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antialiasis · 2 years ago

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I have spent my sick day doing a thing of musical motifs and where they recur in Chess in Concert. I realized some fascinating things in the process of doing this, like how the bit where Florence and Anatoly discuss their frustrations with Freddie and him not being there and how he could go jump off the mountain for all they care in "Mountain Duet" literally has the same melody as the verse of "Pity the Child #2" about Freddie's mom neglecting him in favor of more ill-fated relationships. You probably all figured this out already but I was here like oh my god.

I have probably managed to fail to figure out where some bits are actually the same etc., so by all means tell me if that's the case so I can correct it.

A couple of other unrelated observations I made in the process of making this (they're also about Freddie, I unfortunately love this terrible disaster man):

"Talking Chess" isn't actually Freddie's final scene; he's also there commentating before and during "Endgame #2". Before, he reads out what's clearly a script prepared by Walter: "All eyes in the world of chess, and indeed many eyes outside, are turned towards Bangkok, Thailand today, where what many here expect to be the final game of the match in this gripping encounter has just been launched with a ceremonial splendor, and all the talk is of the recent sensational loss of form of world champion Sergievsky, who seems certain to surrender his title here today to the mightily impressive Viigand." We already know he doesn't believe this; he thinks Viigand is deeply mediocre, and you can even hear it in Adam Pascal's voice a bit as he says this. After the song starts, he sings what may also be a script, given it starts like what Molokov is saying, and how he sounds a bit stiff saying it: How straightforward the game / When one is free from distraction! / When your only concern / Is laid out so clearly before you / Sixty-four squares / They're the reason you know you exist. There's a heavy sense of irony to that as a script, of course - Walter and Molokov have been doing everything they can to distract Anatoly from the game. The literal sentiment, though, is something Freddie probably genuinely feels.

During "The Interview", Freddie also looks extremely stiff and bitter at the line Chess and politics / I take my hat off / to any champion / who can pull that off. Almost like he's himself a champion who's been forced to play politics instead of chess and hates it actually.

Honestly in general I just like Adam Pascal's performance a lot? He is so distinctly bitter and self-loathing throughout most of Act II and that really helps sell his turnaround. Rewatching a scene like "The Interview", you can tell Freddie's channeling some genuine feelings of spite into it but he also tangibly isn't having any fun doing this. It's good nuance that I enjoy rewatching.

I realized while cross-referencing some stuff that the production that put the full "Pity the Child" after "Florence Quits" was the original 1986 London West End production. That's the wrong place for it! The correct place is exactly where it is here! Honestly as many complaints as I had I find myself also understanding exactly why Tim Rice thought this was the production where they were finally getting it right, because they got Freddie very right here and that's obviously the most important bit what do you mean there are other characters in this musical. I am curious about other versions and whether they improved on other bits, but I expect I will die on the hill of how Freddie's arc ought to be exactly how it is in Chess in Concert (except maybe you could move "I Know Him So Well" so it doesn't awkwardly come in between "Pity the Child #2" and "Talking Chess").

#musicals #chess musical #chess the musical #chess in concert

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moosterrecords · 7 years ago

