Carnaby Street at the Hackney Empire

All I said was "I went to a really nice show last night" and it triggered an almighty sulking and moaning session, "I took you to see Alfie Boe at the Albert Hall and you don't take me anywhere". "But I arranged this with my mates ages ago".  On and on it went so, to get a bit of peace, I ended up going to see Carnaby Street twice in one week. Once with my mates and once again with the Boss. Not that I minded because this new musical is really rather good.

It's the World Premiere of Carnaby Street which sounds very grand until you realise that it's opening run was at the Hackney Empire rather than the Albert Hall or the West End. Those of you not familiar with London should note that the West End is the snooty bit and that the East End is the rough bit. Hackney's definitely East End. So am I.

The musical is set in London in the early 1960's, the famous "swinging sixties" and celebrates the West End fashion and music scene; the Marquee Club in Soho, Carnaby Street, the Beatles, Manfred Mann and a host of others. There's virtually no plot so I can't spoil it for you, it's just wall-to-wall powerhouse sixties pop music and packed with great hits "Twist and Shout", "Roll Over Beethoven", "Doo Wah Diddy", "Keep On Running", "You Really Got Me".

Here's the story. Jude comes from Liverpool and arrives in London with his girlfriend, Penny Lane (ouch!) armed with a guitar, some songs and dreams of fame and fortune. He meets Jack Spratt (ouch again!) who manages a band and gets Jude a gig. 

Then... who  cares,  just go and see it will you? You won't regret it, there's a bit of a story but mainly it's the fun, the dancing and the music that matter and, as a bonus, you get to do the twist in public for the first time in years. The house was packed when we went and it was great to see all the grey haired grannies twisting in the aisles. Fab!

The writer, Carl Leighton-Pope uses the storyline as corny introductions for the songs and each one is more painful than the last. For example, we have the hero, Jude rushing to catch a flight, queue music, "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" It's so gaspingly bad it's good.

I was a little bit disappointed that there no Rolling Stones numbers in the show; I believe that they wanted to perform "Let's Spend the Night Together" but the rights owners either refused them or demanded an astronomical sum. Shame, if you see the show you will know exactly where that song fits in.

Equally disappointing was the absence of Beatles hits, which for me define the music of the swinging sixties. There were a few covers but nothing from the maestros Lennon and McCartney. Again, probably an issue with rights. Three of the show's characters are Lily, Jude and Penny Lane, I wonder which Beatles hits they would have inspired?

Musically speaking the only jarring note was "Born to be Wild", the 1968 Steppenwolf classic and a bit late for the early sixties but when one of your characters is a dyed-in-the-wool rocker called Wild Thing it's difficult to see what else would do. 

The excellent young cast deliver the goods with bags of energy and enthusiasm and appear to be having a whale of a time doing so. I wonder if they had heard of even half of these old hits before rehearsals? It doesn't matter because they've brought them all back to life again.

There's a very welcome appearance of Tom Jones in the second act which was spectacularly popular with the audience.

Finally, the show wraps up with the entire cast on stage performing a knock-out medley of hits which for sheer fun I would rate as being on par with the madness at the end of the stage version of Mamma Mia.

Shout and clap loud enough and they'll come back and do it all over again for an encore. Hooray!

Coming Your Way?

Carnaby Street is off on tour round the UK at the moment, I would love to see it return to the London stage and, hopefully, for a much longer run. If you enjoy the Blues Brothers, Austin Powers or Mamma Mia then I think you'll love this one.

22-27 April	Rhyl Pavilion Theatre
29 April - 4 May	Hastings White Rock Theatre
7-11 May	Windsor Royal Theatre
14-18 May	Tunbridge Wells Assembly Hall Theatre
20-25 May	Manchester Opera House
27 May - 1 June	Lowestoft Marina Theatre
3-8 June	Birmingham Alexandra Theatre
10-15 June	St Albans Alban Arena
25-29 June	Bournemouth Pavilion

Ready Steady Go

All this talk of the early sixties takes me back, I was only a young lad at school at the time but I do remember there being a vague sense of excitement about the place and, of course, the music.

The most exciting TV show was on Friday evening; Ready, Steady, Go! All in glorious black and white but we didn't know any better. It started with some wild, young things revving their Vespa scooters at the traffic lights, that was Ready! Then cut to the riders decked out in trendy gear, that was Steady! And then they shot off at high speed on the Go! The theme music was Manfred Mann's "5-4-3-2-1" and then cut to the party at the television studios and the delicious excitement of the opening line, "The weekend starts here!"

Music, dancing fans dressed a la mode, live performances, miming and all mixed in with roving TV cameras. But best of all was the magnificent Cathy McGowan. She wasn't long out of her teens but she carried the show by stumbling through it and inspired a generation. Dressed in all the latest gear she spoke a strange slang language which we all copied to the despair of our parents; everything was either "in" or "out" or the highest praise of all, "fab".

