minihulkhogan asked: Lol you need to calm down, brah!
Why you be saying that, brah?
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of Equality)
A couple of blogs ago I described the painful ordeal of buying tickets to attend a concert organised by Annie Lennox aimed at raising awareness to the fight for women’s equality. You’ll be happy to know that the concert was a huge success and it was well worth the immense struggle that I went through to be able to attend. You may think I’m being melodramatic and that the hyperbolic description of my online adventures is uncalled for, but you must understand that I was born into a world where, by the time I was old enough to attend concerts and gigs by myself and indeed by the time I was old enough to know what good music was, the idea of Annie Lennox going on tour was unlikely (fingers crossed that this isn’t entirely the case).
The night was split up into four parts, each being dominated by four superb female artists. Kate Nash, who opened the show, V V Brown, who makes the Mark’s and Spencer’s adverts sexy as hell, Annie Lennox (YEYEYEYEYAYEEAEYEAEYAEYA!!!!) and Paloma Faith, who performed some stuff from her upcoming album.
Kate Nash had a rather difficult job coming out first, bearing in mind that this was no ordinary gig and by this I mean that there was a lot of sitting down and the most movement that you could get out of these old farts was the odd clap of the hand. However, she performed sublimely well and there was one point where she said ‘Now this is a quiet song, so shut up, yea?!’. This really broke the ice and the audience was generally much more engaging from that point onwards. There were a lot of her fans in the audience, as was to be expected, and she got a barrage of appreciative “woops” when she played the first chords to ‘Birds’.
V V Brown performed second and I have to admit that I had no real idea of who she was until the presenter, Miquita ‘it’s seven in the morning and I’m on T4 shouting at you through your television screen’ Oliver, mentioned her being in the M&S adverts and even then I only had a vague picture of who she was on about. By this I don’t mean to imply that I think that she’s a nobody, goodness knows that I’m the worst person in the world for keeping up with modern trends, except perhaps Gaddafi. In any case, she was absolutely fantastic and rounded off her performance slot with a worthy cover of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida.
The interval was taken up by female comedian Shazia Mirza. She was absolutely hilarious and a lot of her jokes revolved around her Islam upbinging and what it’s like to be a woman in a strict Muslim family. The highlight of her performance was something about using her hymen to help defend the country against missile attacks … I was in stitches although a lot of people in the audience were unsure whether they were allowed to laugh or not.
After the interval we were treated to, let’s face it, what almost everyone had paid £50 for. When Annie Lennox stepped out on to the stage the hall went absolutely berserk. I was extremely relieved by this because, if the audience’s reaction up to this point was anything to go by, I thought that I would be the only one ‘gaying out’, as my sister so delicately put it. After the excitement of seeing her died down, Annie sat at her digital piano and blew the Royal Festival Hall away. Her first song was the classic ‘No More “I love you”s’ from her second album Medusa, which was an album made up entirely of covers from Annie’s favourite male singers. The song in question was sung originally by ‘The Lover Speaks’ who unfortunately only ever released one self-titled album, ‘The Lover Speaks’. For a reason unknown to me the album was a commercial flop, but it’s one of my favourite albums and if you haven’t already listened to it you definitely.
Annie then went on to play ‘There must be an Angel (Playing with my Heart)’ and ‘Here Comes the Rain Again’, two classic Eurythmics songs that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. After making sure that we sung along to ‘Little Bird’ and ‘Waiting in Vain’, Annie stood up to talk to the audience about the reason why the concert had been organised. She started with a ‘feminism test’ and asked everyone in the audience who was a feminist to stand up and I’m sure that I was the first one to do so!!! In the end, most of the hall was standing and Annie went on to tell us what equality for women really meant and how we can all do our bit to make sure that it happens soon!!!
Sitting back down at her piano, Annie surprised all the avid Eurythmics fans in the room by playing ‘Love is a Stranger’, which goes all the way back to when Annie was sporting her iconic orange crew cut. A quarter of the way through, however, Annie had to stop as she had started the song in the wrong key as ‘My daughter knows I’m prone to do’. After a light hearted laugh from the audience she got right back to it and soon had the audience singing along again. This was followed by the apt ‘Sisters are doing it for themselves’, which had the whole hall standing up and dancing (badly). Annie went off to tumultuous applause before being driven back so she could finish off her set with the forever classic ‘Sweet Dreams (Are made of this)’. Needless to say, Annie brought the house down as she swaggered off stage, her coat slung behind her back.
