Mainly music and 'Leonardo'
May. 2nd, 2003 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99Love Friday for music, even if it's either bad pop on Top of the Pops, and middling indie bands on Re: Covered
Macy Grey is back to make the rest of us with no taste in clothing look good. And props to her guitarist.
For those wondering about Jeff Hardy's whereabouts, he's playing guitar for Tatu. Or someone very like him. And what ever else can be said about Tatu at least they look healthy and not like some of the stick insects they foist upon us.
The Bluetones were on. On TOTP! Oh I can remember the good old days of indie when they were on every week. And they still rock wonderfully. Stupid record companies.
There's this new boy band called Triple 8. And they are actually some cynical ploy to replicate Five. Five and the Backstreet Boys are the only boy bands I've ever liked. And this bad are like Five without the charm. And the thing about Five was not only were they good, they were charming.
And this bad sound exactly the same, look faintly similar and have the same dance moves. Damn you record company bastards. And one of the fun things about Five was that even the pretty boys were actually decent singers. With these, the pretty boys aren't pretty (although, one of them does raunchy well - too bad he's a bad J take off)
And Busted are number one. They're a bunch of supposed to be pop-punks. It makes me weep. This girl I know was saying how much she like Busted and how 'punk' she was and I said that they weren't fit to hold Joe Strummer's plectrum, and the blank look I got spoke volumes. Busted are not fucking punk.
And what's worse they're teenaged so of course, they're spotty. But a record company that bought them a number one can't afford a decent make up artist so one of them looked like a teeny bop version of Brian Molko on an awful day. And talk about crimes against eyeliner.
And then came Re:Covered, the basic premise of which is simple: 3 bands playing live doing one of their songs and a cover version.
This week - Reef doing 'Naked' and Sabbath's 'War Pigs' which is even better with a good singer. For those who haven't heard them, imagine the love-child of Free and old swamp-blues. They were doing the throwback retro blues way before it was popular and the stupid music press keep slating them. And they've been going ten years, shock!
- Harry doing her version of Imagination and Blondie's 'One Way Or Another'. In the great Harry debate I'm on the 'she's for real' side.
-And Athlete doing one of theirs called 'Rock Scene' and Prince's 'Kiss'. They are supposed to be this great young band. Trouble is they sound like a watered down Mercury Rev. (I like MR btw). And if you've got no sexy oomph you shouldn't be doing 'Kiss'.
It was actually quite good. The building of his machines was interesting, if a little scientifically suspect. It's all very well saying if he'd built his flying machine he would have realise that it needed a rudder, but he didn't so he didn't so you can't randomly stick a rudder on to make it work and then say the machine worked when it didn't before. There were similar problems with the diving machine.
But the part about him studying anatomy was very good. Unsurprisingly it was also the one done with the least gimmickery.
The only thing I didn't like was the hatchet job they did on Michaelangelo. The two greats met up in Florence, and couldn't stand each other. Trouble was in building up Leonardo they decided Michaelangelo needed building down. So they said that he was a 'dark, brooding, sarcastic man who had no manners, with mood swings, bad hygenie who wore dog hide trousers that he only changed once a year.' Oh and he was a religious zealot. Trouble was they showed a little glimpse of the 'Pieta' and I think Michaelangelo can be forgiven for all of that just for that one work.
Meanwhile they'd been saying how kind and courteous Leonardo was, and how nice he was to animals.
Then they made Michaelangelo seem all backstabbing in his efforts to get the order to make the statue of David. Which he undoubtedly was but the results do kind of speak for themselves.
And then Leonardo went to Rome where Mickey was Pope's chief pet. And the Pope didn't like Leonardo and made him have nasty German spies as his assistants. (PS to actors playing nasty German spies, if you must stage whisper, can you at least whisper in German instead of rhubarbing)
It really annoyed me how they made Mickey seem wrong for being the Pope's lapdog while they said that there was nothing wrong with Leonardo working for Ceasare Borgia (you know the poisoning, incestuous, power-crazed pupil of Machievelli) because he was only doing it to get money to further his research. Although he did produce lovely maps in Borgia's employ.
Ceasare meanwhile was played, as expected, by James Frain. James Frain is who they use when ever they need someone swarthy, sinister and/or slightly melancholy. He got to be all three and be in fancy dress. His Cesare was Commodus with fewer lines and more melancholy. All joking aside he was very good.
Due to his attempts to figure out how the body ticked, Leonardo is accused of Necromancy and told to stop. So humanity loses all this knowledge that it only refound out about in the 1950s.
This bit was (spies notwithstanding) very well done. Mainly because Mark Rylance is an outstanding actor and the narrator wisely got on with his job instead of pontificating. You got a good sense of how much humanity lost.