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In the firmament of rock 'n' roll's first-generation creators, no artist looms larger than Chuck Berry. In a consistently innovative recording career that spanned more than 60 years, the iconic singer-songwriter-guitarist, who passed away on March 18, 2017, laid much of the groundwork for modern rock 'n' roll, while creating some of rock's most distinctive and enduring anthems, from “Johnny B. Goode” to “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Rock and Roll Music” to “Reelin and Rockin’,” and many more. Geffen/UMe are paying tribute to the immortal spirit of Chuck Berry with the ultimate vinyl version of his landmark greatest hits compilation, The Great Twenty-Eight, with The Great Twenty-Eight: Super Deluxe Edition. Available today, the five-disc vinyl box set housed in a textured box, complements the original two-LP, 28-song compilation with an additional LP, More Great Chuck Berry, containing 14 more hits, rarities and B-sides missing from the original, as well as a rare live album, Oh Yeah! Live in Detroit, available on vinyl for the first time. The collection also include a newly created bonus ten-inch EP Berry Christmas, featuring four holiday-themed classics on "Rudolph-Red" vinyl, with one song on vinyl for the first time as well. A limited edition version on “Chess Blue” vinyl, limited to 500 copies, is available exclusively via UDiscoverMusic.com. Order The Great Twenty-Eight: Super Deluxe Edition now: https://lnk.to/Great28SDE Berry's recordings for Chicago's seminal Chess label have been extensively anthologized in the CD era. But for many Berry devotees, the two-LP vinyl collection The Great Twenty-Eight remains both a sentimental favorite and a definitive document of Berry's musical genius. It's no wonder that The Great Twenty-Eight was ranked number 21 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time," the highest-ranking hits compilation on that list. For those interested in the original 28-track edition of The Great Twenty-Eight, it is now back in print in its original two-LP format for the first time since its initial release in 1982. Order The Great Twenty-Eight here: https://UMe.lnk.to/Great282LP The Great Twenty-Eight: Super Deluxe Edition also includes a handsome 12" x 12" book featuring a special introductory essay by Keith Richards, a new essay by best-selling author and SiriusXM host Alan Light, complementing Michael Lydon's liner notes from the original version of The Great Twenty-Eight, and reminiscences from DJ Lee Alan, plus complete U.S. single, album and EP discographies. The text is enhanced by reproductions of Berry's original LP cover art and rarely-seen photographs. As Light writes, "When The Great Twenty-Eight was released in 1982, it was immediately recognized as one of the essential albums in rock 'n' roll history... Enter this edition of The Great Twenty-Eight, with thirty more Chuck Berry recordings—the Great Fifty-Eight, as it were—fleshing out the story of rock 'n' roll's poet laureate while also demonstrating, through the addition of a riveting live album from 1963, his power as a stage performer... The opportunity to spotlight additional facets of his music is the greatest contribution to his history that this collection offers." A survey of Berry's first decade of recording on Chess, the original The Great Twenty-Eight contains 21 singles along with six of their b-sides and one album track from Chuck Berry in London. Of those singles, eleven were top ten hits on the Billboard R&B singles chart and ten were Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. During his Chess years, Berry created a massive—and massively influential—body of work that includes countless beloved classics, from "Maybellene" to "Roll Over Beethoven" to "Johnny B. Goode" to "Memphis, Tennessee" and beyond. Indeed, Berry's music is so deeply ingrained into our culture that NASA launched "Johnny B. Goode" into outer space on the Voyager spacecraft as a representation of the sounds of the human race for the benefit of our cosmic neighbors. All of these songs are included on The Great Twenty-Eight, which also includes the ubiquitous hits "Rock and Roll