Cabaret, craparet!

Whoever let that appalling production of Cabaret onto a Dublin stage has a lot to answer for. I caught this tacky parody on its last night in the Gaeity and if it wasn't for the songs, I would have legged it from the theatre in disgust.
This production, featuring Wayne Sleep as the M.C., was tacky like the carpet of a suburban pub lounge in the smoking days. None of the original film's underlying themes were evident in any substance; the latent homosexuality and sexual confusion, the racism, the rise of the Nazis, the latent violence, the cutting commentary and parody.
Instead, there was an obsession with whether Wayne Sleep could dance anymore, given his age and then, when he did manage a few faltering steps, the expected gushing applause. It was enough to make me puke.
There was a famous stripper in the United States back in the '70s. Her name was Chesty Morgan and her unsiliconed 70 inch chest was a frightening sight to behold. Chesty became a minor celebrity and made a couple of films as a secret agent who smothered counter agents to death by enveloping them with her massive mammaries. In her latter years, she made guest appearances in tacky nightclubs; her act? she sat in a chair, wriggled about and tried, often failing, to teeter upright and standing. I'd rather watch her than Wayne Sleep.

Moonlight Mile

I love music and I can never hear enough of it. I like it played with passion, not aggression although sometimes both are present and necessary. I've never bothered too much about the vinyl vs cd debate but in this day and age of flacs, mp3s and mp4s, you can't help but notice there's something going down. I download. Just about everyone does these days. I buy cds too because often the quality of downloadable mp3 is noticeably inferior to the hard product. That's why I've gone back to my vinyl collection.
It all began when I bought one of those decks with a USB connection. I thought if I could download all my vinyl, convert the music to mp3, that I could store it all away for peerpetuity. It was easier said than done. Some of the vinyl was too messed up to survive the transition. Some that did carry the hiss, spit and crackle of scratched vinyl, like party graffiti from the old days. Having vinyl put you closer in touch with what you were handling. You could get all anal and trainspotterish about it. Buy valve amps and talk about your equipment, ad nauseum.
But vinyl did give you more control over what you were listening to; the better the amp and speakers, the better the sound. And a good cartridge and stylus were essential.
I dug my old stereo system out of storage two years ago. Yesterday I spent €80 on a new cartridge and stylus. Today I've been listening to Black's Wonderful Life album and it sounds magnificent. But best of all was Moonlight Mile, that haunting blues track that closes The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers album.
And there's another thing...y'see, back then, an album was an album. It was something you picked up and studied. You studied the cover, the art work, the attributions, the credits, the lyrics. Then you listened to it from start to finish, A side and B side. There was no cherry picking songs, no random play facility, no playlists. You bought the album in good faith, believing the artist could deliver what they promised. If they didn't, you never played it again and you badmouthed the artist in the playground. I think I'm gonna listen to some J.J.Cale...