I think I have the programme somewhere but this was on my mystery list until I found it in both our diaries while doing one of my “25 years on” trawls.
This was a “birthday treat” for Janie in which I expect i picked up the tab and Pauline, Duchess of Castlebar, graced us with her presence.
Janie’s not much one for opera but we all agreed that Carmen was a good place to really test that hypothesis. I had “done” Carmen as a small child of course – type cast as an urchin boy – another story for another Ogblog.
Anyway…
…this was the Jonathan Miller production at the ENO.
Edward Seckerson in The Independent sort-of liked it:
I think we were fairly indifferent to the production. It certainly wasn’t as good as the Putney Operatic Society’s version 25 years earlier…I wasn’t in it for a start.
Janie had known Laurie & (especially) Dot Johnson for a great many years – the latter being one of Janie’s clients.
Laurie was very well known in show business and media circles, primarily for writing TV theme tunes such as the following, which Janie and I both remembered fondly from our childhoods:
In 1997, it seems that Laurie, in an attempt to stave off dotage, was launching an autumnal recording and touring career with a new combo; Laurie Johnson’s London Big Band.
Dot kindly invited us to the 8 June concert and the star-studded after show party.
We were among the youngest people in the audience that night. Actually, I think our combined ages at that time (75-ish) might still have made us among the youngest people at the show that night.
Janie and I, seated among the guest celebs in that central block of seats deemed the best in the Barbican Hall, enjoyed watching the bobbing heads of the elderly concert-goers in front of us, making micro-movements in recognition of the swinging beat of the music.
Indeed, for years…nay decades after the concert, Janie and I would mimic the uber-syncopation, not least the cymbal beats, of the Big Band’s rendition of the This Is Your Life Theme:
That one seemed to go down especially well with the elderly bobbing-head brigade.
The after show party was very enjoyable. I guess that we technically met a great many celebs: Laurie Johnson, Ron Moody, Jack Parnell, Don Lusher, Kenny Baker, Benny Green and Tommy Whittle were all on the bill…
…as was a lovely young woman named Alexia, who was a singing waitress at a restaurant that Laurie and Dot liked. They had taken Alexia somewhat under their wings and were promoting her through this show/tour.
We didn’t meet John Dankworth & Cleo Laine that evening, much to Dot’s chagrin, as she seemed very keen for Janie to meet them, but for some reason (health we think) they were unable to attend. Nor was Lionel Bart there, possibly for the same sort of reason.
I do however remember chatting at length with Herbert Kretzmer, who was a good friend of the Johnsons and was very interesting company for quite a while at that function. Fellow lyricists and all that – me and Herbie had a great deal in common. 😉
Go on, bob your head gently to the swinging strains of the This Is Your Life theme again – you know you want to:
I’m not sure why we went so very little in 1996 – I’m guessing we might have been preoccupied with other things when the Proms programme came out.
I don’t think this concert would have been our first choice, but Pauline liked Debussy and was convinced that Janie simply needed to work at it to find a place in her heart for Prokofiev. We tried a few times over the years and it didn’t ever work.
Valery Gergiev, conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, would certainly have been a draw.
I made three mixtapes for Michael & Elisabeth Mainelli’s wedding, which were used at the informal party on the Sunday after the formal wedding. I kept track listings (dated 12 May 1996) and can therefore recreate the experience, 25 years later, mostly in embedded YouTube form. Occasionally such embeds get moved, removed or delisted, but you should be able to hear most if not all of them.
Here’s Tape Three, which I called “The Cynical Wedding Tape”. Side A continued the theme of a dance party mix from Tape Two, but all the tracks have an element of cynicism towards romance. Side B was intended to be an “after the main party” cynical selection, which I named “Sit Around & Think About It”.
A couple of the tracks on this tape have not yet found their way to YouTube in a suitable form (e.g. Ben Murphy’s recording of my own lyric, The Ultimate Love Song). I have uploaded MP3s of those tracks, so you can still hear them…if you dare.
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Cynical Wedding Tape Side A: Dance Que Pasa / Me No Pop I, Kid Creole & the Coconuts Don’t Leave Me This Way, Thelma Houston Money, Flying Lizards I Heard It Through The Grapevine, Gladys Knight & the Pips Just Don’t Want To Be Lonely, Main Ingredient Why Do Fools Fall In Love?, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers Thin Line Between Love and Hate, Persuaders I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor Mistra Know It All, Stevie Wonder She’s Gone, Hall & Oats One Day I’ll Fly Away, Randy Crawford Will You Love Me Tomorrow?, Shirelles
Cynical Wedding Tape Side B: Sit Around & Think About It The First Cut is the Deepest, PP Arnold Falling In Love Again, Temperance Seven Don’t Get Married, Roy Bailey & Leon Rosselson Ever Fallen In Love With Someone…, Buzzcocks Freebird, Lynard Skynard It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band I Used To Love Her But It’s All Over Now, Rolling Stones Born To Shop, Guns ‘n’ Charoses Single In Spring, Roy Bailey & Leon Rosselson Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Neil Sedaka The Ultimate Love Song, Ben Murphy
I made three mixtapes for Michael & Elisabeth Mainelli’s wedding, which were used at the informal party on the Sunday after the formal wedding. I kept track listings (dated 12 May 1996) and can therefore recreate the experience, 25 years later, in embedded YouTube form. Occasionally such embeds get moved, removed or delisted, but you should be able to hear most if not all of them.
Here’s Tape Two, which comprised my idea at that time for a dance party mix with a bit of a 1990s feel to it but mostly rooted in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, which is the era of dance music for which I sensed that most of the guests, like ourselves, could not resist dancing if they heard the right sound.