Music," "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "No Particular Place To Go" and many others that have become part of the collective consciousness. More Great Chuck Berry comprises 14 classic Berry tunes not included on The Great Twenty-Eight, including the sultry, simmering number "Wee Wee Hours," the original flip side of "Maybellene"; "My Ding-A-Ling," Berry's only No. 1 pop single; "Too Pooped To Pop (Casey)," the top 20 R&B A-side of "Let It Rock"; the Top 10 R&B hit "No Money Down"; the celebratory "Promised Land"; and the rollicking "You Never Can Tell," which earned cinematic immortality as the accompaniment to John Travolta and Uma Thurman's twist in the film Pulp Fiction. Oh Yeah!: Live In Detroit is a thrilling, rare concert performance from October 1963, celebrating Berry’s return to the stage after a break from performing. With support from local DJ and TV host Lee Alan, Berry, backed by Motown's Funk Brothers rhythm section and horn players, recorded the live album during a series of performances at Detroit's Walled Lake Casino. Returning to the spotlight after a year-and-a-half brought out an energy and intensity in Berry that can be heard clearly in this historic 12-song set, which launches with "Guitar Boogie" and includes "Let It Rock, "Too Much Monkey Business (available for the first time in the U.S.)," "Johnny B. Goode," Sweet Little Sixteen" and a lengthy, edge-of-chaos medley, as Berry feeds off an audience that sings along with nearly every track. Throughout the show, Berry tells jokes that slyly address racial tensions. But the record was scrapped at the time and has been previously only available as part of a limited-edition CD set; this marks its first time on vinyl, and as any kind of standalone release. The bonus EP Berry Christmas collects together four Christmas classics on "Rudolph-Red" vinyl. The 10-inch disc features Berry's chestnuts, "Run Rudolph Run" and "Merry Christmas Baby" along with "Christmas" and "Spending Christmas," the latter making its vinyl debut as it was previously available only in a limited-edition CD box set. Bob Dylan once called Berry "the Shakespeare of rock 'n' roll." John Lennon stated, "If you tried to give rock 'n' roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry.'" As Keith Richards writes in the booklet intro, "Chuck Berry is the gentleman who started it all.” And if those testimonials aren't convincing enough, one listen to The Great Twenty-Eight: Super Deluxe Edition will make the case for Chuck Berry's singular, timeless rock 'n' roll brilliance. LP 1 & 2: The Great Twenty-Eight The original classic 2-LP compilation Side 1 1. Maybellene 2. Thirty Days (To Come Back Home) 3. You Can't Catch Me 4. Too Much Monkey Business 5. Brown-Eyed Handsome Man 6. Roll Over Beethoven 7. Havana Moon Side 2 1. School Day (Ring! Ring! Goes The Bell) 2. Rock And Roll Music 3. Oh Baby Doll 4. Reelin' And Rockin' 5. Sweet Little Sixteen 6. Johnny B. Goode 7. Around And Around Side 3 1. Carol 2. Beautiful Delilah 3. Memphis, Tennessee 4. Sweet Little Rock And Roller 5. Little Queenie 6. Almost Grown 7. Back In The U.S.A. Side 4 1. Let It Rock 2. Bye Bye Johnny 3. I'm Talking About You 4. Come On 5. Nadine (Is It You?) 6. No Particular Place To Go 7. I Want To Be Your Driver LP 3: More Great Chuck Berry Side 1 1. Wee Wee Hours 2. No Money Down 3. Drifting Heart 4. La Jaunda (Español) 5. Blue Feeling 6. Vacation Time 7. Joe Joe Gun Side 2 1. Too Pooped To Pop "Casey" 2. Our Little Rendezvous 3. You Never Can Tell 4. Promised Land 5. Little Marie 6. Dear Dad 7. My Ding-A-Ling (live single version) LP 4: Oh Yeah! Live In Detroit Recorded at the Walled Lake Casino, October 25 & 26, 1963 First time on vinyl *First U.S. release Side 1 1. Guitar Boogie 2. Let It Rock 3. Almost Grown 4. Chuck Berry Dialogue 1 5. Too Much Monkey Business* 6. Johnny B. Goode 7. Introduction / Instrumental 8. Sweet Little Sixteen Side 2 1. Wee Wee Hours 2. Chuck Berry Dialogue 2 3. Maybellene 4. Medley: Goodnite Sweetheart Goodnite/Johnny B. Goode/Let It Rock/School Day Bonus: Berry Christmas EP Side 1 1. Run Rudolph Run 2. Merry Christmas Baby Side 2 1. Spending Christmas (first time on vinyl) 2. Christmas

