#he took my up by the stage during one of the songs and alan pointed at me and tossed him the pic and im pretty sure thats like. my oldest | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hellfire-munson · 4 years

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Looking Up Luke x Reader Pt 1

Pairings: Luke x Reader (Briefly at the end), Julie x BestFriend! Reader

Warnings: Fluff, Brief mention of sad memories.

Word count: 2211

This is My first post so bare with me. I’ll get better at the edits and stuff as I learn my way around Tumblr. I also took inspiration from Paramore and the reader was strongly based on Hayley Williams in my mind but you can make her in your image. I don't own Paramore or their music. The song I took inspiration from is Looking Up.

“Jules, you and Flynn are coming tonight, right?” You ask while you and your best friend throw you school books in your locker after your last period. Julie looks over and smiles at you.

“Of course! The boys were wanting to tag along especially after I told them how you were in a band of your own. They wanted to know why you denied their offer after Luke heard you shred the guitar solo during that one rehearsal.” She says.

“If he thought I was shredding that guitar, just wait till they see what I really got going on. Right now all they know and all anyone knows and thinks is I play guitar for the band. Also Luke wanted me to join so he could see me everyday.” You smile.

“Wait, Jackie walked?!” She screamed excitedly.

“Yeah, after her and I got into this huge argument about the upcoming shows and letting me actually sing vocals for MY songs she walked away, and someone had to take her place. I wrote this new song we are going to play tonight, you’re going to love it.” You smile at her.

“Y/N this is amazing! Our mom’s would be so proud of us.” She smiles longingly.

“Maybe we could collaborate one day, I know you’re a bit more popish than what Paramore is but we could make something work!” You smile at her. She jumps up and down loving the idea of the whole thing.

“Yes! That would be amazing! Let's head home, we have to get ready for tonight. Oh how will we get in? I thought the venue sold out in minutes?” She asks turning to look at you as you two walk through the doors to your car. You pulled 5 vip lanyards out of your bag and handed them to her.

“I got you covered girl, don’t worry.” You smile unlocking the door. The drive back to your house was filled with you blasting all your bands old songs and singing along. You were lucky enough to live in the same neighborhood as Julie and the boys so you often carpooled to school but the boys had things to do after school before the show so they went their separate ways. Julie was trying to help you choose your clothes for tonight but with you two being so entirely polar opposite it was hard. If anyone was to help you it should have been Luke since you two share almost the same fashion sense with a hint of Reggie mixed in. You eventually settled for an old cut up Sunset Curve shirt you “borrowed” from Luke with a lace bra underneath and you paired that with your highwaisted, ripped black skinny jeans and your studded Doc Martens. What you decided to do with your hair and makeup will come to you once you hit the venue. You gathered your things to pack into the car while Julie made some final accessory details to your look. She handed you your chain to attach to your jeans along with an assortment of rings and bracelets. Everything was looking perfect for your first big performance as the lead singer.

“Okay, I gotta head to the venue for soundcheck. You, Flynn and the boys should be there around 6, the show starts at 7:00.” You smile, dropping her off at her house. You see the boys sitting in the garage waving at you. You smile and wave back before backing out of Molina's driveway and head towards The Orpheum.

Soundcheck went perfectly and it left a little time to grab a light snack before you had to get ready. You knew not to go to the street dogs stand after the incident with the boys that ended their lives 25 years ago before they met Julie and you and somehow were brought back by the two of you. Your drummer’s girlfriend decided to have catering come out with healthy choices which you were enjoying as we speak. Heading back to your dressing room the security guard stopped you saying there was a group of people here to see the band.

“Oh that’s my friends from school, you can let them on back. Thanks Alan!” You smile popping a strawberry in your mouth.

“You didn’t tell me you were playing the Orpheum!” You hear Flynn yell causing you to turn around with a piece of cantaloupe hanging out of your mouth.

“Well you didn’t ask.” You say chewing the part that was in your mouth.

“Okay smartass. Also when did you change your hair color?” She asks pointing to your now orange hair. You smile slyly at her.

“I did last night, but I wore it up in a hat today so people didn’t see it until now.” You say getting up to hug your friends. The boys are just standing at the door staring at you.

“I don’t bite, you can come in.” You joke ushering them in.

“You’re playing the Orpheum tonight Y/N how does it feel to make it big?” Alex asks.

“I’m not sure yet, maybe I’ll know after the show. Which speaking of that when you guys head down to the floor just find Alan and he’ll take you to the spot that’s reserved for you guys.” You smile at them.

“Your hair is so bright.” Is all Reggie can say making everyone burst out laughing.

“I can’t wait to see you shred the stage tonight. That day at rehearsal when you and Julie were goofing off… Holy shit, that was sick!” Luke says jumping up and down.

“It runs in the family to be honest. Our moms were in a band when they were our age and my dad is a world known rockstar so I learned at a young age.” You smile winking at Julie.

“Well we should start heading down so you can get ready. We are going to dinner after this to celebrate just so you know.” Julie says smiling at you. Once they left you started getting ready to meet up with your band to do your before show ritual handshake.

“All right guys, this is the Orpheum. The place is packed with execs. This will be our big break. Let’s rock it!” Andrew says putting his hand in the middle as the rest of you follow. The opening band finishes their set signaling your time to go. The band runs out causing the crowd to erupt in screams of your name. You stay back to surprise everyone as they begin playing your new song.

“Los Angeles! Are you ready!” You scream from backstage as the beat picks up.

Things are looking up, oh finally!

I thought I'd never see the day

When you smile at me.

We always pull through, oh when we try,

I'm always wrong but you're never right.

Oh you're never right!

You run out causing everyone to scream as you work the stage to the music. Luke, Flynn and the boys look up in awe hearing your voice for the first time. The way you rocked out was breathtaking to Luke.

Honestly, can you believe

We crossed the world while it's asleep?

I'd never trade it in, 'cause I've always wanted this!

And it's not a dream anymore!

No. It's not a dream anymore!

It's worth fighting for.

You interacted with the audience as you sang the lyrics. You shot a wink over at Luke when you noticed his jaw nearly dropped to the floor. Julie looked over at him and knew right then and there he has fallen in love with you even more than he already was. She smiled at her bandmate. She saw the smile break across his face as he began banging his head to the beat.

Could have given up so easily

I was a few cheap shots away from the end of me

Taken for granted, almost everything that I would have died for

Just yesterday,

Just yesterday

Honestly, can you believe

We crossed the world while it's asleep?

I'd never trade it in, 'cause I've always wanted this!

It's not a dream anymore!

Oh. It's not a dream anymore!

It's worth fighting for.

You interacted with your bandmates as they played their instruments, dancing around the stage as you had the time of your life. Jumping and head banging with your guitarist.

God knows the world doesn't need another band, (whoa, whoa!)

But what a waste it would've been! (whoa, whoa!)

I can't believe we almost hung it up (whoa, whoa!)

We're just getting started (whoa, whoa!)

Honestly, can you believe

We crossed the world while it's asleep?

I'd never trade it in, 'cause I've always wanted this!

It's not a dream anymore!

Oh. It's not a dream anymore!

It's worth fighting for.

You stood there smiling, taking a breath letting the crowd think you were done before you jumped off the drum stage singing the final line of the song.

I can't believe we almost hung it up!(whoa whoa)

We're just getting started! (whoa whoa)

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

You dropped to your knees as you held the final verse as the lights went out sending the crowd into a fit of cheers and screams. You smile to yourself as you hold the microphone in your lap. The lights come back on letting you see the crowd still cheering you on. The surreal feeling you had was causing your heart to sing and you were pretty sure you saw a sign off in the distance of the audience that let you know your mother was proud of you. Composing yourself, you finished the night with 6 more songs.

“Thank you guys for coming out to support a small band from this sleepless city. We are Paramore! Good night!” You said before running off backstage. You are met with your friends and a very starstruck Luke.

“Oh my god! That was amazing! I mean we knew you could sing but that was epic! Why haven’t you fronted before?” Flynn asks.

“Jackie wouldn’t let me. The band was my idea back when I was slowly getting back into music but I was still wanting to stay back and play. I wrote all the songs and let her sing them. When I finally said I was ready for a shot she threw a fit and when the rest of the band sided with me she walked.” You say taking a swig of water.

“So this is why you refused to join us?” Alex asks.

“That and your style isn’t my style of music. It’s to pop centric but I told Julie there might be a chance of collaboration in the future.” You smile seeing Reggie get excited about the idea.

“And then we can do a country album!” He yells causing your bandmates to start laughing at your reactions. During your laughter you didn’t see a man dressed very businessy walk in.

“Y/N…” Julie says tapping your shoulder pointing to the doorway.

“Oh, hi!” You say walking over with your band to meet the man.

“I’m Eric from Capitol records. Are you Y/N?” He asks.

“Um, y-yeah I am.” You say reaching out to shake his hand. Your friends are eavesdropping behind you while pretending to hold a conversation of their own.

“I’ve seen many bands here, I’ve scouted some of the biggest names in music but the energy you displayed tonight is something we’ve never seen but have been looking for, for our label. Capitol records would be happy to have you join. Here’s my card. Give me a call and we will set up a meeting with the head of the label and get you signed.” He says handing you his card.

“Oh my, wow! Thank you. Also if you don’t mind me spreading the word but I know of another you might be interested in. I’ll send you their latest video if you’re up for it.” You smile sneaking a look over at your friend and her bandmates.

“Of course, we are always looking for new talents.” He says before exiting the room.

“Was that?! YES!” You scream jumping into Luke’s arms. Everyone starts dancing around cheering.

“We are being signed to Capitol Records!” You yell into the air as Luke holds you close to him. His eyes never leave your smiling face. He throws caution to the wind when you look back at him and he crashes his lips onto yours making everyone stop and gasp.

“Well it's about damn time!” Alex shouts as you two pull away.

“Well damn Patterson, if that’s what I get for getting signed I wonder what I’ll get after I tell you I sent your video to him as well.” You smile.

“YOU DID WHAT?!” The band screams together.

“We’re all getting signed.” You smile.

“I’m going to marry this girl.” Luke says kissing you once more with more passion than the first. Everything was falling perfectly into place and you couldn’t wait to see what the future holds for you all.

I don't know how good this is, it sounded good and looked good when I was writing so I’m throwing caution to the wind and going for it.

@parkeret I promised I’d tag you in my first one, I hope it doesn't suck!

@issaxcharlie thank you for also pushing me to do this as well!

@cookiebuba

#luke patterson x reader #luke jatp #luke patterson #julie and the phantoms #jatp alex #jatp reggie #julie x reader #julie and the phantoms imagine #charlie gillespie #jatp luke #jatp imagine

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babyspiderling · 4 years

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Under the Lights Daveed Diggs x reader

Before I even paste this into Tumblr, I want you all to know that this took me two days of constant writing, and FOUR pages on google docs. I know that the second I hit paste, it’s going to be like one page. Anyways, here’s Daveed x reader.

2010

“Hey, Y/N, I brought you muffins!” A woman with a mouth full of pins, her hair up in a messy bun, measuring tape sloppily tied around her neck, and a pincushion on her wrist, exited a space separated from the rest of the apartment by a thin curtain. Seeing her best friend and roommate enter with goodies, a bright grin fluttered onto her face. “Wanna see what I did while you were gone?” He nodded and followed her to her half of the work room. On a mannequin, a beautiful dress was fleshed out much more than it had been when Lin had left this morning. It had been nothing more than a sketch on paper for the Newsies show. As a major in history with a minor in design, Y/N was accepted by Disney to create the costumes. It didn’t hurt that The Lin Manuel Miranda of In the Heights fame was on her list of references. She had decided to start with Medda’s dress first. Medda was a personal favorite of hers and was excited to do her own spin on it. A deep purple sash had been half pinned under the bodice and sadly hung from its haphazard placement. “The sash would look better if you hadn’t distracted me with food dork.” He smiled and pressed the folded paper bag into her hand. “Alright. I’m going to finish this for Alan. It’s a miracle I have this job. I’m not screwing it up. I also meant to tell you that one of my guys are going to be here tomorrow for a measure and design session. Sweet kid. Amazing dancer.” Lin grinned teasingly as he set his laptop down on his desk. “Am I getting replaced? Is he going to be your new roommate and best friend?” Y/N stuck out her tongue at her best friend and continued her work. The sounds of humming and a machine whirring mixed in with the excited clacking of keys to make a strangely beautiful symphony.

2013

“Y/N! I need your help!” In the tiny apartment in the upper east side, an over-caffeinated Wesleyan Alumni burst through the front door, a paper bag of bagels clutched tightly. At the yells, another Alumni ran from her section of the apartment. “Lin! What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” He thrusts the bag into her searching hands, and lets out another shriek. “Y/N! I’m fine! They want to put The Hamilton Mixtape through a workshop! And if we get this right, they’ll move us to a real show!” Shoving his shoulders, she muffled her screams behind pinched lips. “Lin, you can not go scaring me like that! I’m going to get gray hairs before we even get to the off Broadway! What do you need my help with?” He pulled her onto the ratty couch they had in the little space. “I need a costumer. You’re the best in the business. Not to mention I’ll be with you all the time, so there’s no chance of miscommunications!” Standing from her forced seat, she cradled Lin’s head in her hands. She saw the excitement glimmer in his eyes and softened. “Lin, of course I’ll help you, I am a history major after all. Who else could make it historically accurate while still being functional? Thank you for even considering me, and for the bagels.” She pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. Giving a crooked smile, she pointed a finger in his face. “If you ever scare me like that, I swear I will never cook or bake for you again.” He smiled sheepishly and shrugged in apology. “Sorry, but hey, you’re my costumer now!” She smiled and bumped her hip with his. She dug through her pads of paper and snatched her laptop off the charger. “Alright. Give me your tracks and I’ll get started.”

July 27th, 2013

“Alright, I’m here. Sorry I’m late, I got halfway down the block before I figured out I left my notes on the desk. Who do we have here?” Three men held my attention, understandable since they were the main cast. I recognized Brian D’arcy James from other productions, there was another man with big hair and bright eyes, and finally my eyes fell on Christopher. I smiled at him and gave him a quick hug. “Oh my God! What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in so long! How’ve you been.” He chuckled and pulled me in again. “I’m good. I was missing our Vanessa for a while, but you’re working with us now so I won’t have to miss you anymore! Lin told me about the project and I couldn’t turn it down.” He turned me to the stranger at the clearing of a throat. “Oh, this is Daveed. He’s playing Thomas Jefferson and Lafayette. He raps.” I looked at him up and down, remembering the songs Lin had written for him. I cocked my head, and he looked at me with nervous eyes. “This will work. This is going to work great actually.” I saw his shoulders relax and sag with relief as I walked back to the table set up for the behind the scenes people. I gripped my pen in my hand, ready to jot down every little thought that passed through my mind for the time of the workshop.

After hours and hours of rehearsals and run throughs, I’d filled up a notebook and a half for costumes for the characters. This time around Lin wanted his cast flexible. Those whose characters were not in the second act were recast as another role, so I had to figure out how to do quick changes not only for the nine main cast members, but for the entire ensemble. As Lin and I packed up our things to head home, the man with the beautiful eyes stopped me. “Hey, Vanessa, right?” I heard Lin and Christopher snicker somewhere behind me and I shot them a look. “Actually, it’s Y/N.” His eyes widened in embarrassment and his hand lifted to rub the back of his neck. “Sorry, I just thought it was Vanessa since that’s what Christopher called you.” I shook my head and smiled. “Oh, no. That’s just a little joke between us. I was the demo Vanessa when Lin was trying to sell In the Heights. I’m the reason why Vanessa never speaks Spanish. I took French all through high school and college.” He nodded and rocked back and forth on his heels. “I’ve got some questions about costumes and everything you do. Could I have your number to keep in contact?” I nodded and pulled out my phone, switching it with his and I plugged in my contact information. “Alright. I’m headed home, but I’ll make a schedule for measuring and design sessions. I’ll see you tomorrow?” He nodded enthusiastically, making his hair bob with his movements. I waved goodnight and followed Lin out of the building.

“So, Daveed.” I looked up from my buzzing phone to Lin out of the corner of my eye, giving him an eyebrow. “What about Daveed?” He shrugged and wore a small smile. “You texting him?” I put my phone down to look at him headlong. “And if I am?” Once again he shrugged and got up to grab a snack. “Nothing, just remember your worth.” I shake my head good naturally. “Alright Dad. Now, I’ve got to sketch out what my brain was screaming during the workshop. And how to create every outfit as a quick change. Thanks loser.”

July 15th, 2015

“Alright everyone! We’ve practiced these changes for weeks! Remember your number, remember your cue. You all have been a wonder to work with and to create for. I love you all and break a leg!” Everyone is dressed in white for the opening number, and I am proud of my work. “Oh, and Daveed;” Daveed looks up at me, a strange look in his eyes. “Yes, Y/N?” I looked him in the eyes, stoic and serious. “If you rip your pants during Guns and Ships again, you will repay me by organizing the scrap bin.” He swallowed visibly and nodded his head. I smiled once again and put my hand out for a group theatre circle. “Break a leg!” Everyone scurried to their cue spot in their costumes and Lin hugged me from behind. “Thank you for doing this for me. I never would be able to have costumes this good if it weren’t for you.” I turned in his arms and smiled. “I’m glad I did too Lin. Now go, they’re calling your name.” I listened from my side of the stage, getting everything in order for the main cast. I pulled Daveeds coat off quickly and held out his blue one for him to slide on. “Hey, Y/N, maybe after the show we can-“ “Diggs! Get to your cue!” I smiled and nudged him. “Go. Talk to me after the show.” He gave a quick kiss to my cheek and went to do his thing on stage. As I pinned the rose to Renée’s dress, her sweet voice teased at me. “You do know that he loves you too, right?” I know what she’s talking about, but I pretend to play dumb. “Who loves me? Nevermind, neither of us have the time for this. Go kick ass out there.” She scrunched her eyebrows at me and pointed her finger to say “This isn’t over.”

The first act went by in a flash, costume changes and character changes took up all of my time. After I had hung up every dress, every coat, every pair of trousers and corset, Daveed had changed and packed up all of his things. I had just finished mending the lace cuff on his magenta sleeve when he had walked in. He wore a sleeveless Oakland jersey with a matching hat pressed onto his freed hair. “Oh! Daveed! Perfect timing! I was just finishing up here. What was it that you were wanting to tell me?” At my question, it was like a switch had been flipped in him. He went from the cool and collected suave man who the fans fantasized over to a shy and awkward man who had run out of words. Self-doubt and insecurity filled my inner dialogue as I watched him shut down and clam up. I was filled with the fear and anxiety that he had come to ask me to stop staring, to stop caring. I let the silence carry on for a while longer until Anthony called for us to leave. “I, I should probably go, then. You were amazing tonight, not a single trip or stutter. I am so proud of you.” I swallowed down the tears making their way up my throat and gave him a watery smile. I grabbed my bag, and started to make a hurried exit until my wrist was caught by a large and calloused hand. “Wait, no. Y/N, I wanted to know if you wanted to grab something to eat, go do something when we don’t have a show. You know, like maybe a date? Unless you don’t want to, then it’ll just be us as friends. I’d actually really appreciate it if you just forgot this whole ordeal and-” I smiled and blushed at his sweet ramblings. I stepped up onto my workbench and gripped his face in my hands. Taking a deep breath I leaned in and connected our lips, praying to every spiritual being in the heavens that they would allow him to kiss me back. I guess praying did me good because after getting over the shock of being interrupted, he kissed me back with the same fervour. Once more, we are called to leave the theater and we break apart, panting lightly with swollen lips and pink cheeks. He helped me down from my step and I lifted myself onto my toes to give a peck to his cheek. “Alright big guy, let’s go home. Lin’s either knowing of what we were doing, or he’s pacing in our living room, police on speed dial. And I would love to go on a date with you.”

#daveed diggs #daveed x reader #daveed diggs x reader #hamilton #hamilton x reader #lin manuel x reader #lin manuel miranda #lin manuel miranda x reader #hamilcast #hamilcast x reader #theatre #theatre x reader

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Ducktales: Woo-oo! Review! or From the Top

Hello all you happy people! And to those of you just joining this blog, welcome I review ducks, other animated shows and comics... and today’s review is special for me. For a number of reasons. For starters it’s a reminder how far i’ve come. See I always wanted to be a reviewer, ever since high school when a friend showed me a certain online reviewer whose now dead to me, and opened me up to a world of much better reviewers who i’m still fans of to this day, and ones who came after them , and after that and so on and so on. I so badly wanted a community to belong to I struggled to be a youtube reviewer but frankly lacked the talent or self confidence back then to try, so my attempts over the decade were a series of stops and starts. Of me starting to find my niche writing only to stop because I hated myself so much, and still struggle with that, i’d tell myself I could never do it, I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t funny enough and no one cared. I kept shutting myself down AGAIN AND AGAIN, for far too long.

But that all changed a year ago next month: I’d long been a fan of the Ducktales Reboot. I was caustiously optimistic when it was announced. The optimism came from a deep abiding love of scrooge as a character despite not having dove into his comics that deep, I didn’t have an easy way at the time, thanks to life and times and what comics I had read, and was excited to see a fresh reboot closer to the comics with my eternal boy Donald Duck back in the main character. The caution.. came from the fact that at the time we’d gotten a string of bad to medicore reboots: Teen Titans GO, Powerpuff Girl, and Ben 10 which started pretty meh but has turned into alirght from some of the later episodes I saw. I wanted to be hyped to all hell but I had no proof this wasn’t going to be another dumbed down reboot. Then comic con came, the first teaser poster dropped, and my skepticism died.

