Surely somebody has noticed how much this record…
…sounds like this one…
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
the tohu vabohu tour
Surely somebody has noticed how much this record…
…sounds like this one…
Ktismatics 
Can’t say I still notice it all that much, but did see the Shangri-las in 1964/5 at a big rock show, also had the Dave Clark Five, who were huge for a very brief moment. Obvious Beatles spinoff. Of that period, I mostly liked the Supremes and their early Motown hits.
The Winehouse video reminds me of the Hollywood Forever! cemetery adjacent to the Paramount Studios (still have that gate as in Sunset Boulevard, but I don’t know how extensively they’re used–still, at least in H’wood instead of Burbank–I’ve never taken a tour of any of those studios out there, sounds like going on a daytime TV show). She’s good, but I don’t quite like it (the Shangri-las either, not all that much, but ‘Leader of the Pack’ was a catchy one, and they didn’t even sing that in the concert I saw, although they did sing this.)
LikeLike
Odd that you don’t see the similarity: same mopey angst, same key, same piano, more or less the same chord progressions, even the melody is similar. Winehouse had this same “greaser chick” look as the Shangri-Las’ lead singer, especially the beehive hairdo. We used to refer to the greasers as “D-wingers” because in my high school all the shop classes were taught in D wing. Leader of the Pack is great: a friend gave me the 45 record for a birthday present once but it’s long gone. There’s also Give Him a Great Big Kiss: “Is he bad? He’s good-gad, but he’s not evil.”
LikeLike
Well anyhow, I’m kind of embarrassed about putting up this post, which seems so Facebook. The only other post I’ve put up since the New Year was a bit of text that I was then editing but that I’d written years ago. Blogging lull.
LikeLike
Why is it so Facebook? I would have never heard nor seen the Winehouse video otherwise, and it was interesting, going along with her ghoulishness. Was surprised that I don’t find anything in the posthumous talks about her ‘beauty’. I don’t find her ugly, but neither do I see her as pretty.
LikeLike
I don’t find her ugly, but neither do I see her as pretty.
She’s nearly, but not quite, a wamyn; she comes closer to an urban lesb’an, of which I saw countless examples in London this week. And you’re right about the ghoulishness, though somehow, through the sheer poignancy of this song, she transcends the conventions of the Gothic genre, transforming into something real and beautiful.
(Doyle, I know Kenzie is into Goth, so I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings)
LikeLike
From the Wikipedia entry on Walking in the Sand:
Amy Winehouse would occasionally interpolate the chorus of the song into the bridge of her own song “Back to Black” during live performances.
LikeLike
From this article:
Again and again after Winehouse died, on July 23, you could read her talking about how she’d written the self-mocking, self-loathing, unflinchingly fuck-you songs for Back to Black: “I didn’t want to just wake up drinking, and crying, and listening to the Shangri-Las, and go to sleep, and wake up drinking, and listening to the Shangri-Las.” But she did. That’s why she would let their deathly “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” drift into “Back to Black”
…“She could not stand fame any more than I could,” Mary Weiss, the lead singer of the Shangri-Las, said after Winehouse died. “I wish I could have helped her, even if she never sang publicly again. My hairdresser told me that is just ego, thinking that maybe you could possibly make a difference when others could not. I thought about it, long and hard. I do not think so. I would have only spoken about her pain, not drug usage, until (if ever) she was ready. I related to her so much it is a bit scary… I will never understand why people get off kicking people when they are down and need help. How could that possibly make you feel better about yourself?”
LikeLike
Britain is FULL of urban Lesb’ans. It’s even worse there than here, if possible.
LikeLike
Next to the urban Lesb’ans you also have the garden variety of girls prancing around the tube well after midnight wearing only an ”overcunt” (Serbian expression for a very thin thong). Yesterday I saw one whose overcunt was even hanging underneath her ass crack, in broad daylight. She might as well have worn a T-shirt saying FUCK ME, NOW. Somehow these lasses have very good legs, but when you look from the waist up you only see common Limey trash. There was one sublime encounter, though, somewhere on Trafalgar square, with a woman who looked like the ideal cross between Kylie Minogue and Cate Blanchett. I was SMITTEN. For a fleeting moment I thought, maybe I could be a romantic heterosexual. But then the bus came, and she disappeared into the night.
Later at Vauxhall’s Roman bath, there was a really good looking 50 plus muscle top who however spent the whole night (or the 7 hours I spent there) walking in circles; he would approach a whole spectrum of bottoms – from thin Thai ones to chubby niggaz – and then having sniffed them out, retreated for some reason. The bottoms were equally dismissive, and I think only because of his age, because he looked much better than the young ones. At this point I really got sick of the endless ”catwalk”, and went out; but did enjoy a really long and good bubble bath first.
By the way the whole city is buzzing with talk of the financial crisis. You can hear it literally as you walk, being thrown at you from the bar corners.
LikeLike
C of P, maybe you should have retuned your Shining powers from identifying urban lesbians to finding your way out of that maze. I liked the link to MrDejanno at the end of the maze video — is that some of that Lynch electronica to which you’re lipsyncing?
LikeLike
That clip was an experiment, partly to test software, but also to test the idea of ELO (Electric Light Orchestra’s) album TIME as a modern musical. It’s a great and visionary album, which tells the tale of the time traveler from the 1980s to the 21st century.,..
which reminds me, in London I saw advertisements for a holographic theater musical starring Liam Neeson which will be a reworking of the famous WAR OF THE WORLDS album (with Richard Burton’s ingenious recitals) – one of my favorites. I am going to go just for that, it’s not to be missed.
LikeLike
Liam Neesson is one of the best actors today–not only his acting, but truly sexy and beautiful. I would LOVE to see him and Michelle do some kind of middle-aged romance story, but not that shit like Vanessa and whoever it was doing ‘A Month By the Lake’, which was just banal.
LikeLike
I also like Liam, though I don’t see what you find so handsome about him.
Vanessa BTW is being praised by British press for CORIOLANUS, directed by Ralph Fiennes, some kind of a Shakespeare update. Started playing on the 20th in London.
MURRRRL was staring at me from every nook and cranny of London – she’s on the buses, on undergrounds, in shops, everywhere. IRON LADY got three stars from Time Out, a magazine I respect a lot, although every reviewer says that it’s mostly about MURRRL’s imitation and not about the conventional biopic behind it.
ANyhow the excitement of the trip is subsiding as I’m back to the usual dreary business of job hunting, where I note with horror that Richard was completely right about welfare in England – it’s around 4,000 GBP per annum – which isn’t even enough to cover food expenses. This means that if one is to fall ill or lose the job, one is completely, to utterly, fuck’d.
Speaking of fuck’d, I should now finish my Canterbury post and my Gay London post.
LikeLike