#IFTTT #Blogger #Moosterrecords #punkrock #punk

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inbedwithmen-blog · 7 years ago

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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How Doctor Who Was Quietly Revolutionised By Its Least Popular Season

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In 2014, when Doctor Who Magazine asked its readers to rank the show’s first 50 years, out of 241 options, Season 24 stories ‘Time and the Rani’ came 239th, ‘Paradise Towers’ 230th, ‘Delta and the Bannermen’ 217th, with ‘Dragonfire’ thought best of in 215th place. This was largely a repeat of its 2009 poll, although then readers rated ‘Delta and the Bannermen’ above ‘Dragonfire’. Season 24 was also ranked bottom in a GQ article ranking every series of Doctor Who – a combination of words I never thought I’d write.

Season 24 of Doctor Who went into production just as its 23rd season, the 14-episode ‘The Trial of a Time-Lord’ was finishing up on TV. By late 1986, producer John Nathan-Turner was expecting to be moved onto another show and had lost both his script-editor and the show’s most prolific writer (the former quitting after long-simmering tensions erupted behind the scenes, and the latter passing away during the making of the series).

A surprised Nathan-Turner was given 13 months to hire a new script editor and produce 14 episodes under a BBC edict that Doctor Who had to become lighter and funnier (not dissimilar to the instructions producer Graham Williams found himself under in the Seventies). He also ended up having to cast a new Doctor, after Colin Baker was sacked and didn’t want to return for one story just to regenerate. Sylvester McCoy was formally cast at the end of February and started filming ‘Time and the Rani’ in April.

‘Time in the Rani’ was written by husband-and-wife duo Pip and Jane Baker (UK readers may remember their early-Nineties CBBC show Watt on Earth), who were given the job because there were no scripts either ready to go or in development. Nathan-Turner knew they could write quickly after they’d completed the final episode of ‘Trial of a Time Lord’ at extremely short notice earlier in the year.

The Bakers’ writing style was to produce frothy and campy nonsense and then act as if they’d just written The Seventh Seal. ‘Time and the Rani’ contains continuity references such as costume shout outs to past Doctors, a returning villain and references to the Lord President of Gallifrey. It’s set on an alien planet and makes no attempt to engage with contemporary life either directly or allegorically, and is happy to be adventure for adventure’s sake. It’s not a last hurrah for that style of story, but is a strong argument for why it had to be stop being the House Style after five years (though, to be fair to it, it has some nice ideas in it and the scene with the Doctor chatting away to the universe’s geniuses is great).

New Script Editor Andrew Cartmel wasn’t a fan of ‘Time and the Rani’ but arrived too late in the day to have much impact on it. He was able to influence writer Stephen Wyatt away from a story steeped in continuity and towards what became ‘Paradise Towers’. This was based on a combination of the novel High Rise by J.G. Ballard, Wyatt’s real-life experience in London’s East End, and Cartmel’s fondness for Alan Moore comics. Not only is it the first story for years to not refer to other Doctor Who stories and doesn’t feature the TARDIS interior but it is, in stark contrast to ‘Time and the Rani’, clearly about something real.

What ‘Paradise Towers’ did, which few Doctor Who stories had done before, was sympathetically reflect a working class setting by depicting people trapped in a block of flats by the whims of an aloof architect. In doing so, it didn’t go for realism. The show has rarely been in a position to, and here the budget and imposed tone meant it couldn’t. What it does have is a coherent approach: everything is big, be it the cleaning robots, the performances or the costuming.

So we have a Doctor Who story that isn’t aiming at its usual audience (Considering it had lost viewers this is clearly sensible) and is trying to overcome its restrictions by putting on a pantomime about social structures featuring cannibals and killer robots. Criticising it for lacking a realism it could never achieve is harsh.

Doctor Who: revisiting Sylvester McCoy’s first season 30 years on

By Jamie Andrew

Doctor Who: the Historical Places the Show Has Never Visited (But Should)

By Chris Farnell

Season 24 follows ‘Paradise Towers’ with a story set in a holiday camp and then in a shopping centre. Being Doctor Who, the shopping centre is in space and run by an intergalactic criminal, and the holiday camp becomes the battleground for an attempted genocide (“Now, let me try and get this right. Are you telling me that you are not the Happy Hearts Holiday Club from Bolton, but instead are spacemen in fear of an attack from some other spacemen?”) set to the backdrop of the space race and the coming of rock and roll. Again, it seems to be courting an audience other than organised fandom for the first time in five years, using recognisable aspects of contemporary life and mashing them up with fresh takes on Doctor Who staples.

While the tone is cartoonish, the satire of a building, designed by a celebrated architect, that actively harms its residents is clearly pointed. In fact, because the tone is cartoonish, it gets away with more. Over the past few series Doctor Who had been very ‘LOOK how NASTY this is. LOOK. It’s HORRIBLE’, whereas Season 24 knowingly presented things that were both silly and horrible simultaneously, revelling in the dissonance. This is one of the many ways in which the Seventh Doctor era prefigures Russell T. Davies’ approach. The survivors of ‘Paradise Towers’ coming together to fight their attackers feels very RTD.

In fact, given that ‘Survival’ is often heralded as a mirror image of ‘Rose’, it’s worth noting how Season 24 combines the recognisable with the fantastical in the same way we’d see Autons in shopping centres or plumbers and burger vans in space during Series 1. The Doctor was part of this too. McCoy was instructed to play the role like Patrick Troughton, but specifically Troughton’s lighter moments. Ultimately McCoy would gravitate towards how Troughton fully played the Doctor in the Sixties, but here he’s mostly being silly and avuncular. Indeed McCoy was clowning more than the role demanded.

