UK Piano Page Piano Forum

That would be 'Newport State Of Mind' if my memory serves me well, by chav rappers Goldie Lookin' Chain (the same outfit responsible for 'Your Mother's Got A (Sir Wm Borlase)'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx8CZyFM4b4

the title being of a parody of a Billy Joel song and the song itself of one of piano damsel Alicia Keys' biggies.

That's the one; it was so good. EMI are horrible for taking it down.

There are lots of 'Birmingham', 'Birmz', BTown' and '0121' raps around the ether but as nearly all of them involve doing something rather naughty with either a gun or a knife and another human being, I cannot possibly post links to them. But there is this one (clean):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teA8zStFvys

Feg, has the festival been/gone yet? How was it, if so?

Balerno Music Festival doesn't start until 24th September. I am procrastinating about the pieces I'm choosing for my 'little turn' I'm planning a Max Jaffa-esque selection with some Elgar and some Kreisler but it is getting a decent edition of the music which is causing problems. The collected works type stuff is so badly printed as to be unreadable on a music stand.

I may attempt Czardas - wish me luck

Is any of the festival being filmed for YT, including your piano escapades??

dave brum wrote:Is any of the festival being filmed for YT, including your piano escapades??

No filming of me, thank goodness. My escapades are of the violin variety

Feg wrote:I may attempt Czardas - wish me luck

What, without performance enhancing drugs and just the ten (well, five, for a fiddler) fingers? Ah, you'll be fine. You show 'em!

Well last night in actual fact - 'The Old Rugged Cross'. I was looking on YT for some footage of the Kings Norton organ being played and all I could come across was this funeral service from February that included this and 'Lord of the Dance' by Sydney Carter. I think given the elaborate nature of the service the deceased should have paid slightly more income tax....

Ethna Campbell (Irish female singer) did a popular version of TORC that I had in my record collection. I believe Stevie Wonder has even done a cover version.

Salut D'amour by Elgar. One of my violin pieces for the Festival. I've been practicing from an online version only to discover that the original is in four sharps

I like TORC as long as it isn't dragged...I hate draggy hymns.

Nobody will notice, Feg, will they? I wouldn't... are you going to relearn it in another key?

TORC is in the Musicsales 'It's Easy To Play Hymns' book. And it's a real funeral belter. You can often hear lovable old codgers humming or mumbling it on buses as if to say 'I'd like this when the time comes'.

Gill the Piano wrote:I like TORC as long as it isn't dragged...I hate draggy hymns.

Nobody will notice, Feg, will they? I wouldn't... are you going to relearn it in another key?

What is this 'relearn' of which you speak? I'm a read the dots at all times sort of person so I will play the official version. I've just got to go through it and mark changes to fingering and position to remind me. My Youtube accompaniment version is no use for my pianist so we are playing the proper one.

My Old Mayn Said Follow The Vayn since I saw Simon Webbe doing it on Strictly last night.

As sung by Dick Vayn Doyke, eh?

And Bob Hoskins in 'Made in Dagenham' (accompanying himself)

The bookshop Ebola appeal has made me think of 'I've Got A Luvverly Bunch Of Coconuts'. Roll Ebola ball a penny a pitch.

'Gypsy Woman' (Crystal Waters) Only because I heard a jazz version of it whilst eating in the Bun and Bowl restaurant in town last week.

'Once upon a dream' - no not the Disney original but the arrangement done for the end credits of Maleficent sung by Lana Del Ray. It really is worth listening to if only to compare the two different styles of orchestration.

Quite creepy given the usual saccharine tosh that Disney churn out!

Feeling old once more, 'Calling All The Heroes' by It Bites from '86. I remember not long after that ITV (or 'Central' as it still was before it lost its regional identities) went 24 hour and I sat through a whole hour of It Bites in concert. At the time I was bored out of my head. Was the quality antidote to the commercial stuff of the time (Stock Aitken Waterman, Madonna, Michael Jackson etc) though I did not realise it as a naive under-educated 16 year old!

Depeche Mode; Your Own Personal Jesus. Going round and round in my head after hearing it this morning!

Here's a jazz version of Personal Jesus that was on the same playlist as Gypsy Woman in the Bun and Bowl:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfMQFWV1Ht8

Annoyingly, it is still Once Upon A Dream from Maleficent/Lana Del Ray.

I liked it, even though it's a bit creepy. And I liked the Jazz version of Personal Jesus too. People are clever. I like the version of 'Creep' by the Kolacny brothers & Scala...womens' voices.

I like the Jazz and Floyd version of Another Brick, though I'm not too keen on anything else of PF done in jazz. I thought See Emily Play would be good but it was not. Arnold Layne, would definitely not convert to jazz due to the subject matter of the song (pinching womens' smalls from washing lines).

The Boars Head Carol, after seeing a version on YT by Steeleye Span. I put 'the boars head carol sheet music' into Googlesbury and I didnt see anything easy that was free to download.

Have you got a not too difficult version of it, Gizzy Gill or Fiona?

I have one; I could post you a photocopy.

Scrap that; put Boar's Head Carol into goggle and press ;images'. Lots of versions pop up. But I'll still post you the music if you want it.

Uff, still can't shake off Once Upon A Dream.

He is the biggest purveyor of drivel and pap English music has ever seen, which is why I cannot understand why I seem to have 'Another Day In Paradise' by Phil Collins...oh and it makes me feel about one hundred and fifty years old as well.

Because he's good at earworm music. Do you want the Boar's Head or not? I'm sending E down to get some copies of other bits, one more won't hurt.