It was perfect: a barksian art style with it’s own twists! Donald full on display! And best of all the triplets FINALLY had not only unique outfits but personalities! I’ve long went on in my reviews about how much that annoyed me and while it worked for the barks comics ever since then it’s just felt like a waste to have three characters there.. and not even the SLIGHTEST difference.

My anticipation only grew with the full trailer, the promo posters as more and more info showed how good this series would be, how unique it’d be, and how much tw as taking what made the comics great, giving us a better distalation of that while still being very much it’s own beast. And once this episode dropped.. that faith was unfounded. Woo-oo! is without hyperbole, one of the best pilots i’ve seen, one that introduced the entire main cast perfectly, gets the series tone and mission statment out just right and in general set the stage for one of the best shows of the 2010′s (and 2020′s, even if it only lasted a year and some change). Wheras Teen Titans GO actively tried to take a dump on it’s source material, they thankfully have stopped that but it dosent’ make those early years any less grating, Ducktales was a breath of fresh air that honored the past while making i’ts own future. I tried talking about it but it was all in other failed attempts at reviewing: solo podcasts, my breif second video review career.. stuff no one rightly cared about and I just couldn’t get the hang of.

So this is where we loop back to last year: I decided to finally try and cover it one more time, not realizing this would be my last chance as it came out anyway, and since I was doing text reviews but my output had slid in the new year, I decided to review Season 3 as it came out. If it bottomed out I could always stop.... and I just never did. I kept going, eventually finding new fans, a patreon (The other one’s an old friend of mine), and not only got paid doing what I love.. but found some peace. I reviewed other shows as they came out, covered things i’d wanted to cover for years like life and times, scott pilgrim and x-men,. I covered other shows as they came out, found people willing to talk over my opinions and found my niche at long last.

So that’s why the long speech folks: After almost a year of reviewing i’m properly covering the start of something that made me happier than I had been in a long time and gave me hope during one of the worst periods of ALL our lives. Something i’ve wanted to cover since I finally got started last year, and something truly amazing. So i’d be honored if you’d join me under the cut as I talk about the genesis of one of the best series Disney has ever put out.

Behind the Scenes Stuff: Most details I could find were sparse. it took going back to the first month the show came out and looking at a LOT of unrelated questions to finally find out Frank and Matt outright pitched the show. This dosen’t suprise me as both are huge ducktales fans with Matt having drawn his own duck comics as a kid and Frank taking it an extra mile having sang the theme song in his first grade talent show, worked it into his vows and got his first daughter’s first word to be “Woo-oo”. It’s very clear this show as a labor of love for them something they dreamed of Disney made possible.

Otherwise I don’t have much on the genisis of the show: It was in the earliest ideas going to be a revivial but Frank and Matt both decided against it , deciding it’d be unfair to expect kids from 30 years after the original to know the source material, and instead just starting it over outright, which was the right call especailly with Alan Young’s passing.

Design wise I found quite a bit of concept art thanks to one website, and it’s incredibly intresting. This is why i’ve really gotten into art books: I like seeing this early stuff what characters used to be, figuring out or outright hearing from the creators mouths why they changed it that sort of thing.

Starting off we have some early designs for Donald, with him wearing the sailor suit as a kid but his Quackshot outfit as an adult, something I honestly wish they’d kept but get why they changed it: The iconic sailor suit both helps contrast him with della and fits his reluctance to adventure in season 1 more. I still wish that they worked the Quackshot outfit in somewhere, but they worked in so damn much, it’s hard to complain> Though I probably will make a list of “things I wished they’d worked” in at some point and i’d be lying inf I siad my mind wasn’t currently turning the gears to figure out how to work this into a fanfic. Oohhh maybe as Dewey’s outfit as an adult but blue, obviously.

Next we have Donald settled more into his final apperance as well as the boy’s first outfits. As you can tell from both of these the show originally went more with the classic art style before getting the one we’re familiar with now, one I love by the way and was made to combine a classic cartoon style with the visual of the comics. Donald originally had his classic outfit before they transitioned to the more barks style one, a good call.

The interesting bit though is obviously the boys original outfits which i’m honestly bummed didn’t make it for Huey and Louie, not so much Dewey minus the visor. I do get the changes though: The hoodie Dewey had fit WAY beter on Louie, and the lumberjack shirt didn’t quite fit the nerdier huey. Still look nice. Dewey’s is okay, but only the visor is something I really gregret them removing same with louie’s fedora. It would’ve been neat ot keep the hat thing, but have each hat be unique. Likely they simplified things to make animation easier and simply removed the hats for some reason, but it’s nice ot see these more detailed original drafts and it is VERY interesting to find that differentiating the triplets was something planned from the earliest concept art. Though given Matt and Frank said in interviews they wanted a more natural family feel, it’s not a huge surprise.

Scrooge like everyone BUT the boys thus far, naturally also had his original outfit at first, but like he ended up doing in the series rotated a bit, if not as much in the final product. We also see a protoype for his final design, the old coat but with a jacket over it in the last image. I also notice Donald seemed a lot more like his old comics self in the concept art with quackshot!donald.

Like everyone else, Webby and Launchapd were originally their 87 deisgns, though Launchpad’s slightly diffrent jacket and green scarf were changed from the start. Webby is the closest to her 87 design, and as shown in the previous Lena concept art from my “Spies Like Us and Dime after Dime” double feature, she still had her new personality. More on that in a bit.

Finally we have Flintheart, whose design is a bit diffrent from 87: He was a chub from day one it appears, though they’d exagerate it, and his beard was a bit longer at first like his other incarnations.

Beakly is largely unchanged form 87, only given a coat, which would gradually be mofidied, much liekt he boys into her current outfit.

As you can tell Beakly, Webby and Launchpad were all there from day one as they wanted them from the original ducktales just updated.

Production wise they wanted to go handrawn, chose the style they did to have something close to the comics that felt classicly aniamteda t the same time, I feel they succeeded and wanted a show that felt like the original. I do think this show has it’s own feel but it does feel ducktales. I badly hope for an artbook at some point though as this show probably hada LOT more intresting concept art. Seriously Disney I will PAY YOU to look at your neat art. Please.

So they created a fully formed world and put the characters in it, wanting it to feel like the world had existed before and had throughly been explored and letting our young heroes be the watson to Donald and Scrooge’s holmes.

Finally Della was indeed part of the initial pitch and a core idea from day one as every family has secrets and Della felt like one that had been lurking around the fringes of the story for 80 years. The rest of the production stuff i’ll weave in as we go but first one last stop, the STELLAR voice cast, none of whom outsideo f Tony i’ve talked about before sooooo...

The All Star Cast

The casting was outstanding here, with Matt admitting the cast brought a LOT to the characters, especially Ben Schwartz whose taken on Dewey was so unique and intresting they actually rewrote some of his dialouge for the pilot to fit this version better. This is far and away one of the best casts in western animation, most coming from comedy backgrounds and one or two coming from a voice acting background, but all bringing their absolute best. And since our main 8 are all in the pilot let’s run them down along with Keith Ferguson shall we?

Playing everyone’s faviorite billionare scotsman and one of the very few to ever do so, we have David Fucking Tennant. David was their “First and only choice” and for good reason: David is a talented actor with a MASSIVE amount of stage, tv and audio drama credits. His biggest and best known role is playing the 10th Doctor on Doctor Who, which while not my faviorite (That’d be matt smith, as he’s both the one I came in on and hte one who got me hooked) he’s still VERY close second and damn talented and I need to watch more of his tenure. Outside of that just to condense it to his ongoing roles on stuff and bigger roles: Filmwise he’s had starring roles in the Fright Night remake, You, Me and Him, Fish Without Bicycles and Bad Samartains, and is set to do a voice for the upcoming Loud House Movie, which excites me to no end.

TV wise where most of his roles have been he got his first big starring role on the Telly with the BBC Mini series Taking Over the Asylum in the late 90′s. He’d go on to make a career out of doing mini’s for a while, also taking part in He Knew He Was Right, The Quatermass Experiment Remake, Casanova, Secret Smile.. and Blackpool. I saved Blackpool for last before we move into the Who era as if you’ve never heard of it.. it’s REALY fucking weird. It’s a jukebox musical about a man who wants to make Blackpool, a real city, into the new vegas and Tennat plays a cop investigating a case around the guy and also trying to get with his wife because they used to date and because our lead is philandering jackass. That’s already kinda nuts.. but then you get to the fact the songs are sung OVER the original songs instead of making a new version of them. It’s surreal to be sure but if you can find it it’s worth it for the handful of good numbers and how weird it looks and you can find clips of the songs on youtube if your intrested. Here’s a starter.

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Your also welcome. He’d go on to play Detective Alec Hardy in Broadchurch to critical aclaim as well as be a part of it’s short lived american remake, would play the Fugitoid in tmnt 2007, Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, one of his few post who roles i’ve seen or heard besides Scrooge and easily some of his best work he NAILS that purple bastard perfectly, would make his own show Staged about a fictional version of himself putting on a Stage play that’s still ongoing, and is currently , along with Ducktales as it wraps up, the voice of Lord Commander on Final Space, with the character returning this season judging by the trailers to fan delight and terror. He’s a VERY talented actor and voice actor and I do hope he goes on to do more and more voice work in years to come as, with his background in radio, he was born for it.

He was also born for this roll, playing Scrooge perfectly and easily matching Alan Young in quality, not a small feat and i’ts VERY obvious why he was their one and only choice.

Next up is another legend, Tony Anselmo who we’ve talked about before when I covered legend of the Three Cablleros: He’s been Donald’s voice since shortly before Ducktales, hasn’t done much else but given he’s THE voice for the character and this show let him show off one hell of a range with teh voice, he dosen’t really need other credits. The man is a treasure and I fear loosing him one day and fear for whoever replaces him as they have a LOT to live up to.

Getting into the triplets, we’re going by age so starting off we have Huey, voiced by Danny Pudi. Like most of this cast aside from Toks Ogladyve and Beck Bennet (Who I probably HAD seen on SNL but didn’t really know or look out for him on there till after Ducktales), I not only knew Danny but was a huge fan of his going in. This is due to his breakout role on the glorious sitcom Community, which sadly only had a handful of i’ts cast show up on this show. I mean you got Lin Manuel Miranda I’m sure Donald Glover would’ve said yes too. He grew up with Ducktales. Regardless his role as meta guy Abed was easily the best of the cast on that show, with Glover as troy a very close second and the two working at their best as a duo. Outside of that he’s had a few roles being a regular on Powerless, which I forgot existed and currently on Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, and shockingly hasn’t done a ton of voice work. And given his performance as huey was one of the best parts of this show he REALLY, REALLY SHOULD. Please Danny. He’s also a loving husband, father and surprisingly a marathon runner. Never would’ve guessed.

Next up is SNL Alumn of 9 years, Bobby Monynihan. Bobby is naturally best known for that, my faviorite role of his being Ass Dan. That’s right bitch you know he’s going to live fore..

ASS DAN 1981-2021

He’ll be back. Outside of SNL he’s done a bunch of minor roles. He’s currently on the tragically mediocre sitcom Mr. Mayor, and voiced Panda on We Bare Bears. Hopefully he keeps up the good work as he deserves better than he’s gotten and Ducktales proves it.

Finally for the triplets we have a rising star in voice acting, Ben Schrwartz. At the time Ducktales launched, I was a fan of his from his roll on parks and Rec as Jen Ralphio, aka older scummier Dewey.

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Outside of his historic recurring role here he played a main role on House of Lies, a show I need to go back to, and has done other live action rolls but has REALLY hit his stride in voice acting. He started with voicing Randy Cunningham in Randy Cunningham 9th grade ninja and since then has hit the ground running: He was Rutabega on Bojack, Josh on Bob’s Burgers, and went on to complete the trifecta of blue nostalgic characters after voicing dewey by voicing Leo in Rise of the TMNT (and having one of the most unique and intresting versions of the character to play) and reprised the roll for the upcoming film. And of course he hit it HUGE by playing Sonic in the suprsingly fantastic Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and will do so again for the sequel and might even take up the roll for the games now Roger Craig Smith has retired. We shall see. Point is this guy’s at the top of his game and Dewey is part of that. Like with his brothers I can’t picture anyone else playing him.

Rounding out the kids is Webby, played by the wonderous Kate Micucci. Kate is a lovely talented woman who mostly showed up in smaller parts, was part of the musical duo garfunkel and oates which even got their own tv show, and is currently a fairly prolific voice actor with this being her best known roll. I also had a bit of a crush on her once can you tell? Regardless besides absolutely nailing it as Webby she’s voiced Julie Kane in the crimnally short and even more crimnally not on Disney+ Motorcity, “Irma” in the 2012 TMNT cartoon, and the fact that “Irma” is in quotes should tell you how big a waste I felt it was having her NOT actually be Irma, despite Kate’s massive talent, the fact that Irma hadn’t been in anything since the 87 cartoon, and the fact that for added “Fuck you audience points” her krang form was voiced by Gilbert Godfried, who I love but whose casting feels like they wanted to make the twist as grating as possible. Good job there.

Anyways her second biggest voice gig was as Sadie on Steven Universe, which took WAY too long to show off her absolutely tremendous singing voice. She started voicing Velma Dinkley in the mid-2010′s and has since, voiced Milo’s sister Sarah on Milo Murphy’s Law, Dr. Fox on Unikitty, and most recently voiced a sentient present on close enough who did this.

So yeah quite the career and like Ben she probably has a long and storied career in Voice Acting ahead.

Next up is Beck Bennet as everyone’s friend Launchpad where he excels. He’s best known as a castmember on SNL outside of this, and shockingly hasn’t done a ton of voice work. The only other time i’ve caught him is in the same season of Close Enough as Luc, aka dude-bro satan. But like eveyrone else here who hasn’t done a lot of voice work so far or has been more selective I defintely hope he keeps going with it as he’s amazing. He and Ben will be co-starring on MODOK in May so i’m excited for that.

Last up for the main cast is Beakly, voiced by Toks Olagundoye, who I hadn’t heard of before this show and hasn’t done a lot outside of the two season sitcom the neighbors, the aliens one not the really terrible looking one, and a stint on Castle, but like everyone here deserves much more and if Beakly is any indication, really should stick with voice acting.

Last up is Keith Ferguson as only he could as FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD, whose a staple in the voice acting community ever since 2000, and has had a TON of roles some of which I was unaware with him. Given Frank worked with him on Wonder Over Yonder, where he voiced Lord Hater to perfection, the two clearly have a close working relationship. He also has a close working relationship with Wonder creator Craig McCracken and has worked on all of his post-powerpuff girls show, voicing Bloo as his first major role, something I never would’ve guessed, and currently voicing Papa G on Kid Cosmic.

Outside of Craig and Frank, he played both Karate Kid and Nemisis Kid on Legion of Super Heroes (Which really needs to come to HBO Max), Deputy Durland on Gravity Falls, and Thunderbolt Ross on Avengers Earth’s Mighteist Heroes. He’s damn good and deserves the world for Glomgold alone and i’m glad Craig rung him up again as so far through my watch of Kid Cosmic he’s great.

So with our cast in place, our past in place and you all likely ready to get on with it already let’s dive into the episode:

THE EPISODE: Part one Woo-Ooo!

We begin with a shot of a seagull flying overseagulls, a nice way to establish how this world works and how it bends expectations. They’d have to wait till season 3 to get a duck next to ducks but given that gag is one of the best of the series, it was worth it.

Inside a house boat we meet Donald, Huey and Louie and get a sense of their personalities: Donald is panicked trying to get to a job interview and insists the boys wear life vests, showing his overprotectiveness and responsibility exclusive to this version. Louie stresses that Donald wear a suit instead of his normal clothes to properly impress the interviewer, showing his skill at people reading and manipulation, and Huey is making a nice, if messy, breakfast with a heartwarming message showing his heart and dedication. After finding out said Babysitter was sent to the wrong address, the boys TRY to hustle him out to stay alone.. only for Dewey to blow the scheme by starting the boat too early, letting Donald know he’s been had. Huey’s attempt to lie about it is of course the classic “Who’s Dewey?” Dewey’s caught wiring the boat and Donald throws them in the car, with Donald livid and the boys upset as their chafing at his constant overprotectiveness.

Both sides aren’t wrong. tThe boys DID do something reckless, putting an old woman in the desert and risking their home just to go on a joyride. What they did was wrong.. but the boys AREN’T wrong for getting annoyed that he won’t let them DO anything and overly hovering over them when they CAN handle themselves as we’ll see. WE now know why: he lost their mother and his sister to her and scrooge’s recklesness. While he got therapy for his anger it’s clear he never properly got help about Della, and thus overcompensates by trying to keep what he has left of her alive. He means well.. but to them it comes off as him being manically overprotective with no good reason. They get into trouble because it’s the only way to DO anything away from him. He’s trying so hard not to loose them he almost has by the time hte series starts, and it’s telling that when they get context in Last Crash, they appricate him more from then on. They do love him, but their frustration is understandable even if what their doing is pretty damn stupid. But their also 10 and Donald’s the grown adult in therapy who should’ve dealt with this or tried to at least by now.

So with no other options Donald sets a course for McDuck manor which excites the boys who have heard of Scrooge McDuck and his exploits, each rattling off something they heard him do that fits their personality (Dewey picks him fighting a stone monster, Huey picks him uncovering a hoax and Louie picks his swimming in money. ) As Donald tries to get them to simmer down, they wonder what he’s up to

He’s up toooo.. depression. He’s in a room with his board, watching them with utter hate and sadness as they talk about cutting the invention and aviation departments. This scene plays ENTIRELY differently after the final two episodes of the season. Before it still plays well as Scrooge clearly resenting being stuck in a boring board meeting, having lost everything that made him him and just having lost his passion for life. Now? It plays as a man utterly disdainful of the men who made him give up on his daughter. While as far as he knows they did it to save his employees from his company collapsing, we know better now... and seriously where IS the rest of the board they just vanished after the Season 3 premiere.

I don’t mind only one being fleshed out, unlike the triplets we only NEED the one I mind that they just never explained it and still haven’t. Hopefully the finale will.

But back on the plot, it now plays as Scooge just full of hatred for them, knowing they had to do what they did, even if they weren’t emebzlling but still hating them and himself. He’s likely not even paying attention anymore because he just dosen’t CARE: he has all the money int he world.. and it couldn’t bring him his daughter back. As he sadly puts the coins he was fiddling with back and says see you tommorow he can’t even close the vault without a struggle. As we’ll see later the strength never left, it’s not like he stopped execrising.. but he has nothing left to fight for. Nothing left to care about. He could adventure agian so far.. but without Della or Donald, as we’d learn two seasons later the reason he enjoyed it again... what’s the point? He has nothing left except his money.

This is also a nice parallel to the final Chapter of LIfe and Times. I always felt the first half of woo-ooo was a spiritual adaptation of chapter 12 of that: Scrooge meets the boys for the first time and with their help, and Donalds in the story< Webby and Launchpad here, he regains his passion and more importantly his family after driving them away> The how is very different: he did in life and times due to sinking to his lowest point morally, then cruelly dismissing his family when they tried to welcome him home and bury the hatchet despite what he’d done. Here.. he made a HORRIBLE mistake, one that wasn’t entirely on him but still cost him everything and spent the decade instead of stewing or making more money trying desperately to undo it. The end result is the same, a dried out husk of a man with nothing left to loose and no will to gain anything.

This husk has launchpad though whose introduced as his driver and while good with subs and planes.. isn’t great on the road. After that though Donald pulls up hoping to drop the kids off before Scrooge arrives. Naturally this being a cartoon and Donald having tempted fate with that Scrooge shows up telling him to jettison that Jallopy at once. And finding out who it is, apart from asking how Donald is and Donald doing the same, dosen’t sway him. The boys however freak out after finding out Scrooge is Donald’s and there uncle, with my faivriote bit of that being Dewey exiting the car via a window and rolling across the roof back in. Amazing bit of animation. Wish I had a gif of that.

Donald makes the situation plane and angry and asks “Can you do that without LOOSING THEM”. And scrooge is so painfully disarmed by his reminder of his past mistakes and the fact his surrogate son still resents him, that he agrees before realizing “Shit I have to watch children now don’t I” as Donald drives off. As you probably guessed, this is another scene that plays differently in hindsight, if not by much: It still plays as two men too stubborn and bitter to reconcile.. but now we know the why behind both their rages it feels even sadder. They both lost the person they cared about most but as it sadly happens in real life both have dug in their heels to reconcile, both feeling their right when neither completely is. While Donald was right to be upset at scrooge and della for what happened, and is mostly taking it out on scrooge because he’s the one left... he’s held onto his anger for 10 years instead of going to help when he’s unemployed, living in a dilapidated houseboat and trying ot raise three children alone and could’ve used what help scrooge would give. Scrooge is right to be upset that Donald is just selectively ignoring everything he’s done to save Della, but is too stubborn and prideful to apologize for what he DID do wrong and feels that’s enough to make up for it when , while it is enough that donald should forgive him, still dosen’t mean he dosen’t have a lot to apologize for. Both are just too angry and too much alike, as much as it woudln’t seem so, to settle with each other and see too much of what they lost.