Frankly, looking at the mix today, 25 years on, I would still happily put this mix on if I wanted to get people dancing. Might need a few leaning props around the dance floor and some stretcher-bearers on standby for people of my generation.
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Michael & Elisabeth Wedding Tape 2 Side A: Dance Fast We Are Family, Sister Sledge Twist & Shout, Chaka Demus & Pliers Harvest For The World, Isley Brothers I Feel For You, Chaka Khan Sex Machine, James Brown Love Machine, Miracles Incredible, M-Beat Featuring General Levy I Want You Back, Jackson 5 This Old Heart Of Mine, Isley Brothers Backstabbers, O-Jays Pump Up The Jam, Technotronic Featuring Felly Harlem Shuffle, Bob & Earl Land of 1000 Dances, Wilson Pickett
Michael & Elisabeth Wedding Tape 2 Side B: Dance Varied La Bamba, Los Lobos Stayin’ Alive, N-Trance featuring Ricardo da Force Sexual Healing, Marvin Gaye Now That We’ve Found Love, Third World Proud Mary, Checkmates Ltd Ride On Time, Black Box You Never Can Tell, Chuck Berry I Knew the Bride…, Dave Edmunds Easy, Commodores I Say a Little Prayer, Aretha Franklin Do You Love Me?, Contours 54-56, Toots & the Maytals Shake, Otis Redding If You Don’t Know Me By Now, Harold Melvyn & The Bluenotes
I made three mixtapes for Michael & Elisabeth Mainelli’s wedding, which were used at the informal party on the Sunday after the formal wedding. I kept track listings (dated 12 May 1996) and can therefore recreate the experience 25 years later in embedded YouTube form. Occasionally such embeds get moved, removed or delisted, but you should be able to hear most if not all of them.
Here’s Tape One, which comprised a fair amount from Michael’s own collection of recordings, mixed in with some of mine that I thought would go well with Michael’s own choices.
The other two tapes were more my own ideas.
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Michael & Elisabeth Wedding Tape 1 Side A: Soft Rock Moondance, Van Morrison Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes, Paul Simon Eternal Flame, Bangles We Built this City, Starship Lets Stay Together, Tina Turner Modern Love, David Bowie Downtown, Petula Clark Cherish, Kool & the Gang Keep On Loving You, REO Speedwagon Come Monday, Jimmy Buffett Don’t Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult
Michael & Elisabeth Wedding Tape 1 Side B: Harder Rock American Girl, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers The Kids Are Alright, Who More Than a Feeling, Boston Just What I Needed, Cars Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen Travelling Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival New Speedway Boogie, Grateful Dead Rosana, Toto Because The Night, Patti Smith Group Total Eclipse of the Heart, Bonnie Tyler Stairway To Heaven, Led Zeppelin 99 Red Balloons (irritatingly short excerpt) Nena (singing in English)
Anton Bruckner – Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1890 version, ed. Nowak)
My log note describes “Brucknergate” as follws:
It was meant to be a different programme, but Gunter changed it.
Well, I suppose Günter was a Bruckner specialist and I quite often booked to see him conduct Bruckner’s works anyway.
Mercifully, The Duchess (Janie’s mum, Pauline) seemed to accept the change with grace at that time. She possibly felt that the change meant that she had dodged a bullet in the matter of procuring interval drinks, as there was no interval given that it was a one piece concert. Pauline’s idea of a fair deal was for me or Janie to buy the tickets, the other of me or Janie to buy the dinner and she would buy the interval drinks…
…unless we were at The Questors Theatre, where she was a member, in which case she would do the theatre tickets, while Janie and I would procure the drinks and meal. (The Duchess received a few free guest tickets each year as part of her membership package, we later discovered.)
But I digress.
Strangely, I have found a recording of this very concert on YouTube, which I can share with you right here:
According to the accompanying verbiage, this concert turned out to be Günter Wand’s last stand…in the matter of conducting BBC Proms.
Rick Jones waxed lyrical about this concert in his trio of Standard Proms reviews:
Martin Kettle in The Guardian compared this Wand performance of Bruckner 8 with previous ones a little unfavourably while still praising the performance. A case of “the Kettle calling the Wand slack” or something like that:
In the end, I suppose I should be glad to have been there for this one. I had been following Günter Wand around the Proms for best part of a decade by then.
Of course Pauline (The Duchess of Castlebar & Janie’s mum) knew all about the big Norwegians. She’d have done all of that before, but, as we were suggesting it, yes, she would join us at this Prom.
Latvian maestro Mariss Jansons conducting The Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra in the following programme:
Magnar Ã…m – Study on a Norwegian Hymn
Richard Strauss – Also Sprach Zarathustra
Jean Sibelius – Symphony No. 2 in D major
Were we excited? Were we excited!
I loved a bit of Also Sprach back then. Here is a video of Mariss conducting the Concertgebouworkest in that very piece:
Even more, I loved that Sibelius Symphony No 2. Still do. Here is Mariss conducting the Big Norwegians from Oslo in the first movement of that amazing symphony:
Bliss.
Adrian Jack in the Independent also thought the Sibelius was bliss.
Janie’s first encounter with Günter, was this. Possibly Pauline’s too, although she “will have done all that” with Janie’s father decades earlier, no doubt.
Günter Wand had a close working relationship with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for the Proms for a long time.
Carmen Edward Seckerson Indy 15 Sep 1995, Fri The Independent (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Carmen Geoffrey Norris Telegraph 16 Sep 1995, Sat The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Carmen Kate Kellaway Observer 17 Sep 1995, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
