Zorac's LiveJournal

Yes, that subject is the literal truth. It was one of your higher-class ready meals including whole chicken breasts, which I microwaved as per the instructions. When I stuck a fork in it, however, I was surprised by a loud noise and a spray of sauce. I approached the other with more caution, but there was a similar effect. Exploding breasts - my day is complete.

And now to music - cover versions, to be precise. The most annoying sort, of course, is the re-make of a classic which tries to sound as much like the original as possible - they almost always fail, and what's the point anyway? Then there's the just plain bad - like Madonna's version of American Pie - and Don McLean had already done a bad cover of his classic original.

What spurred this subject was my recent acquisition (recc'd by frayer of Paul Anka's Rock Swings - a fabulous album of rock songs done in the swing style. Genius. This gives me two versions of Wonderwall - neither the Oasis original, the other being 60s-style Mike Flowers Pops version.

I also now have two versions of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Again, the second isn't the Nirvana original, it's from Scala's on the Rocks, which is familiar songs done by a girl's choir. The crowning glory and song which made be buy the album (after one of you recc'd it to me) is a cover of the Divinyls' I Touch Myself. 'Nuff said.

Another double-cover example is Holding Out for a Hero - which I do have the Bonnie Tyler original of. Here, the two covers are both on the Shrek 2 Soundtrack. The Frou Frou version is ... different, but still pretty good. Jennifer Saunders' showtunes-style version from the film's finale, on the other hand, is simply fantastic.

Another fertile ground for cover versions is my collection of Ally McBeal CDs. Music was a very big part of that show, but to keep the style consistent, rather than using original versions of songs, Vonda Shepard would do a cover. Exceptions to that were either when the song was within the show's world (or, more likely, a character's head), or when the singer was doing a guest spot (a quite frequent occurrence).

Which reminds me, I did one of my periodic checks of Vonda's tour page, to discover that she played two nights at the Jazz Café in London last month. [ Long string of expletives deleted ] I went there last October, and it was really one of the highlights of my year. Still, maybe next year...

Lately I've been mostly listening to the cast recording of Monty Python's Spamalot. How much do I want to see this show? Alas, for some reason it opened on Broadway rather than in the homeland of the Python's. So unfair. I'm sure it will come to the West End eventually, although likely without Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce et al on the cast.

Not at all jealous of the NYC folks on my friends list. Oh, no.

A few random tales of shuffling iTunes:

1. Late one evening, a couple of weeks back, iTunes randomly played Paul McCartney's Another Day. Unfortunately, this triggered the part of my mind which goes "Ooh. I've heard that in a movie recently..." This sort of thing is always fatal as I of course want to know what that movie was, and I ain't gonna get to sleep until I've got the answer or managed to forget about the question. Thankfully, IMDb* came to the rescue - a bit of poking turned up the soundtrack search page which quickly gave me the answer: 50 First Dates.
2. I recently watched Charlie's Angels, and remember thinking that I should look up what one of the songs played over the end credits was. This morning, iTunes popped up All the Small Things by Blink 182, and once again I knew it was from a movie I'd seen recently, so I headed over to IMDb, thinking that I could check the Charlie's Angels soundtrack while I was there. Of course, the two questions proved to be each others' answers...
3. Later on, iTunes brought be part of the soundtrack from the final episode of Babylon 5 and I ended up turning off the shuffle feature to hear the final track as well. Those of you familiar with the show will know that the final episode is more of an epilogue than a finale, and that it appears to be deliberately written to reduce fans to gibbering wrecks - and just the music by itself can do that. Powerful stuff. Randomly, it seems that JMS has some B5 stuff up for auction on eBay - including the dalies and two director's cuts of Sleeping in Light. *WANTS SO MUCH*

* If you're not familiar with IMDb, then why not? It's easily one of the most useful sites on the 'net, with pretty much every bit of information about seemingly every movie ever made (and plenty of TV shows and some video games). Many a time and oft has it saved my sleep or sanity.

This has been around for a couple of weeks, but in case you haven't seen it yet:

Zero Wing Rhapsody

I laughed. A lot.

Yesterday really didn't get off to the best of starts, what with the whole no sleep thing, and that was followed up by public transport working against me. Still, it was all in a good cause - I was going to the Jazz Cafe to see Vonda Shepard (most famous for doing the music - on and off screen - for Ally McBeal) performing live.

The doors were somewhat late opening (but that was fine, as I was also late on account of my apparent inability to read the tube map), but when I got inside I was able to grab a spot where I could sit on the edge of the stage and read my book until things got started. First up was Mark Buck playing a few blues tracks. He was really rather good - you can download a few tracks for free from Amazon. After that there was another break while they re-set the stage for the main event.

The venue was really great - in terms of size and atmosphere, it was just like being in The Bar on the show - just without Ally's neuroses, Elaine stealing the microphone or a guest spot by a big-name music star. I managed to snag pretty much the best spot - right at the stage by the end of the piano - so, unlike when I went to see Bryan Ferry earlier in the year, I was never more than about 10 feet away from the artist.

Vonda opened with this post's title track, then greeted us "How many of you are here because you watched Ally McBeal?" *big cheer* "And how many of you were dragged along?" *deep-voiced cheer* "Lots of men, I see." *laughs*. The set included tracks from all of her solo albums as well as some from the Ally soundtracks (some, of course, appeared on both). We also got comments about the number of cameraphones - "All I can see from up here is [mimes holding up phone]" (guilty as charged) - and a plug for her website and upcoming live album and DVD.

