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Got an email from Ticketmaster this morning, reminding me of an event for which I’ve bought tickets. Well thank goodness for their efficiency! The Tom Waits concert, which I’ve been waiting 20 years for, for which I’ve paid an arm and a leg, and which I’ve woken every morning thinking about for the past 3 months, completely slipped my mind! Let’s just hope it lives up to my own hype.
OK, so I was disappointed to hear that Joan Armatrading and Valerie Singleton were never an item after all (see below), but, under the heading of “People I Admire Who I Would Like To Be In A Relationship Together”, I was delighted to learn today that Tom Waits used to be the boyfriend of Rickie Lee Jones, whose music I also love. And as if this wasn’t good enough news in its own right, it further transpires that Rickie herself features on the cover of “Blue Valentines”, Tom’s 1978 masterpiece. This is the album that contains “Kentucky Avenue”, one of my favourite Waits songs, and one the most moving pieces of music I know.
Thanks to BigRab for this information, which has made my day – his blog’s a very good read. All I need to be told now is that David Bowie is the lovechild of Frank Sinatra and Cilla Black, and I’ll die a happy man.
And talking of Valerie Singleton and good reads, I found a very entertaining piece on the Telegraph site, of all places, about Val, and her non-relationship with Joan. It’s an affectionate piece, and reckons that “Valerie’s star quality flowed from the mesmerising blend of foxiness and severity that continues, decades after her last Blue Peter appearance, to send baby-boomers into nostalgic rhapsodies of psycho-sexual longing.” Hmm, a bit strong, but, in a slightly uneasy way, I know what he means.
Is La Winehouse a genius? Or is she, perhaps, the most overrated, self-important self-publicist the music world has ever seen? The crowd at Glastonbury last night seemed happy enough, worshipping her every fragile warble, despite her telling them off for not being appreciative enough of her decidely mediocre covers of old Specials songs – not really cutting edge stuff, is it? Without the phenomenal band, backing singers, and the odd roadie to prop her up (literally, in the case of the roadie), she would have been in serious trouble.
Joan Armatrading – now there is a talent, and a very nice person too, by all accounts. I saw her perform several times in her hayday, and loved every understated moment. For a long time, I understood that she was the unlikely partner of Valerie Singleton, another very important figure in my younger days. I liked the idea of two people whom I admired looking after each other as they got old in their Putney love nest, making desk tidies out of jam jars covered with Fablon with Joan’s old hits playing in the background. But now I read that Valerie is not gay at all, and was shagging Peter Purves on the set of Blue Peter almost before the credits had finished rolling – so it seems that it was just another one of those urban myths. They’ll be telling us next that Bob Holness didn’t really play saxophone on “Baker Street”.
Tom Waits – there’s another one. Put him in front of a Glastonbury crowd and, whilst half would probably leave straight away, the rest would really see what talent looks like. His tour is now well under way in America, and is getting consistently rave reviews, both from the media and the punters. The set lists are surprisingly varied from one night to the next, and extremely diverse. People seem agreed that the best bits are when the band toddle off for some refreshment, leaving old Tom on his own at the piano to do some ballads, and I imagine that’ll be my favourite bit as well. Only four weeks to go till we see him in Edinburgh, and the excitement is really building – I just hope he manages to keep his ageing, over-indulged self going that long!
Well, by popular demand, here’s a clip of me singing at my birthday party in November. Actually, when I say “popular demand”, I mean one person, who said she “wouldn’t mind seeing it”. My friend Stephen recorded this on his little digital camera, so it’s not exactly broadcast quality. The sound’s pretty good though (although you may well disagree…). In my defence, I did have a stinking cold and bad throat at the time. And I think the microphone was faulty, somehow changing the key of what I actually sang…
I find that people are rarely neutral about Tom. I have friends who have to leave the room when he pops up on the iPod, and others (admittedly not many!) who think his music’s marvellous. I think he’s great, and if I could take only one artist’s music to my desert island, it would have to be his. I’m not sure whether this video would help to persuade the doubters of his weird genius, but here’s the link anyway.
