29/08/2024 by Peter Viney
At AROUND AND AROUND, the latest record label article is RCA Victor (follow link). This is the history of the US company up to and including the format wars of 1948 to 1950, after Columbia / CBS introduced the LP record at 331/3 rpm and RCA introduced the 45 rpm single. It’s as usual heavily illustrated.
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24/08/2024 by Peter Viney
At Around and Around:
Verve (follow this link) started as a jazz label. MGM took it over in 1961, but after 1966 Verve started to identify with rock, and started the Verve Folkways and then Verve Forecast brands. Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie to Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto. Then Jimmy Smith, The Righteous Brothers, Velvet Underground, Mothers of Invention, Blues Project, Janis Ian, Laura Nyro … then MGM just let it go.
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19/08/2024 by Peter Viney
MGM’s short-lived1968 label Music Factory (linked) added to Around and Around.
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19/08/2024 by Peter Viney
At AROUND AND AROUND. MGM post 1967 (linked) picks up the story when MGM became independent of EMI in the UK in 1967. They started out with a surprise shift for a staid soundtrack label, with Eric Burdon & The Animals, The Velvet Underground and The Mothers of Invention. Just a few years later they were best known for The Osmonds. Follow the trail.
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18/08/2024 by Peter Viney
Review of the 2024 production of THE BIRTHDAY PARTY by Harold Pinter (follow link to review) at Bath’s Ustinov Studio. The Ustinov Studio continues with top directors and casts in a tiny studio theatre, the end result normally being a transfer intact to London and a bigger stage. I think this will follow the pattern.
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15/08/2024 by Peter Viney
AS YOU LIKE IT at the open air garden theatre at the RSC (follow link to review). We thought it marvellous. It’s edited to 80 minutes. It’s sharpened, focussed and very funny. It’s not just a “popular” version, it’s one of the best in its own right. It’s full of energy and we saw it in the rain. It’s budget price too. Try and get to Stratford! You can get in. Read my review for rain protection too.
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15/08/2024 by Peter Viney
Review of PERICLES PRINCE OF TYRE (follow link to review). This is the first Royal Shakespeare Company production by co-artistic director, Tamara Harvey. It’s also a rarely performed play, and often avoided because Shakespeare only wrote Acts III to V. It’s a stylish production. Well worth seeing, though the intrinsic faults of the material are impossible to hide.
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12/08/2024 by Peter Viney
Review of THE GRAPES OF WRATH at The National Theatre added. This is a mighty and epic production. trucks move, the Colorado River gets swum in, the creek tries to flood the place. Directed by Carrie Cracknell, with a cast of 24. The original New York adaptation by Frank Galati had 36, but it has been cut well for the National. As so often with plays and films of novels the reviewers get snotty. Not us. Extra marks too for a truly incredible last five minutes.
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11/08/2024 by Peter Viney
Review of THE HOT WING KING by Katori Hall at The National Theatre. A Pulitzer Prize winner in America, it went down extraordinarily well in London. I guess ticking both the Global Majority and LGBT+ boxes helped. We had some doubts though. Read the review.
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04/08/2024 by Peter Viney
Chichester’s annual big musical is one of the national theatrical events of the year. They’ve done it again with a new version of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! (LINK TO MY REVIEW) directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne. This is as good a musical as you’ll see this year or any other. Running to 7th September- if you can get tickets.
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