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burntcopperListened 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.
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.