What this allows, though, is for the Doctor to engage more with the people in these stories. In an extremely Troughton-esque move, the Doctor happily mixes and enthuses with the tourists in ‘Delta and the Bannermen’. In one scene he’s following an alien princess but stops to check on the sound of someone crying. He leaves a Doctor Who story to step into the real world, sitting in people’s bedrooms holding a guitar and making wistful observations about love. And he belongs. This Doctor fits in this world, and this version of the Seventh Doctor lingers even amidst the Winging-It-Chess-Playing manipulations of later series. It expands what the character is capable of in a positive way.

I’m not going to claim here that Season 24 as a whole should be thought of amongst the very best of Doctor Who, but it’s important to address how much it achieved in difficult circumstances. Despite the rushed production it managed to take Doctor Who from the lows of cancellation and its flawed return and point it in the direction of Seasons 25 and 26. Beyond this we have the New Adventures and the show’s return in 2005, all going further with ideas brought into the show in the late Eighties. I am going to claim that ‘Paradise Towers’ is great and ‘Delta and the Bannermen’ is charming in a delirious way. ‘Dragonfire’ is the only real dud of the new approach, being somewhat plodding and incoherent. What Season 24’s unpopularity demonstrates is that fans are far more willing to overlook a poverty of ideas over a poverty of appearance.

Once I’ve put my flameproof hat on, I’m going to say ‘Terror of the Zygons’ is a great example of a very well-made story that is ultimately just a fun yarn with some particularly egregious examples of ‘Activate the Unnecessarily Slow Dipping Mechanism’ type monsters. It’s not about anything. It’s just a blast. ‘Paradise Towers’ is furious and inventive, witty and (in Doctor Who terms) novel. It just looks like someone asked CBBC to adapt a 2000AD strip, and this is too much for some fans.

The show’s reach exceeded its grasp, however. Doctor Who had been temporarily cancelled and then returned diminished. It had become harder to disguise the lack of budget. This was a period of recovery and transition, and so the ambitions of the scripts (the caretakers being older men and Pex being a Stallone-esque slab of a man) were beyond Doctor Who in the late Eighties. If ‘Paradise Towers’ had been made in 2007, Richard Briers would certainly have taken it more seriously. Equally, given his influences, Cartmel’s Doctor Who would make a great series of comics.

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You don’t have to enjoy it, but you should acknowledge that without Season 24 Doctor Who would be a much duller place.

The Doctor Who Season 24 Blu-ray box set is released on June 21st.

The post How Doctor Who Was Quietly Revolutionised By Its Least Popular Season appeared first on Den of Geek.

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vsplusonline · 5 years ago

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Chess | Caruana favoured to come out on top

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/chess-caruana-favoured-to-come-out-on-top/

Chess | Caruana favoured to come out on top

Cinemas are closed. Shutters are down on malls. Stadia are empty. Coronavirus has pressed the pause button on the world.

Every day dawns with the news of the cancellation or postponement of a major sporting event. On Tuesday in Russia though, one of the biggest tournaments of the year in chess will get underway. The Candidates tournament opens at Yekaterinburg, which boasts some of the tallest buildings in Russia.

Three weeks of action

The next three weeks will tell who, from among the eight players, will stand the tallest and stake the claim to challenge Magnus Carlsen for the next World Championship, to be held later in the year.

For the uninitiated, the World chess champion has the privilege of playing the title match directly – a bit like the Wimbledon champion getting seeded straight to the final. That has usually been the custom in chess for decades.

So it is indeed extremely difficult for someone to emerge as the new champion.

In the 134-year-history of the championship, there have only been 16 undisputed champions.

Carlsen became the 16th when he dethroned Viswanathan Anand in 2013 in the latter’s hometown of Chennai.

In late 2018 at London, the Norwegian genius was given a tough fight in the title match by Fabiano Caruana.

The match was tied 6-6 and it was through the tie-breakers that Carlsen emeged victorious. Caruana is very much the favourite to be the challenger once again.