Macy Grey is back to make the rest of us with no taste in clothing look good. And props to her guitarist.
For those wondering about Jeff Hardy's whereabouts, he's playing guitar for Tatu. Or someone very like him. And what ever else can be said about Tatu at least they look healthy and not like some of the stick insects they foist upon us.
The Bluetones were on. On TOTP! Oh I can remember the good old days of indie when they were on every week. And they still rock wonderfully. Stupid record companies.
There's this new boy band called Triple 8. And they are actually some cynical ploy to replicate Five. Five and the Backstreet Boys are the only boy bands I've ever liked. And this bad are like Five without the charm. And the thing about Five was not only were they good, they were charming.
And this bad sound exactly the same, look faintly similar and have the same dance moves. Damn you record company bastards. And one of the fun things about Five was that even the pretty boys were actually decent singers. With these, the pretty boys aren't pretty (although, one of them does raunchy well - too bad he's a bad J take off)
And Busted are number one. They're a bunch of supposed to be pop-punks. It makes me weep. This girl I know was saying how much she like Busted and how 'punk' she was and I said that they weren't fit to hold Joe Strummer's plectrum, and the blank look I got spoke volumes. Busted are not fucking punk.
And what's worse they're teenaged so of course, they're spotty. But a record company that bought them a number one can't afford a decent make up artist so one of them looked like a teeny bop version of Brian Molko on an awful day. And talk about crimes against eyeliner.
And then came Re:Covered, the basic premise of which is simple: 3 bands playing live doing one of their songs and a cover version.
This week - Reef doing 'Naked' and Sabbath's 'War Pigs' which is even better with a good singer. For those who haven't heard them, imagine the love-child of Free and old swamp-blues. They were doing the throwback retro blues way before it was popular and the stupid music press keep slating them. And they've been going ten years, shock!
- Harry doing her version of Imagination and Blondie's 'One Way Or Another'. In the great Harry debate I'm on the 'she's for real' side.
-And Athlete doing one of theirs called 'Rock Scene' and Prince's 'Kiss'. They are supposed to be this great young band. Trouble is they sound like a watered down Mercury Rev. (I like MR btw). And if you've got no sexy oomph you shouldn't be doing 'Kiss'.
It was actually quite good. The building of his machines was interesting, if a little scientifically suspect. It's all very well saying if he'd built his flying machine he would have realise that it needed a rudder, but he didn't so he didn't so you can't randomly stick a rudder on to make it work and then say the machine worked when it didn't before. There were similar problems with the diving machine.
But the part about him studying anatomy was very good. Unsurprisingly it was also the one done with the least gimmickery.
The only thing I didn't like was the hatchet job they did on Michaelangelo. The two greats met up in Florence, and couldn't stand each other. Trouble was in building up Leonardo they decided Michaelangelo needed building down. So they said that he was a 'dark, brooding, sarcastic man who had no manners, with mood swings, bad hygenie who wore dog hide trousers that he only changed once a year.' Oh and he was a religious zealot. Trouble was they showed a little glimpse of the 'Pieta' and I think Michaelangelo can be forgiven for all of that just for that one work.
Meanwhile they'd been saying how kind and courteous Leonardo was, and how nice he was to animals.
Then they made Michaelangelo seem all backstabbing in his efforts to get the order to make the statue of David. Which he undoubtedly was but the results do kind of speak for themselves.
And then Leonardo went to Rome where Mickey was Pope's chief pet. And the Pope didn't like Leonardo and made him have nasty German spies as his assistants. (PS to actors playing nasty German spies, if you must stage whisper, can you at least whisper in German instead of rhubarbing)
It really annoyed me how they made Mickey seem wrong for being the Pope's lapdog while they said that there was nothing wrong with Leonardo working for Ceasare Borgia (you know the poisoning, incestuous, power-crazed pupil of Machievelli) because he was only doing it to get money to further his research. Although he did produce lovely maps in Borgia's employ.
Ceasare meanwhile was played, as expected, by James Frain. James Frain is who they use when ever they need someone swarthy, sinister and/or slightly melancholy. He got to be all three and be in fancy dress. His Cesare was Commodus with fewer lines and more melancholy. All joking aside he was very good.
Due to his attempts to figure out how the body ticked, Leonardo is accused of Necromancy and told to stop. So humanity loses all this knowledge that it only refound out about in the 1950s.
This bit was (spies notwithstanding) very well done. Mainly because Mark Rylance is an outstanding actor and the narrator wisely got on with his job instead of pontificating. You got a good sense of how much humanity lost.