So inspired by all this nostalgia we declared a sixties week at the office, dug out our "Music to Watch Girls By" CDs volumns 1,2 and 3 and decked out the kitchen as the RSG studio.

What do you think? Groovy, huh? Maybe even a wee bit fab? However, like all our stupid crazes it didn't last long and after a few choruses with Petula Clark and Gerry and the Pacemakers we got bored with it and got back to the present. Black and White telly indeed! Music on vinyl, no iPods, no iPads, no internet. No can do.

Here's the Boss as Keith Fordyce, RSG presenter, sixies pop presenters usually sported the suit and tie ensemble and here's me as Cathy McGowan, the Queen of the Mods. No change there then. I don't think that I have really mastered this Photoshop thing, a rather inept use of layers I'd say. I might need to go on one of those Photoshop courses so that I can learn do this sort of thing properly.

Maybe there's a bit of dodging and burning required to get the skin tones uniform but overall I'd say that I make quite a striking Cathy McGowan, although not one that you'd want to meet on a dark night. The Boss is a little unhappy with his Keith Fordyce look and feels that I should have done a lot better. I don't really see the problem and the stick-on mask effect gives him, in my opinion, a sort of Phantom of the Opera appearance, which I thought he'd like.

I shall close my pean to Ready, Steady, Go with a tragic thought; we did not have video recorders in those days so if you wanted to watch the show you had to be there when it was broadcast on Friday evening. But surely if you had any sort of life then you wouldn't be at home on a Friday night watching telly; you'd be out with your fab, swinging and groovy chums. Wouldn't you?

Songs

This is the list of the songs as they are performed on stage and is not quite the same as the published soundtrack for Carnaby Street. Many of the songs are cover versions of older ones and I have tried to identify the ones that we would have heard on Ready Steady Go on a Friday night. No doubt you will tell me where I have made a mistake.

For example, I think most people would agree that "Roll Over Beethoven" has to be Chuck Berry but at the time it was the Beatle's recording that we loved. Both Cilla Black and Dionne Warwick recorded "Anyone Who Had a Heart" but in our hearts it is Cilla's. 

The Beatles and the Tremeloes had their version of "Twist and Shout" out at much the same time but, to me, this song is forever the Beatles with that amazing, raucous John Lennon vocal, recorded when he was suffering from a very bad cold. This is the first record that I can remember owning.

There are also a few contemporary songs, written by James Hall for the show.

Title	By
I Wish I Was There	James Hall. Cast
Bend Me Shape Me	Amen Corner
How Do You Do It?	Gerry and the Pacemakers
I’m In With the In Crowd	Doby Gray
Mustang Sally	Wilson Pickett
Doo Wah Diddy	Manfred Mann
Roll Over Beethoven	Chuck Berry or The Beatles
Go Now	The Moody Blues
Son of a Preacher Man	Dusty Springfield
Soho Shuffle	James Hall. Cast
In the Middle of Nowhere	Dusty Springfield
5-4-3-2-1	Manfred Mann
I Only Wanna be With You	Dusty Springfield
Poison Ivy	The Dave Clark Five
Yeh Yeh	Georgie Fame and The Blue Flames
I Can’t Control Myself	The Troggs
Funny How Love Can Be	The Ivy League
Summertime Blues	Eddie Cochran
Sweets for My Sweet	The Searchers
Don’t Throw Your Love Away	The Searchers
Twist and Shout	The Beatles
Shout	Lulu (and the Luvvers)
Money (That’s What I Want)	The Beatles
I Like It	Gerry and the Pacemakers
Born to be Wild	Steppenwolf
Don’t Let the Sun	Gerry and the Pacemakers
Keep On Running	The Spencer Davis Group
Anyone Who Had a Heart	Cilla Black
Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood	The Animals
Transistor Radio	James Hall. Cast
Green Green Grass of Home	Tom Jones
Do You Love Me	Brian Poole and the Tremeloes
I Just Don’t Know What to do	Dusty Springfield
Three Steps to Heaven	Eddie Cochran
Sealed With a Kiss	Brian Hyland
We Gotta Get Out of This Place	The Animals
You’ve Got Your Troubles	The Fortunes
She’s Out of This World	James Hall. Cast
I Know a Place	Petula Clark
Downtown	Petula Clark

Alfie Boe at the Albert Hall

Nice to get out and about and say enough already to the daily grind. Enough already to Excel training courses, Word training courses, PowerPoint, macros and all the rest of it. And a free ticket! Alfie Boe at London's magnificent Royal Albert Hall. Puffing and panting I arrived fashionably late as the Great Leader phoned with my further orders. Door 9, 2nd Tier, box 68. 