So the kids follow Scrooge.. who forgets to open the door, and Beakly lets them in. It’s a nice subtle bit. After some silence, Bentina TRIES to get her old friend and now employer to talk to them, but he naturally refuses and they do the talking, asking tons of questions.. and Dewey ends the conversation by accidently pressing the “imply he USED to be something rather than is something right now “ button

So Scrooge throws them in the twins old room, and Beakly gives them some marbles. You will give them b ack they will be counted. But another subtle touch I missed the first time is there... her sad look. She clearly doesn’t want to do this, but she has to play this carefully or else he might get mad and fire her on the spur of the moment. He’d obviously hire her back, where else is he going to get an ex spy who will both clean for him AND be his bodyguard and security. It’s a very small pool. Mostly because Beakly probably killed most of the other people who’d of fit that description during her spy days.

Scrooge meanwhile is still rattled by Dewey’s statment, wondering if he really is a “used to be” instead of a “never left”. The fire is starting to spark again.. he just needs more kindling. And more kin.

Meanwhile Louie and Huey marvel at Dewey’s “Brilliant’ breakout plan: hit the door knob with the sack of marbles til lit breaks. To be fair, they’ve known dewey as long as they’ve been alive and even by season 3 after he’s taken several levels in badass and cunning.. he still crashed a plane because his brother well-meaningly called him basic, and thought being nearly sacrificed the most times was an accomplishment. This is the best he could do and you all know it. It also works, so they can’t fault him for that... though he’s quickly kidnapped as are they. They wake up after the commerical break in a room with pure darkness, hung from the celing with a mystery person asking who they are and who they work for before Louie calls out for “uncle scrooge”... so she claps the lights back on and..

Well close. But it is Webby, who cuts them down, fangirls over meeting the nephews and asks who the evil triplet is. They all point to Louie who shrugs it off. I mean it was funny enough the first time but at this point I know he’s running several fradulent charites, almost all scamming his uncle. He’s earned that title. Webby puts them on the big board and then when asked they find out she’s Webby, her granny Beakly is housekeeper. She then asks the big questons “Are we friends now?” “If we say yes will you let us live?” “Ha good one new best friend”

She then explains she dosen’t get to leave or anything even eat a hamburger. The boys are moved by this and Louie asks what she does for fun. She leads them to the vents and while Huey and Louie are a bit relcutant, Dewey naturally goes first pointing out it’s better than the marble room. They agree and are on their way.

Okay unpinning that pin, the crew conciously updated Webby and Beakly as neither really had a lot of purpose in the original. It was also to conciously add more actiony females to the main family lineup, as both creators, both being fathers, preferred someone their daughters could look up to and would enjoy watching. Not someone perfect but someone intresting instead of someone who often got Kidnapped and whose main charactrisitcs were “Sweet and GIRL STEROTYPE” So cleverly they KEPT her being girly, having a skirt, liking ponies. .but also gave her all the training and skill of one Cassandra Cain, a sheltered background and an adorable personality that kept the sweetness but added her probably having killed a man at some point. It worked as Webby is one of the best parts of the show.

Likewise Beakly was upgraded from fuddy duddy housekeeper, to badass former secret agent whose also a housekeeper, and bodyguard and confidant to scrooge. Demonstrated by her talk with him as he tries to put on his diving suit and go after the jewel of atlantis, having spotted the signs to go after it in the paper.. and wanting to prove a child wrong. Beakly points out the flaws in this, and tries to get him to connect to his family. Having lost hers, it’s easy to see why.. though the how’s a mystery.. for now i’m guess. We’ll see in the finale. But she’s Scrooge’s concisence and the one who can easiest reign him in, to the point two episodes directly have our heroes have to NOT call her or else the plot was end, but have that worked into the plot so it works. She’s the calm in his storm and hte one person he needs more than anyone else even if he dosen’t always realize it. He calls family “nothing but trouble” just as Dewey passes overhead.

So naturally as Webby shows off Scrooge’s old treasures in a mysterious room, while the other Siblings are rightfully impressed, Dewey dismisses it as “fake” because he’s being a little shit, and they agree after seeing Donald, not knowing his reputation. The cutaway to him struggling with a stapler does not help> it’s only when Webby accidnetly uneleashes Captain Peghook, a vengeful ghost after scrooge, who gets his hand on a ghostly sword do they realize this time the monsters are real. Huey also accidently wakes up Manny, the headless manhorse!

Things somehow get WORSE as Scrooge finds them.. but is in no state to argue and as our heroes duck and Huey tries to divise a plan.. Scrooge get’s his spark back once agian.. it’s starting to become an ember now... and he charges in despite Dewey’s cries of “No come back your old!”. It then gets VERY badass Scrooge: Oi! Beastie! What's it gonna take to shuffle you off to the afterlife? Captain Peg-Hook: The head of Scrooge McDuck! Scrooge: [cracks his neck, flips his cane around to wield like a sword] Would you settle for his hat?

Now that is how you show how badass Scrooge is in a few lines and gestures. HE proceeds to take both out, as they’ve now teamed up, easily, tricking peghook into cutting off the head of a statue of him in the area, throwinng it at him and finsihing the ghosts buisnesss (”I should’ve been more specifiiiicccccc”) and then giving Manny the head, earning him a loyal employee for life. So our days saved, the kids have faith.. and Scrooge is still pissed. He also reveals this isn’t a treasure room but the garage in what’s easily the best gag of the first half, possibly the whole special but one iconic moment is very close in that one. Webby concedes what about the stack of old magazines or the hose or.. okay he’s probably right. He berates them only for the kids to fire back, pointing out he threw them in a room, they just wanted to spend time with him... but it’s only Dewey throwing his words back in his face that pisses him off. Scrooge bellows at them to get out, clearly having internalized everything with donald into rage and trying to justify pushing eveyrone away instead of working at it... but this dosen’t have time to actually work, nor would Beakly actually throw three children out on the curb, as he hits a mystic gong.. the third time it’s been hit. And after realizing it’s already been hit twice Scrooge is faced with Pixu, the gold hutning dragon! And guess who has a giant bin of it wanting to snack on? Scrooge naturally climbs on the thing and the kids naturally want to follow, with Webby getting her first development by proudly announcing “I’m going to eat a hamburger” then explains the metaphor. They just need a pilto.. and as Launchpad has been saying but I forgot to add in “I’m a pilot”

So we get a GORGEOUS bit of Scrooge riding the dragon over the city, getting banged up as he does before finally being thrown off.. only for the kids to catch him with the planes help and try and come up with a plan. Scrooge overcomes his anger at them not staying put, especailly since Webby brings up the right weakness: as a wise man once said...

So they need some.. like say the Medusa Gauntlet Scrooge had in the garage.. that Louie naturally stole. Huey and Webby eyeroll him but they have what they need.. and Huey brought the hose and quickly comes up with a plan, tying scrooge in, and swinging him to Pixu. The kids hold on tight, Dewey calls his family awesome and our heroes win the day as Scrooge turns the dragon to stone, slips and falls.. and then GRACEFULLY dives into hte bin, showing off his diving skills and his badassery. The day is saved, the gauntlet and the dragon go in the bin for safe keeping and Scrooge calls the kids trouble.. and chuckles fondly. “Curse me kilts how i’ve missed trouble”

He’s impressed: Huey’s quick thinking, Louie’s pickpocketing, Dewey’s drive, and Webby’s magical knowledge all saved them. For once. .he’s happy again. And for the second time in life it took his family to remind him why he does this and show him the true fun of adventure: Getting to share it with those he love. And he finally has people to love again. He has family back, kids who look up to him and want to learn from him again, a REASON to adventure. Money and treasure and eveyrthig couldn’t bring della back.. but he at least sees now that whiel they certianly couldn’t.. they can bring him closely with what he has left. She’s gone, for now.. but she left behind three great kids who could use a mentor and Beakly brought him a fourth. And he just found out he has a pilot. The ember.. is now a raging flame. Scrooge is back. Because i’ts not the money or the glory.. it’s the thrill of it, the discovery.. and the family that makes adventuring worth while and he’s learned that lesson again. So he calls Beakly to clear his schedule.. forgetting she you know PUT A FUCKING PIN INTHE WALL the last time he asked her to play scretary and the onlyr eason she dind’t drive over the choke him to death, is that she’s probably happy he’s back on track.

Back at the interview Donald is stapled to the wall and gets the job.. not as an accountant mind but his employer needs a sailor.. and his employer is FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. Oh boy.

Part 2: Escape To/From Atlantis First the last bit of background I saved: Originally, Fenton and Gyro were supposed to show up here, starting a gag of Fenton showing up but not being named until “Beware the B.U.D.D.Y. System!”, setting up the sub. But the crew decided this took too much away from the focus on the duck family. The not naming him gag was also dropped, and I have two reasons why: Their given reason, which is it’d take up too much time and a logistical reason: While they gave a heartfelt pitch to Lin-Manuel Miranda, as frank wanted a strong Latino superhero to combat the lack of them on film, Frank and Matt probably thought they woudln’t get such a huge name or at least prepared for it.. and were delightfully suprised when Lin happily and tearfully agreed. So they likely scrapped it so they could properly promote the biggest name in their voice cast. Honestly it was for the best and they still go to do the idea with Drake in “The Duck Knight Returns!”, where it worked much better than it probably would have with Fenton.

We open with the Glomgold Industries Employee Training Video! Encourging IP Theft, making things cheaper and general scumbaggery, and claming your the world’s most beloved scottish billionare. IN short the perfect introduction to everyone’s favorite insane, fake-scottish, scheming, egotistical , short sighted billionaire. As i’ve made transparent before, I fucking love the reboot version of Glomgold and he’s easily one of my favorite parts of the reboot. They clearly needded to find a new place for Glomgold in the grand scheme of things as the show was more about globetrotting adventure and family and less about getting contracts or bets about whose bigger money and more about family. While they DID do a classic bet storyline with season 2, it’s clear the old glomgold was just a bit too stiff to properly fit into this new zanier and deeper universe.

So they instead remolded him as a half insane, knockoff scrooge, someone who PURPOSFULLY modeled himself after the guy to try and one up him, and instead of being a fairly low pitched schemer, was a bombastic idiot whose schemes were half baked, whose name was on everything he made, and whose only thing bigger than scrooge was his glorious ego. In short he was perfect for this series and perfect to show up way more often as a bumbling thorn in Scrooge’s side.. but one who COULD be effective in the right circumstances, as to not make him completely pointless. Keith was likewise the only person I could see in the roll now as with Hater he had a history of playing bombastic, egosticial morons, and made Glomgold into the enjoyable ball of ego, bombs, sharks and shouting we know and love. Some people didn’t take to this version after a while... I’m not one of those. I loved him here, I love him now, and he’s every bit as good in season 3 as he was at the start. He’s also wearing a kilt mcduck A KILT. A bit that’st STILL funny four years and 70 some episodes later.

So we meet Gabby McStabberson and the Smashnikovs as they and Donald file in, though Donald is busy wrapping up a call with Scrooge, who assures them he has a low key day planned.. while in the sub getting ready to go to atlantis. And nearly drowning when Dewey tells Launchpad to dive while he and Scrooge are still up top. Cue credits.

So on the sub we get our setup for the two main plots for the episode: While the main thrust of everything is Scrooge taking them to Atlantis, each leads to a diffrent plot. Louie talks to Donald and lies entirely about their day, worrying Webby.. who then reveals she just didn’t tell Beakly she took off or where she was going and encourages her to call and lie. To save time, i’m going to cover this subplot now minus the conclusion as it’s pretty simple and this review is already a day behind. Louie wants her to lie so she dosen’t worry, which is oddly sweet.. still a bit greasy, but it’s clear he means well and it shows in his own way the boy cares about Donald: Sure he’ll lie to the guy, and set up a fradulent charity to scam him.. but he also knows not to worry his dad-uncle and kows Donald is better off thinking their safe than knowing the truth. Granted it also prevents consequences for Louie.. but he’s not playing here here. He gets nothing out of Beakly not knowing the truth or helping some girl he just met, he’s just being NICE in his own twisty way. It’s a nice show of his depths: While louie will lie, cheat and steal Eddie Gurrero style, he does have a caring side underneath hit. He can read people well and while he primarily uses it to manipulate people, we’ll see time and time again that he can use it for good too and to help those he cares about. He’s nothing but supportive the whole plot, and even when he says “you can’t back that up” it’s more worrying about her and having a bit of crack than actually being a dick.

So Webby tries lying, but is about as good as Huey is at it, saying “I’m at a friends house nothing, then makes up a clearly fake name, then says their only talking in swedish for a grandpa. Launchpad DOES help, but only by accident and snake venom. We’ll get to that. As I said this wasn’t the most complex plot.

The main plot is our focus episode for dewey. In theory each of the kids was supposed to have one in the first five episodes: Dewey here, Webby in Daytrip of Doom, Louie in Great Dime Chase and Huey in Impossible Summit of Mt. Nevverest!. Given the last one was horribly delayed, he instead got Terror of the Terra Firmians, which in hindsight wasn’t the best spotlight episode for him. But it’s a good system; Introduce them all in the first half of the pilot then slowly focus on each one. So now Idoloizing Scrooge, Dewey is desperate to be his sidekick and be seen as an equal and is in deep denial as scrooge instead has them all buckle up for a 17 hour ride and when Dewey questions the route, which skips the direct path.. but is clearly marked with monsters, Scrooge just snaps at him and shuts him down and disapoints the boy who only wants to prove himself to Scrooge.

Naturally though, telling someone with that kind of need for attention and validation to wait goes poorly as he redirects the map while Launchapd is distracted.. and we find out WHY the trip is 17 hours as the direct route nearly gets them killed by mer-ducks, krakens and some sort of storm elemental. Dewey is bummed it didn’t work and annoyed to realize he’s just lumping them all together like Huey pointed out earlier. Huey is also delightful here, having brought travel bingo and sea shanties, clearly used to trips with his other uncle. And adorably taking after him.

But Dewey’s deversion has done more than make him even MORE determined to prove himself to Scrooge whose just trying to NOT loose the son of the daughter he lost...

The Merducks have taken up residence in the bathroom, so they have to make a pitstop. Scrooge, CLEARLY forgetting how to take a trip with children, wasn’t prepared for this but they find a frieghter and make a stop. Naturally it’s GLOMGOLD’S freighter, where his sub took off from, and he and his minons including Donald find Scrooge using the bathroom.. and the boys to Donald’s rage. Unfortunately saying ‘I’ll kill him” to a raging sociopath who takes that as a sign to kill ALL of them, isn’t a smart move.

So while Donald tries to plan to keep his family alive, said family arrives in Atlantis with a great bit of Scrooge trying to give a big speech only for them to see it first and ooh and ah. They touch down in the city.. which is flip turned upside down. Scrooge notes hti is odd but is able to read the hieroglypchs even upside downa nd notes there’s tones of deadly traps and that they shoudl stay back and..

Huey: Dewey ran in as soon as you said traps.

So while Scrooge tries to prevent dewey loosing his head, Donald prevents launchpad loosing his and makes up an excuse about “if their dead now we can’t tourture them later” to cover his ass. Glomgold is impressed. Dewey is Dewcipointed that the traps are upside down, though he does trigger some snakes that get launchpad. He’s fine just delirious. And possibly slowly dying but the fact he’s lived this long is a miracle. Maybe that’s why he’s missing for most of season 3 part 2, the snake venom caught up to him and drake and fenton need to find the cure. Anyways the rest of the party stays behind while Scrooge chases after Dewey, who naturally runs ahead AGAIN.

Donald ducks out to use the bathroom, as Dewey tries the old dance through the laser grid routine.. but forgets the part where your supposed to actually avoid it, leaving it to an unseen Donald to stop the fire traps from barbqueing his boy. IT’s a really awesome sequence that shows off Donald’s still got it even if he dosen’t want it. Scrooge naturally works smarter not harder and simply ziplines above like a badass and berates Dewey when he tells him he took “The easy way”

“Why would you want to take the hard way?” The argument that’s been brewing all episode bubbles up and once again both sides have a point: Scrooge rightfully points out Dewey’s being reckless, has no experince and needs to listen to Scrooge and learn something. Dewey claps back that Scrooge isn’t TEACHING them, just teling them to get behind him while he does things instead of trying to actively mentor them. He outright told them he was going to teach them so while Dewey’s been a wee bit overbearing, he’s right in being disappointed that Scrooge instead just wants them to be safe. I see it as his subconscious acting up: He wants and needs the kids along and is right ot keep them safe.. but is too scared to properly mentor them after what happened to Della and is just trying not to loose anybody. His methods have been right, to keep them safe.. he’s just been so determined to save them, he can’t properly TEACH them so he won’t have to forever or explain WHY. And given the First Adventure shows that while protective he did eventually let Della and Donald pull their weight.. but here he lost so much between adventures.. he just can’e bear loosing them. Dewey also rightfully points out he just lumps them together which in any other version wouldn’t be an issue, until the reboot I had no idea which one was which here? They have distinct outfits and personalities and you had 17 hours to actually get to know them. Probably less given the shortcut but still, several hours at a minimum. It’s things like this that make the series work: while there’s plenty of internal conflicts, at their best their nuanced ones, where if one character is clearly in the wrong they have a reason, and if both are right both are also a bit wrong, versus the original where it’d be scrooge or the boys grabbing the asshole ball at times (Not always mind you but when they did it was insufferable.

However they don’t have time to argue as the bridge goes out and Glomgold finds donald.. and another way around as a result and gets to the treasure first. Scrooge notices they have donald but once again Dewey charges in

“Unhand my uncle” “No” “Okay wasn’t prepared for that”

Naturally both sides are a bit livid, Donald for dragging his boys into danger after being part of the reason his sister is on the moon right now, and Scrooge for working with one of his greatest eneimies.. though Scrooge has less ground to stand on because as Donald points out “I can’t keep track of ALL of your sworn enemies” I mean he has lived like .. 200 years. That’s a long enemies list and Glomgold, while the most persistent, isn’t exactly the most dangerous they probably encountered. Given the guy’s an artist with Bombs and Sharks that does say a lot about how badass Scrooge is.. and how incompitent glomgold usually is. He’s just having an on day today I guess.

Glomgold naturally holds Donald hostage, takes what is suppsidley the jewel and leaves them to drown to death, hitting a wall to let it start leaking. HIs minons run into the rest of the heroes and a fight breaks out while naturally Donald, after even more naturally getting his ass stuck in a hole, literally, rails out at Scrooge for doing this telling him “I knew I couldn’t trust you and” “This is the spear of selene all over again”

Scrooge’s only response is “I was not responsible for the Spear of Selene!”

Dude you still paid for the rocket. While Della shoulders most of the blame, SHE choose to take an untested rocket, SHE choose not to come back during the turbulence YOU still built it and hid it from donald and didn’t make sure she couldn’t just take off in it. Your both to blame. And as I mentioned earlier to the least extent but still an extent, so was Donald telling his grown, adult sister whose as stubborn as she is what she could and couldn’t do. He had the right idea and was the only person trying to be an adult here in this situation.. but he still took the wrong approach with stopping her. Still he got far more ground to stand on than Scrooge, who also took his nephews out. Dewey stops both by pointing out that while yes Scrooge took them on an adventure he’s been doing NTOHING but keeping him safe and most of it was his fault which disarms donald a bit. Though Dewey is quickly distracted.. but for once by an obersvation: the gem glowing above thaem that glowed when they entered... and since the city got flipped turned upside down.. THAT’S the real jewel. Dewey asks Donald ot let it flood so they can get it and begs his uncle to trust him despite his doubts which he does. They get it and everyone’s okay and even more when they reunite with the others they find they’ve handily beaten them. To me this is where donalds walls go down a bit: he realizes he’s been smothering the kids, and that while he may hate his uncle for good reason... he’s not going to make the same mistake with them and while he lied.. Don probably realized if Scrooge had been honest Donald would never have let them go. He can trust him.. and he can trust his kids will be alright without him.

So Glomgold naturally leaves his minions to die, but our heroes manage to make it to the sub, and Gabby asks if they can bum a ride. Not wanting to do any murders they agree. On the surface Glomgold is showing off his jewel, only for Scrooge to upstage him second’s later with the real jewel, and point out his is “nice but defintly cursed”... and right on cue Glomgold gets dragged off with an octopus and let’s off his first “Curse you mcduck!”. Scrooge offers clean water and power thorugh it, for a price because of course he does, and has offically made his grand comeback.

We get back to Webby’s subplot, as she’s confronted by Beakly.. who naturally being a former spy easily figured it out immieditely but is only upset her grandaughter lied to her. And even at that she dosen’t raise her voice or anything about the matter, knowing it’d only make her feel worse and getting that her grandaughter needs to see the world and that much like donald, she walled her up to prevent loosing what little she had left. And since being with Scrooge is safe as with her, she can go with him anytime just tell her first kay? They hug. Awwww.

Donald likewise apologizes, admitting that whatever has passed, he misjudged his uncle here and while not forgiving him yet, is at least willing to let him back into his life and into the boys.. on holidays and stuff at least. But fate forces his hand.. or rather his 10 year old nephew-son having left the engine on and neither having turned it off, meaning his boat goes boom and is in no liveable condition. But Scrooge has the space in his heart and mansion for them.

So as we close the kids help move the artifacts all around the house instead of just the garage while Launchapd drops the boat. While clearing out Dewey notices the painting from earlier.. and finds part of it was flipped over...