Watch out for Liren

The Italian-American is the World No. 2, with 2842 Elo points. He could face the stiffest challenge from Ding Laren, the World No. 3 from China with a rating of 2805.

Russians Alexander Grischuk (2777), Ian Nepomniachtchi (2774) and Kirill Alekseenko (2698), Dutchman Anish Giri (2763), France’s Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2767) and China’s Wang Hao (2762) are the others in the fray.

“I think Caruana is too strong for this field,” says Mumbai-based Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay. “As he proved in the last World Championship, he could pose the toughest challenge to Carlsen.”

Caruana’s toughest challenge at Yekaterinburg could come from Liren. He had arrived, along with his team, from China (the epicentre of Corona) and had been in quarantine.

Not that every chess player wanted to take on Corona and play at the Candidates. Teimour Radjabov of Azerjaiban had pulled out and had requested the world chess governing body FIDE to postpone the tournament (he was replaced by Vachier-Lagrave).

Caruana had found his flight to Russia was cancelled without notice but was able to board another later. FIDE was in no mood to change the schedule of the Candidates, stating that an eight-player tournament could not be compared to a large event.

Anand’s new role

One can follow the tournament live online and on chess.com, one can listen to the commentary of Anand, who is stuck in Germany, after competing in the Bundesliga chess league, because of travel restrictions.

The five-time World Champion is making his debut as a commentator. Given his deep knowledge, experience, the ability to analyse quickly, articulation and sense of humour, he should be a treat to listen to.

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londontheatre · 8 years ago

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It can’t be easy telling your life story on stage. What to put in? What to leave out? What to emphasise, what to downplay, what to deliberately omit? These are the sorts of issues that Harry Kit Lee isn’t afraid to openly discuss in So This Is Who I Am. A broad range of musical styles reflects eclectic tastes and an equally eclectic career to date. Highlighted in this gig are stints in Little Shop of Horrors and Fame, though Harry has straight plays and television dramas under his belt too.

What struck me was the sheer sincerity with which Harry told his story. Sparse on detail about his biological father, for reasons outlined in the show, he later speaks with a similar level of discomfort about his late grandmother, paradoxically because they did get on so well. In short, the former is still with us but might as well not be, and the latter has departed but Harry still feels her presence. I understood what he was driving at when he expresses reservations about doing this show at all, because, as he points out, unless one is a mega superstar whose every move is tracked by celebrity chasing paparazzi, “Who cares?”

But everyone does have a unique story to tell, and there are plenty of us who don’t really care for the day-to- day movements of the great and the good. And as it turns out, Harry’s choices of topics have considerable gravitas, even when he focuses on supposedly negligible details about clumsiness or, to quote Carrie: The Musical (he sings a number from that show, and from many others) being a ‘dreamer in disguise’.

I couldn’t help laughing at an anecdote about refusing to answer equal opportunities monitoring forms. I like to have a bit of fun lying on such forms, ticking the ‘wrong’ boxes, by which I mean ones that don’t actually reflect me. Harry would rather not answer them at all, as he shan’t be contained in a box marked ‘male’ or ’25-39 years old’ or ‘Are you married or in a civil partnership? Yes/No’. Indeed, it is difficult to categorise what this show is – ‘autobiographical’ is the best I can muster, though even this doesn’t quite cover it. For instance, he ends with what I think is Fox Television’s Glee version of ‘Defying Gravity’ from Wicked (that is, significantly softer than the Broadway/West End belter rendering). It was included not to tell a story, and not because he was in a production of Wicked (if he was, he doesn’t say so), but because it was the winner of a Twitter poll. The other options, for the record, were ‘Anthem’ from Chess: The Musical, and ‘Beautiful Disaster’, presumably the tune made famous by the US recording artist Kelly Clarkson.

At face value, it would seem performing the rousing ‘I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll’ minutes after ‘Bring Him Home’ would be quite jarring. But, with the accounts of various life events and themes abound, it all fits in snugly – it’s clear some thought has gone into this concert. Even when the order is inadvertently messed around, however, it still works. A case in point: the heart-rending ‘February Song’, made famous by Josh Groban, made the jaunty number that followed, ‘Bring On The Men’, from Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical, an appropriate antidote to the palpable sadness permeating amongst the audience. The frantic flicking of pages as a result of Harry getting a tad ahead of himself only served to add to the live experience.