Blimey! That's generous, box tickets at the Albert Hall don't come cheap and these ones were 75 quid a pop.

I had my suspicions, what was this all about? Had I foolishly volunteered for something? No, the Great Leader assured me that he was just showing his appreciation for all the jolly good work that I had been doing recently. I still had my doubts and could not help but feel that this ticket was originally intended for someone much more alluring than myself.

The GL is a generous guy but his largesse is usually in the fish and chips, cheese sandwich and packet of crisps department. Never mind, don't look a gift horse in the mouth and enjoy the show. Now, I have to confess that I'd never heard of Alfie Boe until recently, apparently he has something to do with something called Les Mis and that my not knowing this means that I am an ignorant peasant and a muppet. OK. Well, I knew that and I didn't want to say anything more as I was clearly surrounded by a full house of Alfie Boe fans.

The auditorium at the Royal Albert Hall is quite something with an excellent view from our box but, for me, the real bonus was a bit more leg room than the usual theatre stalls which I always find a little cramped. I put this down to my slightly stocky build.

"Take a seat, dear boy" says the old fellow in one of his avuncular moods, sinking back into red plush comfort. He's definitely up to something. Here's the view from the box and you will notice the complete absence of the back view of somebody's head which is my usual experience. Having not been to the Albert Hall since I was a nipper I enjoyed a good goggle at the place particularly admiring the Star Trek ceiling with its flying saucers. What I did not know about these boxes is that the door locks behind you should you leave to go for a pee and that banging sound that you can hear is actually someone wanting to come back in. I'm still in disgrace.

The hall is styled in high camp Victorian except for the ceiling which is space age futuristic. Mushroom shaped fibreglass acoustic diffusers, lit in blue, hang from the roof of the hall and above them you can see fluted aluminium panels, lit in red. These are below the original glass roof and counteract the hall's notorious echo. I find this sort of thing fascinating and could go on and on about it for hours. Sadly, nobody else does and I was told to shut up. On with the show...

Alfie bounced on stage accompanied by a rock band of three guitarists (including Matt White and Murray Gould), drums, keyboards, horns section, a couple of very slinky backing singers and an eight-strong strings section in mini-skirts. Was this Alfie Boe the well known opera and romantic ballads singer? No, tonight was Alfie Boe the Rock Star. I don't know whether his regular fans appreciated all this but I thoroughly enjoyed it, he opened up with a few Elvis numbers and brought the house down with a rendition of "Bridge Over Troubled Water". Was I becoming a closet gospel fan? And when they did Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin" I knew that I had come to the right place.

We were treated to a quiet interlude with acoustic guitars, some traditional Italian love songs and a couple of sofas full of female Alfie fans. He had asked for a couple of young ladies to join him on stage but an entire posse descended and subjected the poor fellow to trial by serial snogging. And then came the show stopper, the moment all Alfie fans had been waiting for, "Bring Him Home" from Les Mis.

I don't know whether this was staged or not but Alfie plucked one of his Les Mis chums, John Owen-Jones, out of the audience and invited him onto the stage to do a few bars of "Bring Him Home".

It was a joyful moment to see the two chaps singing together, there's a line in the song that goes "Now I am gone..." and off he went! JOJ scarpered, exit stage left and went back to his seat just like that. Quite right too, he was probably a bit worried that his choc ice was melting.

It was a really good turn as he clearly wasn't expecting it, had arrived on stage with his hands shaking and hadn't had a chance to warm up but nevertheless he launched into song like a good 'un. You have to take your hat off to these old crooners, they are a sight to behold.

Here's John Owen-Jones taking his leave and once again proving that it's as important to leave with aplomb as it is to arrive in style.

The rest of the Boe Show was outstanding, full of ancient hits which I thoroughly enjoyed and to end it all a performance of another great favourite of mine "Shine a Light". This song is off the Rolling Stones 1972 album "Exile on Main Street" and I have never, ever heard anyone else cover it other than myself in the shower. Fantastic, a smile on my face and a tear in my eye. There were so many other people getting up on stage that I considered going up myself and asking Alfie if he was going to do requests.

I was going to suggest his doing Albert King's "Like A Road Leading Home". It's the final track on Albert's 1971 Stax album "Lovejoy" and is, in my opinion, a sadly neglected classic gem of a song. It's a bit bluesy, it's a little bit gospel, Alfie's got just the voice for it and he's definitely got the band. What do you think?

Oh dear, I think I've just become an Alfie fan. Now, if you are already an Alfie fan but you have not yet discovered the Alfie Boe fansite then it's high time you did, it's a real treat. By the way, I got my comeuppance for being a bit cheeky about Alfie Boe and Les Mis.