“Mom?!”

Now keep in mind, while nowadays Della’s inclusion in the show is one of the most famous and treasured parts of the show.. back then this was a fucking shock. Disney never really cared about the boys mother and outside of one comics story never really went into what happened. So the fact she was not only an actual important part of the plot but we’d find out was a HUGE wham moment and left my jaw dropped after seeing the episode. Like I would with the finales I had read no spoilers and had no idea this was coming but damn was it a huge and welcome suprise and how far they’d take it and how much they’d flesh her out was an even bigger one. Easily one of the best big reveals i’ve ever seen. The only better one I can think of from this series itself... is the end of season 2. But that’s for another time.

Final Thoughts on Woo-Ooo!:

This two parter/hour long special.. is still one of the episodes best and easily one of the best pilots. It does slow down a bit in pacing in the second half, but otherwise is just an immaculate , beautiful pilot movie that introduces and fleshes out all 8 main characters, maybe Launchpad the least but enough to still work, gives us some big mysteries to work out, and even throws in Glomgold’s first apperance. It sets the tone, reverent and adventuerous but also with it’s own weird and wacky sense of humor and world building, and universe perfectly. I .. don’t have much else to say really it’s just THAT good and really worth checking out. If you somehow haven’t seen it go watch it and if you haven’t seen it in a while might be worth a rewatch before the finale. The absolutely perfect start to an amazing ride.

Next on the Della Arc: Dewey and Webby try to figure out where Della is while Louie learns a valuable life lesson and pisses off a killer robot along the way.

Next on the Blog: Amphibia Season 2 is back!

Until then if you liked this review follow for more and if you could please support me on patreon. Even a buck a month helps and juicy stretch goals give you na incentive to contirbute. We’re 5 bucks away from 20 dollars a month which means a review of super ducktales and a Darkwing Duck review EVERY. MONTH. So contribute now! Until the next rainbow it’s been a pleasure.

#ducktales #wooooo #woo-ooo #scrooge mcduck #webby vanderquack #donald duck #dewey duck #louie duck #huey duck #bentina beakley #launchpad mcquack #flintheart glomgold #della duck #disney channel #disney xd #disney plus #ducks

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grey-eyed-menace · 3 years

Text

Hello there.

My name is Lenzie, and well, uh...

I actually don't know how to phrase this, but, as I'm pretty stumped about my three Twisted Wonderland OC's I'd like people to send in questions about them!

I'll accept any and all questions about them, so long as they aren't incredibly inappropriate.

There most basic information, and pretty much all I've come up for them, are listed under their picrews.

And they're all Chibi's because the Chibi picrew had the best selection in my opinion.

Now, without a further ado, here they are!

First up is the Yuuki Cousins! Who, rather regrettably, have been redesigned slightly in that they aren't related, but they still grew up together!

Alongside his lovely co-kidnappee, he's only about sixteen once he ends up in Twisted Wonderland.

This fine gentleman is Yuuki Yuuya, better known as 'Yuu' by his friends, with the added appeal of no one being quite sure if Yuuki or Yuuya is his first name, it's generally assumed Yuuya is, and due to Subaru's last name, people generally reference his last name as Yuuki.

He passes off his everyday fashion as his Dorm Uniform, and Crowley... Can't really contest it, as Ramshackle technically now counts as a dorm...

He's a bit like an over excited puppy, always rushing headfirst into danger and asking questions later, and, is, technically speaking, the real 'MC' of my story, as he is put in Ramshackle with Grim.

He's also a Disney Nerd, and is both completely flabbergasted at his new surroundings and absolutely thrilled.

He also might have a thing about Thorne. Subaru's convinced it's a general 'Cute Bunny' thing, it's not. He's lying. Everything he claims about the situation is a lie.

It's like Agatha and Ortho, the former claims that the latter isn't special to them, and then the latter does the 'smile' thing, and suddenly the former is throwing candy at their creator passive aggressively.

...okay, so maybe it's not like Agatha and Ortho, (and it's definitely not Idia and Agatha because that's a very specific dynamic based on shared pessimism, misanthropy, and what Agatha equates to shared trauma), but nonetheless.

Calls Malleus 'Stranger Danger'.

He also bought a baby sling for Grimm, said Demon-Like-Cat is unamused.

And the other Yuuki attending NRC.

Yuuki Subaru!

Again, like her 'cousin', (it was an easy lie, and at the very least, it guarantees that no one will be loosing their heads over her and Yuu being alone in the same room), she's only about sixteen when they end up in Twisted Wonderland.

She's also incredibly pissed about it.

Subaru, unlike her best friend, is sorted into Pomefiore!

Back home, she was a somewhat small-time up and coming idol... Who was perpetually broke.

She's sorted into Pomefiore on the grounds of her core values... And amusement.

Beyond that, she's a very hard worker and values blunt honesty above all else.

Because she's literally a minute away from decking everyone in the face, and isn't really into keeping up the 'Persona' she had back home unless she's on stage, mostly because there's no point, she's tired, and honestly just wants everyone to shut-up so she can pass out.

She gets along with Leona simply because she feels kinship with the fact that he wants to sleep through most of the day.

Comes up with increasingly weird nicknames for Malleus every time they meet, (first time is Tsunotaro, as is canon, second time is Green-Eye's, third time she's under the genuine impression that his fondness for Thorne means they're related-or dating and calls him Not-Blondie for some reason), infuriates Sebek, amused Lilia, and Thorne is just really... Confused? She wants to say confused.

This is Rista Caspian!

He's the fifth born Prince of the Coral Sea, (and unfortunately NOT the bain of Rielle's school experience at RSA much to his eternal lamentation, fortunately Claire's doing just fine on her own), and a third year at NRC.

He has an adventurous streak a mile wide, and thinks himself something of a troublemaker, even if that's not exactly the truth.

As he's fifth in line for the throne, he doesn't have as many responsibilities as his older brother and and sisters, which freed him to attend NRC on land.

It also resulted in a somewhat... Less than stellar habit of not owning up to his mistakes and a lack of responsibility.

(Also, the entire reason he wasn't picked as Dorm Head? Spite. Pure unfiltered spite. Crowley made one vaguely insulting comment about Queen Minerva and it was war. Tradition be damned.)

His eldest sister, Thea, is the Crown Princess.

In order his siblings are...

Thea, Alan, Renna, Ven, himself, Claire, and Rielle.

Twisted from Ariel's elder sister Arista.

I have a vague idea about his Unique Magic being called 'Siren's Song'.

By the time of Chapter Three, he and Thorne have a weird friendship built on an incident involving them raiding the school kitchen.

And finally, the Disamonia first year, Thorne Brodeur!

The daughter of a very well off family from Pyroxene, and completely human... Er, maybe.

She's a very skittish and quiet young woman who ended up face planting against the Mirror when Subaru and Yuu rushed into the ritual chamber.

Thorne was good friends with Neige LeBlanche as a small child, but eventually, (purposely), fell out of touch with him once his career took off as her father started to push for a much... Different relationship afterwards, she straight up disappears during Chapter Five because of this, and no one can find her. NO ONE.

No one's quite sure what that says about her usual efforts to disappear.

She really doesn't know why she ended up in Disamonia, but Lilia seems endlessly amused by it, and everyone else is vaguely confused.

She's twisted from the Spindle that pricked Aurora's finger.

Her Unique Magic, as it is currently, so far has the working title of 'Wicked Lullaby'.

A good chunk of her hair gets lopped off during Leona's Overblot, and Lilia ends up in evening it out, and to Sebek's eternal frustration, she starts taking after Floyd on how to wear her uniform more casually...

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland mc #twisted wonderland oc #twisted wonderland yuu #twisted wonderland questions #the little mermaid #the little mermaid arista #sleeping beauty #spindle #arista #octanivelle #Disamonia #Ramshackle #twisted wonderland grim #Thorne took one look at Vil and vaulted over a staircase #Rista and Thorne have an incredibly weird friendship

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mstrumpeter · 3 years

Text

“I’m glad we both have found back to you.”

Alan Rubin x fem!Reader (chapter three)

Word Count: 1,950

Fandom: Blues Brothers

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Blues Brothers characters or movies.

Warnings: swearing, age gap, jealousy and slight smut

Summary: You met a handsome musician and his band, including a surprise form your past.

chapter 1

chapter 2

chapter 4

It was the day of Kelsey’s very first Blues Brothers concert. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror taking care of her make-up. She usually wasn’t the type of girl that applied much but for tonights special occasion she chose to add some eye shadow and a soft lip gloss to her regular make-up which involved a foundation, mascara, some light powder and doing her eyebrows. The girl tied up her hair in a bun and pulled out one curly strand at each side of her face. She picked another dress from her wardrobe, this time it was a dark red one with dark blue flowers on it, matching well to her blonde hair. She put on her black boots again, which she loved above all, given to her as a birthday present by her mum and threw on one of her black leather jackets.

She entered the concert hall and was surprised how big it was. This is a fucking barn. I didn’t think they would fill it. But they did, most seats were already taken. She was lucky to find a single empty seat on the far left edge, second row.

The show opener was “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and Jake and Elwood did a grant entry, Elwood with his briefcase and his harp in it and Jake was doing incredible flic-flacs across the entire stage. They played a great choice of songs with solos for the sax, the guitars, trombone, the horn, piano and harmonica, bringing out every member of the band, suiting Jake’s rough voice very well. She couldn’t resist staring at Mr. Fabulous during his stunning solo in the Peter Gunn theme. He looked hot killing those high notes with his sensuous chiseled lips and she missed his hazel eyes which were covered by the dark sunglasses everyone was wearing during concerts. Her staring of course hadn’t gone unnoticed by the trumpet player and as soon as the song came to an end he gave the girl his biggest and warmest smile, clearly happy to see her in the crowd. It wasn’t that easy staying focused on Alan though, with Elwood dancing and vibing right in front of Kelsey’s eyes. The tall man looked so sexy, swaying this hips and tasty bum to the rhythm of the music, and the way he played his harp, looked like he was making love to it. Every now and then he gave her a few glances before shaking his butt and she could swear he did it a little wilder just for her. She enjoyed every minute of their concert and was one of the loudest when calling for an encore.

After the concert she walked up the stairs at the side of the stage to greet the boys. Kelsey immediately caught the trumpet players eyes, who quickly put down his horn, excited to see her. As they both walked towards each other Kelsey was pulled into a hug from Elwood, approaching her from the side. “I don’t believe it, I didn’t knew you were coming.” “Hi Elwood.” The girl stammered taken by surprise and broke away from his arms.”Alan has invited me.”, she explained while letting her gaze wander in search of that very same man. But Alan had turned around on his heel as his heart dropped from seeing the two embracing each other. She saw him walking down the stairs to the backstage area with Lou carrying some of the equipment and she instantly felt bad for letting him down. She needed to talk to him after what had happened yesterday. “I’m almost finished but gotta help Willie demounting the drum set first.” Elwood explained. Kelsey quickly jumped down the stairs Alan had taken before and bumped into Tom. “Woah, slow down girl!” “Damn, I’m really sorry, Tom… Have you seen Alan?” The troubled girl apologised to the trombone player. “Mr.Fabulous? Yeah think he has already left with Lou. Seemed to be in quite a hurry.”, the tall man explained to her. She sighted in disappointment. “Oh, alright… Aaand Tom? Brilliant show by the way!” “Well thank you.”, he smiled and gave her a little bow. Kelsey then decided she should try not thinking about the horn player tonight as she went outside, waiting for Elwood to show up.

He pulled her out of her thoughts by poking her in the side and hugging her from behind. “You ready girl?” “Sure, been waiting for you.”, she beamed as he took her hand and they started walking to the little place where Sonny Boy was presenting some of his best tunes and songs.

When the show came to an end, the two walked hand in hand to Elwood’s car, inhaling the fresh but cold night air. The handsome musician gave Kelsey a look. “You freezing?” “Huh? No, I’m alright.”, she stated but the man took off his suit jacket putting it over her shoulders. “Thanks Elwood.” They reached the Blues Mobile, turning to each other. He broke in on Kelsey by crushing his lips on hers and pulled her in a tight hug. The kiss became more heated before Elwood stopped for a second, both gasping for air, when the pushed his forehead against hers. “I had a fantastic time with you tonight.” She wanted to answer but he pulled her into another deep kiss. The man grabbed her legs at each side and placed her on the bonnet of the Caddy, stepping in between her spread legs. Kelsey pulled at his shirt collar, loosening his tie and started to unbutton the white shirt. Elwood had moved his lips from her mouth down to her neck, nibbling at her ear causing her to moan softly. “How about we continue this at my place?”, he whispered in her ear. It would be a lie to say she wasn’t extremely tempted to agree on that but something held her back. “Perhaps another time, Elwood? It became rather late.”, she tried to say in a seductive way, not wanting to push him away completely. She couldn’t catch much of his reaction since he was wearing his shades. She caressed his face giving his glasses a soft tap. “Do you ever take these off?” “He gave her a roguish smile. “Only in bed.” “Stop it, you!”, she exclaimed and gave him a push on his chest. “Come on girl, I take you home!” She took a seat in the Cadillac’s passenger seat and watched the houses and lights they passed by while Elwood drove. He stopped at a red signal as the lifting bridge in front of them slowly started to move up, so the approaching tanker could pass. “You’re free from giddiness?” He grinned. “Err.. that depends.” Kelsey answered nervy. That answer satisfied him way enough so in the twinkling of an eye, he hit the gas, twisted the steering wheel around and raced straight towards the moving the bridge. The girl jumped up in her seat, grabbing the handle right above the car door and yelled in panic “Heeell, what are you doing?!?” The car picked up speed and jumped from one edge of the bridge to the other side, landing with a big jolt. Kelsey gasped for excitement, looking back at the bridge behind them. “THAT WAS AWESOME! What else can you do?” He laughed “Relax girl, think that’s enough for one night, don’t want the cops on me.” Shortly afterwards they reached Kelsey’s flat. He opened the passengers door for her and walked her to the main door. “So.. you’re sure I won’t get to take these off tonight?” He wiggled his eyebrows causing his glasses so slide down a few inches. “Well you can do whatever you like in ‘your’ bed.. by yourself.” He rolled his eyes in joking way and licked his lips. “You are such a tease, you know that?” He leaned in a gave her a kiss on the lips. “See you hun.”, the man whispered and made his way back to the car, driving off after giving the girl a quick wave. The next day the band had its usual rehearsal of course. Alan was one of the first showing up, so he started unpacking and warming up. While he applied some oil to the valves of his horn, Elwood, Jake, Willie and Murphy walked in. “Come on Mr. Motorhead, don’t be shy” Jake patted him on the back. “Yeah man!” Willie shouted. “Tell us if you finally got her laid. We do have a right to know.” “The hell you have”, Elwood said annoyed. Murphy added “If I’m up to speed it was their 3rd date, you all know what ‘that’ means.” Alan looked up from his horn, watching the guys acting like a bunch of pubescents.” Willie clapped his hands. “Nice man, real nice. How was it? Boy if you ask me, she's one of those wild ones who likes to take the reins!” Alan dropped the small bottle of oil. Did they really…? Could it be true? Elwood sighed. “You know what they say. ‘A gentleman does not boast of his conquests.’” “Aaaand once again we all know what ‘that’ means.” Murphy assured causing the harp player to roll his eyes but Alan couldn’t see that with Elwood being turned away from him. That statement though hit Alan right in the heart. So they really have. He just stood there, staring dead ahead. He didn’t know what to think or say or feel. But it hurt. It hurt as hell. “You don’t wanna pick that up?… Alan? ... Are you alright?” Lou waved his hand in front of his friend's eyes, bringing him back to reality. “Huh?” “The oil?” Lou pointed down. “Oh, err… yeah.”, Alan said emotionless and grabbed the little bottle.

As everyone was set up they started rehearsing, first on the list was “Gimme Some Lovin”. Jake started dictating the rhythm and the guys gave it everything. Except for Alan. As soon as the others realised he hadn’t joined them, they stopped. Jake gave him a look “You’re ready or what?” “Yeah, yeah, just start over.”, the trumpet player mumbled and so they did. They played half of the song when Murphy interrupted, suggesting to change a chord in the guitar parts. Tom looked over at Alan. “Psst, Alan, what the hell was that? Sounded like you left out a bunch of notes there, man.” The trumpet player didn’t even look at him but hissed under his breath. “Yeah, whatever.” Alan couldn’t stop thinking about ‘them’. He saw them in front of his inner eye, making out and with each second more he imagined them it hurt him even more. They started from the scratch until the chorus came up for the second time. Alan missed his cue, rapidly tried to catch up but lagged behind, so Jake broke off again. “I’m sorry guys, I, I seem to have some trouble focusing today.” Steve was fuming “Jeez Mr. Fabulous.”, he mocked his nickname by pronouncing it funny. "As soon as we make a mistake your bigheaded New York ass is hacked off but once you’re playing like crap, it’s alright, huh?” To be fair, this was nothing new, Steve and Alan often had a brush with each other, Steve’s southern characteristic trait hitting on Alan’s New Yorker attitude often ended in disputes. Lou chipped in “Woah hey, calm down, guys!” “Steve’s right though...” Elwood muttered, shrugging his shoulders. Alan gave him an intensely strain look but laughed derisively. “You know what guys? Fuck this, I’m getting out of here!” And with these words he grabbed his things, rushed to the door, kicked it open and left.

#Blues Brothers #blues brothers fandom #blues brothers fanfiction #Alan Rubin x Reader #Alan Rubin x fem!Reader #Mr. Fabulous #Alan Rubin #Elwood Blues

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bubblesandgutz · 4 years

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Every Record I Own - Day 622: Jaye Jayle Prisyn

The following is the bio I wrote for Jaye Jayle’s 2020 album, Prisyn.

Evan Patterson has always been a wanderer and an explorer. It’s evident in the constant evolution of his musical projects since his earliest days as a guitarist in left-of-center bands out of Louisville, but it’s best exemplified by the constant creative shifts within the fever-dream blues of his current project Jaye Jayle. Their sophomore album No Trails and Other Unholy Paths was a mission statement of that restless search across barren canvases, a proclamation of turning away from one’s past and marching into the unknown. But with the latest Jaye Jayle album Prisyn, Patterson takes his boldest leap into unknown territories yet, capturing immediate moments in his ever-shifting surroundings with the most basic tool at his disposal—the GarageBand app on an iPhone 8. Instead of his usual backing band, he paired up with Ben Chisholm (White Horse, Revelator, Chelsea Wolfe) as collaborator and producer to create an electronic album completely unlike anything else in his discography.

The project began with a request from couture designer Ashley Rose. The up-and-coming designer proposed that Patterson team up with Chelsea Wolfe and Ben Chisholm to create a soundtrack for one of her upcoming fashion shows. Patterson was in the early stages of a massive eleven-week stretch of touring—starting with a European jaunt with his rekindled band Young Widows, continuing on with Jaye Jayle, and returning to the US to play guitar for Emma Ruth Rundle—and used the extensive downtime in the van to flesh out ideas on his phone. “So I sent the track to Ben and he sent it back the next day with additional instrumentation, sounds, and effects,” Patterson recalls. “It was wild. He suggested we make a whole record that way, and it just took off from there.”

By the end of the three-month tour, Patterson and Chisholm had an LP’s worth of songs waiting for vocal treatments. “I initially wanted it to be an instrumental record called Songs For Iggy because I literally had this dream where I made an instrumental album with that title and Iggy Pop found out about it and sang on it,” Patterson recalls. Pop’s album The Idiot had been an enormous influence on the songwriter in recent years, and it seemed like the proper homage to a fellow sonic explorer. But as time passed and other guest vocalists were proposed, Patterson finally decided that the album would be the next phase, or perhaps even just a strange detour, for Jaye Jayle. “I had no idea what I was gonna sing, how it was gonna go. So I printed out all these poems, stories, and journal entries I’d made on my phone over the course of the year and went into the studio with my friend Warren (Christopher Gray). We’d eventually find things that rhythmically worked, and that’s how all the lyrics and singing happened. It was all gut instinct, improvisational.”

Consequently, Prisyn’s ten tracks are composites of various snapshots of Patterson’s three-month tour, with the music taking shape on one leg of the journey and the lyrical components coming from some other moment on the road. “The vocal approach isn’t meant to be full of hooks and melody,” Patterson notes. “The music is framed almost as a film score for my life. Instead of David Attenborough or William S. Burroughs as a narrator, I used this opportunity to narrate visuals from my reality.” You can hear that commentary quality on songs like “Blueberries,” which came to fruition during a late night drive through a thunderstorm in Atlanta. The white-knuckle experience manifests in the static blasts, ominous bass synth lines, and cascading arpeggios, and in the background you can hear Patterson reading a short story about trading his eyes with a blind man. Meanwhile, the gloomy electric piano lounge vibes on “Guntime” came from some non-descript drive, with lyrics that capture the much more harrowing experience of having a car full of teenagers point an Uzi at the Jaye Jayle tour van as they drove into Paris, creating a strange sense of distance to the event, as if it was viewed in an out-of-body experience. The expanded horizons provided by extensive touring also served as a point of contrast for Patterson’s comparatively conservative hometown of Louisville, which became the muse for “Don’t Blame the Rain.” The track sounds like a drug induced panic attack in a European discotheque, though the lyrics tackle Southern conservatism and Patterson’s efforts to rise above a culture he doesn’t believe in.

