Eminem

"Capoeira" and Rap at a 'Relais & Chateaux' 5* Hotel...

What would have thought of this Jorge Amado, the writer of the Bahia world,

or Eminem, the rapper of white-trash America?

W.A. Mozart

The tenor wears sunglasses to perform a credible Don Giovanni in full-seduction mode...

Alexander Vertinsky

Shanghai and the exile route of an White Russian...

Shanghai and its port area in the 1920's and the port of Vladivostok at the time of the White Russian débacle

This blogger of yours was fed in his adolescence by high quality Belgian and French comics (“Bande Déssinée” or BD). It turned into an addiction I cannot kick. A couple of years ago I was staying with a future Secretary of Defence during a stop-over in Paris, flying from Moscow to Lisbon. In the guest room I found myself surrounded by BD “albums” and I spent half the night indulging my habit. The five albums of the “Nuit Blanche” series, about the fate of a White Army cavalry officer after leaving Russia were fascinating. Paris, Odessa, Vladivostok, Shanghai, all the romantic and/or exotic places of White-Russianness were invited to the graphic novel. Only very recently I have managed to acquire, through google-research and Amazon-help, the entire series. “Les spectres du tsar”, “Le rossignol de Koursk”, “Agafia”, “Vladivostok” and “Shangaï”, all by Yann (script), Olivier Neuray (drawings) and Marianne Garnier (colouring).

An added bonus, when I compare notes with my recollection of that half-night in Paris, is that I had totally missed then the appearance of Alexander Vertinsky as a character in the “Vladivostok” album. Now, Vertinsky is a most fascinating Russian artist who has a extremely colourful – and dramatic – biography. He was already an outstanding lyrics-writer and singer at the time of the Revolution (a bit like George Brassens or Tom Waits, if the Right Honourable Reader understands what I mean). He fled the Red swarming, singing first in Vladivostok, later spending many years in Shanghai. He returned in 1943 to Russia where he was able to give public concerts again, although none of his verses or songs were allowed to be published or recorded in the Soviet Union. Cocaine consumption loomed large in his early career and no biography is completed without a mention to his sister’s sad OD-eing on coke in the 20s.

The depiction of Vertinsky singing in a cabaret of Vladivostok, in the days just before Bolchevik take-over..

In Shanghai he met and married a deliciously young Russian émigrée, even less than half his age. In due time she would become the mother of the author of the lyrics of the Russian national anthem (both pre and post 1991 versions!) and the grandmother of Andrei Konchalovski and Nikita Mikhalkov, the two DNA-sharing giants of Soviet/Russian cinema. And, if I may add, the great-grandmother of my dear friend Stepan, a Muscovite entrepreneur who opened a few years ago a very successful Shanghai-themed restaurant. Called, The Right Honourable Reader is absolutely right, “Vertinski” (please go to www.vertinsky.com for further details on this excellent spot ).

The great-grandson of Vertinsky had the excellent idea of selling hip-hop and lounge remixes of Vertinsky’s songs in that venue, one of my most cherished CDs.

The last James Ivory’s film, “The White Countess”, which takes part precisely in Shanghai at the time of its huge non-volunteer White Russian colony, has also cabaret scenes with, who else?, Vertinsky performing.

I hope I have managed to wet the appetite of the Right Honourable Reader to this amazing Russian personality. Get on with Google-research then. I shouldn’t help that much but try also YouTube, under the tag ‘Vertinsky’.

The Pet Shop Boys

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Sergei Eisenstein

The Pet Shop Boys twenty years later....

Last Friday I took Gilda to the Palacio de Deportes to see the legendary The Pet Shop Boys.. The amount and density of non-heterosexual patrons in the venue was staggering... At the most holywood-like almost disco-sound sounding song a passionate kiss just in the row in front of us was a sobering experience... A tiny bald sweetie, with prince of wales red and black trousers, engaged in french-kissing with a bearded thirtysomething with the looks of a bureaucrat in the Internal Revenue Service... But multiculturalism oblige we just avoid eye-contact and try to keep on enjoying the gig..

The use of extremely youthful doppelgangers of the Pets was a a very successful device. Neil Tennant was in top hat and Chris in a yellow parka, subdued and quiet, while two pairs of top hat and yellow parka claded dancers were jumping and breakdancing like mad. Clever way to elude the lost-youth issue...

