Brel over Britain
Oct. 16th, 2009 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusMy full-spectrum dominance of the UK press continues as I tell the New Statesman how the love affair between me and Jacques Brel began, and land a jabby scissor-kick on Blair's press secretary Alastair Campbell...
Read on...
By the way, if you were thinking of coming to see me, Marc Almond, Diamanda Galás and others singing Brel at The Barbican next Thursday, you're too late; I'm told it's sold out. There are seats left for the same show the following night at the Warwick Arts Centre, though.
Read on...
By the way, if you were thinking of coming to see me, Marc Almond, Diamanda Galás and others singing Brel at The Barbican next Thursday, you're too late; I'm told it's sold out. There are seats left for the same show the following night at the Warwick Arts Centre, though.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-15 11:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-15 11:27 pm (UTC)MSP > LHR
Date: 2009-10-15 11:46 pm (UTC)BTW is there a plan shaping up for yr visit? xx
Re: MSP > LHR
Date: 2009-10-16 12:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-16 02:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-16 04:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-16 07:37 am (UTC)Please 'Anon & 1' to the guest-list...it's the least you could do for your anon readers.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-16 08:09 am (UTC)The guest list is completely full too, but semi-transparent Anons should be able to float in through the walls like ghosts and sit on the lighting gantries, throwing semi-transparent peanuts at the stage.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-16 08:16 am (UTC)Shit, I'd've loved to have gone to that... Warwick's miles away... Hmmm... :/
I really fancy Diamanda Galas too. Don't really think I'd be her type though.
jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 09:39 am (UTC)Re: jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 10:15 am (UTC)I actually find Brel's worldview a little too homosocial -- in the sense that he's a "man's man" living in a rather macho man's world, an adventurer given to male bonding and sparring -- and rather too little homosexual. So I'm pleased that Marc Almond has taken the material in this other direction.
Almond and I don't just share an appreciation of Brel, by the way, we're also both artists who've chosen to be photographed by Pierre et Gilles. Can you imagine Jacques Brel -- had he lived into the 80s and 90s -- doing that? Gainsbourg, yes -- his second-last album saw him (in a William Klein photo) made up as an old travelo (http://pianoweb.free.fr/actualite/gainsbourg-portrait-4.jpg). Brel? Never.
Re: jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 10:30 am (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
Gainsbourg said in interviews he'd had gay experiences "in order not to remain an idiot". Brel, I think, would have been much more likely to imply that having a gay experience was itself a form of idiocy.
Re: jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 10:31 am (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
Gainsbourg said in interviews he'd had gay experiences "in order not to remain an idiot". Brel, I think, would have been much more likely to imply that having a gay experience was itself a form of idiocy.
Re: jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 10:35 am (UTC)Re: jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 10:42 am (UTC)Re: jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 10:44 am (UTC)Re: jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 10:57 am (UTC)The Latin conception of masculinity is really quite different. The male tends to be more of a peacock. (You can't imagine bullfighting outfits ever originating in a protestant society, can you?) But since ostentation and emotion are female signifiers in protestant societies, Latin masculinity becomes somehow intermeshed with gay culture when it crosses the channel. The French are eternally effeminate compared with good plain John Bull and his roast beef.
Re: jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 11:00 am (UTC)Re: jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 12:15 pm (UTC)The macho elements of Brel are pretty convincing (the harbours and bars of Benelux can be rough as old boots). We’re always told that maleness is a kind of orthodoxy and camp is some sort of counterbalance or alternative, but I think that proper macho is rare in popular culture. Even in hip hop - what sort real man goes poncing around preening and crooning (and bragging)?
Re: jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 12:38 pm (UTC)You miss the point - there clearly are lots of cultures where this kind of behaviour is exactly what the "real men" do. And ironically, in these kinds of cultures the men actually tend to be a lot more macho than in cultures where men are supposed to be less ostentatious and more "authentic".
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-16 04:08 pm (UTC)Also see the Proclaimers are playing in Warwick the day after, might be worth the trip...
i wish i was deep insteed o just macho
Date: 2009-10-16 04:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-16 04:24 pm (UTC)Link as you would be linked to; the apparent rule.
Some Brecht discussion on R3 (Die Dreigroschenoper)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n6vdt
Wonder who/ how to successfully revive this?
The panelists are, perhaps rightly, skeptical...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-16 05:06 pm (UTC)That's a lot to live up too, Nic!
Re: jacky OTT
Date: 2009-10-16 07:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-17 01:27 am (UTC)'Nicky'
Date: 2009-10-18 10:21 pm (UTC)Re: 'Nicky'
Date: 2009-10-18 10:35 pm (UTC)You don't need my permission to record a cover of a Brel song, you know! Just a credit on the record is fine.
Basically I was slagging everyone else off, so I had to slag myself off as a matter of form! I think "Nicky" qualifies as those adjectives I lined up, but I'm rather proud of the others.
The line "we thought love could cure a toothache" is sort of mine: Brel sings "and our loves who have toothache". I took the idea a bit further.
Re: 'Nicky'
Date: 2009-10-19 08:13 am (UTC)Norman