{"id":3886,"date":"2019-05-08T09:56:27","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T09:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/?p=3886"},"modified":"2019-05-08T09:56:27","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T09:56:27","slug":"marc-almond-nottingham-royal-centre-6-5-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/marc-almond-nottingham-royal-centre-6-5-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Marc Almond, Nottingham Royal Centre, 6.5.19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>My review from today&#8217;s Nottingham Post. Photo below by their Kevin Cooper.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At 61, Marc Almond is entitled to take it easy. He has no album to promote, he tells a packed house, but wants to keep tonight \u2018populist\u2019, singing lots of favourite songs, most of them by old stars: \u2018who tend to be dead stars, so they\u2019re never going to let you down.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He kicks off with Charles Aznavour\u2019s\nI Have Lived, then it\u2019s straight into a Scott Walker tribute, with The Big Hurt\nand, later, a fine Big Louise. There\u2019s Billy Fury\u2019s I\u2019m Lost Without You and\nT.Rex\u2019s Cosmic Dancer, which leads into a Bowie section featuring Starman,\nJohn, I\u2019m Only Dancing and Brel\u2019s Amsterdam. Four numbers are done nearly\nacapella, with his four backing singers. All great fun, featuring a six piece\nband and only a couple of first night missed cues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My highlights are a fantastic\nrendition of Charles Aznavour\u2019s What Makes A Man A Man and Lou Reed\u2019s Caroline\nSays, performed with just cello and violin. He falsely accuses Paul McCartney\nof stealing a Russian folk song before giving us a rousing Those Were The Days\n(the villain who stole sole\ncredit to his adaptation of the Russian song was one Gene Raskin, Macca only\nproduced the Mary Hopkin hit).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two hours rush by with his\nown hits restricted to the final section, including Stories of Johnny, a\nlovely, slowed down Bedsitter, a great Days of Pearly Spencer, a terrific A\nLover Spurned and the closing My Hand Over My Heart, replete with comments\nabout how forty years on high heels have played havoc with his knees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Time is tight so he doesn\u2019t\nleave the stage for the encores but launches into Tainted Love. There\u2019s only\none song he can finish with. Tonight, it\u2019s dedicated to his Soft Cell bandmate,\nDave Ball, who turned 60 this week. Say Hello, Wave Goodbye only becomes more\nemotionally resonant with the years. We sing, sway and wave along. A triumph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"927\" src=\"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-13.51.58-1024x927.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3887\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-13.51.58-1024x927.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-13.51.58-300x272.png 300w, https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-13.51.58-768x696.png 768w, https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-13.51.58.png 1124w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My review from today&#8217;s Nottingham Post. Photo below by their Kevin Cooper. At 61, Marc Almond is entitled to take it easy. He has no album to promote, he tells a packed house, but wants to keep tonight \u2018populist\u2019, singing lots of favourite songs, most of them by old stars: \u2018who tend to be dead stars, so they\u2019re never going to let you down.\u2019 He kicks off with Charles Aznavour\u2019s I Have Lived, then it\u2019s straight into a Scott Walker tribute, with The Big Hurt and, later, a fine Big Louise. There\u2019s Billy Fury\u2019s I\u2019m Lost Without You and T.Rex\u2019s Cosmic Dancer, which leads into a Bowie section featuring Starman, John, I\u2019m Only Dancing and Brel\u2019s Amsterdam. Four numbers are done nearly acapella, with his&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3886"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3889,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3886\/revisions\/3889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}