The projection on the screen of a bit of "The Battleship Potemkine", with soundtrack by the group, was a great moment of irony. Einsenstein would never have thought that his masterpiece of Bolshevique propaganda would be shown in a decadent mass concert, where corridors were saturated with the acrid-sweet smell of marijuana...

Twenty years ago I saw the Pet Shop Boys in London... As a matter of fact, in the Wembley Stadium.. Wait a second, Wembley Stadium does not even exist anymore!.. Oh Dear..

Go West!

John Coltrane

An Englishjazzman amongst sextet Spaniards, at the Cafe Central, in Madrid...

Boy George

The invitation for the night Boy George was a DJ at Club Shamballa, Moscow...

Ellis Regina

Manuela Azevedo, like a virgin in her very first time...

Manuela Azevedo, in concert last week , at the Circulo de Belas Artes..

There is only one rule when you are up there on the stage, the mike in your hand, the audience in the dark, awaiting something... Give them everything they expect from you and then give them something more... Don't hold back.. On stage, Tina Turner did that, Madonna did that, a Brazilian once-in-a-generation-lead-singer, Ellis Regina, did that too before a line of Cocaine too long. Last night I saw another example of this complete physical surrender on stage: Manuela Azevedo, from the Portuguese progressive rock band "Os Clã"... If that magical something was not present once in a while in live concerts we all be downloading obsessively into our iPods by now, just staying at home and away from gigs...

Josh Rouse

California sound in "El Sol"...

The singer and the home-videos...

Took the three women in my life, Daughter 1, Daughter 2 and VYW (Very Young Wife) to Josh Rouse's one-night-only concert in Madrid. Is is pathetic to try to connect with a music that touches the raw nerves of a young crowd born thirty years after one's own birthday? Is there a too young to die too old to rock 'n' roll syndrome anywhere? I can still see the point of my younger selves' emotions, though.. Maybe more in a "second degree" way than completely in your face brutal feelings.. But I'm happy to report to the Right Honourable Reader that this blogger of yours can slip easily slip his feet out of his cosy sleepers... Bring on the rock, baby..

ps. Ref. women in one's life. My teacher, in Secondary School, of "Moral & Religion" classes was a Roman Catholic priest with a strange hair-do. One day he declares solemnly: "There are three women in my life".. Total silence in the class-room... Hitchkockian suspense.. "My mother"... Unbearable tension.. "My sister"... Almost hysterical reaction to the long Stanislavsky-like pause.. "and the Virgin Mary".. Disruption irrupted in the classroom.

Syd Barrett

Gigolo Aunts: Bostonian pop-rock in town...

Rock and Roll is for teenagers, I always say. Guitars, drums and voice is the only musical genre that has not changed a yota since my own teenage times. Artic Monkeys sound like Oasis who sound like The Beatles, and so and so on... Why not moving on, then?.. As I poke my children many times: Look, there are new things, with plenty of electronic help, that expand our musical boundaries, why this compulsion to stick to outdated formulae?

And then you go to a small place, 100-people maximum, where you are just there five meters from the guitar solos and the screaming lead singer, kilowatts of sound pounding your ears, a neighbour bissfuly polluting the atmosphere with his porro ... and you understand why rock and roll is still alive...

Last Friday, at the El Sol, a "we'll-give-you-all-we've-got" performance from the "Gigolo Aunts" reconciled me with my delayed adolescent self...

Very few in the audience were actually contemporaries of Syd Barrett, the Moody Blues co-founder, who christened the term "gigolo aunt".

From his solo album "Barrett":

GIGOLO AUNT

Grooving around in a trench coat/ with the satin on trail/Seems to be all around its tin/ and lead pail, we pale// Jiving on down to the beach/to see the blue and the gray/seems to be all and it's rosy/-it's a beautiful day!
Will you please keep on the track'/cause I almost want you back'/cause I know what you are/you are a gigolo aunt, you're a gigolo aunt!/Yes I know what you are/you are a gigolo aunt, you're a gigolo aunt! (...)

Keith Richards

Nostalgia for Keef-times...

