| | | 'I experience joy very easily': Patti Smith on Springsteen, the climate fight and the meaning of punk | | by As told to Dave Simpson Mar 31, 2022 | | The singer, poet and writer answers your questions about playing music with her children, being at her friend Allen Ginsberg’s deathbed and maintaining hope in a troubled world Which bits of Because the Night were written by you, and which were by Bruce Springsteen? palfrey-man Jimmy Iovine was producing [1978 album] Easter and had given me this tape. Bruce had already put the song together and “Because the night belongs to lovers” was the chorus, but he had no verses. At the time, my boyfriend Fred “Sonic” Smith [of the MC5], who I later married, lived in Detroit and I lived in New York. Long distance calls were expensive and we weren’t rich, so we’d set a time and speak once a week. One night, Fred didn’t call. I was restlessly pacing about and I remembered this tape Jimmy wanted me to listen to. I thought: “Darn, this is a hit song.” But it was very relatable. Fred finally called at midnight, by which time I had finished all the verses and the reprise/coda. That’s why it says: “Have I doubt when I’m alone / love is a ring, the telephone.” It’s a love song to Fred. I couldn’t talk to him, so I talked to him through the song. Bruce later wrote his own lyrics but always praised my version and the last time we sang it together, he sang my words instead of his, which was very nice of him. Continue reading... | | | | | Franck: Complete Songs and Duets review – elegant and refined vocal works | | by Andrew Clements Mar 31, 2022 | | Tassis Christoyannis/Véronique Gens/Jeff Cohen
(Bru Zane, two CDs)
Carefully shaded performances of the Belgian composer’s lesser known songs – and wonderfully comprehensive sleeve notes – help mark the bicentenary of his birth One of this year’s more significant musical anniversaries is the bicentenary of the birth of César Franck. Born in what became the independent country of Belgium, Franck was one of the most influential figures in French music in the second half of the 19th century. Nowadays, outside Belgium and France, even his best known orchestral works, the Symphony in D minor and the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra, crop up in concerts far less often than they once did, though his organ works at least are still regularly performed. There are parts of his output that remain practically unknown. Later this year, Bru Zane is planning to record Hulda, the grandest of Franck’s four operas, none of which was staged in his lifetime. But the label’s first release marking the bicentenary is a survey of his 22 songs and six vocal duets. Spanning his entire career as a composer, they are settings of a wide range of verse, from what the wonderfully comprehensive essay in the sleeve notes describes as “a poem verging on silliness written by a provincial crank” to texts by celebrated authors such as Sully Prudhomme, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. Continue reading... | | | | | Jacqueline Novak review – audaciously funny trolling of the penis | | by Brian Logan Mar 31, 2022 | | Soho theatre, London
The standup ruthlessly dismantles the machismo around the act of fellatio while telling her own cocksure journey through oral sex ‘Do I overreach?”, asks Jacqueline Novak. Well, yes – no show ever overreached more, which is what makes Get on Your Knees such a remarkable comedy. The show, which arrives trailing all kinds of glory from Off-Broadway, is about the blowjob. It’s a philosophy of the blowjob, a spoof academic treatise on the blowjob, a personal history of blowjobs – and a full spate of ridiculous metaphors for the penis soft and hard and every which way to orally arouse it. In the long line of comedies borne of overthinking things not usually taken seriously, few ever over-thought to this spectacular effect. There’s not much you don’t get in Get on Your Knees, a 90-minute show notable for its verbal profusion as well as its eye-catching subject matter. You get Novak the playful and skilful standup, mainlining that brand of intellectual superiority and brittle self-regard also practised by her podcast co-host Kate Berlant. (“As a woman of ideas, everything from the chin down feels beneath me.”) You get a handful of free-standing routines, about boyfriends’ dads or – and this one’s brilliant – the relationship between the confident and self-deprecating halves of Novak’s personality. At Soho theatre, London, until 2 April and at Leicester Square theatre, London, 24-25 June Continue reading... | | | | | |
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