Musical - Top Songs

Just put on Elaine Paige on Sunday and I do love that she starts her show with a rousing number that normally gets me going and I am always excited to see what it is.  Today was an excellent, the Trolley song from Meet Me in St Louis - I recognised it from the first dong!  So I am putting that on the list!  

The Trolley Song - Meet Me in St Louis.

Musical - Anything Goes

This is definitely one that is up there in my top 10 musicals (not furthered that post in a while!).  This was my 4th viewing of it, which puts it up there in most seen list too.  First 3 times were the National Theatre production and I saw it between about 2001-2005, first at the National with Mum, Lizzie and some theatre friends, and then by myself on my Gap Year at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, then by myself (I think) when it was touring through Malvern.  This was an amateur youth musical group performance at the Oxford Playhouse.  I went fairly spur of the momently with Lizzie after a dinner date at Fire and Stone for Lizzie to try out the new swordfish pizza!

It continued the improved reputation of amateur theatre that has been building up for me.  And although for a few of the characters, it was a little odd seeing young people playing them, most of them did an excellent job!  My favourite had been the guy playing Moonface Martin (sadly no photos).  They somehow had his hair greyed a bit - am guessing it wasn't natural!  He played a great gangster accent (loads of convincing accents) and then at points he (deliberately) went into an Irish accent which was equally impressive and wowed me!  When he came on for his curtain call, I started to woop, but then he slipped and fell and Lizzie tells me my woop changed from 'wooo-hahahaha'!  I was really sad that he missed his moment of applause!!

 Lots of good songs in the show, with Anything Goes being my favourite and liking Blow Gabriel Blow.  Other catchy ones I quite like are: Friendship, De-Lovely, You're the Top, I Get A Kick.  I once heard a story about Easy to Love and All Through the Night.  Cole Porter had written one for the show, but the male lead actor asked him to write another because it was too tricky to sing.  So Cole wrote the other which was just as/even harder to sing!  I think when we first saw Anything Goes at the National, Jon Barrowman was playing Billy Crocker - though can't be sure he was playing that night as I didn't know who he was then!  I went to hear Jon Barrowman talk at the Union some years later and people were calling out songs to sing, and someone called out one of these and he said no way, too hard!!  I like that story!

Think am going to start my best musicals songs post now as am listening to Elaine Paige on iplayer and a favourite just popped up!

Swim the channel time!!

J

Musical - 42nd Street

This year between Christmas and new year we went to see 42nd Street at the Leicester Curve, after last year seeing the King and I.  I was very lucky to be taken and enjoyed the theatre outing again.  It was not a musical I knew at all though thought I maybe knew one of the songs from a compilation show I had been too, but turned out not!!!  (am not sure how I am ever going to find out what the song was that I was thinking of... something about 15th floor, or street or avenue???  just going to google songs from avenue q just in case...  hmmm not happening).  I hoped I would like it as it was a big dance number, large cast and good choreography.  But I am sad to say I just didn't feel it so much.  It was set in the early 30s, and the music had quite a jazz slant to it which I am deciding I am not the biggest fan of.  The dancing was was often tap dancing which reminded me of Anything Goes, but most of the time I spent thinking that I preferred Anything Goes.  I did quite like Lullaby of New York song.  The storyline was a little odd and didn't particularly do the show any favours.  I was also confused about the order of bowing - my opinion of the name person didn't get the final bow...hmmm!

Dance Tonight - Paul McCartney in Liverpool! TO FINISH

This week we certainly had an adventure: two nights in Liverpool with the purpose of seeing Paul McCartney in concert - and what a time we had :-)

So much to write about and not sure where to start!  I want to get it all down but I only have 8 minutes till I need to start making cheesy red pepper muffins for some Christmas eve lunch visitors and I still need to finish the Mark post and write the Fighting Talk one and this ramble is surely not helpful!!  I might try bullet point it as a way of getting it down quicker...