Replace Mowgli image for that of 62-years old Keith ("Keef") Richards and you'll get the picture

Thanks to the HasselbaldPortraitist, this blogger of yours, together with his highly ballooned Malinka (38 weeks) had the occasion to peep into the mores of a peculiar Madrileña tribe, the Swinging Ibizians. With already close to perfect suntan, sexy good-looks and blasé smiles, many friends of Carlos Martorell had come to the book launch of his novel whose title one could translate as "Caged Memory" (an elegant and successful metaphor for the ravages of Alzheymer).

There was in the sobering comments of the writer about drug consumption in his heyday a "the-party-is-over" mood. Psychedelic summers in Ibiza, when the Stones (or at least Mick J.) were in town are now glorified memories, and the present there is treated with a slightly conservative and grumpy tone. In fact, what one cannot excuse is the Youth one can no longer claim. Harsh comment? Deserved one, I think, when there's a call for moderation directed to their children's generation which I find a bit patronizing, really... Something like "Do what I'm telling you now, Don't do what we have (eagerly) done when we were your age"... Survivors Syndrome, I know, I know.. but what moral legitimacy has a once upon a time happy consumer of chemical excesses to warn the current bright young things against going for it?

No surprise then that the favourite theme of gossip around the room was Keith Richards 's fall from a coconut tree. What on Earth was he doing on top of that tree? A matter of young enough to rock, young enough to coconut picking? There.. There you do have a true guru for the ex-60's flower people... No apologizing for bad behaviour, no Sir ... Sex and drugs and rock&roll.. You just keep on climbing those wretched trees.. Sometimes you fall down and you loose face... So what? ... Rock on..

Some articles on the British media were delightfully bitchy, like this one in "The Independent" : "Once admitted treating his body as a "human chemical laboratory", the veteran rocker Keith Richards has grown accustomed to the occasional unscheduled hospital visit. But in the latest scrape, spectacular even by his standards, he needed a brain scan after falling out of a coconut tree. "Keef", as the Rolling Stone guitarist is lovingly known, was holidaying at the luxurious Club Resort on Wakaya, Fiji, when he and fellow Stone Ronnie Wood decided to explore the same tree. The consequences were spectacular. Half-way up Richards - reformed heroin addict and one-time hellraiser - slipped and fell to the ground, severely banging his head in the process.The concussed musician, who will need no reminding that his band's hits have included "Tumbling Dice" and "Fool to Cry"...

Rephrasing the old adage one might be too young to die but never too old to rock roll...

Carlos Martorell at the Madrid launching of his latest novel

Once I finish “La Memoria Enjaulada” I'll return to "Blue Eyed Charlie", as Carlos Martorell was known at the prime of his Ibiza days (which he has written about in his very cleverly titled first novel, "Requiem for Peter Pan" ) .

Jacob Pastorius

The talent of Cuban jazz music with a twist of Pastorius-like genius...

 

Gato Barbieri

Cuban-jazz concert near Princesa (awesome!) ...

 

Manuel de Falla

At the Opera one should never ever forget to swicht it off...

 

Giacomo Puccini

'Mycobacterium tuberculosis'...

The zefirellish ACT II of "La Bohème" at the Teatro Real..

MayaMalinkaRusskaya had never seen "La Bohème" live and on top of that she had not set foot on the Teatro Real yet. After lengthy appraisal on-line of all the available seating options I managed to get two Butacas de Patio (Stalls, 4th row) which have cost me around six times the price of a first class DVD of the same opera.

As is the case with every B+ operahouse in the world (A+ being Glyndebourne, Met, Scala and Bayreuth; and A being Covent Garden, Salzburg, Palais Garnier, etc.) an academic merchant-ivorish lavish production is a bit of a bore. Only exceptional singers can carry with them boring ruskin-approved art directions, and we all know B plus opera houses cannot afford exceptional singers. Am I being snobbish here? Shouldn't one visit a zoo after having been on a safari? Of course one should. There's always something new coming to your mind when you are in automatic listening mode during Act IV ( I guess if one was listening to Mirella Freni playing Mimi one would never found oneself in automatic mode..).

