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First I didn't want to go to London because I had been there a few times during the past few years. Then my mother suggested that I went there to buy some things she needed, among them a Paddington teddy bear (don't ask, too hard to explain why she needed that one). Then I heard that Whistle Down the Wind, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and the great Jim Steinman, had just opened on West End. So I thought that maybe I could see that musical. I had heard some of its songs, one of them was Boyzone's version of No Matter What, and liked them. And of course it's always nice to go to London, a big and beautiful city with lots of record stores.
I flew to London. During the journey I was listening to the Electric Light Orchestra. I was staying in a small hotel which was near Notting Hill and Bayswater. It was a very interracial hotel. The manager was a nice Indian or Pakistani fellow and there were Indian, Arabian, African and European people working.
The first day in London was my 23rd birthday. I woke up in the morning when there was a fire alarm. False alarms seem to be very common in London. The same evening there were fire engines in front of the hotel next door.
I bought a ticket to Whistle Down the Wind and got one for the same evening. I wanted to go to the hotel and leave my stuff there before I went to the theater. Unfortunately there was something wrong with the underground that day and so it would have taken a very long time to get to the hotel. So I went straight to the theatre and bought a Whistle Down the Wind t-shirt. My seat was in the upper circle but I saw very well from there. On my left was a nice older couple from Ohio. I showed them a photo of the lyricist Jim Steinman and told them that he was my favorite songwriter. On my right was a young guy who loved the old film version of Whistle Down the Wind. He was reading the programme and said: "Why so many songs? Where's the story?"
The show started with the song Vaults of Heaven. It's majestetic ending was really breathtaking and made my heart beat faster. I knew I was going to love this show. The music was played by a big orchestra and sounded really strong. The title song was first sung by James Graeme who played the father of the kids. It sounded good but the song really started to live when it was sung by the heroine Swallow (played by Lottie Mayor). Lottie Mayor was maybe a bit too British to play a Louisianan girl but she had a very beautiful voice. The best vocal performance of the show was the song Cold which was sung by Edward (Walter Herron Reynolds III). He was a huge man with a huge bass-baritone. This man should record an album. I loved his voice.
Then a man came on stage and Swallow though he was Jesus Christ. The man was played by Marcus Lowett who looked a bit like David Gahan of Depeche Mode, but his high tenor didn't sound like him at all. First there was something about him that I didn't lik,e maybe his overacting. But then he was left alone and sung the song Unsettled Scores. It's a very powerful song with great lyrics. Its ending ("That's the nature of the beast") had the same effect on me as the ending of Vaults of Heaven. A great song and quite well sung. Lowett didn't have a big voice but he could cover it up quite well with the interpretation (unfortunately this didn't work at all on the cast album). Tire Tracks and Broken Hearts was another powerful song. It was sung by Veronica Hart and Dean Collinson who is a musical composer himself. When Children Rule the World was good too. I had liked the Red Hill Children version of it but was quite dissappointed when I heard Donny Osmond's version. The Finale of the first act was based on the song No Matter What, and it sounded even better than the Boyzone version. In the end there were excerpts of other songs and the song grew really big. In the act two there were a lot of reprises in but also one of the best songs of the show: A Kiss Is a Terrible Thing to Waste. This was the first really big musical I had ever seen. I'd been in a production of Hair in Finland and seen the Rocky Horror Show in West End. But this was completely different. The staging was amazing. The casting was great. The story was at times a bit silly but it doesn't really matter in this kind of show. And the music and the lyrics were so great. When I left the theatre, I was singing No Matter What and When Children Rule the World. I was still singing aloud in the underground, and I guess people thought I was crazy.
The next day I read some reviews of Whistle. Most of them said something like "Andrew Lloyd Webber has finally lost his touch". I couldn't disagree more. There's always been some great songs in Lloyd Webber's musicals but this is the first one I loved completely.
I went to Croydon near London because I had heard there was the biggest secondhand recordstore of Europe, Beanos. It was big but I didn't find anything special, and everything was expensive. I recommend these record stores in London:
Record and Tape Exchange, 36&38 Notting Hill Gate, 28&30 Pembridge Road, 229 Camden High Street, 90 Goldhawk Road (Shepherd's Bush). Lots of crap but you may also find soem really interesting stuff. Cheap prices. One of those in Notting Hill Gate had a ratities section.
Reckless Records, 80 Berwick Street, 79 Upper Street (Islington). The one in Islington is more interesting, they also have a rarities section. When I was there, they were playing Surf's Up by The Beach Boys, and almost everybody was singing along. I told somebody that I thought the title track was one of the best songs ever written. He agreed.
Tower Records, Piccadilly Circus. The best choice if you want to buy new (not 2nd hand) cd's. Open until midnight so I sometimes spent my evenings there.
Bootleg cassettes and videos are available in Portobello Road Market and Camden Lock Market.
I was trying to find music by a French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. I saw his cd's in Tower Records and other big record stores but they were very expensive French imports. I did buy a cassette of Jane Birkin singing songs by Gainsbourg. I bought one Steinman related item, a live tape by the Sisters of Mercy. One day I went to a big toystore to buy that teddy bear. That toystore had a lot of Andrew Lloyd Webber stuff, and they were showing a Whistle Down the Wind documentary video which was hosted by Jim Steinman. Unfortunately they didn't sell copies of this video. I still haven't found a copy of this documentary. Does anybody know anything about this?
Then I went back to Finland, and it took me one and a half years before I finished writing this lousy story about my trip. |
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