Category Archives: North America

➤ Index of posts for February

People’s Palace, Valentine Ball, New Romantics, Astoria Finsbury Park

Frills, tassels and hats: Arrivals at the New Romantics ball, 1981. Photographed © by Caroline Greville-Morris

➢ 1981, New Romantics have their day — rearranging the deck-chairs at the posers’ ball

➢ 1944, “Go to work, Slim” — Lauren Bacall offers a musical treat for Valentine’s Day

➢ Guardian makes Shapersofthe80s an internet pick of the week

➢ 1961, No wonder The Beatles changed the shape of music after 456 sessions practising in public

Beatles, Hamburg, Astrid Kirchherr, Stuart Sutcliffe

The Beatles’ beat look, 1960: honed in Hamburg by photographer Astrid Kirchherr who took this picture when guitarist Stuart Sutcliffe was in the lineup

➢ The Kemp Brothers cook up a mystical morsel

➢ EMI chief confirms record company sale highly likely

➢ Rivals sniffy about Murdoch’s Daily — more an iPad magazine than a newspaper

➢ 1981, Birth of Duran’s Planet Earth — when other people’s faith put the Brummies into the charts

Duran Duran, New Romantics

Duran Duran in 1980: Birmingham’s fluffiest New Romantics

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1944 ➤ “Go to work, Slim” — Lauren Bacall offers a musical treat for Valentine’s Day

❚LAUREN BACALL WAS 19 AND GORGEOUS when she was introduced to tough guy Humphrey Bogart on the set of the war movie Passage to Marseille in 1944. Within the year she was making her Hollywood debut opposite the star in the much under-rated gem, To Have and Have Not. This too was a war movie and it made an overnight star of Bacall. It also brought her love, even though Bogie was 45. Within another year he was divorced and remarried to Bacall. They were separated only by Bogie’s early death in 1957.

Fashion editor Diana Vreeland had discovered Bacall’s photogenic qualities and turned her into one of the hot models in Harper’s Bazaar. Today Bacall still exudes the sensuality we see in her first screen role of Marie “Slim” Browning, the sassy adventuress who sings in the bar where Bogart as Harry “Steve” Morgan hangs out. Her opening line in that silky voice “Does anyone here have a match?” set the screen ablaze. But it was the song in the video clip above, How Little We Know, that announced a star is born. As a Hollywood epithet, Bacall became simply “The Look”.

Bogart, Bacall, To have and Have NotMade during the second world war and wonderfully crafted by director Howard Hawks, this loose adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s novel is a sensitive morality tale. It centres on Morgan as a hard-boiled American with a past he seeks to forget by captaining a sports-fishing boat on the Caribbean island of Martinique. For the duration of the war this overseas region of France, and an integral part of the Republic, is under Vichy control.

The couple’s real-life romance is electric, and caught on-screen for all to see. It is beautifully nuanced in the playful pet names the pair adopt for each other, when “Slim” as a resistance sympathiser persuades “Steve” to compromise his neutrality and help transport a fugitive on the run from the Nazis.

♫ Maybe you’re meant to be mine.
Maybe I’m only meant to stay in your arms a while
(As others have done) ♫

The clip above has the fine pianist Hoagy Carmichael as Cricket accompanying “Slim” as she sizzles her way through How Little We Know. The film’s music contributes toward a piece of pure entertainment which grows with every viewing. It contains some of the best lines of its day — almost in the Casablanca league — including these:

➢ You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?

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➤ EMI chief confirms record company sale highly likely

Tinie Tempah, EMI, RayBan,

Tinie Tempah, south London star on the troubled EMI label: the 22-year-old rapper keeps his cool in RayBan Wayfarers

❚ AN INTERNAL STAFF MEMO from EMI chief executive Roger Faxon confirms that the historic record label of the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Queen is up for sale. Last Tuesday ownership of EMI, Britain’s oldest record company, passed to Citigroup, the US banking giant, after 114 years of British ownership. The takeover ended speculation that has marred the label’s future ever since 2007 when Guy Hands and his Terra Firma private equity firm bought the British music major for £4.2bn, widely believed to be a massive overpayment. Terra Firma was unable to keep up interest payments on the loans.