This time, as Mimi (the rather wonderful Inva Mula) was dying of consumption in between some really amazing pianissimi, I thought of my old friend, the Koch Bacilus . In this blogger of yours' previous life some afternoons of his Microbiology-related job were spent teaching a dozen medical students the lab tricks of a diagnostic of Tuberculosis. Compared with the relatively plain methods to isolate "plain" bacteria the colourful paraphernalia needed to deal with TB was a sure hit among students. I guess that at this point I should mention also the young soldier dying from a multiresistant strain in the room next to the Room-of-the-Officer-on-Duty at the Military Hospital for Infectious Diseases where I was resting - but, even twenty years later, that slow asphyxia intertwined with paroxistic anxious cough it's too painful to evoke ).

An idea came to my mind as Musette was leaving the scene to satisfy Mimi's last wishes: mass popular culture ( like Opera in the XIX century or movies nowadays ) requests a dying young main character expiring from the disease-of-the-age. Mimi was dying from Tuberculosis, as Ali Mc Graw was dying from Leukemia (in "Love Story") and as Tom Hanks was dying from AIDS (in "Philadelphia").

I thought I had just stricken blogging gold so I turned off my automatic pilot and proceed to enjoy the dying moments of Puccini's "La Bohéme"..

*

Now, the day after, I realize, once again, that there's a book or a paper published somewhere about that very same idea you took for reasonably original. After googling "Opera + tuberculosis", as an honest researcher toiling to impress positively the Right Honourable Reader should do, I came across a reference to "Opera: Desire, Disease and Death" by Louise and Michael Hutcheon.

In that book, co-written by a Professor of Literature (Louise) and her medical husband, Michael, a Professor of Medicine, one can find chapters on "The tubercular heroine" (in La Boheme and La Traviata), or syphilis and Parsifal or on pox and Lulu and Rake's Progress . It looks it might justify some Amazon-ordering.

Agony is a powerful ingredient indeed not only in novel-writing but on libretto-writing too (and in script-writing for sure). It remains a quintessential element of melodrama and an almost unfairly easy device to provoke a strong emotional response from the public (novel-reader, opera-goer or movie-watcher.)

Leaving these mental digressions aside, was the instillation of Puccini's music in Scenes of Bohemian Life worth the evening out in Teatro Real? A qualified yes.

Mozart, Hergé, Casanova, Tiersen and Stoppard

Sunday bloggin' babblin' ..

Now, the Right Honourable Reader might be thinking why on Earth this blogger of yours has failed so utterly in his duty to feed his blog at a respectable pace? Some of us have our addictions, we might agree.. You would need the fix of my next post, honey? ...That's quite a compliment..

Truth is, I'm absofuckingly lazy.. Better go for a photo quickly extracted from my virus-prone Picassa database.. And, wham!.. A quickie night or day cybershot shoots away.. Itching fingers and guilty artistic integrity feelings just melts away.. Another day of reprieve...…

But surely, the Right Honourable Reader might insist, there is much to blog about in these recent times? … Honeymooning included, for Goodness' Sake?.. The charms and spasms of a cinquentanero lurking.. The mermaid chants of a possible New Why future ("N" "Y", very clever) .. The lifelong fantasy of dressing up as the Chevalier de Seingalt.. Come on, bloody blogger, move your ass.. Write us something..

Indeed, Sir, I will ..

What blogtexts are queuing up in now dry formerly wet paper notes that stand by the wash basin where I scribble post-showers ideas?.. Right:

Mozart, Wolfgang - Because I read in "The Guardian" that the best way to commemorate the 250th anniversary is to go and see "Apollo and Hyacinthus" which he composed at the age of 11.. A little short opera where the DNA of portentous things to come is there for all to see..

When my children, the three of them, first went to visit their diplomatic-exiled father in Moscovy I tried to concoct an unforgetable program..… From the Durov Animal Theater, the oldest animal circus in the theatrical world (awful stench of adolescent hippopotamus) to Red Arrow night train to Petrograd..

From Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with babushkas hopping from place to place with careless indifference to rows and seats.. To the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg with minus ten clear sunlight obfuscating the white and gold State Rooms..

And what about Opera?.. Surely their age and their presence in the city with most opera performances going on at every given night demanded some opera? But to take an hyperactive child to more than one Act of ever present Piotr Illitch's works?.. To ask pre-teenagers for the attention span of a Bolshoi regular?. So, in the end, I took the small tribe to the Helikon Theatre, in Bolshaya Nikitskaya, to see "Apollo and Hyacinthus"

(www.openweb.ru/helikon/appollon.htm )

.. Quod erat demonstrandum..

