Word: songs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There's a song on AM radio just now that breathes ecstatically about "Southern Nights" just now when summer looks when it might be making a final long-awaited appearance but if you are a properly brought up culture-vulture you will probably go for Hector Berlioz's "Nuits d'Ete." Janet Bedell, mezzosoprano, and Robert Cohen, pianist, will present this recital in Holmes Hall Living Room...
...bumpkin crossed with a New England preppie. Attired in billowy corduroy knickers and some kind of felt pot pulled over his wire-rimmed spectacles, he lopes through his role with slack-mouthed, loose-limbed, knock-kneed charm. His throaty voice and lascivious gestures make "Pearls" one of the funniest song and mimes in the show. Launce and his fellow servant Speed (Jonathan Alex Prince) run through some congenial duets on the way to the ale house, and Speed makes up for his raspy voice with quick foot work. Apparently, Speed's affinity for fruit is supposed to be comic...
...smooth choreography of the Citizens of Verona and Milan and the alert timing and confident sound of the orchestra provides the back-drop for a demanding variety of song and dance numbers parceled out among a handful of actors. The isolated soliloquies and duologues of Shakespeare's play carry over into frequent solo and duo performances of Guare's lurics. The music does not make operatic claims on the actors' voices, but its idiosyncratic Spanish and soul-based timing can be tricky. What with the generous amplification, no one is under much strain...
...music evokes a futuristic, endless landscape of highways and smoldering refinery stacks. Although some of the instrumental passages could be briefer, the song represents a brilliant synthesis of Bowie's and Iggy's talents. A low sinister drone ends the tune in an effective, chilling fade...
...tune emerges, though, as Iggy's musical and emotional salvation. The love song, "China Girl," shows off the richness and flexibility he can achieve. A tinny xylophone riff wraps around the lead guitar in beautiful counterpoint, and the use of electronic media is sensitive and restrained. Carefully punctuated, many-layered, "China Girl" unfolds to a solo guitar fadeout which mimics the beginning theme, in the most cohesive track on the album. As the China Girl soothes him at the end of the song, I began to wonder if she had the secret that Iggy, in the dum dum daze...