• John has said the two people he has always wanted to see are Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan and back in about October he got emailed priority ticket application for Paul's On the Run tour.  I said he should go for it and in the process we invited Mum and Lizzie along who were very keen.  We weren't able to get the tickets for some reason.  But we set Mum up to get them when they went on general sale on Thursday morning at 9am.  She had two computers on the go and managed it by 9.30 am!  Woop woop, way to go Mooms!  They were in two sets of two on opposite sides of the Echo arena in Liverpool - the final date on this latest world tour.  We then booked in to the Premier Inn for the night of and night before the concert.  Excellent!  Time for excitement to start mounting!!
• (post 8 minutes and muffin making and eating and some other things like getting a yule log, dropping off yule log and then hoovering) So, I never considered myself a Beatles fan.  A few years ago we went on a cruise where there was a Beatles tribute night and I decided yes, I didn't like them, except for one song that I think might have been peppermint twist - though is that even Beatles?! Then my first two years teaching year two involved the Swining 60s topic and I found a growing affection for them.  Then John has been playing me some Paul music to get me acclimatised.  I have definitely found that I prefer it the more songs I know at a concert.
• We met at Liverpool station on Monday afternoon and made our way on foot down to our hotel which was on the dock area - Albert Dock.  Liverpool had a big regeneration for or resulting in it being European Capital of Culture in 2008.  The docks was definitely one area of that. 
• duckmarine tour
• premier Inn
• Beatles Story
• seats
• songs
• dance tonight with choreography
• christmas and bagpipes

Fighting Talk

 How exciting that I can now blog about Fighting Talk take two!  I have just read about take one in the Snow Again post.  It has entertained me greatly - I am so pleased I wrote so detailedly about it and I am surprised how humourous I seemed to be!

So a few weeks ago I heard on 5Live that they were going to be filming a Fighting Talk Christmas special joint with 6Music and I just knew that this was like a dream team for John!  So he applied for tickets for it on three different accounts and on Friday 2nd December John got a txt to say he had two tickets for the filming on Monday 5th December 2011.  We were very excited!  It was being recorded in 'the legendary Maida Vale Studios' (as everyone kept referring to it as).  So we mega excitedly hot footed it from school to the train station and got on our way to London with tupperware tea in tow.  We walked from Paddington along the canal to the studios which was both exciting and scary!  Glad no one jumped out of the dark to push us in!

So we came across the studios and they were nothing like I was expecting (photo on left is one I got from internet).  It was a really long low white building along one side of a gorgeous residential street.  I think most of the studios were below ground level.  And there was a queue outside... dun dun dun!!  We hadn't thought about not being able to get in.  We joined the queue, hoping it was the right thing.  While we were queueing up it turned out there was some carol singing going on in there too so they kept going past us.  They divided us into a 6music and a 5live line at one point and then gave us stickers and we thought we were in there!  Eventually we got inside the building and thought we were following a man leading us to the right place but then we ended up in a cafeteria.  After hanging out there for a bit we emerged and went downstairs and found our way to the right studio!  Horray!

We had realised on the way by looking at the tickets that it was a standing only venue... not my favourite!! There were quite a few people in there when we arrived but by no means full.  John squirmed our way right to the front which I wouldn't have done on my own but was really grateful for!  We even put our bags down on the staging that the 5Live desks were on!

After a little while we spotted Colin!  He looked to be walking around so nonchalantly that I wasn't sure it was him!  Then Simon, the producer guy that John recognised from before did a similar non-comedic introduction and they did the defend the indefensible with audience members as they had done before 'to check the sound levels'.  They got people up on stage and Colin said I think we need a woman and looked straight at me and said how about it and I just shook my head petrified at the thought!!!  And when they were doing it one of the microphones didn't work so perhaps it was a real check!!

Then they introduced the panelists and they came to take their seats.  For 5Live it was Pat Nevin, who I had never heard of who turns out to be a semi-regular on Fighting Talk and a Scottish footballer from the 80s.  And also on the 5Live team was Tony Livedsey, who does the weekday 10pm-1am show that I listen to every night as I go to sleep - so I was very excited it was him and he sat literally about 2m away from us.  We were so close it was so fun that we were able to see their notes!!  I loved the contrast: Tony had 1 A4 page handwriting with a sentence or 2 of notes for each questions.  Pat had several pages making quite a thick wad and he had a blue highlighter that he went through with during the show!