In the note sent to music staff last Tuesday, and published today by Guardian online, Faxon confirmed that “there is no doubt that in due course EMI will be up for sale – just like it has been from the day Terra Firma bought it.” But he emphasised: “Regardless of the country of origin of our owner, EMI remains a British company – both legally and spiritually.” Faxon insists that “EMI itself was never in administration”.

➢ Read Roger Faxon’s memo at Guardian online

➢ More on Shapersofthe80s: After Queen quits, who can save EMI?

“The takeover in 2007 of EMI by Guy Hands’s Terra Firma — just as the bubble in financial markets was going pop — will go down in British corporate history as one of the worst ever deals”
Robert Peston, Business editor, BBC News

Further analysis in today’s Guardian by Dan Sabbagh, head of media, is headlined: Is the music company going to go for a song? He writes: “Hands’s instincts at EMI often failed to serve him and the business well. Three-and-a-half years later, after an overambitious acquisition that left the company unable to handle £3bn of debt Hands had taken on, the barbarian at the gates was forced out by his bankers Citigroup.

“Now that Citigroup has written off £2.2bn of loans, EMI, with a manageable £1.2bn debt load, is likely to be sold within months. Out of politeness, Citigroup sources prefer to say predictably that the process is ‘not a fire sale’ and that it is possible – if unlikely – that it will be theirs in a year’s time. The rhetoric is only there to protect the bank in case something goes awry again with a company that counts Katy Perry, Swedish House Mafia and Tinie Tempah among its latter-day artists.”

Warners and BMG are tipped as potential purchasers of EMI.

➢ Read: Is the music company going to go for a song?
at Guardian online

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➤ Rivals sniffy about Murdoch’s Daily — more an iPad magazine than a newspaper

The Daily, Jemima Kiss, The Guardian, review

Jemima Kiss on The Daily: “First impressions are that this looks quite Microsoft to me which is probably not exactly what Apple were hoping for — the navigation is like a not-quite-so-good version of Cover Flow, which is how you navigate albums in the iTunes store”

➢ View video of Guardian’s Jemima Kiss scrolling us through
The Daily’s first edition (above, 3min 42sec)

❚ WITH A HUGE ROLL OF THE DICE, Rupert Murdoch has sought to put a seal on his reputation as a visionary media tycoon by launching The Daily, a digital-only news operation created from scratch and designed specifically for the iPad. Much is riding on it, not just Murdoch’s personal legacy in the twilight of his career, but, in his own description, the future of how people produce and consume journalism…

➢ Read more at Guardian online: Rupert Murdoch unveils
next step in media empire — the iPad ‘newspaper’

The Daily❚ SO WHAT DOES AN iPAD NEWSPAPER FEEL LIKE? The answer is “not much like a newspaper”. Instead, The Daily feels much more like one of the better examples of an iPad magazine, along the lines of Wired or Virgin’s Project. Despite the fact that both publications are ultimately owned by the same company, The Daily is nothing like The Times’s iPad app, as there’s little attempt to replicate much of the look, feel or tone of a traditional print newspaper. There’s plenty of video, both in stories and the ads that are strewn through The Daily. In some cases, rather than use ordinary photographs, there are 360-degree panoramic shots…

➢ Read Ian Betteridge’s review at Guardian online: The Daily offers glitzy graphics, video and live updates at low cost

❚ IT’S NOT A ‘NATIVE’ iPAD EXPERIENCE AT ALL, it’s a news magazine torn up and stuffed, page-by-page onto the iPad screen… If this is the best that journalism’s brightest brains can do, given a huge budget and input from Apple itself, then we’re in worse trouble than I thought.

➢ Read Shane Richmond at The Telegraph online:
A complete failure of imagination

Rupert Murdoch

“Not a legacy brand”: Murdoch shows off The Daily at its launch

❚ RUPERT MURDOCH SPEAKING YESTERDAY: “The iPad demands that we completely reimagine our craft… The magic of newspapers — and great blogs — lies in their serendipity and surprise, and the deft touch of a good editor. We’re going to bring that magic to The Daily. Similarly, we can and we must make the business of newsgathering and editing viable again. In the tablet era there’s room for a fresh and robust new voice.

