Year: 2008

Pet’s Serenade To Love

Let’s make it a Petula Clark triple post for today. From an appearance on the American TV show The Hollywood Palace, she sings “This Is My Song.”

[flv:/Video/2008/APR/PetHollywoodBowl.flv 440 330]

Thirty five years later Petula did what I feel is an ever better rendition of the same song. Be sure to check out the other Petula clips that are linked in the YouTube menu.

A Sing Of The Times

I’m going to do one of my rare reruns. It’s a video that’s so much fun it’s worth watching again. It’s Petula Clark’s 1966 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, performing the Tony Hatch song, “It’s A Sign Of The Times.” The set, the clothes, and the colors really are signs of those times. I remastered the video yet again, for bigger and better quality than the one I did before.

As I’ve long joked, in a perfect world Petula Clark, Julie Andrews, and Diana Rigg would all have been on the American scene at the same time, each dominating their respective fields of entertainment. Oh! Wait! They were! They did! 😉

[flv:/Video/2008/APR/SignOfTheTimes.flv 440 330]

I particularly love the way the music moves along when Pet sings the lyric, “Maybe my lucky star, at last decided to shine… maybe somebody knows how long I’ve waited to make you mine.” This is pop music perfection. As a bonus, this time I’ll toss in the original studio recording of the song, taken from a well-worn LP.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/APR/SignOfTheTimes.mp3]

Another track from the same LP is a Pet-penned autobiographical tune, “Two Rivers.”

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/APR/TwoRivers.mp3]

Pet Pitches For Coca-Cola

It’s already been over a year since the PBS program The British Beat, hosted by Petula Clark, first aired. Take a look at this video clip I posted, and you’ll see what Comcast analog cable TV looked like, and why I switched to Verizon FiOS digital.

That show wasn’t the first time Pet had been paired, in a sense, with legendary New York DJ Bruce Morrow, aka: Cousin Brucie. Pet did some radio spots for Coca-Cola in the sixties, with Cousin Brucie doing the intro.

[flv:/Video/2008/APR/PetCocaCola.flv 440 330]

I know that Pet greatly admires the late Dusty Springfield, but as a kid I had a hard time recognizing Dusty’s new songs. Versatile to a fault, is how I would now describe her work. In this regard Springfield was similar to Bobby Darin.

Petula Clark, on the other hand, has a distinctive and immediately recognizable sound that’s all her own, whether she’s belting out a pop tune or a love song. She’s done it all, from small French cabaret performances to lavish Broadway productions. For myself, growing up when I did, Pet represents the same thing the Beatles do — the absolute finest in popular music.

Problem

As I feared would happen, the conversion of my site to iPower’s new management platform has made a mess of things. My oldest blog post is now my newest. AUGHH! If you click on the individual categories you should be all right. I’ll start the troubleshooting process….

UPDATE: Indeed, there’s been an update. A big one. WordPress is now the absolute newest version, which seems to have fixed the problem. It was no surprise this update was necessary, but I would like to say that the iPower support guys confirmed this for me, in a matter of minutes. So kudos and not brickbats to them.

The only casualties I’ve spotted so far are the “Contact” and “Gallery” pages on the navigation bar, and that seems to be a problem with the theme. I should be able to fix that with some minor code edits, or maybe I’ll finally try a new theme. Please let me know what quirks and blow-ups you come across. Hopefully no blow-ups!

UPDATE update: Well, what I just did seemed to have fixed the navigation bar problem. So if you were hoping I’d pick a new theme, you’ll just have to wait! 😉