But perhaps the most evocative track on the album is “The River Spree.” Patterson crafted the music—an organic mixture of digital contrabass and interweaving drones—while driving across the long barren stretch of Kansas. But the lyrics capture a moment across the Atlantic, when Patterson found himself lost in Berlin late at night, peaking on acid, without a working phone, and without knowing the whereabouts of his bandmates. He charts his journey over the six-minute song with a drug-high ambivalence, recounting a mugging with the same stoicism as breathing in the night air while “thinking about David / thinking about Iggy.” It sounds like Alan Vega singing from an opium den, comfortably numb while recounting some urban nightmare.

“It’s a very odd record,” Patterson says of Prisyn. The album title, a play on the idea of a synthetic prison, alludes to Patterson’s desire for artistic freedom and the album’s conflicted use of addictive technologies, but in the time of the pandemic he also views it as an example of overcoming adversity in desperate times—it’s a record that could have been made under the jail-like confines of quarantine, with Patterson and Chisholm having never been in the same room at the same time. “These songs have a totally different energy, and that’s the exciting thing about making art. Things have to progress. I don’t wanna draw the same picture for the rest of my life. Maybe that keeps you from being a master at it, but being a master isn’t the key to art. It’s having that constant expression, the constant outlet, the constant change.”

#jaye jayle #everyrecordiown

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howaminotinthestrokesyet · 3 years

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Where Have They Gone Now: Axl Rose

Born William Bailey originally in Lafayette, Indiana in 1962. His mother was still in high school when she had him, while his juvenile delinquent father was 20 years old. They would divorce when he was two years old, which led his father William Rose abducting him and reportedly molesting the young boy. His mother remarried to a man named Steven Bailey, who was not much better than his birth father. Axl and his siblings were beaten on a regular basis and once again reportedly molested as well. Led by his stepfather, the Rose household was very strict religiously growing up in the Pentecostal faith. He was required to attend church 7 to 8 times a week, and even taught Sunday school on occasion. This seems to be in stark contrast to the Axl Rose we will see later. Axl would comment on his upbringing. “We'd have televisions one week, then my stepdad would throw them out because they were Satanic. I wasn't allowed to listen to music. Women were evil. Everything was evil." Music became a source of solace from an early age as he began singing in the church choir at the age of five. Rose began as a natural baritone, but decided to change his pitch consistently during practice just to anger the teacher. The future Guns N’ Roses lead singer also began to study piano at Jefferson High School, as well as participating in high school musicals. At the age of 17, Axl was going through some insurance papers when he discovered the existence of his biological father. At that time, he unofficially adopted his real father‘s last name of Rose, but told everyone he would not share a first name with him only referring to himself as W. Rose. After this discovery, the young man began to completely act out leading to at least 20 misdemeanor arrests from public intoxication to assault. Lafayette police were trying to charge him as a habitual criminal when he moved to LA in 1982 at the age of 20.

Almost immediately upon arrival, Rose joined the band Rapidfire with guitarist Kevin Lawrence. He had met him just outside the Troubadour in West Hollywood. They recorded a five song demo, but due to legal actions was not released until 2014. The EP was entitled Ready To Rumble. His next band included childhood friend and guitarist Izzy Stradlin, which they named Hollywood Rose. They recorded a demo featuring songs like “Shadow of Your Love,” “Anything Goes,” and “Reckless Life.” These songs would appear on various releases throughout the years including 2004’s, The Roots of Guns N’ Roses. The band would break up just after the hiring of Slash and Steven Adler. The biggest reason for this was that Rose decided to join LA Guns led by guitarist Tracii Guns. As he struggled for musical success, the young Axl continued to work to make any sort of money including night manager of Tower Records and even smoking cigarettes for a scientific study at UCLA with Izzy Stradlin. By 1985, Rose had restarted Hollywood Rose, so this band and LA Guns could merge their members. Guns N’ Roses was finally born, but almost immediately Tracii Guns and two other members left the band. Essentially, Guns N’ Roses became an expanded version of Hollywood Rose rather than any connection to LA Guns. They simply liked the name, so they kept it. Yet, there is absolutely no Guns in the band.

One thing to understand about Rose and his prima donna behavior that eventually led to the disintegration of the band was that every band in Los Angeles wanted him to be their lead singer in the mid-1980s. Axl had a certain buzz about the energy and intensity he brought every night on stage that could not be replicated. He represented the shining star of the Sunset Strip at that time; he could pick any group that was not signed to a record contract. The band would sign with Geffen Records in 1986, but one thing to note was that right before he changed his name officially to W. Axl Rose. The name originated when he was playing in a band called the Axls, so one of his bandmates suggested that he change his name to Axl. Rose thought it was a cool idea and never changed it. As the band began their sudden rise to the top of the music world, people began to realize that Rose was much different than any other singer before him. He began to single people out in the crowd, who were causing problems after two people died at the Monsters of Rock Festival in 1988. Most times previously singers would tell roadies to take care of it without publicly calling out anyone in the crowd. If you listen to their live compilation album, there are a couple of tracks where you can hear him actually doing this. Axl would say this in a 1992 interview. “Most performers would go to a security person in their organization, and it would just be done very quietly. I'll confront the person, stop the song: 'Guess what: You wasted your money, you get to leave.'" Upon the release of their EP Lies, Rose ran into quite a bit of controversy for his use of racial and homophobic slurs in the song, “One in a Million.” His explanation and defense of the use of the terms at the time was he meant it to be a joke about people that are a pain in your ass in your life. If that had occurred in our present times, he would have been canceled immediately. In 1992, the singer tried to explain the use of the lyrics once again relating some personal experiences he had with blacks and gays that had formed this negative connotation in his mind. For all the controversy, the group was dropped from a 1992 AIDS benefit show. By 1989, most rock writers had begun to see him as one of the top frontmen in rock and roll at the time. Rolling Stone had such respect for him as a singer that they allowed him to use his personal photographer for their story on him, instead of someone on their staff. During the recording of Use Your Illusion, Rose began to impose his will upon the band in a variety of ways. He forced the band to accept his friend Dizzy Reed as a keyboardist. Axl then wanted to fire their longtime manager Alan Nevin, which the band had to go along with because the singer threatened to not perform on the album if he was allowed to stay.

The Use Your Illusion tour began in May 1991 highlighted by concerts that started hours late, rants of his on stage, and even a riot in St. Louis. He tried to jump into the crowd during that show to take away a fan’s video camera, so after he got back on stage Rose quit the concert. Upon seeing an empty stage, the 25,000 people there started a riot. The damage bill came out to be just around $200,000. The friendships between the band members and Rose were gradually imploding throughout the tour. At one point, Axl demanded and received legal ownership of the Guns N’ Roses brand name. He had supposedly issued an ultimatum either give me legal ownership or I will not perform. Axl would later deny these reports saying the contract would not have been legally binding if he had done such a thing. Who knows what the truth is when it comes to this band sometimes? The singer helped to start another riot in Montreal at a concert co-headlined by Metallica. The heavy metal band had their concert cut short because pyrotechnics severely burned lead singer James Hetfield. Once again, Rose was nowhere near the venue to go on early coming on stage very late. The group needed to do an extensive set to make up for the short one by Metallica, but Rose cut his set short claiming voice problems. Once again, the fans rioted leading to some extensive fines directed towards the singer by Canadian authorities.

In 1994, the band released the covers album The Spaghetti Incident, which included a hidden track originally written by Charles Manson. Axl had intended the song to be a message to his ex-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour. The controversy that followed this song meant that the band needed to donate money for the son of one of the victims of those murders. In 1994, Rose also decided to terminate guitarist Gilby Clarke as a member of the band without consulting any of the other members. This decision was made so that Axl could bring in the controversial guitar replacement, Paul Tobias, which eventually led to Slash leaving the band. By 1997, the only original member of Guns N’ Roses was one Axl Rose. He had started to fade from any public view becoming essentially a rock and roll hermit. The media had dubbed him either Rock and Roll’s Greatest Recluse or the Howard Hughes of Rock and Roll. By the late 1990’s, rumors began to spread that Rose was forming a new lineup of Guns N’ Roses for an album entitled Chinese Democracy.

The absolute insanity that was Chinese Democracy took place from 2001 to 2011. The album would be officially released in 2008, but not after several starts and stops over and over again. A tour of the new album had been scheduled from 2001 to 2002, but almost all of the shows were either cut short or canceled because Rose was either a no-show or would quit very quickly. Finally, in 2006 and 2007, he actually toured as Guns N’ Roses promising new music. The concert offered very little in Chinese Democracy, but only concentrated on their hit songs. Around this time, he had changed his hair into cornrows, which got a laugh from music fans everywhere. One should note that Izzy Stradlin actually made a few guest appearances during that tour. Fans had hoped that a reunion collaboration might occur, but there was no such luck. Upon the release of Chinese Democracy, the singer did everything he could to sabotage any possible success the album might have overall. He refused to promote the album, would not return phone calls, or give interviews for three months after the release of the album. By the time he actually did say something about the album, the reclusive Rose complained that Interscope Records did not help them very much in promoting the album. In 2009, Axl and GNR went on a 2 1/2 year long tour, which included a headlining appearance at Rock in Rio 4. Around that time, he was sued by former band manager Irving Azhoff for $1.87 million. Of course, Axl countersued him claiming that he was forced to do a reunion tour because Azhoff had completely mismanaged the release, promotion, and tour of Chinese Democracy. In 2010, he sued Activision for their game Guitar Hero. Axl claimed that he had an oral agreement with the company that if “Welcome to the Jungle” was allowed on the game, then Slash nor any Velvet Revolver would not be included in any release of it. Not only was Slash’s music included in the game, but he ended up on the cover. A judge threw out the lawsuit in 2013 saying that Rose could not prove the oral agreement and the statute of limitations had run out anyway. In 2012, the Guns N’ Roses singer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but he declined to appear. In an open letter published on the Internet, Rose stated that due to the tensions between his former bandmates, he did not want to be where he was not wanted or respected. Yet, slowly but surely Guns N’ Roses began to tour with some of the original members culminating with the inclusion of Slash in 2016.

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thesethingsofours · 4 years

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Nina Simone, Duende & Pastel Blues

Nina Simone’s Pastel Blues is a true embodiment of duende — the rare depth and darkness that impels her work.

1969 © Jack Robinson / Hulton Archive

Her distinctive warble permeates thousands of movie soundtracks, hip hop samples and advertisements, let alone the countless personal moments by which people demarcate their lives. This omnipresence allows us to forget who Nina Simone was, and the outright value of her music. For the streaming generation, knowledge of such an artist is limited to “top hits”; on some Spotify, Sunday Mood playlist. Or worse, the songs will only wriggle into the brain from various attempts to sell Coca-Cola, Seat Atecas, Renault Clios, Volvo XC90s, Fords, Apple Watches, Chanel №5, Warehouse discount clothes, Virgin Flights, HTC Phones, Jockey underwear and Behr Paint.

Most egregious among these is the Muller Light yoghurt advert, inescapable for anyone sentient in early 2000s UK. It uses her 1968 song I Ain’t Got No, I Got Life, but only the second, I Got Life half; carving it off entirely from its I Ain’t Got No essence. In its truncated form, the song sounds like a free-wheeling celebration of life and limb: Got my hair, got my head / Got my brains, got my ears / Got my eyes, got my nose / Got my mouth, I got my smile. Yet the missing section is a lengthy condemnation of segregated American society, where disenfranchised black people had been given nothing to cling to: Ain’t got no mother, ain’t got no culture / Ain’t got no friends, ain’t got no schoolin’ / Ain’t got no love, ain’t got no name /…Ain’t got no god / Hey, what have I got? / Why am I alive, anyway?

Yes, the song contains positivity in tune and verse, but stripping the darkness from Simone’s work also strips away its incandescent light. It would be like taking Rodin’s Gates of Hell and shrouding everything except the seemingly peaceful thinker at the centre; or cutting the lightbulb from the top of Picasso’s Guernica and presenting it as a bright, merry, representative segment. Or a millionaire DJ taking Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech and turning it into a dance track during race protests and a global pandemic. But surely not even David Guetta would do that.

The reduction of such a deliberate and profound artist to commercialised snippets is saddening. In Simone’s case this is particularly true because of the highly unusual, powerful darkness that clutches her music. She has something rare. In Spanish, it is known as duende.

Duende

Rooted in Iberian cultures, duende derives from “duen de casa”, meaning “possessor of a house”. Originally the superstition of a dark, goblin-like spirit, it is now the concept of impassioned, death-endorsing, creative invention; typically associated with the performative aspects of Flamenco. In that context, poet and playwright Federico García Lorca describes its contemporary meaning (in his 1933 Buenos Aries lecture, Theory and Play of the Duende), as the “buried spirit of saddened Spain”.

As a guitar maestro explained to him, “the duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet”. Lorca quotes others, one, after listening to Paganini’s violin, identified it as, “a mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher has explained”; or another, upon hearing Manuel de Falla perform Nocturno, proposed that, “all that has dark sounds has duende”. In Lorca’s own words:

For every man, every artist called Nietzsche or Cézanne, every step that he climbs in the tower of his perfection is at the expense of the struggle that he undergoes with his duende. Not with an angel, as is often said, nor with his Muse…

…With idea, sound, gesture, the duende delights in struggling freely with the creator on the edge of the pit. Angel and Muse flee, with violin and compasses, and the duende wounds, and in trying to heal that wound that never heals, lies the strangeness, the inventiveness of a man’s work.

Nina Simone embodies duende.

1968 © Hulton Archive

It exists not only within her more explicit protest songs, born of the Civil Rights movement, but is present in everything she did — a ferocity, fragility, sadness and authenticity that claws its way up her throat and flings itself from her open mouth. It’s an otherworldly channelling of something very few can access, but which audiences pray to feel. With music so steeped in darkness, using it to gleefully sell products is a comedy — a joke on the shamelessness naivety of consumers and marketeers — as well as a tragedy.

A Brief History

Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in 1933 and raised in Jim Crow-era North Carolina, Simone was ambitiously desirous of becoming a concert pianist — an uncommon career path for a young black girl at the time. Despite obtaining the ability to do so, she was instead funnelled into performing a mixture of jazz, gospel, soul and folk. And blues, in every shade. Her voice — ostensibly untrained — was burnished in the fire of necessity: if she wanted to earn money in the clubs, she had to sing as well as play piano. She electrified audiences, but remained persistently dissatisfied with how she was received and perceived:

It’s only normal to want acceptance from one’s own country for one’s gifts God has given you. I’m tired of begging for it. It took me 20 years of playing in clubs, in nightclubs, on the concert stage doing all these records to get a decent, real accurate review of my gifts by the New York Times… It was the first time I had been compared to Maria Callas as a diva. All before that I had been labelled a jazz singer, a blues singer, High Priestess of Soul, which… I am not sure what that is. I have studied piano 18 years! So yes I’m tired. I’m too old to keep asking for love from the industry. (Nina Simone, 1984)

Elevated by activists and aficionados alike, yet shunned by the industry at the height of her popularity after vigorously speaking out for black rights (see: Mississippi Goddam), she evolved as an artist in parallel with the revolution of television; first appearing in grainy monochrome and then in saturated technicolour. In the 12-year period between 1959 and 1971, she released 16 studio albums. In the years that followed, before her death in 2003, she released just four more.

Pastel Blues

These days, the idea of albums is virtually defunct, Drakefied to an incoherent heap of songs occasionally “dropped” like laundry, to be worn or discarded at the listeners behest. But as with other great artists, if the extent of Simone’s depth and duende is to be appreciated, it is essential to listen to her albums — the home of her authorship.

Pastel Blues is a nine track, 36-minute LP, mainly of covers and blues standards. It was released in October 1965, eight months after Malcolm X was assassinated, seven months after Bloody Sunday in Selma, and two months after the Voting Rights Act became law. Arguably, it arrived at the height of the movement. Nina Simone was 32. Just imagine.

Although the title suggests something soft and light, underneath the label, the substance is preternatural. As you listen, watch the image on the cover transform from a gentle gaze into a pointed glare; a stare in stereo. Altogether, it is a marvellous enunciation of Nina Simone’s darkness, with which she writhed in body, mind, and soul to give us some of the most memorable artworks of the 20th century. Pastel Blues gives her duende its due.

Listen to Pastel Blues on Apple Music

Listen to Pastel Blues on Spotify (1965 Live Version)

Listen to Pastel Blues on YouTube

Track-By-Track

Be My Husband

It opens with Be My Husband, featuring lyrics incidentally written by Simone’s own husband (and manager), Andrew Stroud. Slightly off-kilter, echoey, four-beat stamping and clapping, heightened by the tight splash of a high-hat, introduces a languid, yet driving pace. With purity of purpose, Simone’s voice drawls intensely into her opening repeated demand: Be my husband and I’ll be your wife / Love and honour you the rest of your life.

It suggests a woman pleading for the hand of her lover, committing to do all he would expect of a wife: If you want me to cook and sew / Outside of you there is no place to go. In return, she asks him only to curb his wandering eye: Stick the promise man you made me / That you stay away from Rosalie, yeah. This is presumably the intended (somewhat biased) perspective of the lyricist. But the way Simone sings it, with improvised shrieks dropping into deep, bassy groans, something quite different is suggested.

Nina Simone & Andrew Stroud, photographer unknown.

At this point, Simone was four years into an emotionally and physically abusive marriage with Stroud. Knowing this, it has far more resonance to picture her in a kitchen, staring down a boorish, unsatisfactory, and unsatisfying man; stomping on a linoleum floor, and throwing him a powerful, sacred ultimatum — give me what you promised. To imagine it otherwise is to imagine how Ed Sheeran might perform it — with the frivolousness of a millennial wedding on a sunny day in Surrey, and all the stamping, clapping vigour of a gaggle of giggling, inebriated aunts.

Furthermore, Be My Husband is effectively a re-worked chain gang song from the segregated south — a version of Rosie by the Inmates of Parchman Farm Penitentiary recorded in 1947 Mississippi by ethnomusicologist, Alan Lomax (and notoriously sampled by… well, well, well… hello again, David Guetta). The original lyrics ring out: Be my woman, gal, I’ll be your man… Stick to the promise girl that you made me / Won’t got married til’ I go free. Even aside from Simone’s interpretation, its genesis as a song of imprisonment immediately gives it a grimmer tone.

Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out

As it bows to track two, Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out, the heavy opening of the album is extended. A blues standard written in 1923, it was popularised by Bessie Smith’s 1929 recording and re-introduced to a new audience by Eric Clapton, who performed it throughout his career. Sam Cooke, Otis Reading, Janis Joplin, Bobby Womack, John Lennon, Derek and the Dominos and Duane & Gregg Allman all put their spin on it, with wildly varying degrees of quality, duende and notoriety.

It begins deceptively upbeat: Well once I lived the life of a millionaire / spending my money I didn’t care / Taking my friends out for a mighty good time. Simone’s version is no different as she lightly pads major key piano chords, but what immediately sets her rendition apart is the tremble in her voice. It sounds like she is singing through tears, not least when the song reaches its sobering bridge: Nobody wants you / Nobody needs you.

In Simone’s case, the song became painfully prescient. Following her fall from grace within the music industry, she left for Barbados in 1970, where she had an affair with then Prime Minister, Errol Barrow. Her subsequent divorce from Stroud limited access to her income, which he, as her manager, controlled. Also, due to an arrest warrant for taxes she withheld in protest at the Vietnam War, Simone was unable to return to the US, so ended up first in Liberia, then living across Europe. With little money to live from and few relationships to speak of, for a time, she came to epitomise the song.

End of the Line

The first fully original song on the album, End of the Line is initially carried by another deception of positiveness, this time through its melody; romantic and light despite the lyrics: This is the end of the line / I’ve clearly read every sign / The way you glance at me / Indifferently / And take your hand from mine. Such is the flowing nostalgia of the tune, it is plausible to imagine the same song with all words made positive (e.g. The way you glance at me / So happily / And place your hand in mine).

Divisible into two parts, the first has the feel of Simone sipping a martini in a Rogers & Hammerstein bar (perhaps offering some musical theatrical hope of salvation). The second, however, gives way to resigned sorrow, over a steady, rumba beat. Aside from showcasing Simone’s prodigious classical piano-playing ability — albeit only through twinkling, floral runs — the richness of her vocal tone spills forth, smoothly and lusciously, particularly in the second half. While lyrically it lacks the forcefulness of other tracks, its simplicity opens the door to Simone’s abundant musicality.

Trouble in Mind

Written in 1924, Trouble in Mind is another blues standard, but given its title, after three tracks of despair, it surprisingly brings a degree of levity.

The original lyrics (as sung by Dinah Washington, Janis Joplin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ella Fitzgerald, Marianne Faithful, Johnny Cash and original recording artist Thelma La Vizzo) are far darker than this version. Typically, the singer, wrestling with the irrepressible demons of their psyche, contemplates suicide by train: I’m gonna lay my head / On some lonesome railroad line / Let the 2:19 train / Ease my troubled mind. Yet on Pastel Blues, it never gets that far.

While refrain of the song always concludes: I won’t be blue always / ‘Cause the sun’s gonna shine in my back door someday, Simone’s version leans more heavily on those lyrics than others’ versions; giving it a more hopeful perspective. She also dresses the music with a quicker, cheerier pace. Furthermore, instead of seeking the certainty and finality of a gruesome suicide, she resolves only that: I’m going down to the river / Gonna get me a rocking chair / If the Lord don’t help me / I’m gonna rock away from here.