Of worthy note is the mention and subsequent exploration of what Harry calls ‘being bipolar’ – he does not use the NHS term ‘disorder’, preferring ‘mental illness’. My knowledge of chart music being as sparse as it is, this was my first exposure to ‘Bang Bang’, a Grammy-nominated single, even more energetic than the tune immediately preceding it, the infinitely more familiar ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’ from Funny Girl.

There’s an easy-going charm about Harry that lends itself well to this intimate venue, and I do hope this isn’t the last time So This Is Who I Am hits the London stage. A tremendous vocal, an extensive repertoire, and a great evening’s entertainment.

Review by Chris Omaweng

HARRY KIT LEE – ‘SO THIS IS WHO I AM’ – AN EVENING OF BROADWAY, WEST END AND A FEW OTHER SURPRISES – Sunday 5th February 2017, 5pm at Phoenix Artist Club, London. Read our Q&A with Harry Kit Lee

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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Neil Gaiman: I like being British. Even when Imashamed, Im fascinated

The books interview: The award-winning author on his new book of Norse mythology, Brexit and being an Englishman in New York

Neil Gaiman wanders into the Crosby Hotels colourful parlour in lower Manhattan looking like the Platonic ideal of himself. Hes all wild hair and gracious manners, dressed in a lived-in black wool coat, which he keeps on throughout. He loves this hotel, he says, not least because the concierge writes a comic about Houdini with the former concierge.

Gaiman started out in comics, reading them as a child and eventually writing them too, including his famous Sandman series. So does this happen to him often, his very presence tempting out underground comics enthusiasts all over the globe? I wish I could say yes. It would be a much more interesting and sort of Pynchon-esque world. But no, its just here.

Gaiman looks a little tired. He has just come from feeding breakfast to his toddler youngest son, the progeny of his second marriage to the singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer. (He has three children with his first wife, Mary McGrath.) His creative life is a whirlwind of projects. The television version of his 2001 novel American Gods is to air in the US in April. He has also been at work on an adaptation of his 1990 collaboration with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, for Amazon and the BBC, on which he is serving as showrunner. Meanwhile, there is the matter of writing books, the latest of which is Gaimans retelling of Norse myths in the straightforwardly titled Norse Mythology, out this week.

It has clearly been a struggle to find the time. I would look up every now and again and go, OK, I have a week. Good, I will retell a story. These are drawn from the 13th-century source texts for many Norse myths, the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, which he first read in his 30s, after absorbing the superhero stories inspired by them in Marvel comics as a child growing up in West Sussex. With such a haphazard schedule, it has taken around eight years to write the book, the idea for which was first floated by his American editor at Gaimans birthday lunch in 2008.

Listing all of Gaimans achievements could fill a book on its own. In addition to the comics, he is the author of novels for adults and children including Neverwhere, The Graveyard Book and The Ocean at the End of the Lane. He has written original screenplays and seen his work adapted by others, too, such as the 2009 stop-motion version of Coraline. He has been nominated for and won countless awards, including the Hugos, Nebulas and Eisners.

An illustration from Neil Gaimans The Graveyard Book

Gaimans love of Norse mythology surfaces frequently in his work, not least in American Gods, which captures a battle between Odin and Loki. But in embarking on the retellings in Norse Mythology, Gaiman found himself faced with new limitations, as much information about the gods is missing. On Greeks and Romans, for example, we have scads of stuff, but the Norse werent writing it down, he explains. They were telling the stories, so everything we have was written down after the event. The holes and the contradictions that result from the oral tradition presented creative choices, but he felt an acute responsibility to be faithful to the traditional versions.

I have to play fair with the Norse scholars and I have to play fair with kids who pick up the book and read it and think they know the stories. And so I may add colour, I may add motivation, Id go and put in my own dialogue. I may draw inferences, he says. All that stuff Im allowed to do, but I feel like Im not allowed to just go, OK, theres a patch of canvas missing here. Im going to draw something in

Even so, Gaimans personal sensibility is apparent in the text. His affection for Loki, for instance, shines through: Loki is very handsome. He is plausible, convincing, likable, and far and away the most wily, subtle and shrewd of all the inhabitants of Asgard. It is a pity, then, that there is so much darkness inside him: so much anger, so much envy, so much lust.