On the 6Music team on the other side of Colin, was Sean Keeveney who does the breakfast show and is John's absolute favourite!  He didn't know anything about sport so it was pretty funny!  And the other person was Steve Lemacq who I had heard John mention and who it appeared had been on Fighting Talk a couple of times before.  He seemed to have a huge amount of music knowledge from over the years and I was put in mind of one of the DJs from the Boat That Rocked.

We were intrigued to see how this recorded version would differ from the Live on we had seen before. I was surprised how often Colin stopped in the middle of what he was saying and then would say it again.  And sometimes he paused to remember the punchline for a joke and then would say play this straight after that answer and then would say it.  He seemed to be listening and talking to Simon in his headphones quite a bit.  And it was funny as they had to keep adding things in like: breaking for the travel now.   About half way through the scorer lady sitting next to Colin, made a comment about Colin saying 'this evening' when the programme would be on during the morning!

Pic on right (or somewhere depending on formatting) taken during a break - normally Simon in his booth.
  I thought the questions were generally very clever in that they could refer to both sport and music: 'would you rather your child grew up to be a rock star or a sports star?' and 'what is wembley's greatest moment?'  There were a lot of references I didn't get - especially Music ones and I had to keep referring to John to find out what they were on about! It was funny in that because it was going to be broadcast live on 6Music too, and they normally have lots of music, they had to keep finding excuses to play tracks.  We didn't normally here the whole thing - they just faded out and said they would play the whole thing in the real thing! And I think when they said 5Live is breaking for the news, they said 6Music would hear another song!

The other way they got around it was by having the Kaiser Chiefs as their house band!!  They were all set up on a stage at the far side and played the intro to Fighting Talk (Sabotage by Beastie Boys) and the intros to each competitor and some other pieces.  They also took a break from recording the radio and the Kaiser Cheifs played a set for us audience.  I wasn't a particular fan before, but did recognise some of the songs.  My favourite Kaiser Chiefs bit, which they had hyped up slightly, was the Christmas song that they played at the end.  Apparently FT people had suggested a few but they came up with their own and played 'Wish I was at home for Christmas'.  Not sure if that's the name but I like the trumpety bit and the dub-ba dub-ba dub-ba dub-ba that goes on  and 'hey mr churchill' kind of bits.

Nearly there on the post I think.  (it's currently 16th January and it's been written in several parts so far.  Feel we will be here for a bit!)  Still to go: half time Simon discussions and after FT meetings and mentions.   Just to mention... love this photo of John.  He looks so happy and in to it!  Think it is during Kaiser Chief set.

11th February Let's see how far I get this time... finishing line?

Half time was great.  Can't really remember why it was half time now!!  think maybe just before the Kaiser Chiefs did their bit!  We tried to get a photo with Collin but in the end didn't and ended up chatting to Simon, for what felt like a long time - 5+ minutes.   We talked about the last live one we had been to which he remembered well for the snow epicness!  He told us there were only 80 tickets available in the ballot for tonight's show which made us well chuffed we had got in!  Then he also told us behind the scenes info of fighting talk.  There are only 4 of them that work on it; the four that are in the picture a bit further up.  When FT started 8 years ago there were something like 13 people who worked on it.  He said they think of questions during the week and send them to guests on Thursday afternoon.  Sometimes it might just say, a question about the Grand National, but it wouldn't have been finalised yet.  He said sport stars aren't great guests because they are not that funny, but journalists tend to be quicker.  I asked if it was just FT he did but he sort of scorned at that because FT takes so little time to do now as it sort of runs itself.  One of the other things he produces is the 5Live Formula One which I was of course really interested to hear about and there was lots of discussion about the TV coverage going to Sky.  He told us that he had lost his whole radio commentary team to sky which we looked up when we got home and seemed that the news had only broken in the last few days.  It was all very interesting. 

