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Urban Shocker's Neighbourhood Watch

I recall the '80s glory days of Yohji (Michael Hutchence adored his clothes), Yuki, Rei Kawakubo and Jun Wuntoya and Miyake. Ever since CNN canned Elsa Klench, there's no good Saturday morning guide to the "design worlds of fashion, beauty and dec-or-a-ting". Sadly.
 
I bought a Miyake shirt in London in '83, and handed in the VAT refund form at Gatwick as I left. The customs man was itching to know what a 140 Pound shirt looked like, so I unpacked it and showed him. He didn't seem too impressed.

I still wear it, long after other clothes from that era have been turfed out.
 
In those days, Vivienne Westwood had a charming little shop called Worlds End on the Kings Road that was all at odd angles with the floors sloped, and a clock outside with hands speeding rapidly backwards. When I was in there once, two local lads blundered in and began scoffing at her latest line - which looked like old rags. "They look like old rags!" they scoffed insightfully as they left.
 
That was in the same space where she and Malcolm McLaren had run Sex, and Seditionaries, and whatever other names they had on their shop, was it not?
 
Yes. I lived in England from '78 to '80, around the time Worlds End opened. I never got to visit Biba though, which was popular when I was at high school over there in the '60's.
 
Hey you two - back to your own thread now - off you go...
 
Re: More Opera for Cinplex...

The Met's Eugene Onegin - produced and designed by Canadians Robert Carsen and Michael Levine - got a nice revue from Tommasini in the NY Times today. It'll be broadcast live at the Scotiabank Theatre on the 24th. The conductor, Valery Gergiev, will be here to conduct the TSO on Wednesday and Thursday.
 
Re: More Opera for Cinplex...

Have you ever seen the movie about Gergiev and his conducting master classes. I think it's called The Master and His Pupils. It was at Hot Docs a couple of years ago. It's very good.
 
Re: More Opera for Cinplex...

Alas no, I'm decades behind in my movie-watching. But I am looking forward to seeing him in the flesh on Wednesday night.

I've booked my TSO season for next year and I've taken Oundjian out of the picture completely. I'm not enamoured of his smarmy ex-Brit onstage bonhomie - though Babel can relate to it at times, and it has probably helped draw in a larger audience - but more importantly I've never attended any concert he's conducted that has been anything other than ordinary-to-good. Never extraordinary. So, I'm listening to the music our great orchestra produces when lead by guest conductors in 2007/08.
 
Re: More Opera for Cinplex...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABEL!

gaybirthday.gif
 
Re: More Opera for Cinplex...

All day, the TSO maintained the charade that Gergiev was delayed by snow but was "en route".

Yet they rehearsed with Yannick Nezet-Seguin in the afternoon.

Yannick, who conducted the first half of Faust at the opera house, left Bradshaw to conduct the second half and strolled over to Roy Thomson Hall and gave a fabulous reading of the two Debussy pieces for us. I can't imagine Gergiev doing better.

How lucky we are to live in an alpha city ... as far as music is concerned.
 
Re: More Opera for Cinplex...

<knocks gently before entering>

bb, did you really think Lady Macbeth was all that? I found it a little... schitzoid.
 
Re: More Opera for Cinplex...

Sir Novelty:

Come on in!

Pull up a chair!

There's beer in the fridge!

Scratch and belch if you want to!

Well, she was totally nuts, yeah. I wouldn't want to be married to her, would you? But all that glorious music rising up and inhabiting the hall, the "musical ride", the rat-poisoning, the black humour, the stench of death from the basement, the sad legend-in-his-own-mind drunk and a more realistic take on the "drinking song" than we usually see, the Keystone Kopsky scene ( where Stalin, sensing a piss-taking, walked out of a performance, apparently ), that oh-so Russian ending, etc. - what's not to like about that wacky old 20th century?
 
Re: More Opera for Cinplex...

Oh, was it the keystone kops that sent Joe packing? I heard the story (we attended the Winterfest dinner-and-worst-seats-in-the-house young'uns event) but didn't know what it was that did it.

I enjoyed the police station scene, but it kind of threw the rest of the piece for me. I thought that the Lady really sold it, and - like the best psychos - I was starting to feel for her a bit. (I was also a huge fan of her unfortunate stepfather. In performance, not character.)

But the whole third-act descent into slapstick threw me for a loop. (Never mind the fact that the men's chorus couldn't dance in sych.) Perhaps you can't expect too much in the way of unity from a book that has other ideas, but still. It seemed less like tragicomedy than two different shows smucked together.

But everything I heard about the acoustics of the house was true. Every last note was clear from - literally - the very back row of the top ring. Lovely.

<BELCH>
 
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