looking like you're trying to disguise the fact that you can't impress with the basics (A good comparison would be singers and actors who can't perform live or have no stage presence. You can't hold that audience, I don't want to know.). To quote Strictly Ballroom, 'Too jazzy. Don't throw away your energy.' Yep. Snob of the old school I have become.

Comments

[derryderrydown.livejournal.com]

Oh, god, yes. There are so many singers/dancers who don't have a good grounding in their craft and it shows. Sticking in extra fiddly bits might hide poor breath control from the ignorant but, for people who've been listening for a while? It just makes you look talentless.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

god yes. And then you snicker when they whine about the old farts not appreciating their new take on something. Old farts, eyebrow raised : 'Sweetheart, there is a *reason* why the old greats are called greats. You haven't proved you can actually perform the piece yet.'

And it starts to extend to your appreciation of other, more pedestrian performers - you get more impressed by someone who's not necessarily brilliant but delivers a good, solid job each time, consistently and without hissy fits or absences. No bloody use having someone brilliant if they're off having the vapours when they should be delivering a performance.

[derryderrydown.livejournal.com]

And the thing is, I love new interpretations of songs. I have a vast number of covers that I love. A Perfect Circle's cover of Imagine. Marilyn Manson's cover of Sweet Dreams. But the thing is, there's something new there.

I was in a shop the other day that was playing a cover of The Weakness in Me. And... the arrangement was exactly the same. The only difference was a few extra twiddly bits and a complete lack of anything approaching emotion.

(A google shows that it's been recorded by someone called Keisha White and the blurb describes it as "a beautiful love song". Oh, dear god, it's nothing of the sort. I bet they'd describe Every Breath You Take as a beautiful love song.)

[geordieboy56.livejournal.com]

there are quite a few programs to rip streaming audio, but I can never get them to work (particularly from the BBC site). So the way i've found to do it is a bit long winded, but works. You need a downloader program (I use flashget)

1) load up the streaming audio, right click in the left hand panel where the controls are and select "view page info". Copy the url into the download program and it should save a small file (about 23k)

2) open that file up in notepad and search for a url with .rpm as the type (it may be an uncomplete url, so you'll need to add http://www.bbc.co.uk to the front). copy that url into the download program and it saves and even smaller file (1k).

3) open up that in notepad and there'll be just one URL in it, copy that into the download program and it downloads the whole realmedia file. (you don't need the BBC-UID section at the end).

Or If you want, you can download the copy I made for myself here

http://rapidshare.com/files/52050636/fridaymusic.ra

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

ta - couldn't get it to work, so nabbed yours.

[alysscarlet.livejournal.com]

I'm a snob of the old school too. Can't bear all the trills and bad breathing.

Did you watch Michael Ball's prom on Monday? He's grown rather large again. Also sung Sunset Blvd, pretty well I thought, but not quite as good as JB. And not much Sondheim!