After the show was finished recording, we hung around trying to get the photos we hadn't got earlier.  We had quite a chat with Pat Nevin who seemed keen to talk and show us photos on his iPhone of Collin Murray and Perry Groves in bed together!  I felt bad that we weren't asking for a photo with him!  We got ushered out of the studios outside before we had managed to get any photos.  Outside the doors were Steve LeMacq and another man, who seemed to have gone with him.  They were smoking and talking and we listened for a bit and then John bravely said something and we talked a bit!  So we had had conversations with all the people we weren't as particular about!!

We were wondering how long to wait for before giving up.  And then up came Tony!  with Pat Nevin again.  We launched in there and managed to get a photo!!! Very excited by the fact!!  He was so kind and friendly.  We said where we were from and that I went to sleep listening every night.  He then got out his phone and made a note of our names and said he would say hello tomorrow!!!  I said I'm normally asleep by 11!  They set off together and we were just so excited by our encounter!

We then had to decide if we would hold out for Shawn or Colin.  We did for a bit and were paid off by a large group coming out and we were brave enough to call out Shawn and get a photo with him.  Again, extremely generous.  See how much we are laughing!!  We then walked with them a bit as we were going in that direction too - they were off to pub.  We asked how he ended up doing FT and he blamed it all on a lady he was with who I imagine was maybe a manager or PA or something and very nice and friendly.  As we parted he asked for our names and said he would say hello, but he didn't write them down this time!

We made it back to Paddington and got home, tired but excited.  We both put on Shawn Keeveney from 7am the next morning and heard mention of a blue jumper and he had been wearing a blue jumper the night before.  But we had to leave before we heard any mention of us :-(  so we eagerly iplayered his show in the evening and lo and behold...

the joy of trying to remember how to do voice memos has started!!!  First see this post.  Then find files not on itunes.  Via some websites find that need to tick include voicememos box.  Find still not there!  Emailed in the end. Then took me a while to drag the mp3 file to dropbox - just do in finder, then was a bit flummexed but the key is to go straight to boom bit which explains how to do it all!



Well I feel that was less than an hour from start to finish so i consider that a success!



Shawn 1
The same sort of thing happened with Tony.  Didn't hear any mention of us before I fell asleep - though admittedly fell asleep very quickly after the late night!  But with iplayer...

Tony

wow - think that was less than 4 minutes - its all about the practise!

So nothing more to say now, but thank you John for a super special night!!!!! 

Sausage and Mash at Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi.

It's been quite some time since an F1 post. I don't even know whether I have posted this year.  And oddly I have just realised I was looking at the blog a couple of days ago and thinking I hadn't yet done a post in December... it's only now November 13th!

Anyway, think it's been a while since I have watched a GP live, which tends to increase blogging desire, and this is a nice lunchtime start.  And Vettel (double world champion as of a few races ago) pulled away from pole but then was off at second corner with a right rear puncture, leaving a McLaren one-two.  Vettel crawled back to the pits losing the tyre and the mechanic motioned slitting his throat and the world champion thumped his steering wheel and his the only retiree so far.  Sadly Button seems to be going backwards and is now just third, but Hamilton is holding the lead on lap 8/55.

Just checked and found German Grand Prix, Thank You, Pirelli and Last of the Late Breakers.  Think will read now.

Lap 16 Button has a KERS failure and apparently he has to shut down a lot of systems in order to reboot it - all while driving round this circuit and keeping Weber at bay??  Weber got him at one corner and there was real close stuff on the next few corners, but Button kept the lead.  And then all on the same lap Ham and Alo pitted from 1st and 2nd, a couple of seconds apart on the track.  Great stop for Mclaren which it had to be as Button pitted on same lap from 3rd.  Kinda shows how far behind Button has pitted but it was still only a 6 second regroup for the mechanics!

Lap 17 Weber pits this lap and it was a slow one for him which lets Button off and also lets Massa through ahead.  So its Ham, Alo, But, Mas, Web.

Well it was a Lewis win and Button in 3rd - woop woop!  Although I did close my eyes a little in the final laps.

I was super spoiled in that John arrived just before the start with the ingredients for some delicious sausage and mash and prepared and served it for me all while I got to enjoy watching the race - what a lucky girl!!