Hergé - Because while enjoying some rare snow-filled tourist-free Loire-castling, Mayamalinkarusskaya and this blogger of yours paid a visit to the Chateau de Cheverny.. The central corpus of the Chateau is Moulinsart, the beautiful palace that King Louis XV granted on July 15th 1695 to his loyal servant the Chevalier de Haddock, captain of the Unicorn, and ancestor of Captain Haddock. (In the English version of Hergé's Tintin saga, the "Chateau de Moulinsart" becomes Marlinspike Hall.. Tintin, Haddock, Nestor and Abdullah keep their names but Milou becomes Snowy.. and Prof. Tournesol becomes Professor Calculus..).

On the grounds of Cheverny all those nostalgic of their Tintin-reading youth can have a field day.. One can see there the scale model of the Unicorn, the one first spotted in Paris' Marché aux Puces which triggered the diptych "The Secret de La Licorne/ Le Trésor de Rackam Le Rouge".. The actual hand-written diaries of the Chevalier de Haddock.. The three scrolls which when hold together against a light would give the latitude and longitude of the exact spot where the Unicorn sank.. One can see the office of Professor Tournesol/Calculus with the green felt bowler hat, some scientific devices and a framed photo of Madame Castafiore, with dedicatory .. One can see the original LP with the recording of the Jewel Song (Air des Bijoux) from Gounod's "Faust" that immortalized the Milanese Nightingale, Bianca Castafiore, in the role of Marguerite.. Would this blogger of yours need to say more?.. Any serious scholar of Tintinology has to visit Cheverny...…

The original vynil LP which triggered Ms Castafiore's star status..

Casanova, Giacomo - Oh no, not again! - the Right Honourable Reader might shout, with understandable horror.. But what can one do, when Carnival and fancy dress parties were approaching?.. This blogger of yours fulfilled his fantasy to dress up as the Chevalier de Seingalt.. Did I say dress up?.. No, rather impersonating or.. how should I put it?.. "Being" Giacomo in the twilightish zone sense of the numerous escapades of Mr Presley, Elvis from his Memphis resting place.. What was not on the cards was the heavy snowstorm that made getting a taxi an impossibility.. This blogger of yours had to walk, in high-heeled buckled shoes, silk socks and XVIII century velvet and lace outfit, under severe weather conditions, to get, 3 km away, the rescuing SUV. Madrid in the snow on Mardi-Gras night.. A Casanova keeping a brisk walking pace among other dressed up revellers.. Blogable stuff, wouldn't you say?

Tiersen, Yann - A live concert from the Parisian author of "Amélie" 's soundtrack is worth a mass, surely? Two birds caught in one shot: Tiersen music live itself and a chance to be in "La Riviera", the legendary gigs place in the Ciudad. (The madrilène equivalent of the Apollo Hammersmith, or the Fillmore East, or the Coliseu dos Recreios).. ~

Very impressive neo-jazzy "valse musette" stuff.. with guitar and organ crescendos like musical panzers sweeping through mittleuropa flatland.. Despite anxious cries of "Amélie!" from his fans, Mr Tiersen remained unimpressed throughout.. He stuck to his new album music and ignored the nostalgic public.. It was bloody cold everywhere, and a couple of honest gin tonics couldn't be of any help..

Yann Tiersen in concert at the "La Riviera"..

Stoppard, Tom - Just a quick reminder for those who believe this blogger of yours when he says Sir Tom is in the recently nobelized Harold Pinter league, just so much better.. Next June you just have to travel to the Royal Court Theatre, in Sloane Square, to attend a performance of his latest play ("Rock 'n' Roll") dealing with pre-democratic Chech Republic .. Brian Cox, Sinead Cusack and Rufus Sewell have ben cast.. Better book tickets well in advance, mind you.. I've just bought two seats for July 15th and I intend to be there, no matter the size of my family by then...…

Cesária Évora

The whole who's who of Cape Verde's music performed here, including Cesária.

( "B.Leza" bar , Lisbon)

Piotr Illich Tchaikovsky

my fifth each-on-a-different-country performance of "Peter and the Wolf"

Eros Ramazotti

Roman mythological Paganism...

Uncle Eros can play the guitar too..