Given she was be known to perform the full lyrics on other occasions, it is an interesting choice to uplift them on Pastel Blues. In terms of the album’s full narrative, however, it makes sense to offer a moment of optimism, keeping us on an undulating journey of emotion, rather than wallowing solely in melancholy.

Tell Me More and More and Then Some

The dynamic changes once again in Tell Me More and More and Then Some, as Simone hints towards her unapologetic, simmering, sexuality. Sex is known to have often enthralled her — as she wrote in her diary, “My attitude toward sex was that we should be having it all the time.”

Originally recorded in 1940 by Billie Holiday, Simone tweaks the lyrics to make the titular line more demanding, more desirous: I want more, more and then some. Accompanied by quivering, raunchy harmonica and clanging, insistent piano chords, Simone’s phrasing and emphasis draws lustfulness from the lyrics: You know how I love that stuff / Whisper from now on / To doomsday / But I never no no no no, ooh / I never, no I never, will get enough. It’s an erotic elaboration on Holiday’s already sultry interpretation, loading the request for whispered sweet nothings with a throbbing, sexual overtone.

Chilly Winds Don’t Blow

Chilly Winds Don’t Blow acts as a natural, also largely optimistic companion to Trouble in Mind, making Tell Me More and More and Then Some the bawdy, thick-cut meat between two, forward-looking slices of bread. That said, the song was previously released by Simone as single in 1959, as an even more upbeat spiritual, with denser orchestration and less of her signature vocal style.

On Pastel Blues, however, it is likely sung from a position of matured disappointment towards the unending hostility experienced by black Americans. With a sparser arrangement and greater vocal freedom, the new context is pointedly conveyed: There will be red roses round my door / I’m going where they’ll welcome me for sure, oh baby / Where the chilly winds, they don’t blow. Notably, as her piano rumbles, mimicking the sound of a rolling, cold wind, Simone also refers to her own maturity, as a woman. In this new version, she no longer wants to go where her father waits for her. Instead, it’s her daddy who will be waiting.

1968 © David Redfern

Ain’t No Use

Recorded in 1959 by Joe Williams and Count Basie, Ain’t No Use manifested as a break-up song. In that bright, brassy version, Williams croons at the opening: Ain’t no use of hanging round / Ain’t no use I put you down / There’s no love left / In my heart for you. In Simone’s rendition, the subject of the warning is much more ambiguous. When considered alongside Chilly Winds Don’t Blow and the tracks that follow, Simone instead implies a sense of exasperation, perhaps a desire to withdraw from broken American society, or the increasingly hostile music industry. She opens not with fallen love but accusation and fatigue: Ain’t no use baby / I’m leaving the scene / Ain’t no use baby / You’re too doggone mean / Yes I’m tired of paying dues / Having the blues / Hitting bad news.

To this point, Pastel Blues is a solid, often special, blues album, but here it really begins to soar; marking it apart. The underlying anguish of the blues is of course ingrained in the genre, but with Simone, her duende, fraught personal life, and civil rights activism, a dramatic narrative acceleration begins to emerge in the gap between Ain’t No Use and Strange Fruit (and again between Strange Fruit and Sinnerman). Without realising, tracks one to eight have been quietly coaxing you towards the edge of a cliff. The final two rip through you, forcing you over the edge before you can pull back. Amidst the silence between the songs, everything that preceded becomes re-contextualised with a deeper, darker tone. Embrace the fall.

Strange Fruit

The majesty of Strange Fruit is well documented — in 1999, Time named it the best song of the century. It was written by Abel Meeropol — a white, Jewish sometime Communist, and real-life MacGuffin, who intersects with numerous historically important features of 20th century America, but never appears at their forefront.

As a student and then teacher at Dewitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, he crossed paths with a young James Baldwin and numerous other luminaries of American culture. After seeing a photograph of a lynching, he felt compelled to write; originally penning the words as an anti-lynching poem. Published in a teacher’s union publication, it concisely described the horror he had seen through the sinister metaphor of a seemingly innocuous fruit tree. He later set it to music and presented it to Billie Holiday, who recorded her socially and sonically remarkable version in 1937. In 1945, he gave up teaching to become a full-time songwriter under the pen name Lewis Allen (the first names of his two, tragically stillborn sons), most famously writing Frank Sinatra’s Oscar winning, patriotic short film and accompanying song, The House I Live in. Not only that, but in 1953 he adopted the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg — a Jewish couple famously executed for spying on America for the Soviet Union.

Abel Meeropol with sons Michael and Robert Meeropol in 1954, via Robert Meeropol

As for the song itself, if Holiday’s recording is classical — a regretful, tender jazz lament — Simone’s is something more modern, more openly enraged; a cutting, resonant howl; transcending genre. The arrangement is minimal and masterful at once, with often dissonant piano chords treading like distressed steps through fallen leaves towards the horrifying tree at the agonising conclusion. It climaxes with a literal wail as the end nears: Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck / For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck / For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop / Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Its intensity lent itself perfectly to the sample on Kanye West’s scorching rebuke of destructive celebrity relationships, Blood On the Leaves.

Sinnerman

Simone’s Sinnerman is virtually unrecognisable from the first, folky version recorded by the Les Baxter Orchestra in 1956. Baxter adapted (read: plagiarised) the song from On the Judgement Day, by the Sensational Nightingales, which in turn takes elements from the 1924 No Hiding Place Down Here, by the Old South Quartette. But much like Jeff Buckley’s version of Leonard Cohen’s similarly spiritual Hallelujah, Simone’s version remains, and will forever remain, the definitive iteration; the most copied, covered, celebrated and recognised; never bettered beyond that point.

As her Sinnerman evolves, it reveals the preceding short, eight tracks to have been little more than an (excellent) overture to this — the epic, operatic finale. At ten and a half minutes, it makes up nearly a third of the entire album. Brace yourself.

After the silent gap following Strange Fruit — another inhale between urgent roars — the first few bars are timeless, perhaps some of the most familiar notes ever recorded. Piano keys clamber over one another, skipping like a broken record. A foot taps out a light beat in the background. The percussion joins: a double-time, racing, hi-hat heart rate, yielding only to the occasional heavy, melodious thump of a double bass. Simone enters, Oh, Sinnerman, where you gonna run to? / Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?

1967 © Tony Gale

After Strange Fruit, the question takes on new meaning. Picture Simone in a deep purple Cadillac Deville n hot pursuit of a fleeing lynch mob; hood down, foot down, brow furrowed, engine roaring, steering on the edge of control. This toying with tumbling gives the song its energy. Like running down a steep slope, with the slightest misstep, all would be lost. As the beats impatiently trip over the piano notes, it feels like it’s constantly accelerating; never settling into a regimented pace.

After erupting into a minute-long call and response of: Power!, Sinnerman changes gear. A jangling, twanging guitar breathes heavily in contemplation of the next charge. The music fades, leaving only intimidating clapping, until the piano returns most wonderfully with a couple of pleasingly apparent (yet well-intended) mistakes; three or four notes missed, misplaced, or hesitated over as the tune searches again for its order among the tumult. When found, it resurges with renewed purpose; Simone audibly hyperventilating in anxious anticipation: So I run to the river, it was boiling / I run to the sea, it was boiling / All on that day. Judgement Day has arrived, and the devil is everywhere.

(Should this masterpiece really ever be used to sell hatchbacks?)

It ends with a pleading prayer, agitated piano chords and chaotic drums: Don’t you know, I need you Lord?, Simone cries. Whether the prayer is answered, we’ll never know, but as the percussion takes over and batters us into a final, frenzied submission, it feels too late.

Exhausted and exhilarated, Pastel Blues is at its end. But within it, Nina Simone’s duende forever persists.

#music #women #art #nina simone #album #race #civil rights #duende #1960s music #jazz #soul

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vampyr-bite · 4 years

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hI! can you take a picture of that Sounds article and post it? i kinda want to read it lol

Hey! The archive I’m using at the moment is text only (thanks corona) but I’ve pasted the article below. Hope that’s good and u enjoy and u have a lovely day!

Pete Makowski, ‘Def Leppard: The Leppard Doesn't Sleep Tonight’, Sounds, 6 February 1982

ROUGH NOTES/ROUGH NOTES (Prelude)

THE SOUND of Ross Halfin's bouts of self induced vomiting...Steve Clarke smashing his guitar in a Blackmoresque frenzy...The black dude with a gold tooth who offers out cocaine in a packed McDonalds at eight o'clock in the morning...Sleepless nights, trying to get some shuteye on the tour bus which due to the lack of any form of suspension feels like a plane in the state of permanent turbulence...Waking up fully clothed feeling like an over abused cocktail shaker...Nights spent paralytic in bowling alleys and truck stops willing the hours away – If the rednecks with arms the size of those slabs of meat that adorn butcher shop windows don't kill you, the infra red fried chilli will...This is life on the road!

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT TEXAS RADIO AND THE BIG BEAT!

The Lone Star State is a place one could easily write volumes about and still nobody would believe half the stories you told them. It's a proverbial utopia and lunatic asylum rolled into one. Plenty of sunshine and healthy-looking women; in fact every form of debauchery is available at your beck and call.

This was the perfect location for Def Leppard to close their tour which had proved to be a long and arduous trek. The merciless blows endured during the six months of gigging are cushioned by the fact that the Leppard entourage are basically a closely knit family-like affair. Tour manager Robert Alan (brother of drummer, Richard) also doubles as sound engineer, and token Irish lunatic lighting man 'Famous' is a typically stocky, cheerful chap who spends half his time dreaming about his homeland where he dreams his days away with fishing rod in one hand and a proverbial pint of the dark velvet brew in the other. The band and crew eat, sleep and defecate together giving the whole thing a warm congenial atmosphere.

As I've mentioned in a previous feature the group and entourage are all so young it makes one want to retch with envy. And they are all far from being as blasé (as one might expect) in fact surprisingly enough they still come over as avid fans, although their attitude to work is surprisingly professional and they put every iota of energy they've got into their stage performances, giving headlining act Blackfoot a good run for their money.

After all these months of hard graft Leppard are beginning to reap their just rewards, meeting with ecstatic audiences at almost every show. In fact their performances are met with nothing less than fanmania from a crowd that is not short of wholesome looking nubiles who squeal in frenzied approval at everyone of Leppard's moves.

While the average Blackfoot fan can be seen lumbering around the auditorium wearing the almost uniform check shirt, hiking up his baggy denim pants, clutching some obscene piece of junk food in one hand and the obligatory doobie aka spliffette in the other, The Leppard-ites in contrast are a new breed of fresh faced kids out looking for a whole new brand of kicks.

Although Texas is supposed to be a stronghold for Blackfoot (who to be fair are a hardworking road band with no shortage of talent and energy and as people are very amiable, good time folk from Jacksonville who really enjoy their crazed life style – these dudes do walk it like they talk it) there's no doubt that this time round the lil' ol' band from Sheffield made a big impression on the locals and will be guaranteed a headlining spot the next time round.

Their best shows on the tour were undoubtedly at the tropical seaside resort town of Corpus Christi and in Houston – which is undoubtedly one of their biggest strongholds in Texas shitkickin' territory.

"Home Of The Encores" is the sign emblazoned outside the Ritz, which in reality from the inside comes over more like a pokey old cinema that should have been condemned many moons ago.

The backstage area resemble a derelict bombsite and the roadcrew were apprehensive about the voltage system, the main concern being whether the place had enough juice to feed the vast backline Leppard had put together for this tour.

At first a feeling of despondency hung thick, like an onimous cloud, in the air and people were beginning to draw straws to decide who was going to lynch the promoter. Feelings didn't improve after they saw the bathroom facilities, that resembled something that harked from the dark ages. But once they took to the stage Joe Elliot and crew demonstrated where their real commitment lay and amidst the sweat arid sawdust blasted their way through a set that had the audience frothing at the gills.

Powered along by Rick Allen's tireless drum work that gelled with Rick Savage's fluid and thunderous basslines, the frontline barrage guitar attack of Pete Willis and Steve Clarke projected the excitement and innovative soloing that was ever present with Lizzy in their Live And Dangerous days.

Elliot becomes a more proficient frontman as the days go by. With one foot on the monitor he beckons the punters on, working them into a state of euphoric frenzy while belting out the lyrics to such epics as 'Let It Roll' and 'Lady Strange' with effortless ease.

He had the people totally on his side during 'High And Dry' and rafters shook as the auditorium burst into a chorus of "Saturday night, high and dry". It was this night that convinced me without a shadow of a doubt that Leppard are going to be a giant force to be reckoned with in the next couple of years.

NEXT DAY

AS THE bus jerked its way into Houston the local radio station seemed to continually plug the evening's show touting Leppard as one of the Eighties' brightest hopes. Meanwhile, back in the sleeping area Joe Elliot sat leaning against his bunk perusing his evergrowing collection of cut out and bootleg records, proudly announcing that he almost owned the entire Matt The Hoople catalogue. The rest of the group attempted to catch up with the strain of non-stop touring by getting as much sleep as they could in between the bumps on the road that shook the road-battered vehicle with the effect of a series of land mines.

Like the rest of Texas, Houston is overwhelming and unlimited in size and possibilities. The general atmosphere seems to be warm and welcoming throughout the State although this place as it turned out seems to be that much crazier.

The first chore of the day was to attend an instore signing, a common on the road practice which involved the group going to a local record store where they meet their fans, converse and sign autographs. The ritual was performed at the gargantuan Texas Record And Tapes Store, which can only be described as a proverbial Santa Claus grotto for vinyl freaks, featuring a dazzling array of parapheranalia and owned by the very amiable and over generous Geoff Hamer, otherwise known as 'General Doo Dah' – who is without a doubt a true gonzo at heart.

As it happened the band drew a record amount of people, in fact there were more fans here than at the previous day's concert (which by the way was sold out) and that evening the group performed like troupers proving they had Houston like the rest of the US, so it seems, in the palm of their sweaty paws.

The rest of the night was spent celebrating with an end of the tour party that included an Awards Ceremony hosted by yours truly The Grand Toastmaster who presented prizes to members of this deranged crew for various offences some too obscene and illegal to mention in this respectable organ. This was followed by a totally incoherent and over the top night of debauchery, courtesy of 'General Doo Dah' which took myself, Rick Savage and Steve Clarke into the land of Never Never, making any episode of Fear And Loathing look like the teddy bears picnic. A champion finale to a fine tour.

THE INTERVIEW/A MORE SERIOUS FINALE

"We don't worry about England anymore, we're just trying to put across the point that everybody's missed out and that is that we've been shit on and people have said things about us that are a lot of bullshit." – Joe Elliot

"I always look forward to playing England 'cause that's where we're from like, but I don't think that it will do us any good at the moment because the kids, the kids meaning people like me, I'm not sure whether they want to listen to us at the moment...which is a bit of a shame because they're missing out on a good thing." – Rick Savage

WHILE LEPPARD continue to 'wow out' crowds in the US, they still seem to be at the butt of abuse as far as certain British media and fans are concerned. While groups like Saxon and Iron Maiden seem to be able to travel the world and lead a grandiose lifestyle and still retain that dubious street credibility factor, anything that Leppard do is regarded as being pompous and the general consensus of opinion from the average anglophile headbanger seems to be that they are egotistical popstars who sold their souls to the American rock and roll machine.

Which couldn't be further from the truth. It's hardly surprising that Leppard feel jaded and bitter with their audiences back home. I personally believe that they are producing some of the finest high quality heavy rock sounds around today.

They write songs, not just riffs with words loosely attached to them, with a sophistication and flair that puts some of their elder statesmen to shame and they knock the average so called NWOBHM ('scuse me while I wash my mouth out) into a cocked hat and it's unfortunate that they have to travel across the water to get an audience that actually appreciates this fact.

When we conducted this interview, the band were beginning to recover from the lunacy of an American tour which began earlier last year with Ozzy Osbourne, and the strain of the roadlife was beginning to make itself apparent. This nomadic way of life can be as strenuous as it is exciting and it may sound crazy when you hear a band yearning for the simple things in life like a good old English breakfast and a copy of the Daily Mirror, but it all makes sense once you get caught up in the insanity they've endured since the release of High'n'Dry which is already winning them Stateside acclaim.

Leppard are undoubtedly on the threshold of breaking America: everywhere they play the audience reaction is frenzied almost to the point of being rabid, but as it became obviously apparent on this drunken night Def Leppard still miss their home and feel slightly more than sore about the lack of respect they get from the press and punters alike, and seem to be constantly trying to find a reason for this unexplainable feeling of malice.

"As far as England is concerned people have got something against Def Leppard for purely non musical reasons," explained Joe Elliot, amidst a background noise of chinking glasses and people yelling for more beverage, "40,000 people bought our first album, but only 20,000 people bought High'n'Dry, you're not telling me the other 20,000 didn't buy it because they didn't like the album. I believe they didn't buy it because they read the article in Sounds saying that Leppard had changed their spots. They followed fads."

"American people don't follow fads", announced guitarist Pete Willis, "They go for what they like while England seems to follow trends. Foreigner and Fleetwood Mac are good, they write good songs while bands like Motorhead are a load of shit...don't say that because I don't want Lemmy to beat me up."

While I don't agree with the last part of this statement, I do feel that the GB is basically puppeteered by fashions which ultimately dictate taste and the majority of which come over as nothing more than a grand parade of lifeless packaging, including the new league of HM groups who I personally feel have a very limited lifespan with their generally dated and usually moronic stance.

Elliott: "There's two things you can do when you're in a band. You can go out and do what you wanna do, that's not trying to be pretentious to anybody and that's just satisfying your artistic temperament or whatever you want to call it for the want of a better saying. Or you can do things like Saxon...I don't believe anybody but Biff Byford would want lyrics like that on an album! I mean you're not telling me that he's writing those words so that everybody from people out of a mental institution to people with 'A' levels can understand them?"

"I could write lyrics like 'Denim And Leather', that's the kind of stuff a drummer could write. I write lyrics that are on a street level and that everybody can understand but they're on a different line. I'm not afraid to hide the influences that I've got."

It's a well known fact that Leppard were the first band of its genre to actually stick its collective neck out, undertake major headlining tours, sign a major record deal and venture across the water. Other bands as they pointed out followed after learning from their mistakes and generally avoiding the pitfalls somebody had to make as a kick off. They're also a rarity when you consider they haven't had any line up changes since they established themselves.

At this moment in time the group are preparing material for an album which will again be produced by 'Mutt' Lange. I wondered if they were at all perturbed by the comparisons drawn between them and AC/DC.

"I don't even think AC/DC are that hot!", exclaimed Rick Savage.

Elliot: "The only comparison is that we've got the same producer and because of that you're likely to get the same sound. We didn't use him because he produced a big album and in turn we thought we'd get a big album, we just think he's the best producer around. Anyhow, no way could AC/DC write a song like 'Bringing On The Heartbreak' or 'Switch 625'."

Savage: "We'd have been a big band in England if Mutt had produced On Through The Night because it wouldn't have got the slagging it did. It was still a better album than people made out for all its supposed commercialism for the USA. We were on the crest of a wave when that album came out and the reviews that album got, particularly in Sounds, were so bad and so anti the attitude bands like Saxon and Motorhead and their fans have got, that we totally lost it.

"If England had accepted us like they should have accepted us, things might be a bit different. I think we're a lot better than bands that are accepted more freely than us."

Here, here! C'mon you pommy bastards here's your chance to rectify...And JOIN THE ROCK BRIGADE!!!

#this is very long sjkfhs #asks #Anonymous #Def Leppard

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tcm · 5 years

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Remembering Albert Finney by Susan King

Albert Finney, who died in February 2019 at the age of 82, may have been an acclaimed Hollywood star, but he never played the Hollywood game.

When I had the great and good fortune to interview him 20 years ago for the Los Angeles Times, the charming Finney explained why he didn’t leave England behind and move to La La Land when 1963’s Oscar-winning TOM JONES made him an international star.

“I felt after TOM and TWO FOR THE ROAD (’67), I didn’t want to go shackle myself with any sense or idea that I was a movie star,” he noted. “I wanted to go any way that I wanted to go, and I wanted the freedom to do it.”

And he always stuck by his guns.

Finney earned five Oscar nominations—TOM JONES, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (’74), THE DRESSER (’83), UNDER THE VOLCANO (’84) and ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000)—but he never attended an Oscar ceremony.

After enduring a long screen test for David Lean’s Oscar-winning 1962 epic LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, Finney turned down the title role because he didn’t want to be tied to a five-year contract with the film’s veteran producer Sam Spiegel. According to Finney’s biographer, Quentin Falk in his 1992 book Albert Finney In Character, the actor told Spiegel, “I don’t know where I want to be in five years’ time – or tomorrow for that matter.”

He even turned down a chance in 2000 to be knighted because he said such honors were a way of “perpetuating snobbery.”

Falk noted that Finney was barely 20 when theater critics hailed him as the new Laurence Olivier: “Yet instead of pursuing either mantle, he became a millionaire.” Finney took profit points on TOM JONES “and made love to beautiful women on several continents.”

Adding, “To some he is still the leading actor of his generation; to others, though, he has suffered an ambition bypass. To even severer critics, he appears to have remained cheerfully indolent, an almost willing failing to fulfill the remarkable early promise.”

