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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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FOREST OF NO RETURN, MUSIC FROM THE FILMS OF WALT
DISNEY
The Royal Festival Hall, London June 17th 2007 |
| The
Royal Festival Hall, fulcrum of the much-reviled
Southbank
Centre, the Festival of Britain’s gift
to post-war London, has just re-opened following
an extensive refurbishment. It’s a pity that
this didn’t include air-conditioning in the
public areas because as we wait for over an hour
before a delayed entrance to the still-spectacular
auditorium, the place heats up like an oven. |
 |
| We’re
here for the second night of this year’s Meltdown
– the Southbank's annual avant-garde musical
bash, curated this year by Jarvis Cocker (“Cunts
may be running the world, but a cock will be controlling
the South Bank for one week in June” he declared),
following in the footsteps of Patti Smith, Nick
Cave, Morrissey and Scott Walker and suchlike. It’s
a characteristically eclectic assembly including
Motorhead, Melanie, John Barry, Iggy and the Stooges,
Devo, Roky Erickson, Jerry Dammers, and of course
Mr Cocker himself. But tonight we’re here
for Forest of No Return, Music from the films of
Walt Disney produced by Hal Willner (responsible
for, among other things, last year’s marvellous
sea shanty collection, Rogues’ Gallery) and
for Jarvis. |
 |
The
audience are varied and restive. There are the hideously-dressed
and cruelly self-obsessed and self-conscious fashionistas
– Meltdown hardcore. Then we have the dreadfully
loud chatteratti; over-privileged, over-educated,
over-fed and over-opinionated. And, if I may observe,
the first to start being rude to the attendants
and bar staff as our long steamy wait continued.
Not used to waiting I suppose. And of course we
have the Mummies and Daddies with their Matts and
Mollies. Already over-tired and over-excited the
little fuckers darlings cause
havoc playing with the lifts and running themselves
into states of utter exhaustion. And with half of
the audience getting quietly pissed in the evening
sunshine, things look set for a lively evening.
Oh - why are we waiting? Well, with a cast of hastily-assembled
stars set up for the evening, including the likes
of Pete Doherty
and Shane
MacGowan, you won’t be surprised to learn
that they’re rehearsing until the very last
minute (well, very last sixty minutes to be honest).
We’re told that our patience means that we’ve
been “part of the creative process”.
Yeah – right. |
| Willner’s
been here before – in 1988 he released Stay
Awake, a collection of Disney songs featuring luminaries
such as Tom Waits, Aaron Neville, Bonnie Raitt and
James Taylor. |
| But
tonight’s affair is on a much grander scale,
with 38 tunes and songs (‘though in the end
several were cut as time ran out) with twenty guest
performers and an orchestra, featuring amongst many
others Chris
Spedding on guitar, David
Coulter on musical saw and Kate
St. John on oboe and Cor anglais. She was responsible
for the pretty ‘Little April showers’,
sung by former Morcheeba vocalist Skye
Edwards and Ed
Harcourt, but the majority of arrangements are
shared between composer and pianist Steve Weisberg,
Steve
Bernstein (who also plays trumpet and flugelhorn)
and Jun Miyake,
who each lead the band for their own pieces. On
stage for much of the evening is pianist Terry Adams,
sometimes of NRBQ, whose apparently casual playing
adds both breadth and edge to many of the arrangements
– his vocal contribution on ‘Whistle
while you work’ suggests his career should
remain firmly with the keyboards. Also frequently
present is veteran Sun Ra Arkestra saxophonist Marshall
Allen, whose lightning and jarring solos helped
to paint a different perspective of many of these
Disney classics. For with such heavyweights on stage
this certainly wasn’t Disney lite –
more like Disney dark, as the Glums in the row in
front of us soon discovered, |
| Did
I tell you about the Glums? Maw, Paw and the two
weans – who spent most of the night (well
until their early departure) feasting on a malodorous
popcorn and peanut picnic and guzzling down gallons
of the brown fizzy stuff. Quite what they had expected
I don’t know. You could see their unease as
David Thomas,
bare-footed like a St Kildan, dragged his heavy
black-clad bulk onto the stage and broke into ‘I’m
late’, pausing only to fix the audience with
a menacing Cheshire Cat grin. Maw Glum held her
hands to her ears as Nick
Cave sang a remarkably expletive-free ‘An
actor’s life for me’, and I’m
sure the wee girl was crying when Cave and Thomas
dueted on a wonderful ‘Heigh ho’ (is
it possible to have two such Grumpies?). Thomas
singing ‘When I see an elephant fly’
followed by ‘Pink elephants on parade’
with Adams and Allen at full tilt was enough to
see them pack their bags altogether, having I think
only really enjoyed the wonderfully hammy rendition
of ‘Feed the birds’ by veteran British
comedic actress Fenella Fielding. Needless to say,
they left all their rubbish littering the seats
and floor. |
David Thomas |
| I
had anticipated (no – hoped) that Thomas would
steal the show, but good though he was, there were
others who were equally impressive. After Cocker,
Cave, Doherty and MacGowan had howled their way
through ‘Home sweet home’, Richard
Strange took the stage. “Who could follow
that – me!” he shouted, as he Boris
Karloffed his way through ‘Headless Horseman’
from Disney’s take on Sleepy Hollow, the 1949
movie The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Equally
impressive was Gavin
Friday singing ‘Siamese cat song’
and ‘Castle in Spain’. And a surprisingly
melancholic yet impressive Pete Doherty made a boyish
chimney sweep as he strummed and sang his way through
‘Chim Chim Cheree’. Beth
Orton was characteristically tuneful on ‘Baby
mine’. ‘Stay awake’ and ‘Second
star to the right’. Cocker, of course, was
not to be upstaged on his own night, with ‘I
wanna be like you’ and the show closer ‘When
you wish upon a star’, but it was hard for
anyone to compete against a glistening Grace
Jones with her simmering ‘Trust in me’,
or the uplifting Baaba Maal singing ‘Bare
Necessities’. |
 |
Grace
Jones |
|
Perfect it wasn’t, but entertaining it certainly
was. I only had one real complaint (apart from the
Glums). How can it be entertaining to watch someone
with a chronic illness display the symptoms of their
disease on a public stage? I’m sure a younger
and sober Shane MacGowan would have been the perfect
choice for a Pogue Mahone version of ‘Zip-a-dee
Doo Dah’. But his shambolic and drunken careering
around the stage should have been a source of embarrassment
and concern, not of the shameful laughter that he
got. Never mind – everyone has to make a living,
and no doubt there are a few making a living out
of Shane. Well here’s a final thought and
a strange coincidence. Just count how many of the
artistes performing here were involved with Willner’s
piratical ‘Rogues’ Gallery’. Don’t
you just sense a barnstorming double CD on the way?
- Nick Morgan (concert photographs by Kate) |
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the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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