Sleeping Beauty
My friend Kate (read her short stories here) told me about this production of Sleeping Beauty at the Malthouse: “it’s got Renee Geyer in it! It’ll be great!” We went along on Tuesday.
It wasn’t at all what I was expecting. It was all music, no dialogue – and all of it was pop songs (some of which, to my shame, I didn’t recognise). Things like “Little Ray of Sunshine,” “Oh Happy Day,” and “Dreamer.” And “All the boys in town,” by the Divinyls, which I heard on the radio a couple of days later and had to turn off… because I am still a bit too traumatised by the performance to be able to hear that song, in particular, without having flashbacks. Because Beauty (played by Alison Bell, brilliant) sang it as a lament, almost (which is entirely appropriate to the words), and it was so sad.
So the performance starts with a mum and dad wanting a daughter… getting one… doting on her and her getting annoyed at the attention.* Then… something happens, and she either goes back in time or to another world. Weird things happen there. Like Geyer singing a song that is either Eminem or 50 Cent, which was perhaps the weirdest thing of a weird night. That, and the anime section in the middle. I don’t know whether it was anime produced for the performance or not – I would guess not, that it was sections from at least one if not multiple pre-existing films, spliced together for this.
The set was sparse, and they used light to brilliant effect. The performances were all magnificent. And the music was great – apparently one of the people involved was from Boom Crash Opera which, you know, just makes it all good from my point of view. It was a breath-taking performance… and I am still not sure what happened at the end.
*This is my interpretation of it. I am perfectly willing to admit that there are aspects that I simply didn’t get, so my putting it together may be faulty.
Ray
We got the movie Ray for Christmas, and we finally sat down to watch it on Sunday night. I loved it. Jamie Foxx is fantastic – I understand that Ray Charles approved him, before he died, which is cool. (It was weird to hear him sing a Ray Charles song and realise that it was the bit that he, Jamie Foxx, sang in a Kanye West song that I know I should dislike and… just… cant’t.) Most of the other actors were also really good – and it wasn’t half weird to realise that the dude who didn’t look all that old and actually had hair was, indeed, Toby (or Richard Schiff (West Wing) if you want to be pedantic).
It was a lot like Walk the Line, which I guess is unsurprising: they were two of the biggest stars of the latter half of the 20th century, and they both had drug habits that they managed to kick. The difference being that Charles’ wife stuck by him, and vice versa, whereas of course the big thing in Walk the Line is the love affair with June Carter. J thought they spent an awful lot of time on the heroin issue, and then it just ends – fft. I don’t think it spend too long on the drugs, although it was a significant portion of the movie – I think it jut reflects the reality of the situation – but, again like Walk the Line – it does end abruptly, too abruptly for me. Having seen him be a bastard to his family and lots of other people, I would have liked to see him in middle and later life: did he make it up to his family, or did he continue womanising? (He had 12 children, apparently, so….) I was left feeling like he was a great singer, and not that great a person, and I’m not sure how that’s how the director and producer wanted it. I did like, though, that it showed how the drug habit affected those around him, and how people reacted, rather than solely looking at its effect on him.
The other thing that I appreciated about this film was how they did the flashbacks. I thought it was very clever – and a lot more interesting than having a whole section on his childhood would have been.
Absolutely recommended if you like his music!
I love Led Zeppelin
I don’t think I’ve said that enough recently.
I love Led Zeppelin.
I am doing some prep (yes, for the second last day of school… sad, eh?), so I’ve put my DVD of “Unledded” on – Robert Plant and Jimmy Page doing a concert about ten years ago for MTV. Page is so, so incredible – I love the triple-handled guitar, it’s so unnecessary! – and Plant is a glorious front man. He has a voice I just love listening to – in his newer incarnation, too, with the Strange Sensations. And their songs! – so listenable. Unlike, for example, early Beatles, which is just crap; and modern pop, or even rock, which so often sounds just the same, one song after the other. Kashmir is on a completely different planet, for example, from Rain Song.