I beg to differ. He may not have made a plethora of movies and those he did weren’t always gems, but he was always fascinating to watch.

Finney was one of several acclaimed performers known as the “angry young men,” including Alan Bates, Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and Terence Stamp, who came to fame in theater and movies in the 1950s and early ‘60s in the British “kitchen sink” dramas made famous in 1956 with John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger, directed by Tony Richardson for film in 1959.

Finney earned a BAFTA for best actor for his first starring role in the dour, gritty 1960 drama SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING, directed by Karel Reisz and produced by Richardson.

Though some contemporary critics believe the film may be dated, there’s no denying Finney’s star-making performance as Arthur Seaton, a young man working in a bike factory in Nottingham who spends his off-hours drinking in the pubs while carrying on an affair with a married woman (Rachel Roberts) as he also romances a young woman (Shirley Anne Field).

Then came TOM JONES, a rollicking, sexy romp directed by Richardson and penned by Osborne from Henry Fielding’s classic novel in which Finney played the sexiest of rogues. Finney earned his first Oscar nomination for his flawlessly funny and, well, hot performance and the film went on to receive four Oscars including Best Film, Director and Screenplay.

But instead of cashing in on the success of TOM JONES, Finney traveled for nearly a year and then resurfaced in the rarely seen 1964 thriller NIGHT MUST FALL, based on Emlyn Williams hit play. Directed by Reisz, Finney is fine as Danny, a charming young man who is actually an axe murderer who keeps a head in a hat box. But the film just didn’t come together, and it was axed by critics and audiences.

My favorite Finney film is 1967’s TWO FOR THE ROAD, an exceptional romantic comedy drama that explores a decade in the life of a married couple (Finney and Audrey Hepburn). Penned by Frederic Raphael, directed by Stanley Donen and featuring a haunting score by Henry Mancini, TWO FOR THE ROAD is seductive, romantic and sophisticated. Finney and Hepburn have chemistry to spare and for good reason; the two fell in love while making the film.

Finney seemed to have a lot of fun as Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge in the hit 1970 musical SCROOGE, and he then earned his second Oscar nomination for his deliciously eccentric turn as Agatha Christie’s rotund Belgian sleuth in Hercule Poirot in Sidney Lumet’s stylish 1974 MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.

But for most of the 1970s, he concentrated on theater. From 1972-75, he directed plays at the Royal Court Theatre where he was an artistic director, and from 1975 he appeared in several plays at the National Theatre.

The only time I ever saw Finney on a TV chat show was during this time in 1977, when he recorded an album for Motown of all labels, Albert Finney’s Album, for which he wrote the songs. The disc was soon relegated to the bargain bins.

Finney returned to films full force in the 1980s, most notably playing Daddy Warbucks in John Huston’s lavish and laborious 1982 musical ANNIE, as well as in Peter Yates’ THE DRESSER, for which he received his third Oscar nomination, as an aging, hammy stage actor whose dresser (Tom Courtenay) tries to keep the actor’s life and career from falling into disarray.

My favorite Finney performance is in Huston’s UNDER THE VOLCANO (’84), based on Malcolm Lowry’s semi-autobiographical novel. He earned his fourth lead actor nomination for his naked, heart-wrenching performance as an alcoholic former British consul in a small Mexican town on the Day of the Dead in 1938. It’s a performance that will be seared in your memory for a long time.

Finney began the 21st century on a high note with his Oscar-nominated turn as the caring lawyer boss of ERIN BROCKOVICH (Julia Roberts) in Steven Soderbergh’s smart 2000 drama. Two years later, he picked up a BAFTA and Emmy for his full-blooded turn as Winston Churchill in the HBO film THE GATHERING STORM. Of course, he didn’t attend the Emmy ceremony.

He disappeared from view in 2007, returning five years later in THE BOURNE LEGACY and the James Bond blockbuster SKYFALL. He took time away from acting due to his battle of kidney cancer. SKYFALL ended up being his last film and he stole every scene from under the nose of 007 himself, Daniel Craig.

I still remember him sitting at a small table on the patio at the posh Santa Monica hotel Shutters, talking to me in the late afternoon over a cup of coffee. There were no airs with Finney. He was still a working-class guy who just happened to be one of the greatest actors around.

I asked him what it was like to work in films and TV in England in the 1960s.

“It was [a creative time],” he replied. “At that time, we thought, that’s how it is. You don’t realize in the time that it was a very special time. In the 1950s, suddenly novelists started to write about ordinary people in a way that hadn’t been written about before. Then dramatists did, and then there were performers who played those people, and then there were the Beatles. Things became possible for people that hadn’t seemed possible before.”

#Albert Finney #Tom Jones #Two for the Road #actor #TCM #Turner Classic Movies #Susan King

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belizedeservesbetter · 5 years

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Hercules is Bursting At the Seams With Potential

or, It’s Roger Bart’s World and We’re Just Living In It

Short Version: Right now it’s good but not great HOWEVER with some work this could be really spectacular

Long Version:

The production of Hercules presented by Public Works did exactly what it was meant to do. It brought in crowds, put the entirety of the Public Works community (all 200 of them) onstage and showed producers this is a viable project worth pursuing, be it on Broadway, a Disney park/cruise ship or simply available for licensing.

In all, I liked it. But I didn’t love it, which was a little disappointing to be honest, especially because Hercules is my all time favorite Disney movie. But it is easily (easily!) fixable and could be amazing if they put the work into it.

I’m gonna divide this review/commentary/whatever into three parts:

1. The Good

2. The Bad

3. What I Think They Should Do Moving Forward

So here we go. And I guess I should say there’s going to be a bunch of spoilers here, but if you’re reading this I’m assuming you’ve seen/loved the movie so you already know the plot.

1. The Good

Every moment of this show is filled with an extraordinary amount of heart. You can tell everyone involved with this production loves the source material and wants it to soar. You can tell the entire cast is having a blast and loves being there. The material itself is full of heart because that’s exactly how it was written. The leader of Public Works made a speech at the beginning saying how Hercules is about what it means to be a hero and she’s exactly right. That message is the beating heart of the show.

The length of the show was also pretty nice. My problem with a lot of these film adaptations, Disney ones especially, is that they take a relatively short film and fill it with filler songs/moments in order to fill a 2.5 hour show. Frozen suffered from this. It didn’t need to be that long. However, Hercules was only 90 minutes with no intermission! There was little to no filler! The story, while at times a bit clunky in the beginning, doesn’t take any scenic routes to fill time. This kept the plot moving at a mostly good pace and I was never bored or looking at the song list to see how much longer we had left. I could focus completely on the cast and show without feeling like it was dragging on forever.

And the cast was so good too. Krysta Rodriguez has always been a fav of mine and I was thrilled to see her playing this role. She was fun and spunky and was in great voice. If anything, she didn’t have too much to work with.

Jelani Alladin was FANTASTIC. He was the perfect Hercules. If producers decide to move forward with this show and take it to Broadway, Alladin better stay. He was charming and fun and funny and sang the hell out of “Go the Distance.” But what really impressed me about him was the dramatic moments and how personal and impactful they felt. There’s this great moment when Hercules talks to Zeus and Hera after becoming the hero of Thebes where he breaks down and has his wonderful moment with Phil and that whole scene was so good. He really lets you see Hercules’ insecurities at that moment and the way he was able to be subtle but still project to an outdoor audience of over a thousand was remarkable.

James Monroe Iglehart was great as Phil, as was Jeff Hiller and Nelson Chimilio as Panic and Pain respectively.

The costumes were really cool (with one glaring exception but we’ll get to that later). I especially enjoyed Hades/the gods costumes, because they looked enough like their movie counterparts while still being unique to the show. The way they did Hades’ makeup was super cool, like they pulled him right into the real world. Likewise, the Muses had some really cool costume changes throughout and they all looked amazing.

One of the more impressive aspects of the show was the puppetry and special effects, which felt grounded in a more Greek theatre kind of style and I thought it worked very well. The puppetry of the monsters specifically was super cool. The Hydra looked fantastic, as well as the three Titans. This production of course wasn’t given a lot of money, but much like The Lightning Thief, they worked with it. They were in these cool pieces that different actors held and when they came together they looked great. They were bright and bold and drew on older theatre techniques which I liked a lot. The special effects, especially in the latter half, were also good. How they did the Underworld was simple but effective and made a wonderful stage picture, especially the moment when Hercules saves Meg from Hades. How they made his life string turn gold looked really cool as well.

In terms of musical numbers, what worked best was the songs we all know and love. “Go the Distance” was simply staged, which made the emotion of the song far more effective. “Zero to Hero” was a blast and took all the best parts from the movie and put them on stage. “I Won’t Say (I’m In Love)” was divine, just as I expected it to be. “A Star Is Born” was genuinely uplifting and joyous, since they brought out all 200 members of the cast and everyone was so happy to be there and it was the perfect way to end the show.

There were 5 new songs, and while I wasn’t a fan of most of them, I really really liked “Bolts of Thunder” and thought it was a fun way to musicalize the big fight scenes with the Titans towards the end. The Muses also wore these incredible 90s girl group inspired jumpsuits that were spectacular.

Speaking of 90s girl group Muses, there were two moments when they heavily channeled this vibe and I wish they did more of it. “Bolts of Thunder” with the jump suits and the reprise of “Gospel Truth” after “One Last Hope” where they wore these late 80s/early 90s workout video outfits. Those moments were artistically bold and really emphasized what worked in the original movie, but I’m gonna talk more about that later in part 3.

Of course my favorite part of this production was Roger Bart. He stole the entire show. Whenever Hades is on stage he has the best lines and the funniest moments and he just has a way of making every line feel both biting and passive aggressive. He was absolutely incredible and the perfect choice for Hades. This production gave us more Hades than the original movie, but I wanted even more Hades. Bart has always been an actor near and dear to my heart (Young Frankenstein was my jam) and I was so glad to see him onstage again.

2. The Bad

Unfortunately, a good portion of the show feels clunky, both stylistically and in content. The book was perfectly serviceable, taking a good portion of its lines from the films. But it felt too slow in the first half and too fast in the second, which was also when things got more interesting. For example, there’s a whole song about Hercules not feeling accepted at the Agora and there’s a long scene after that song but later on when Hercules defeats Hades, that takes literally 2 seconds. Likewise, the show over explains certain exposition points (and is not subtle in any way, shape or form) and doesn’t explain other things. Though really there isn’t much exposition at all, as this show assumes you’ve watched the movie dozens of times.

That doesn’t always work well.

I went with a friend who hadn’t seen it in a while and afterwards he asked about what happened to Meg that made her sign her soul over to Hades. I knew because I’ve seen the movie so many times, but the show kind of brushes right over it. If you’ve never seen the movie before, which will definitely be the case with some people, it might be a little difficult to keep up with.

Stylistically, this show was all over the place.

In my opinion, Public Works presented three versions of Hercules:

1. The gospel version

2. The 90s nostalgia version

3. The Greek inspired version

I’m going to go more into this later, but these three versions would have worked if they could have seamlessly blended into each other. As of now, it’s incredibly jarring and distracting and would sometimes take me right out of the show.

For example! Hercules wore a traditional toga. Meg wore this

Yes this is Mal from Disney’s Descendants and yes Meg wore basically this but she had shorter hair and purple heel boots instead of gray. Hercules’ toga and this together looked almost absurd to be honest.

And side note: Disney has been on a kick recently where they think pants equals feminism? Someone needs to tell Disney that women can wear dresses and still be feminist

Anyways

The choreography was pretty basic, but it’s hard to fault them this when the choreography is meant to be for a crowd of 200 people with ages varying from 5 - 80. There were a lot of step touch and wave moments. There was one really cool dance break in “Zero to Hero” that made me think about how cool some of these big production numbers could be if they got some good dancers in there.

I wish the Muses were better. They were so low energy during “Gospel Truth,” which made the evening start off on a lower note than it should have.

The pop culture references were really weird and out of place, mostly because of their specificity. The pop culture references in the movie are purposely vague and more “modern” references than pop culture, which makes the movie timeless. The pop culture references here might date the show in the future. There’s two that stood out specifically, one being when Hercules says “I know the Wobble!” before doing it, the other when Panic starts doing the Hercules Mulligan rap (you know the one) from Hamilton when Hades asks him if he knows Hercules.

The rest of the new songs weren’t great either, and I’m gonna talk about each of them separately

“To Be Human” - This one definitely felt like a first draft of “Go the Distance.” Interestingly enough, I feel that an edited version of “Proud of Your Boy” from the Alladin musical (also written by Alan Menken) would have worked a lot better.

“Uniquely Greek Town Square” - bad

“Forget About It” - I’m all for giving Meg more songs, but this was decent at best

“A Cool Day In Hell” - I desperately want Hades to have a solo, but not this. It was cheesy and felt out of place. Roger Bart sold the hell out of it, but of course he did cause he’s Roger Bart and incredible and amazing

“Uniquely Greek Tough Town” - not to be confused with “Uniquely Greek Town Square,” this song didn’t feel uniquely Greek at all and was, well, bad

“To Be Human (Reprise” - fine, I guess. Jelani Alladin made it good but the lyrics weren’t great. They rhymed “fail” with “frail.”

3. What I Think They Should Do Moving Forward

Like I said before, this show has so much potential! I think it could be so good! This is my favorite Disney movie so I really want it to go to Broadway! If they do, there’s a couple things I think they could benefit from.

The best Disney Theatricals productions draw heavily from the culture/country the story takes place in. The Lion King, which draw heavily from Kenyan culture and reinvents the source material is the best example of this. I think drawing on Greek theatre conventions/styles would work well here, especially if Disney threw some of that good Disney money at it. I’d also like to see them lean into the Greek myth aspect of it a bit more.

However, what also made the original Hercules movie so fun was its modern flair that felt both timeless and very 90s, which was fun. In this way I think the Muses and all the supernatural characters should draw more on this 90s flair while the mortals draw more on the Greek theatre conventions. I think with incorporating some Greek into the 90s and some 90s into the Greek, this could work really well. During “One Last Hope,” all the ensemble members wore those fun workout video outfits. I think it would have been fun if they wore togas still, but with sweatbands and leg warmers. Something like that to blend them together more. A theatrical beauty blender, if you will.

In all honesty, I just want something bold and inspired. Give me something interesting!

The show would also benefit from heavy edits to the newer songs and a good troupe of dancers, but that would of course happen in a possible commercial transfer.

Lastly, as with just about anything, throw some Disney money at it! Make it shine!

Normally I’d end this with a “Go see it!” or a “Don’t waste your time on it!” but this run is already sold out and lottery winners have been predetermined. So if you’ve won the lottery and are going, you’re in for a treat! The show is so fun and so enjoyable. I only critique it so heavily because I love the movie so much and have been wanting a musical adaptation for a while now. But I also know it’s Public Works and it’s free and it’s in the park and it’s fun and you can eat ice cream while watching it. If you didn’t win but live in NYC, give the lottery a go! I saw the lottery crowd waiting for winners to be drawn and it was incredibly crowded, so be aware of that.

Or, if you didn’t win the lottery/don’t win standby lottery, go over to the Belvedere Castle and you can listen in on the show. You’re only seeing their backs, but I saw a bunch of people there watching/listening the whole time!

#hercules #broadway #jelani alladin #krysta rodriguez #disney #review #voice

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dwtspd · 5 years

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DWTS 28 - Week 3 and 4

Hi I’m not dead, just terrible at time management.

Week 3 Movie Night

Random thought: Imagine if Mark were still on the show and he sang “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” from 10 Things I Hate About You at the start of his partner’s dance.

Lauren and Gleb Tango (Pretty Woman) That took forever to start. Lauren’s dancing on her own is still very stop and go, like she sees them as discrete steps, not a series of connected movements. And her eyes were weirdly unfocused like she didn’t know where to look. The dance was decent but not exciting. 6-7-7 T20

Hannah and Alan Rumba (Bridesmaids) This felt awkward for Hannah. She got all the steps but was missing fluidity and hip action. Pretty costume though. Another decent dance but nothing that made an impression. 7-7-7 T21

Karamo and Jenna Jive (Rocketman) Karamo didn’t point his feet and was lacking bounce. I also feel like he could have projected way more energy than he did here. A good showman though, I think the scores are a tad harsh. Like the bit with the piano on Jenna’s arm. 5-5-6 T16

Ally and Sasha Rumba (Selena) I see a some progress here. Very good transitions. Some of Ally’s hard-hitting-ness was still showing through but she has improved on that front. And kept her feet on the floor during that spin so CAI couldn’t dock them. 8-8-8 T24

Ray withdrew due to injury, and Rashad performed with Cheryl in his place. Always great having Rashad around. He had a very social/rhythm stance which proves he is still continuing with social dancing and whatnot. Nice to see a star continue dancing even after the show.

James and Emma Rumba (A Star is Born) Another solid performance from James. Rumba is a hard dance for the man to shine in but he held his own here. Slight issues with the feet turning in, otherwise I think he would have had tied for top. 8-7-8 T23

Kate and Pasha Quickstep (9 to 5) This was Kate’s dance and she owned it. Very cute. She was light and smooth on all the traditional quickstep phrases. Her hold with Pasha was unflappable. I think a lot of people are overlooking her but Kate has a lot of potential and Pasha knows how to choreograph to pander to the judges while being entertaining. This dance might have put them on a few more radars. 8-8-8 T24

Lamar and Peta Cha Cha (Risky Business) This was barely a cha-cha and Lamar’s time is running out fast. At least he gets to go out doing Risky Business. 4-4-4 T12

Sailor and Val Tango (Mamma Mia) Weird song for a tango. The dance was quite fun. Sailor bobbled a bit in the beginning but after they got lifted down the stairs she had a good performance. Standard masks her hard-hittingness, but it was still there whenever she literally slams her arm around Val when they resume the traditional hold. Val please take care of your shoulder blades. 7-8-8 T23

Kel and Witney Rumba (Titanic) Commendable effort from Kel. He looked strained whenever he had to support Witney’s weight. Hip action, he’s trying. I thought his upper body articulation was very good, and had some very nice arms here and there. 7-6-7 T20

P.S. shoutout to the OG Titanic rumba Shawn and Derek (s15)

Lindsay and partner Cha Cha (Saturday Night Fever) Whatever you think about Lindsay’s partner, face it, he might stick around for a while. He is here to dance and looks to be embracing the process more than other contestants. 5-5-5 T15

Kel and Lamar were the bottom two, but neither were eliminated as Ray had withdrawn. I’m not surprised about Lamar, but I’m worried for Kel. I hope he finds some pull in the fan base because he has potential.

Week 4

No theme (wow, what is this show and what has it done to DWTS??). Leah Remini guest judges. Like, I don’t have anything against the concept of having a guest judge, but some of the guests the how has had is like...what credentials do they have to judge?? Leah wasn’t a fantastic dancer and shouldn’t have lasted that long on her season. What does she know to make her a judge of dance?

Lindsay and partner Paso Doble Very garden-variety, entry-level paso No shaping whatsoever but enough elements to be recognised as a paso. Oh, and a proper paso song at that. First dance he’s had where he can’t hide behind being fun and enjoying himself, but he was still passable. 5-6-5-5 T21

Ally and Sasha Jive Listen, this is like the third time in 4 seasons someone has to jive to this song. And the last 2 times, the performer blew it out of the park. A good dance, but Ally is no Paige Vanzant or Jordan Fisher. She did nothing wrong, just didn’t do anything to be memorable. Oh, and camera mishap. We’ve had one almost every week now. Seriously, what’s heppening in the crew? 8-8-8-8 T32

Kel and Witney Cha Cha This dance was pretty good. I can see Kel opening up more. I think he was a tad overscored at times because the actual cha cha sections felt a bit reserved but the other moments - whoo! I still think there is more to Kel, and it worries me that he is progressing more slowly right now. Not sure he will fully be realised unless things start picking up. 8-8-8-8 T32

Kate and Pasha Argentine Tango Not Kate’s style. I think she felt a bit awkward doing it. They did their best to make it a fun-ish AT but it just felt kinda awkward all around. She also stumbled once and went off time. Still a decent performance, and at least she can get it out of the way. 7-7-6-6 T26

James and Emma Quickstep Okay you know I like James, and he keeps giving me reason to like him. Very nice quickstep. He has the best feet of the male contestants. Is light and bouyant. Flexible and strong for his age. Wonderful stage presence. And Emma always gives him plenty of content. I don’t see why this didn’t get 8s. 7-7-7-7 T28

Hannah and Alan Paso Doble That was not paso music. This dance wasn’t bad but it was a bit weird. Hannah looked like she was trying too hard to be fierce that her whole body was all tensed up. And she would still jump into poses and got a bit stompy at times. Again, part of trying too hard to be fierce for the style. Compared to other dances, this was overscored. 8-8-8-8 T32

Lamar and Peta Viennese Waltz well, that was not as big a hot mess as his previous dances have been. By no means a terrific dance, but at least it was contained and his errors weren’t glaringly obvious. 5-7-4-4 T20 ya know something’s wrong when the judges scores vary that much.

