Dionne Live
(Dionne Warwick, Thebarton Theatre, 12 November 2016) They make them tough in Jersey. Dionne Warwick wowed (and at times, admonished) a rapturous Adelaide crowd on a rainy Saturday night with a legendary set of songs, belted out with feeling, exquisite timing and surprising resonance from the seventy-something star. Dionne was warm and funny, kindly but firmly asking several rude or ignorant people to zip-it (‘I’ve got the microphone’) and to stow those annoying, flashing camera-phones. You’re at the show, folks! No need to get a grainy, washed-out snap to enjoy the moment! Dressed elegantly in golden shantung with purple drapery, floating about…
Continue Reading →La Mer
(Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky, 1898)
Songs in Our Heart # 50 La Mer (Charles Trénet version) (written by Charles Trenet; released 1946) [Like drinking champagne at the French seaside. “A berce mon coeur pour la vie!”]
Continue Reading →Leonard Cohen
(photo by Rama)
Leonard Cohen (21 September, 1934 to 7 November, 2016) With a voice even less impressive and more throwaway than Dylan, like a sombre, kindly and perhaps slightly whiskey-giddy uncle, singing his niece to sleep. A sublime indifference to Fame; a gorgeous disregard for money matters, such that he failed to notice his management was cleaning him out. A true poet’s sense, and it is rare, for true poetry to bind with popular music to advantage. Except he did it, in First We Take Manhattan, Dance Me To The End Of Love, Famous Blue Raincoat, So Long, Marianne, and one of the best…
Continue Reading →The Crime Writer by Jill Dawson
'The Price of Salt" by Claire Morgan (Patricia Highsmith), made as the film "Carol".
The Crime Writer is an imagined episode in the life of the novelist, Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith spent time in Bridge Cottage in the village of Earl Soham, Suffolk, but she probably didn’t kill anyone while she was there, which Pat, in Dawson’s novel, does. When asked her opinion of Agatha Christie, Pat says, “‘The only thing Agatha Christie did that interests me is to go missing for a few days. Fake her own death….That’s the closest she’s come to conjuring up a real crime in her life.” And, as Christie’s missing days were imagined in the film “Agatha,” so Dawson imagines an life-changing…
Continue Reading →Trump’s Grand Slam
The Donald in Philly, PA, which might put him over the top (picture: Michael Candelori)
9 November 2016 We have been rebuked quite harshly over a previous post containing some mild objections about Donald Trump, so we have no wish to endure further ‘trolling’… It looks like Mr Trump has won a stunning victory. As at 5 pm Australian Central Standard time, he has 244 electoral college votes to Ms Clinton’s 215, needing 270 to win the election. He is likely to gather the balance he needs by winning Arizona (11), and he is narrowly ahead in Pennsylvania (20), with almost all votes counted there. This puts him over the top, but he also has handy…
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