The other day I turned on my DVD player for some serious TV viewing. I had The Third Man lined up and ready to watch. Cheese sandwich primed and alcoholic beverage at the ready. Orson Welles plays a great part in the movie but of course, he isn’t in it that much, which is why I have always thought it strange that the BBC showed the movie in 1985 as a tribute to Welles when he had just died. Citizen Kane would have been a better choice surely?
Anyway, as my DVD player flickered into life I noticed the George Michael documentary ‘Freedom’ was just beginning on live TV. The programme had been continuously hyped by Channel Four for the previous week so, what the heck I thought. Put The Third Man on hold and let’s see what George has to say.
The documentary was narrated and co-directed by George himself and completed just before the singer’s untimely death at the age of only 53.
A lot of the reviews of the film seem to say how honest the film was but it seemed to me to skim over a lot of things in his life. His arrest in a public lavatory in the USA by an undercover police officer was not mentioned. Neither was the incident where he fell out of his chauffeur driven car on the M1. Maybe he just preferred to concentrate on other things in his life. A big focus of the documentary was when he took his record company to court over his recording contract. That was fairly interesting but another event the film brought into focus was when George was the recipient of the best soul album award at the Grammys and a few members of the black music community apparently weren’t too happy. That experience fuelled George’s next album Listen Without Prejudice. The thing is, was Faith really a soul album? Was George a soul singer?
If you ask the question into Google, What is soul music? This is what comes back:
A kind of music incorporating elements of rhythm and blues and gospel music, popularized by American black people. Characterized by an emphasis on vocals and an impassioned improvisatory delivery, it is associated with performers such as Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and Otis Redding.
I’m not sure George Michael fits into that category but then again, we’re talking about music not some mathematical computation. Music genres shift and merge, one man’s soul is another man’s jazz. Another man’s jazz is another man’s pop!
Another genre crossing track was David Bowies’s Young Americans which reached 28 in the US Billboard Top 100 in 1975 and I’m pretty sure topped the US soul charts too. Bowie himself said of Young Americans that is was “plastic soul, the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey”.
A few years back my favourite radio channel was Jazz FM. My car was constantly tuned to it. I was always down at HMV in Manchester where they had an in store DJ. She was a really nice girl, very approachable and very into her music. She recommended all sorts of albums to me but I was usually in there hunting for some album or artist I had heard on Jazz FM. Then one day I tuned into to Jazz FM, only to find Smooth FM. What had happened to my radio station? Well, it went digital and as I don’t have a digital radio in my car I’m no longer able to listen to it. Still, at least I have my Jazz FM CDs. What’s quite interesting is that looking at them, they feature quite a lot of soul artists. After all, modern jazz is pretty much like soul in a way. Aren’t soul, jazz, and funk all related?
Anyway, getting back to George Michael, his documentary just wasn’t all that brilliant for me. There were a lot of big stars praising George, stars like Stevie Wonder and Elton John. Looking a little out of place was the foul-mouthed Liam Gallagher who despite knowing, presumably, that this was a tribute film about George, he managed to throw in a fair few F words and the occasional C word too. Liam is a big fan of John Lennon and although Lennon wasn’t a saint, the people of Liverpool can be pretty proud of Lennon and his achievements both as a musician and as a peace activist. Speaking as a Mancunian, it’s a pity we cannot say the same about Liam Gallagher.
HMV Manchester. Picture courtesy Manchester Evening News
As for HMV Manchester, I remember going in one day to find the in-store DJ had been replaced by a radio version, someone, presumably at head office in London, who broadcast music to all the HMV stores. Later, in 2013, the store closed down completely after more than twenty years on the same site. Browsing records and videos in HMV and then popping into my favourite book stores before settling down in some back street pub for a drink, ah, those were the days. I probably bought my Third Man DVD there, or was it Ebay? Certainly, the buying power of the Internet may well have played a part in HMV’s demise.
Anyway, for me, Saturday afternoons will never be the same again.
George Michael did make some good music and he was a good singer but I wouldn’t put him up there in the pop legends’ category. I don’t think I have a single one of his records in my collection but I do like this track he recorded with Mary J Blige. Great video too . .
Relax, sit down, time for some TV. Switch on, flip through the channels. What’s this? Undercover Boss? Let’s take a look . .
The other day I was watching one of my favourite movies from my favourite director: Woody Allen’s Radio Days. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s about Woody Allen looking back at his young self and how he lived his life through the radio shows of the day. It pretty much reminded me of myself, and how I was obsessed with TV when I was a child. Personally, I wouldn’t have said obsessed but that’s what my Mum and Dad used to say. They used to tell me I watched that much TV I would grow up with ‘square eyes’.