Thanks to discrete but firm backstage pressure applied by local diplomatic representatives, powerful countrymen of Signore Ramazotti, I managed to overcome the small inconvenience of sold out tickets.

I thought the Honourable Reader would like to feel the contrast between a mega-concert (although not quite of stadium-grade) like Coldplay last month, and this 500 people maximum hall on the ground floor of Pasha Club. ( the upper-floor, the Cielo, has already been mentioned in this blog, per party with a tiger (living one) not moved by hip-hop music).

In a small place even a regular gig becomes a memorable event. I was expecting a late-Thirties crowd, mostly Prince Charming-dependent, eager for soap-operish edulcorated songs but in fact Eros can rock - and the audience, younger than expected, knew it.

What was really worth mentioning? Well, the new trend to use your mobile phones, with sound recording abilities, as portable karaoke devices. (Lots of fans, knowing by heart the lyrics, were singing in sync to their nokias, perhaps sharing with their romantic interests those powerful latin-lover emotions). But, above all, I cannot forget several hundred voices chanting "Eros!..Eros! Eros!!". As I remarked to my Italianate neighbours, we were being transported to some Roman saturnalia, with the masses praying the God of Sexual Love...

Chris Martin

Coldplay: "un buen rollo" ..

and a near-mystical experience ..

Coldplay performing to a full house, at the Palacio de Deportes

- Coldplay too? But how did he managed?!!! The tickets were sold out six months ago! .. I can hear the admiring tone blended with skepticism in the question put by the Honourable Reader. How did this blogger of yours pulled this one?

Well it was a bit of a challenge I had thrown, half-joking, to MissRikyel, a week ago, while sipping an honest Moët. As she works in the underworld of fashion and glossy magazines I assumed she could be my last desperate card. (As a matter of fact I was entertaining at home at the same time a Young Turk of the Esperanza Aguirre Brigade, embedded in the strategic Consejeria de Cultura of the Comunidad, who told me even he could not help me. "Gallardon has kids you know" - was his cryptic comment, referring to the Mayor of Madrid. )

By yesterday lunch time, the very same day of the concert, and with no news, I had lost hearth and decided to honour, in any case, an invitation I had received from the formidable Byzantine-Levantine figure who heads the Lebanon diplomatic mission in this town. The National Day of Lebanon is a glamorous affair and I had therefore chosen the heavy dress-artillery (Canalli pin-stripe suit, Hacket "prince Charles"-pattern shirt, Turnbull & Asser woven silk tie, that sort of stuff) .

As I was entering the courtesy line my phone rings. The TeddyBear, in a short-breath voice, announces she was on her way to the Palacio de Deportes to meet a Manager of musical events who has decided, after refusing countless similar requests "from very high up", to deliver us two tickets for the in-one-hour's-time concert. That was it. No fuss.. and no expense too. And that's how I found myself slightly overdressed on a rock& roll concert, a VIP area free-beer in my hand, roaring and clapping at Chris Martin's antics.

I had almost forgotten the near-mystical experience of sharing with another ten thousand people the good vibes of non-aggressive rock music. And the rallied masses are of course always tantalizing view for a professional of political analysis. When Mr Martin was particularly inspired and the audience was red-hot and delirious I said to my neighbour: "Only in a political meeting in the middle of a revolution can a speaker get this kind of feedback". TeddyBear replied "Yes, but here you have a buen rollo.." (translatable as "everybody is enjoying themselves like innocent unproblematic happy adolescents"). Point taken. It wouldn't be the right description for what were the feelings of the Russian popular classes in the Finland Train Station of Petrograd, wouldn't it?

Two highlights of the concert:

- the chanting from ten thousand voices of the final words of "Trouble", so much in the right tone and mood that Chris Martin couldn't help himself and let out a heartfelt "Joder!, gracias" (which the Spaniard crowd obviously loved).

- the tender and loving stare from beloved Gwyneth to his beloved Chris. "Joder!" I feel like saying it myself. How can one ever compete with the adulating masses worshiping the very object of your love interest? Drieu La Rochelle used to say that women love in a man something that sparkles. A worshiped lead singer of a world-class rock band is sparkling all over, thank you very much..

(For obvious reasons this post is dedicated to Miss Matilde with all the daddy love from this blogger of yours)