“No paper, no multimillion dollar presses, no trucks — we’re passing on these savings to the reader for just 14 cents a day… Our target audience is the 50m Americans who are expected to own tablets next year. Success will be determined by utility and originality. The Daily is not a legacy brand moving from the print to the digital world.”

➢ Launch of The Daily — Video of live presentation at the Guggenheim Museum, presented by Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corporation, and his editorial team (42 minutes)
➢ View demo of The Daily in action at thedaily.com

❚ TECHNOLOGY BLOGGER JOHN GRUBER: “Nothing groundbreaking, but better than most such efforts to date. The carousel feature is incredibly laggy. I can’t believe they shipped it like this. Maybe they’ve hired a good staff of writers and editors, but they sure need better designers and engineers. The experience just isn’t good enough.”

➢ John Gruber’s review at Daring Fireball

The Daily❚ THE NEWS SECTION IS EXTREMELY WEAK. The first edition contains precisely two real news articles, one of which (a story about Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s global address) had been thoroughly covered by all the major news outlets the previous day; the other, about the snow storm currently hitting the US, was borrowed from the AP.

➢ Read Lauren Indvik at Mashable: It’s a second-rate iPad magazine, not a newspaper

❚ THE DAILY IS PARTNERING with the Associated Press for its content… [although] it’s been selling itself as a place to go for original content. As its website puts it: The Daily is “a tablet-native national news brand built from the ground up to publish original content exclusively for the iPad”. Apparently “original” here means “not aggregated.” Which is fair enough. But “original content” also implies “special content.” The kind of content you can’t get anywhere else.

➢ Read Megan Garber at The Nieman Journalism Lab

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➤ Index of posts for January

Boy George, John Themis, Bishop Porfyrios , icon,

Two-way exchange: Bishop Porfyrios reclaims his church’s 300-year-old icon of Christ in London, while as a thankyou, Boy George receives a modern version of Christ Pantokrator (right) from composer John Themis. Photo © AP

➢ George Michael celebrates his golden years of Faith

➢ Reliving the Blitz: two pocket fanzines and a request from Rusty Egan

➢ “Too posh for pop” — Grandpa Waterman condemns two decades of musicmakers

➢ 1981, Why naked heroes from antiquity stood in for Spandau on their first record sleeves

➢ Ferry backed by three bass players, Roxy back on the road — how cool is that?

Japan pop group, Mick Karn, Hammersmith Odeon , 1982, Sounds ,Chris Dorley-Brown

Karn onstage at Hammersmith Odeon, November 17, 1982: Japan’s final UK tour. Photographed for Sounds © by Chris Dorley-Brown

➢ 1981, The day they sold The Times, both Timeses

➢ George makes saintly gesture over stolen icon

➢ 1981, How Adam stomped his way across the charts to thwart the nascent New Romantics

➢ Life? Tough? At the Blitz reunion, Rusty delivers a message to today’s 20-year-olds (TV news video)

➢ The unknown Mr Big behind London’s landmark nightspot makes his return to the Blitz

➢ Va-va-vooom! goes the world’s smallest portable record player

➢ F-A-B! Thunderbirds stamps are go!

➢ Julia and Gaz share their secrets for ageing disgracefully

Return To The Blitz , Steve Strange, Rusty Egan, Red Rooms, Blitz Kids, New Romantics

Motormouths back in action: Strange and Egan interviewed on BBC London news in the club where they once reigned. Such were members’ powers of self-promotion at the Blitz, Egan said, that it was the 80s equivalent of Facebook Live!

➢ 2011, Strange and Egan return to the Blitz to kick off the 20-tweens

➢ 200 new acts tipped for the new year in music

➢ Most popular bits of Shapersofthe80s during 2010

➢ Farewell Mick Karn, master of the bass and harbinger for the New Romantics

➢ Prescott says Postlethwaite’s Brassed Off speech inspired New Labour in 1997

➢ Discover Ubu while Christopher Walken takes flight to Fatboy Slim

➢ Happy New Year from Frosty The Snowman and The Ronettes — and hear the smash that changed the sound of 60s pop

➢ List of posts for December 2010

The Ronettes, Phil Spector, Frosty the Snowman, Be My Baby, Wall of Sound, 1963

The Ronettes in 1963: beehive hair-dos and producer Phil Spector

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