The Election.
I’ve spent a couple of afternoons this week slumped in front of the TV after an early morning shift. Starting at 6 in the morning does tend to knacker you out and although many times I start to think I can sort this or that out in the afternoon, the lure of the TV set is sometimes too much. Over Christmas I bid on a box of Doctor Who DVDs on the shopping site 
Back in the 1970’s Jon Pertwee took over the role of Doctor Who from Patrick Troughton. William Hartnell had played the original Doctor as a grumpy and unpredictable old man, Troughton was the celestial comic and hobo and Jon Pertwee made the Doctor into a suave, smooth talking, velvet jacketed action hero with a penchant for Venusian karate. I wasn’t completely convinced at the time by Jon Pertwee’s Doctor Who but looking back I feel that his Doctor was one of the very best. All the others, even the modern ones, have kept on board elements of the first two doctors characters but Pertwee’s characterisation is just ever so slightly different. I can’t say I remember the first episode of Doctor Who being shown, I was only seven at the time but I Do remember William Hartnell and the strange thing is that I have grown up from a child to a middle aged man with this TV show always in the background. Jon Pertwee was with me in the seventies, Tom Baker in the eighties and so on and when the Doctor returned after a long absence in 2005 with the part played by Christopher Eccleston, it was like the return of a long lost friend.
Formula One racing isn’t the sport it used to be. Well, it’s certainly different from what I used to enjoy as a schoolboy. Still, I’ve followed the sport since I was twelve or thirteen and it’s hard to break the habit of a lifetime so here’s a personal look back at the 2016 season.
TV this Christmas wasn’t particularly great but I did watch a few things. One film I was looking forward to watching was the Lady in the Van, a mostly true story about a bag lady, in a van, who came to live outside playwright Alan Bennett’s home in London. Bennett takes pity on the lady and lets her move the van into his drive when parking restrictions force her to relocate. He combines her story with that of his relationship with his mother but the odd thing about the film is that Bennett gives himself two personas, one Alan Bennett the writer and the other Alan Bennett who is experiencing all these events. The two even confer together. This did confuse me at first but I eventually worked it out. Not a brilliant film but original.
On Wednesday I changed to the night shift and spent a few hours during the day with Harry and Theo, Liz’s grandsons. We went out to the park and then had a drive down to the ‘front’ in St Annes. Many holiday towns seem to look a little forlorn out of the holiday season. A prime example is Blackpool, a few miles further up the road. It looks like a tired film set waiting for the actors and cameramen to return and brighten it up again. St Annes though is a lovely, friendly town that looks good to me whatever the season. Along the front we passed the Spitfire aircraft, mounted on a tall plinth looking just like it was taking off over the sand. The other day on a TV quiz show one of the questions concerned the Spitfire which must surely have a prime place in the annals of British history. This icon of the skies was the backbone of the RAF in the dark days of 1940 and the lady on the Chase or Tipping Point or whatever quiz it was, who had never heard of a Spitfire, was the brunt of a shower of abuse which I directed at her through the medium of my TV screen. Never heard of a Spitfire? What was she even doing on a quiz show?
Last week I picked up a vomiting bug from Liz that came from her grandson Harry via her daughter Tania and finally to me. I only had one day off work but I felt so tired that I booked off my night shifts. I thought great, some time off to write and do those 
Easy, we can just use the new non celebrity celebs and pass them off as real celebs! I don’t know if I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here passes as a reality show, I suppose it does in a way but the current series stars three celebrities I actually recognise. Carol Vorderman, the former numbers and letters lady from countdown is one. Larry Lamb is another, an actor I’ve seen in various TV shows. I don’t actually watch Eastenders but I believe he has a part in that. The third one is Martin Roberts, the guy from a daytime property show I have occasionally watched when nothing else worthwhile is on. There is also some guy from Emmerdale (don’t watch it) some comedian (never heard of him) a girl from Gogglebox (what?) a footballer (hate football) and, well some other people I don’t know. Wonder if the producers have ever tried to get people of the calibre of Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks? I did notice Hanks on a UK TV talk show the other week so surely that’s not such a remote possibility. Maybe if Hanks decided to make a sequel to the movie Castaway it would be a good publicity stunt to appear on I’m a celebrity? (Gosh, I should have been in PR!)
It’s interesting that on TV, the same movies come at us time after time. The Great Escape, wonderful film though it is, has been broadcast so many times I know the script off by heart. The Bond films are a staple of UK TV. They and the Die Hard films, the Carry on series and a hundred others–they are all constantly on British TV. Old TV shows are another staple of the new free view channels.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 