Category: Music

Anakin and Padme… Obi-Wan and Petula Clark??

As I have said numerous times, when Petula Clark burst onto the American Pop music scene with Downtown, we had no idea that she had been in the entertainment biz for 20 years. For a long time she was better known for being in English movies than for her singing. One of those movies is The Card, with Alec Guinness.

[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/2011/Nov/TheCard.flv 512 384]

Pet arrived here as an unknown, and what a thrill it must have been for her to start all over and be such a huge success on her own terms. Happy Birthday, Petula!

All the Whos down in Whoville

Before I took time off from blogging I linked to a delightful and spirited Doctor Who video with the cast and crew before David Tennant left the series. The video was made poignant by the presence of Elisabeth Sladen, who passed away earlier this year. The song is I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by the Scottish duo of identical twin brothers who call themselves the Proclaimers.

Note: the movie clips are from Benny & Joon, with Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson.

Comfort tune

Eric and I got the leaves raked up this weekend, it’s a Sunday Autumn evening, I’m in a contemplative mood, and this recording evokes a strong feeling of nostalgia in me.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Nov/MR1.mp3|titles=Moon River by Henry Mancini]

LIFE misses the Beat

LIFE Magazine, or what’s left of it, has an online George Harrison tribute. There’s also a print edition of the LIFE tribute to George, but it has an error that kept me from buying the issue. It’s a particularly annoying error, that was probably repeated from Bob Spitz’s useless, mistake-filled book, The Beatles: The Biography. The error is that Pattie Boyd appeared in A Hard Day’s Night with her sister Jenny. This is incorrect. Jenny “Jennifer Juniper” Boyd was not in AHDN. The girl with Pattie was, of course, my friend Prudence Bury. The paragraph below was scanned from Hunter Davies’ book The Beatles, in which Pattie mentions her two sisters (Jenny and Paula), as well as Prue.

A couple of years ago I said that Prue’s hair stylist was her friend Vidal Sassoon. Here is a picture of Prue sporting a Sassoon cut. Vidal is on the right, and the man in the middle is Alexander Plunkett-Green, husband of fashion designer Mary Quant.

Back in the former USSR

Unbelievable. The once-mighty Electronics & Musical Industries — EMI — is being bought by a rich Russian, who apparently now lives in NYC.

In other Beatle-related doings, there is still no official DVD release date for the Let It Be film, but director Michael Lindsay-Hogg says work is progressing on the project. He was interviewed on WNYC radio, and the podcast is on the audio player.

[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/soundcheck/soundcheck101711apod.mp3|titles=WNYC: Michael Lindsay-Hogg interview]

K3 fans fly united

K3 fan Theo Hendriks in the Netherlands writes…

Hello Doug,

This is Theo, I’m on your blog with a picture of me and K3 and I would like to add to the comment that K3 including Josje, and very especially Kristel, have been very supporting to me in the transistion to a K3 without Kathleen. I still see K3 regularly, and I’m still a big fan.

I lost some weight (well 25 kg), so I look a bit different now, but could you add this picture to your story? It’s Kristel and me end of august 2011.

Greetings Theo.
Netherlands.

Thanks, Theo! I’ll add a link on the earlier blog post pointing to this one. You know how to make a fellow jealous! And on top of that you’re reminding me that for the first time in decades I need to lose weight myself. I’ll make myself even more jealous by grabbing this other photo of you with lovely Kristel. It looks like it was cold there for late August!

P.S. Adjusting to change isn’t easy, but I agree with Theo that Josje is great, although I’m still not sure how they can be K3 with two K’s and a J. 😉