Sailor and Val Cha Cha I thought Sailor would shine in this dance but it felt a little awkward. She was keeping her legs too straight for the most part - yes you’re supposed to have straight legs for the cha cha but there are in-between moments where you can bend at the knees to get into the ground and accentuate the hip action. Sailor was not getting that. Another one overscored compared to earlier dances. 7-8-8-8 T31

Lauren and Gleb Foxtrot this is a weird song for the foxtrot, which put a whole really weird vibe over this dance. Shame, because I thought Lauren had really good execution of what she was given. The choreography didn’t have a lot of musicality in it, which could be part Gleb and part the music being weird for the style. 8-8-8-8 T32

Karamo and Jenna Tango so, this dance was decent and then Karamo looked like he got a bit lost right at the end. It looked like he was gonna do some knee walks but then just shifted his position so...idk. He was flat footed and looked stampy on occasion. 7-7-7-7 T21

Karamo and Lamar were in the bottom two. Lamar goes home. Put him out of his misery.

So this was the first week I thought there were some real outliers in the scoring. Both Hannah and Sailor were clearly overscored. Is there some agenda to keep all the women up this season? Is Ally - who I think is the most hardworking and deserving female contestant at the moment - so far ahead that they need to level the playing field? Is Bobby Bones rallying all of country music behind Lauren? Is Kate pulling in her Office cult? Meanwhile I feel like the judges have been stingier with the men. James is getting a bit of the Jordan nitpick treatment. He should have tied at the top the last 2 weeks. I really really want him to go all the way.

Next week (well today, since it’s after midnight) is Disney night.

#DWTS #dwts28 #dancing with the stars

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magistralucis · 6 years

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Breakbot + Busy P + MYD + Alan Braxe + Borussia @ XOYO, 26 May 2018 [Review]

A fantastic reward for the comedy of errors that is my life.

Been a while since I did a review of a gig! Technically, I should have done one for Justice last September, but given the amount of content I gained from that performance, I keep thinking that one has to be several gifsets and a video upload instead of me rambling on. I’ll get to it in a billion years;;; Over the weekend I went to this all-nighter and didn’t sleep for like, 30 hours? And I’m still recovering. So much like the TBB review last year, this is going to read super disjointed, like a bunch of random stream-of-consciousness notes I took over several hours. (Which 70% of this review actually relies on.) There are pics and a few lil’ gifs, all splendidly red-tinted to reflect the lighting in the club, but the tl;dr is essentially:

The Journey

As previously stated, I do not live in London. London is not easy to navigate. I do not have the strongest sense of direction and frequently map out walking paths and exact number of turns and landmarks nearby my intended destinations, which works for me 9/10 of the time - but this means that when things go bad, they tend to go really bad holy fucking shit under the influence of certain factors XOYO is the hardest fucking club to find in the entire universe. I have never had this much trouble finding a single location despite having such clear directions from multiple sources. It’s not the club’s fault, of course, thousands of people find it just fine - the stars just utterly refused to align for me this particular weekend, turning what should have been a straightforward path from A to B to over an hour of running around.

To attend to this spectacular all-nighter, I took the train from my university city to London, alighting in King’s Cross St. Pancras around 7pm. XOYO is located about a minute away from Old Street Station, which as you can see from the above image of the Northern Line is only two stops away; I could have been at the club in less than ten minutes. Because of this, I was slow to take the Tube when I initially arrived, instead stopping for a snack and some adequate hydration at King’s Cross (also tutting at Platform 9¾ which is not that impressive a display but that’s neither here nor there); I don’t think that was unwise in itself, but it was a decision that I ended up regretting, because it meant I didn’t find out about the spanner in the works until it was almost too late.

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

A five-minute journey on a single subway train from A to B was all I was asking. Well it turns out I couldn’t do that!!! Because fucking engineering works!!!! All the Northern line service bilboards and directional posters were papered over and the information being given was often deeply counterproductive (or outright incorrect). First I was directed to Euston to try to make a switch there, but no Northern line services were running at all. Then I came back to King’s Cross and subsequently tried out Moorgate on the Circle/Metropolitan line, which was running Northern line services - but nothing northbound, like I needed! This was exceptionally infuriating because Moorgate is only one stop away from Old Street station. I was delayed for nearly an hour purely trying to solve this problem, because even past 7-8pm the stations were s t u f f e d with people all trying to navigate this Northern line dilemma in their own way. This line splits along the way, too, so depending on where you’re headed to and where in the ‘part closure’ your intended destination sits, you could be lost in utterly infuriating bullshit like I did, being only 1-2 stops away from where you are and being unable to get to it unless you walk or take overhead transport.

And, you know, those people had already paid and gone past the barrier when they found out about the closures. Most of that info could only be had inside. At King’s Cross St Pancras, the only info available outside the barrier were announcements on rail replacement buses - confusingly worded at that, all three of them entirely northbound from King’s Cross St Pancras (I needed southbound for Old Street). The London Underground isn’t obscenely expensive, but it’s not disposable money either! There’s a bus directly from King’s Cross to Old Street Station (which I ended up taking in order to return) - but if you paid and entered the Tube station, you’re going to want to solve the problem before signing back out of the barrier!

fml in the end I just walked. 7-8 mins from Moorgate and then XOYO itself is hidden in an alley between two massive building complexes with naught but a red neon sign to point your way. It’s not a big neon sign. On one hand maybe it was a good thing I was held up traveling. I arrived about 5 mins after the club opened and was let in straight away. If things had gone as I’d planned I might have ended up camping out in front of XOYO for an extremely awkward hour or whatever. There was no queue; despite it all, I was that early, and was amply rewarded for my earliness. But man.

On the other hand, I was dehydrated all over again.

Hour-by-Hour Review

Contrary to the anguished nature of the vent above, most of the night was damn excellent and the review below is the main meat of the experience. I recollected this through small notes I was making on my phone - mostly of timestamps and a single keyword, like what songs were playing at the time - and some videos I took, the position of each photo, and my own memory from yesterday. They are patchy notes, but they are as detailed as I can make them, and largely accurate. Essentially: if you’ve read this far, I invite you to come live the night with me all over again! :D

9:30PM - 11:00PM: I was the only person seeking entry to XOYO when I finally turned up, though music was already playing inside. “You here for an event?” The guard asks, and I produce my ticket and passport. “Just so you know, there’s a band playing in there at the moment - the actual, uh, techno, that’s not going to start until ten o’clock. You can go in now, but once you’re in, you’re in - you won’t be able to come back out and back in again.”

I just look at them. “What am I going to do outside for half an hour. That’s fine.”

Ticket scanned, passport checked and confirmed, bag check occurs. I read that XOYO has airport-security level bag checks, but that was not my experience. I might just have been too damn early to raise any alarms. I’m let in, visit the bar, buy some water, visit the bathroom, tidy up a bit, tie my jacket around my waist to conceal my bag, etc. Around 9:45PM I peer down at the main room downstairs to check out this band, although I come back up shortly to prepare for the main experience...

... which, uh, doesn’t take place until eleven. After the band leaves around 10PM, what actually happens is that the main room is sealed off for DJ setups while in Room 2 upstairs Joshua James plays. I had the choice of saving my energy for later and resting on the bench, or going to see him; I chose the former. Security guy lingering in front of the main room says it might open in ‘half an hour’ when I ask him on the dot at 10PM. My guy that’s the longest damn half hour I have ever waited in my life. At least I can people-watch and save my place because like always, I want to be at the front when the doors open.

11:00PM: The main room finally opens and Borussia is in the house. The dancefloor is very empty for about half an hour while he gets the crowd going. Ushers frequently come by, brandishing red penlights to take away glasses and empty bottles and lost property and the like. XOYO only has a max capacity of 800~ people and I’m fairly sure that’s spread across two rooms; the glasses are like, proper solid pub glasses, too, actual breakage hazards. I imagine it’s because it’s a small and intimate club that the choice of glasses makes sense; even in Electric Brixton they gave out plastic, and that one holds close to 2000 people. I saw several toppling over or rolling on the ground before someone came to snatch up the whole stack of them. I applaud their diligence.

11:10PM: Also this dancefloor is incredibly sticky. Pedro is visible on the left. He talks to a backstage fan before disappearing.

11:23PM: There’s a girl next to me with her boyfriend. We meet eyes. This girl will recur a few more times during the night. Swig of water taken.

11:30~PM: A note about the stage structure of XOYO.

As mentioned previously, XOYO is a two-room club, one upstairs and one downstairs. Downstairs is the main and the top one’s for opening acts and smaller shows; the downstairs has a dancefloor, a bar off to the side, and an elevated stage. Now the important thing about this stage is that you can get on it. There are no barriers between audience and DJ in a XOYO set, except for the ready-built DJ booth and all the speakers and equipment set that may or may not be piled around it. There is a steel mesh of sorts to separate the sides of the DJ booth from the stage/dancefloor viewing area, but aside from that, it is entirely possible for you to mount the performing stage and be about two feet from the DJ at any given time. Around this time is when people begin to mount the stage and like. Dance. But sparsely.

I will return to this stage later. I’m currently parked in front of the DJ booth.

11:40~PM:

Pedro pops back into the scene briefly. He doesn’t linger for long there, but he’ll be back for the switchover. This is the best photo I could get ffffff

11:40~PM (not long after the above): Borussia puts Gorillaz’s ‘DARE’ on and the room goes fucking wild. The girl returns. This time we meet more than eyes and actually dance together, her boyfriend hitching her up on his back for about 30 seconds midway. This is the first point of the night that Borussia starts smiling and I’m taken by how sweet his smile is.

11:54PM: You know what I think Borussia kind of looks like Gesa if you squint

12:00~AM: Pedro in the house. He takes over slowly from Borussia, who exits amidst thunderous applause. For some reason, Pedro did not look awfully happy for most of the show. Compared to the last time I saw him DJ (opener for Justice) he seemed like... stoic? Like he had a lot in his mind. He was capable of cheer when need be, man knows how to drive a crowd, but like... the air about him was different. I have no explanation for this. It may just have been my perception.

12:00 - 12:30AM (?): I genuinely cannot remember when this first happened, only I remember Pedro being at the forefront and giving the people involved an amused glance at some point in the night. So it goes here, even though they might first have appeared during Borussia. Two incredibly scantily dressed and also gorgeous dancers, one male and one female (visibly), rolled out of the backstage area and began dancing on the elevated stage around the same time e v e r y o n e began piling on. I’d kill for the ability to dance on the heels they did holy fuck

12:13AM: I CAN SEE IRFANE OFF TO THE SIDE YES HE CAME AFTER ALL I know he’s officially part of Breakbot now but the XOYO description made it sound as if only Thibaut was coming. False alarm! The duo lives on.

12:28AM (?): Girl I was dancing with earlier + her boyfriend reappears from the bar direction. She mounts the elevated stage and disappears into the crowd.

12:30AM (?): THIBAUT AND SO-ME SPOTTED I WANT TO ATTACH THE PHOTO OF THIS MOMENT but it’s too blurry fuck shit

12:34AM: With a grin worth a million pounds Pedro puts on ‘Audio, Video, Disco’. Lighting changes to bombastic yellow and everybody just about dies for the next five minutes to follow. This was universally the reception whenever anything Daft Punk or Justice came on (Pedro also played ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ immediately after) - many people, Thibaut included, had Justice shirts on and earlier on the 26th Justice played a set on All Points East, so this was understandable.

12:39AM: Fuck it. I’m going on the elevated stage. I just hitched myself up.

12:40~AM: I can see so much better from here.

There’s a bit on the stage where the steel mesh barrier ends, and the DJ set curves away from the rest of the stage, where you can see everyone in the booth really clearly. Currently this spot is occupied by a dude and a girl who I progressively come to realize was getting increasingly drunk/high - she was clinging onto the sides - so I just gravitate towards the steel mesh instead, neglected by most people. For most part my view is blocked by people hanging around from backstage but every now and then they vacate, and I get a good side view. Not long after I settle in, Thibaut pops up for a short while, swigging from a bottle - and the girl I was dancing with from before almost crashes into the mesh shouting her hellos at him. (This is when I realize that she’s French.)

And, uh, I mean. What can you do when a thing like that happens. I join in, of course. Thibaut did not hear either of us before slinking back, but this did have the effect of the girl patting me on the shoulder for our first real conversation:

French girl: [Muffled something]

Me: Ah?

French girl: [After a few tries through the noise] You like Thibaut?

Me: Yeah! Came to see him mostly!

French girl: 😍💖😍💖😍 I’M THE BIGGEST FAN 😍💖😍💖😍

The oddest thing is that during this exchange, the boyfriend guy with her kind of gently takes off my hat and tries to put it back on me backwards. I have no idea what the fuck and I give him a look that conveys that I have no idea what the fuck ‘cause like... dude why are you taking my hat exactly??? Am I missing something??? I replace it and carry on. The girl’s swept away towards the bar again.

12:40~AM: Pedro is the only person who can pull off LeLe’s ‘Breakfast’ in a DJ set without it descending into narm territory imo

12:40~AM: MYD IS HERE MYD IS HERE

1:00AM: Thibaut and Irfane take over at last, the latter first, then Thibaut more fully. Mama P stays at the back, watching over the situation, before silently withdrawing.

The stage is so crowded I can barely breathe. French girl does not return. Ushers begin to move about the dancefloor carrying large foreboding black bags, not for glasses but for lost property.

1:00~AM: J E S U S

1:10~AM: So-Me is the third one in the booth. I wish people would announce it properly whenever he turns up - I didn’t think to expect him at all, as he was not there with Pedro when I saw him open for Justice and his name wasn’t on the guests list. He feels like a lottery treat ; w ;

1:10~AM: Usher on the elevated stage. He finds a credit card on the floor and flashes an exact 🤨 look in my direction, as I was the closest to him. “Not mine,” I mouth at him, and he stashes the card in the lost property bag before vanishing into the crowd.

1:11AM: Come to think of it I’ve seen people lose some seriously scary shit on dancefloors. Like when I went to see TBB and Justice, on both occasions I’ve seen someone lose their foreign identity card. I’d be fucking terrified for my life if that happened to me - and given that I’m toting my passport around (some places don’t seem to accept BRP...?), which I cannot afford to lose whatsoever, I enter a state of brief panic while I check that nothing has been thieved from my bag. All clear.

1:23-25AM: Jesus Christ Irfane is so touchy-feely with Thibaut they’re in love I’m literally crying

1:30~AM: Because of the above mentioned affection-shenanigans, I stop dancing in order to get some photos and videos of the pair. One of the backstage fans notices. “Do you want me to take a picture for you?” He shouts through the mesh; I hesitate, because I’m not in the business of giving my phone away to strangers, but I take the risk. It turned out he made this offer during a period of very weird lighting and it wasn’t a good time for photos, but this is the best out of several attempts from him:

“It’s not a good time,” he shouts as he hands my phone back over. “sorry.”

“Thank you anyway,” I holler through the bars. He flashes a grin and we carry on.

1:30~AM (after the above): Remember the scantily dressed gorgeous dancers? They’re back, dancing on a bunch of speakers (?) next to the side view. Drama with the (drunk?) girl hogging the side view; she gets into a conflict with one of the dancers and it gets really fucking tense. I’m not 100% on what happened, but I can imagine that something that wasn’t meant to be touched was touched or that she was giving the dancer some serious attitude - like the girl was literally grabbing the (drunk?) girl by the face and telling her to get a fucking grip. The dude with her eventually leads her away and the dancers dismount the stage, disappearing into the crowd - I didn’t see them return again, which was a right shame.

tl;dr I took the empty spot and was able to photo marginally better than before.

1:35AM:

Jesus God this is heavenly

1:41AM:

Best quality: his wiggles

(He was mouthing along to ‘Why?’.)

1:40~AM: I keep thinking I stepped on something. This continues for some five minutes before I finally look down and yep whoops I was stepping on something all right. It was a hefty croc leather wallet/purse thing, all black, very sticky from the floor. I set it down in front of me and handed it over to an usher less than two minutes after. Another swig of water. Thibaut’s wiggles do not in any way pale next to Irfane’s.

1:50AM (?): Yet another event I know happened but can’t remember where exactly to place. ‘My Toy’ comes on. I hear this one is a fan favourite and while I can think of better songs in Still Waters, I get to see for myself just how true this statement is. In fact, Breakbot played quite a few of their stuff - not a lot, but enough to bring on significant cheers whenever they did. ‘Back For More’ was the starter and ‘Fantasy’ came on at some point but ‘My Toy’ was easily the most popular of the lot!

2:00AM: Alan Braxe takes over. Irfane and Thibaut continue to linger, as does So-Me, but I’m beginning to see Myd far more often - he must provide the climax to this all-nighter. He had a vinyl signing earlier on the 26th; he’s greeted with cheers whenever he’s visible.

2:00 - 4:00AM: A broad sweeping observation to indicate that my phone is dying a horrible death by this point of the night. I brought an external battery and had it going again once I left the club, but fuck trying to fumble with that in the middle of a club. All those photos did it, especially the videos, and burning the battery on that so quickly was not a good idea because I wanted to take more of Alan and Myd boo

2:20~AM: Alan’s set is considerably darker in tone. Probably more like what I’m used to before I got into EDM, in fact. I consider him responsible for the mild whiplash I got from headbanging.

2:24AM: XOYO’s smoke machines are at their peak performance around this time and I can barely see a thing. Not being a big venue, this is a problem. Irfane and Thibaut and So-Me pop back up for a selfie with one of the backstage fans and rope Alan into participating; he does so exactly once and turns back, as professional as always, while the other stay on for a second and third go.

2:30~AM: wHAT’S THAT I HEAR???? CRESCENDOLLS?????

2:30~AM: IT’S CRESCENDOLLS

2:35AM: Hey remember when it took Irfane 10 years to figure out the Very Disco = Veridis Quo pun

2:40~AM: By this point I’m getting super hungry and I’m just about out of water. Water in XOYO is expensive. Something like 2.50 for a 300ml bottle. The DJs had a stack of these bottles by the side and were powering through them at alarming speed when they weren’t drinking other things. It’s my policy to go early and buy a bottle of water at the bar of wherever I attend a gig or concert, pretty much always. It’s my first time running out with more than an hour to go, though, but despite this I keep dancing with the empty bottle clutched in my hand. I don’t actually remember why. Maybe I thought I’d fill it up after the show or something. Spoilers: I didn’t

2:55AM: Right as Myd is taking over some dude pokes me and asks to have a sip of my water. I should not have been dancing with that empty bottle. He looks disgruntled when I tell him it’s empty and moves on. Sorry my dude I only wish I’d have been able to spare even a drop but I was genuinely out;;;;;

3:00 - 4:00AM: I hate having to sum it up like this but due to aforementioned factors (dying legs + low battery + lack of water) I do not actually remember much of Myd’s set. This is a great injustice to the man and it’s pretty much entirely my fault for not taking any time to rest (seating was provided near the bar) or not buying myself another drink; next time he’s in the UK, wherever he may be and whoever he might be with, I shall make the effort to hunt him down and give him a proper listen. What I remember of his set was brilliant, cheery but mysterious, coupled with Daft Punk’s ‘Rock n’ Roll’ somewhere in the middle. Please enjoy this terrible picture of him taken with my phone’s dying strength.

3:18AM: I can timestamp this accurately because it’s on the last video I took of the night. Enjoy some Myd wiggles

3:30~AM: This was roughly when ‘Rock n’ Roll’ was on! Irfane chatting away in the corner. So-Me lending a hand. Five minutes in he leans over and distributes stickers (I think) into the crowd. I was sadly on the other side and did not get a chance to receive any.

3:40~AM: People are beginning to hunker down on the elevated stage or leaving altogether. The night is drawing to a close.

3:55AM: Phone blinks out completely at this point. XOYO is open from 9:30pm-4am on Fridays and Saturdays (also 21+ years only policy, which I appreciate) so I figured Myd should be winding down about now. Every DJ participating so far has switched out/bowed out after an hour, after all. Myd might need a minute more to think about it.

4:03AM: Myd might need three more minutes to think about it.

4:04AM: Myd might need four or five more minutes to think about it.

4:10AM: Myd why are you doing this. Myd it’s past closing time. Myd my guy you’re pouring ambrosia upon the unworthy. Myd ple

4:15AM~: In the end I leave a few minutes early. I have to stress that this had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of Myd’s set nor that he was playing beyond closing time - encores and extra content are extremely good! It’s just that my legs were dead! ;A ; I limped upstairs and washed my face etc and he was still playing when I came out. That’s dedication.

The End

As soon as it’s actually over, cheers went up - and as I’m sitting at the bench near the entrance of the club just trying to get my shit together, everyone files out all at once to a bunch of weary-looking security guards wishing us all a good night.

I join the line. It’s bright outside already. Some of the guards offer to call us a cab and some of the people take them up on it. I myself walk out of the club, turn left, and down Old Street Yard to examine the bus stops. One of the bus lines are 24hr and go directly to King’s Cross; as I reach one of the relevant stops and lean around, trying to figure out the times, the French girl from earlier recognizes me and pats me on the shoulder. “You were the girl dancing next to me, right?”

“Yep, that’s me.”

“How are you?”

“I’m good and so exhausted I could melt into the floor.”

She giggles and bids me goodnight as she moves to another bus stop. I didn’t get to ask her about Thibaut, as she wasn’t by me when he came on, but I can only assume she had a good time too. Soon the 214 comes along and I hop on towards King’s Cross. The sun is rising and the white noise in my legs dissipates, just a little, only to be gone completely some twenty hours later. Feels good man.

#breakbot #thibaut berland #irfane #busy p #pedro winter #ed banger #borussia #myd #so me #bertrand de langeron #reviews #long post #hi this took ages to write and has prime time content pls give it a peruse #;)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))#xoyo

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