Who, me? Biased? Pft.
Spice, and Spice Girls
I’ve been hearing the Spice Girls song, “Stop”, a lot recently, at school. This has a weird effect on me. A group of girls at college used to do the moves to this song all the time, and consequently when I hear it I have a vision of them doing so – and an urge to join in. Mainly to upset the kiddies.
What made me think of this is the book I am reading: Spice: The History of a Temptation, by Jack Turner. It’s very enjoyable – although I am dubious of his repeated use of the term ‘Dark Ages’ in referring to the time after the (now) official end of the Western Roman Empire. Nonetheless. He has a whole chapter, of course on spice and sex: looking at all the different ways it was recommended to use spice to improve sex in a variety of ways, as well as the problems the more prudish (and supposedly celibate) members of the community had with it. Throughout, he makes comments on some of the things that have lasted to the modern day, and towards the end he comments on the Spice Girls, saying they “shot like a gaudy, squawking comet through the outer orbits of pop stardom before, in obedience to the Newtonian physics of celebrity, the acrimonious plummet back to earth and bust-up.” Beautiful. No wonder he writes about spice; he certainly has the language for it.
New music for me!
I don’t know why, but Guardian’s Buzz came to mind this afternoon. A friend at college had it, oh – 9 years ago. Hello, iTunes: they have it! I would have got it from Word, but they were out of stock. And then, thinking about Guardian, I started thinking about the News Boys and Take Me to your Leader: again, a friend (not at college this time, but at Christian Union) had a copy, and I borrowed it, and listened to the title track about a zillion times. iTunes again: this time because it was about half the price of Word. Bit sad, but ultimately – eh. I’m not that attached to the hard copy version.
Cassettes…
are no more.
I chucked out all of my cassettes a couple of weeks ago, in a mood of downsize or die. It was a bit sad… but I do own a large chunk of the stuff on CD now anyway, so I guess it’s not a complete loss. And the only place I could possibly still listen to them is the car, and I do actually have a secret stash of them there already. My tape with Boom Crash Opera on one side and Ice House on the other, and a tape of American Christian music my friend Denise, from way back at college, made for me. Listening glory!
Ipods and earphones
So it seems the thing to do these days as a teen is to share your ipod – walk around with someone, each of you having one earphone attached to the one ipod. Seems like a slightly looser version of the 3-legged race to me.
Thing is, though, lots of friends are in trios or more. So what I want to know is, has someone invented earphones with more than just 2 listening bits? Or a double-jack or similar so that more than 1 pair of earphones can go into the one plug? This would seem to be the next innovation that ipods bring about.
Is it wrong to spend a book voucher on music?
Well, it wasn’t specifically a book voucher, but it was for organising a Literature Enhancement programme at school last year, and it was for a mostly-book-store… but it just so happens to be the ABC store as well, and the latest JJJ Hottest 100 (volume 14) just came out. So I got that. I also got a book – it was on special, Jeanette Winterson’s Tanglewreck, which looks fairly interesting.
Guilty pleasures
I am happy adn secure enough in my indy/metal/rock skin to be able to admit to the odd guilty pleasure.
I don’t mind the odd bit of Christina Aguilera.
I am curently watching Kylie’s Showgirl tour.
I love that it is on ABC! If it was Channel 10, I would so be ditching it because the ads would frustrate thehell out of me.
She really is a showgirl too – I do not get the feather headdress. And I am a bit uncomfortable with the boys running around and dancing in their Speedos, although I guess it does demonstrate a certain amount of equality of the sexes – we can exploit each other in the same ways. Seems to me, though, that chicks who have male dancers tend to do so in a more almost camp way, or tongue in cheek; perhaps this reflects the perception of male dancers being homosexual? At any rate, it is often – although now always – less overtly sexual than female dancers with male performers.
That’s my 2c.
Randomly Yours, Alex 