Before the Petula Clark blog links to a particular video, I’d like to post it here. This is from an appearance in France, early in 1973, after Pet had her son and had turned 40. She appeared with the late Claude François, who she obviously liked very much.
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If this isn’t sexy and fun, I don’t know what is. Contrast this captivating performance with the video I posted of Pet from about 12 years earlier.
The blog “Petula Clark: Drive by Emotion” has a post about a special performance that Pet gave in commemoration of the end of World War II for Britain. There’s a link to a recording of her performing just three weeks ago, but for convenience I’ll post it here. CORRECTION: Denro pointed out that as it’s been 62 years since the end of the war, it seemed odd this performance happened this month. He is correct. It was July 10, 2005.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JUL07/ANightingaleSangInBerkeleySquare.mp3]Pet turns 75 in November, and considering that, the tricky notes she hits perfectly spot-on more than make up for the few that present more of a challenge for her than they once did.
C’mon, UK residents! Sign the online PETition to award this very special lady the acknowledgment that she deserves. Let there be Dame Petula Clark! Sir Michael Caine has spoken up. Perhaps Dame Julie Andrews could lend her support to the cause, as well.
NPR has a super nice feature on session musician Lyle Ritz, who played acoustic bass on many famous recordings in the 60’s, including Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds. Ritz has also had great success with his sideline of playing the ukulele.
Here are some comments by Ritz, taken from the booklet “The Making of Pet Sounds” taken from The Pet Sounds Sessions CD box set.
What made Brian’s sessions different was the family kind of atmosphere. At first, as I recall, Brian didn’t have any preparation. He didn’t write anything down; he would dictate notes to us on the piano.
What I remember from Pet Sounds was that during that time, his craft was more honed. He brought in music and parts that were written. And he was more intense, more focused.
FiOS TV has added URGE Radio, on the stations that follow Music Choice. As I mentioned in a post in early June — unfortunately lost in the Great Database Debacle — the sound quality of the Music Choice stations is uniformly excellent. The same cannot be said of URGE Radio. Played over a digital coaxial cable going from the Motorola DVR into my Kenwood THX receiver, what I’ve heard so far sounds, at best, like a 128 Kbps MP3 at 22050 Hz. The player has four minutes of URGE Radio. Don’t judge the sound quality by this, as it’s encoded here at only 64 Kbps/22050 Hz.
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As you can see, there’s a progress bar, but it doesn’t appear on all of the screens within a track, which sort of limits its usefulness. I’m not complaining about the service being added. I continue to be impressed with everything that FiOS TV offers for the money, but URGE Radio’s audio quality relegates it to the TV speakers.
Last November, the BBC ran a long overdue one-hour documentary on Petula Clark, called Petula Clark: Blue Lady. In thanks to whomever started the Petula Clark blog, here’s the entire show. Honor Blackman, the first leading lady of the The Avengers TV Series and Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, narrates.
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My Pet Posts have been picked up by a new blog called Petula Clark: Driven by Emotion. I don’t have any information yet on the blogger.
