Friday, November 02, 2007

Now this is a band

Back in the day you were either a Duranie or a Spandau person and I was firmly in the Duran camp. Well, they had more tasty girlies in their video for one thing. So last week's Jonathan Ross was quite a treat for me, Simon le Bon's voice was well probably never going to get him through X -factor but that is really where the X factor fails to find the true X factor, the something that takes someone not so great at all and makes them truly brilliant.

It start somewhat limply but by the time you get to the chorus it sounds like solid Duran gold.



After the new single "Falling down" we have Girls on Film which is a classic. Ignore the video which was frankly only better by The Chauffeur.

and isn't that what all good young bands should be about? Sex in whatever form you're interested in? And what comes back so much is that A) Roger Taylor was an excellent drummer which we get from the version of Girls on film and B) how iconic some of their early songs were.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

It's the Arts!

Went to see a play during the week, it was seasonally enough an adaption of Bram Stoker's Dracula by the , with a cast of thousands. The Belltable does this thing sometimes where they get you to enter from the rear as they want to do it in the round as one might say and this was one of those occasions. There were three areas of action on the stage itself then one in the middle of the seating and then to the opposite end of the state the seating was wooden benches and with the slight incline lead to one buttock getting numb while the other was much more content with the sitting arrangements.

Part of the difficulty with the play for me was that it was perhaps too close to the book and too condensed. the movement from one area to another seemed concerned with ensuring that our attention didn't stray from the matter in hand. The lack of movement in the final third only served to highlight this.

The person playing Dracula was quite good as was Lucy, though I wonder if Lucy has gotten a bad deal down the years as being much more of a minx than she actually was meant to be and for me the Mina was well, kind of lacking in the depiction of her character she was much more and I'm sure some of the story got lost there. Jonathan Harker was similarly lacking existing mostly as a plot device than a person, he appears not to possess the backbone and cop-on of a blade of grass but he is much like that in the book too.

3/5 from me.