Yes Please!!!

Righto. On its way!

The Heart Of Rock and Roll is the Beat by Huey Lewis and the News. Much jollier than Collins. Though I always thought the heart of the European sugar industry was the beet

Can't rid myself of the Dambusters now!

I shall be playing Give Peace A Chance at Keep Fit, which is on Tuesday, Remembrance Day. Nothing militaristic, nothing nationalistic, and definitely nothing glorifying acts of war. Just music and hope.

dave brum wrote:I shall be playing Give Peace A Chance at Keep Fit, which is on Tuesday, Remembrance Day.

You have to play it from memory that day, Dave. It's The Law.

gizzy wrote:

dave brum wrote:I shall be playing Give Peace A Chance at Keep Fit, which is on Tuesday, Remembrance Day.

You have to play it from memory that day, Dave. It's The Law.

Appropriately, nothing I play is from memory! But it's one of the simplest songs I know with the strongest of messages - oddly enough my keep fit instructor had never seen a white poppy before until last week, where has she been all these years!

http://www.ppu.org.uk/whitepoppy/

If I had the appropriate music software I wouldn't mind doing a (sort of) arrangement of it just to use as SR practice. There's oodles of manuscript paper in our shop......

...UPDATE, in the shower I did have GPAC along with an old Yes album track that features it, 'I've Seen All Good People'. I used to have loads of Yes albums on vinyl in the early 90s.

In the SHOWER?

Gill the Piano wrote:In the SHOWER?

The warm vapours are good for my vocal chords. I remember a Christmas party at Mabel's many years ago, unwittingly I burst into 'Wonderwall' in the downstairs water closet. The party heard every word and I got a round of applause when I got back, but no offer to join her choir, alas.

The 'Uncle Arthur' song again. Should be Christmas No1, it's just the sort of slightly cheeky tune from and inspired by the past the British revel in at that time of year.

'Who yo' gonna call??' That one.

Heard something on the wireless today; if you want to get rid of an earworm, you have to sing the whole thing through beginning to end and that apparently gets shot of it. I might try it next time I get one!

I think it'll be G&S overtures today, got them on now. I've always liked them since I first heard them on IBA Engineering Announcements, the weekly trade bulletin broadcast on ITV in the 70s/80s at 0910 every Tuesday morning. It had the accolade of being one of two programmes never billed in listings mags (the other being its BBC equivalent) and the overtures from The Mikado and Yeomen were always played in full before the bulletin began (before TV-am came along, most ITV regions would start at 0930)

When the Durris transmitter aerial feed burnt out that night, I was sad for weeks......Pity there are not many episodes of Engineering Announcements knocking around on YT, it's at the other end of the scale from Jeremy Kyles for me. But one of my favourite ones is, the one marking the switching off of the 405 line VHF television network in January 1985. (of course the UHF analogue 625 line was killed between 2008 and 2012)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq7nASFZhhk

You're such an anorak, chicken! I hate G&S. Well, to be specific I hate G. It's very fussy and gets on my nerves...

Gill the Piano wrote:You're such an anorak, chicken! I hate G&S. Well, to be specific I hate G. It's very fussy and gets on my nerves...

WS Gilbert is one of my heroes. Anyone who can use the intelligent art of the English language to satirise and ridicule the British establishment always has a top kudos factor for me!

I have the introduction music to the BBC Service Information bulletins, it's by the European Soundstage Orchestra on a compilation of library tracks used on BBC radio and TV and ITV. 'C'Mon In' is my fave one of theirs, if you remember when Radio 1 began in 1967, what was not cool enough for it continued on 1500 metres Long Wave and there was a very light-music orientated breakfast show called Breakfast Special (presented by John Dunn and Ray Moore) which had the cheery 'C'Mon In' as its theme. After a daily dose of Breakfast Special (don't remember it but I've heard tapes of it) who could not have a crappy day at work or school? No newspaper reviews, no egotistic DJs, no opiniated Nick Ferrari-ish tripe, no news shoved down your throat. Just groovy sounds with friendly chat to ease you into your day.

The BBC Service Information theme was called 'Walk and Talk'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnSPrA6IE7I

and a mock up of a Service Information bulletin from '1973' (couldn't find anything genuine)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1GG6T1aHEA

Gill the Piano wrote:You're such an anorak, chicken! I hate G&S. Well, to be specific I hate G. It's very fussy and gets on my nerves...

But Gilbert didn't write the overtures, though, did he? But then, neither did Sullivan, with the exception of one or two, like the Yeomen of the Guard.

The Mikado also, probably had Arthur's name on it as that overture's not that disanalogious from TYOTG

dave brum wrote:The Mikado also, probably had Arthur's name on it as that overture's not that disanalogious from TYOTG

Apparently not, according to http://bact.org/bactold/iol_triv.html

Iolanthe is just like Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream music.

I was surprised to find Sullivan had written an overture for Utopia Limited because I conducted it and there wasn't one in our music, only a short piece of Sullivan grafted in from somewhere else, but certainly not the usual "here are the best tunes, all cleverly woven together, see how many of them you recognise, there will be a test afterwards" - type.

I had thought to try to rattle one off for myself, but then I was called in for my first corneal graft (this was in 1988) and didn't have the time to focus on it. I do remember when I was lying in bed gradually surfacing after the general anaesthetic and not having opened my eye(s) that I had my hands above the bedcover and so as to keep my mind off what I could feel, I was going through all the music using a very small beat. I heard two nurses walk past and one of them laughed and said "she looks like she's conducting" and I remember just about being able to growl "I am"