The set ended in style with Searchin' My Soul (the title song from Ally), then we got a three song encore including the dancing baby song and ending with Maryland (the final track from the first Ally CD), featuring some pretty nifty audience participation, if I say so myself. Overall, it was an absolutely fabulous experience - Vonda and the band were really on top form and really seemed to be enjoying themselves, and I had far too much fun clapping and snapping and singing along (although not dancing too t00bily).

PS. I've now updated my last entry with a picture of me in the pink hat. Enjoy.

The second part of Saturday's exploits was going to see Bryan Ferry. There was some amount of concern as regards the weather, and also his recent troubles with laryngitis which lead to some earlier tour dates being cancelled. Certainly the rain was out in force mid-to-late afternoon, but it cleared up by the time I was heading out again. Having mis-judged public transport I arrived rather earlier than intended, so I had rather a long wait in line (naturally, the gates were opened about half an hour late), but this did mean that I was able to grab a spot about thirty feet from the stage and dead centre. I had about an hour or so to read my book and eat my picnic before the show started.

Before the man himself, we had a couple of warm-up acts. The first of these was Duel (a couple of prettyboys with violins), and the second was The Hot Club of Cowtown (the name says it all, really). They played for around 20-25 minutes each and were both really quite good. After half an hour to reset the stage, it was finally time for the main event. Alas, Bryan wasn't fully recovered, so we only got one set instead of two, but it was still very good - a good selection of old favourites, a few other familiar tunes and a couple of new ones. Suffice it to say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Oh, and there were some nifty fireworks to round the evening off.

As to what I was doing there - I'd say that the majority of the audience was at least 5-10 years older than me, and most of the younger ones were accompanying parents - it's all about nostalgia. Whilst I'm not really old enough to have been around when Roxy Music were hitting the charts, Mum had a greatest hits compilation which was a regular fixture on our camping holidays around France for a decade or more. Thus it was that "Our Bryan" became the soundtrack to our summers...

Lasagne + alcohol + Lion King = a much happier zorac

Anyway, it's invent-a-meme time. We watched Channel 4's 100 Greatest Musicals programme over Christmas, and inevitably it leads to a meme:

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Phew! 30% (possibly a bit higher, but if I'm not sure I've seen it, it doesn't really count) - there are a lot of the "classics" that I haven't seen, and plenty of things on that list that I would like to see at some point.

Friday was the first day of formal programming, so it was up bright and early to grab donuts for breakfast with the first talk. I caught a full morning of talks, all of them interesting, with the highlight being Dr. Roger Highfield's on The Science of Harry Potter (such that I was inspired to pick up a copy of his book). I also enjoyed talks on Fandom History (having missed most of it) and Fanwords (despite t00b only getting one tangential mention).

The lunch was rather disappointing (soup, plain salad and a cookie), but Judith Krug's Keynote was both interesting and informative (as well as being entertaining). I did know that the HP books had been the target of banning campaigns, but I wasn't previously aware that they were so overwhelmingly the most popular choice. I was pleased to hear, however, that most banning attempts ended in failure. It also reminded me of a TV advert/infomercial I saw earlier in the trip in which a guy asks about a book in a library only to find that it has been banned. The librarian demands his name, and when he refuses and tries to leave, he is approached by to serious-looking men. The tagline was along the lines of how it's great that America is Free (and not like that). Oh, the irony.

The afternoon programming was mostly taken up by the Slash Panel and the one on "Can Draco Malfoy Be Redeemed?" These had been moved to the Great Hall on the grounds of expected attendance - which must have numbered several hundred. Both panels were very interesting, with plenty of good points raised. Some of the audience participation was a touch irksome with people just spouting a long speech on Their Opinion - I kept wanting to say "And your question was..?", but all-in-all it was good.

Next up was the Quidditch. I was playing for the San Juan Seagulls (a.k.a. John's All Stars), along with Captain queerasjohn, aegeus, sternel, thethrillisgone, ursamajr and vlamidala. The game was fast and frantic, but great fun. We eventually lost 60-160, owing to the entire randomness of catching the Snitch (and I've heard rumours that the other team's Seeker had inside information), but claimed a moral victory ;-)

In the evening, it was the FictionAlley birthday bash over at the Copa Banana in the not-a-Dolphin, so for variety's sake, we decided to have dinner at when of the restaurants over there. Big mistake. To start with, no one came to seat us so eventually we picked our own table - the only one that had actually been cleared. No menus were forthcoming so eventually I got up and snagged some from behind the cash register. After we'd been sitting there for the best part of a quarter hour, one of the waitresses deigned to come and take our order - but it was a good ten minutes before even our drinks came, and considerably longer before we got food.

To add to the evening's entertainment, the not-a-Dolphin Fountain decided to live up to its name - without warning, a waterspout appeared out of the floor (we heard someone at a nearby table suggest that the basilisk was attacking). Thankfully, it wasn't close to where we were seated, but other diners were less fortunate - water continued to bubble up for some time until maintenance turned up to fix it. There was no great surprise when the check also took a long time to arrive after we requested it.

The party itself was great fun - nmalfoy spinning the disks, queerasjohn single-mindedly trying to glitter the entire fandom and "mischief maker" drinks in FictionAlley cups. I indulged in much t00by dancing (including my popular Mact00bage number, the Time Warp), proving along the way that despite being male and straight (and thus in a tiny minority), I can still sing along to the entirety of It’s Raining Men and will shamelessly request Y.M.C.A. Thankyouverymuch...