Burt Bacharach - A life in Song, Festival Hall, London

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Barry in the UK
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Joined: Wed Feb 20, 2008 2:24 am

Re: Burt Bacharach - A life in Song, Festival Hall, London

Post by Barry in the UK »

Having been at the concert I agree with comments already expressed especially those about Joss Stone, Alfie Boe and Shaun Escoffery. They certainly understood the songs and put a lot into them. The reason Michael Grade was the host is that this was one of a series of A Life in Song concerts at the Royal Festival Hall over the last couple of years. Previous concerts featured the likes of Sir Tim Rice, Don Black and Tony Hatch. There may have been more and as far as I know all were hosted by Grade. Certainly the Rice and Black concerts were shown on BBC TV as I saw them and they followed the same format to the one for Burt. To me Grade did a better job on those concerts but was well below par on this one.

As soon as I saw the title of the concert I said to my wife this was not going to be a Burt only concert but we decided to go anyway. I suspect part of the audience was expecting a regular Burt concert and others probably did not know what to expect. I spoke with the couples sitting either side of us and both thought it was a great evening but neither had been to a regular Burt concert.

It was ironic that the biggest ovation, other than those to Burt, was to Josie James for her usual stunning rendition of Anyone Who Had a Heart, which brought the house down! Rather sadly in the TV broadcast she was given no credit either verbally or on the captions that went up stating each song and the artist. The actual credit she got was edited out. Shame. I came across this review from The Guardian newspaper, this being a review of the TV show rather than the actual concert.

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio ... television

Cheers
Barry
Martin Johnson
Posts: 462
Joined: Fri Sep 10, 2010 7:41 am

Re: Burt Bacharach - A life in Song, Festival Hall, London

Post by Martin Johnson »

Something else that was edited out for the TV broadcast was the second verse of That's What Friends Are For, sung, if I remember correctly, by Justin Hayward and then Alfie Boe. Apparently the original lyrics to the second verse as recorded by Rod Stewart for the film Nightshift were deemed too romantic for the Dionne and Friends recording so it was re-written with an instrumental break covering for the lack of a first line and this is now the standard version. Perhaps the TV producer shares my opinion that the words that eventually follow the instrumental are possibly the most cringe-making set of lyrics that have ever been attached to a Bacharach melody.
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