Gaiman attributes his love of Loki to his novelists eye. You always end up fascinated by who changed, and how they change, because the engine of fiction is who are you at the beginning of the story and who are you at the end. Thor, bless his heart, has no narrative arc: he is the same person all the way through. He is not the brightest hammer in the room, but hes good hearted, and you know he will die at the end, but he dies the same person hes been all the way through. In contrast, Loki is both the devil and the saviour of the gods. Almost every story where theyre in trouble, its because Loki got them into it. Also, an awful lot of the time, hes the only one smart enough to get them out of it.

He declares a real joy in passing these things on. Its like being given something that belongs to humanity and polishing it and cleaning it up and putting it back out there.

Gaimans enthusiasm for myths also extends to the Egyptians and the Greeks. He can reel off similarities between ancient stories, and says he doesnt just tell the stories, he feels them on some emotional level. The glory of some of these myths is that they feel right, he explains, although he also concedes that every now and then youll hit a myth and go, No, I cant really get behind that. Really, we get licked out of the ice by a cow? OK, if you say so. (Hes referring there to the myth of Audhumla, which he includes in Norse Mythology, despite his scepticism.)

As Gaiman wrestled with these stories, he says, he had no idea he was writing a topical book. But then, as political events unfolded in the second half of 2016, he could not help but draw parallels. For me, it was Ragnark, he says, referring to the apocalyptic end of the gods. It begins with a long winter, continues with earthquakes and flooding, and then the sky splits apart.

The view that Brexit and the election of President Trump have brought about chaos and even a sense of impending doom is widely held, but Gaimans version of it is particularly eloquent. I remember the 80s and the nuclear clock and the cold war and Russia and America and [thinking] I hope you guys dont press buttons and it would be very nice to not live in the shadow of everything ending, he says. But at least at that point, what you were scared of was just one action. Now one is scared of the accretion of a million actions and a million inactions.

He says there is a strange kind of magical thinking afoot and tells me about waking up the morning after Brexit in a hotel in Scotland and checking the result, then having that sort of moment at the end of Planet of the Apes where Charlton Heston sees the Statue of Liberty … I was going, Oh, no. Are you really

Gaiman has, in recent years, divided his time between the UK and the US, but he is not an American citizen and has fallen off the electoral roll in the UK, so he wasnt able to vote in either the Brexit referendum or the US election. Im frustrated not being able to vote over here, he says. Im like, well, I pay lots of taxes to the US and the UK, but I dont want to become an American citizen. I like being English. I like being British. Even when Im ashamed, Im fascinated.

Indeed, he clearly is. He does a very good imitation of the cab drivers he encountered in London leading up to the Brexit vote, who seemed to believe that, ultimately, the thing they were about to do was of no consequence: The EUs not going to let us go … . Regarding the Trump vote, he says: At the end of the day, what I think was being voted for was change. People were saying Were fed up and were not being listened to, and unfortunately that wasnt being offered by the other side. The appeal of Bernie Sanders was he was standing up there saying This thing is fucked, and the problem with Hillary was she was standing up there and saying Things are good, theyre getting better.

Genuine worry furrows Gaimans brow, but he has plans to respond to current events. His following is huge, including 2.5 million people on Twitter and the millions who read his books and his blog and watch his television shows. He intends to use that platform to highlight the plight of refugees. He hopes, too, to double down on his longstanding activism to promote freedom of speech. I wrote an essay on my blog in 2009 called Why Defend Freedom of Icky Speech?, he says, Which just becomes more and more timely. I have a 14-month-old son, and a four-month-old grandson. I have no idea what kind of world theyre going to grow up in. Im going to do my best with the time and the intellectual effort remaining to me to do whatever I can to give them a good world, he says.

Ragnark, as Gaiman writes in Norse Mythology, is of course the end of something. But there is also what will come after the end, he adds. In his version the sun comes out. Something glitters in the grass. The gods children find a set of golden chess pieces waiting for them. They arrange them on a board, and then one of them makes a move. And, Gaiman concludes, the game begins anew.