Paloma Faith was the last act of the night and the first thing she said was ‘I don’t know whose idea it was for me to follow Annie Lennox, but she got her preferred slot as she should’. Daunted, then, with the seemingly impossible task of following up what was undoubtedly the act of the night, Paloma went on to performing some tracks from her new album whilst looking absolutely stunning in an all in one. As everyone was so hyped up from Annie’s performance she had no trouble in getting everyone on their feet and dancing along as she performed song after song, finishing with ‘New York’.
Needless to say, that the concert was a complete success. There was no doubt in my mind that everyone who had attended had gained something from the experience, including me. It seems strange, perhaps, that in a world of constant technological advancement, there still exists the overly primitive notion of discriminating against someone because of their gender. For some reason, feminism is still viewed and even used by many as a derogatory term; a word sometimes utilised so as to dismiss the opinions and arguments of an individual who may be considered a little extremist. For me feminism is about choice. The choice between actively seeking out the implementation of perfect equality between man and woman or living one’s life in the hope that as the world progresses, humanity’s ideals will transcend the differences between gender, race and sexuality. Feminism isn’t a bad word, I think that everybody should be a feminist.
Thefacebook
Yesterday, I finally got around to watching the Social Network. I’m ashamed to admit that the main reason for my delayed viewing of this masterpiece of a film was my reluctance to give in to what I thought was a movie designed solely to capitalise on the social phenomena that was - is facebook. So for that I apologise, I’ll never do it again I promise. Even if the sequel to Wendy Wu - The homecoming Warrior comes out I will make sure that I hold no preconceived notions of its awfulness (Ironically, the girl who played Wendy Wu is in the Social Network as a slut; well done to her she did it very well!!!)
Anyway, as I have already hinted I absolutely loved this film!!! The mastery of its screenplay is confirmed right from the onset in the first scene which took 99 takes and took up a total of 18 pages on script!!! (Thank you IMDB). I was surprised to later discover that none of that scene had been improvised by either of the actors. This means that all the character development and realism was devised by the beautiful Aaron Sorkin … all of it! every single lovely word!!! (He gets a cameo in it later on, hahaha he’s so awesome) The rest of the film is a constant attack of quick fire witty screenplay perfection, which makes for very enjoyable viewing indeed. The lines of course would have meant nothing without the lovely deliverance from all the actors so well done to them (although Andrew Garfield is going to have to do a little more for me to be able to get over his awfully awkward recovery attempt after his gaff at the Golden Globes, not that he will care, but I still cry at night because of it. His American accent was awesome though so there you go).
I already knew that the score for this movie was absolutely divine before I watched it, but there’s nothing like listening to such a masterpiece whilst watching the film for which it was devised. I was disappointed that Mr. Desplat didn’t win the award for best original score at the Oscars and I think that I’m going to stick to that feeling, thank you very much, but there’s no doubt that the Social Network equally deserved it. Indeed, just like the King’s Speech the score was very much about creeping up behind you and following you home from the cinema, after the film had finished, before smacking you in the proverbial face with a sublime flash of pianos and violins. A perfect way, I think, of demonstrating the frailty of friendship and the superficiality of success and all the ‘power’ and money that it brings.
It really was a fantastic example of good movieship and since I watched it not twenty four hours ago I can’t seem to get it out of my head!!! Guiltily, I find myself not being able to wait to add it to my modest blu-ray collection not only because it’s a great film, but because the disc design is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s just black with ‘the social network’ written in classic Facebook font on the rim in one ‘corner’ … mmmmmmm :)
So I love Annie Lennox, I love Annie Lennox so
Yesterday I paid £45 to become a full member of the London SouthBank Centre just so I could have access to the priority booking of an Annie Lennox performance that will occur in March. Ultimately, this resulted in absolute failure as my internet, which you will all come to know as being one of the many banes of my life, refused to allow me to purchase any tickets until after midnight, by which time (OF COURSE!!!) the tickets had gone on general sale. In any case, the prospect of seeing Annie Lennox live lessened the £45 pound blow upon my meagre student savings. (That and the fact that members do not have to pay the £1.50 booking fee, so I will be able to justify my expenditure once I have gone to 30 events. At an average of £17.50 a show that brings the total money that I have to spend so as to account for my initial spending to £525, jolly good)
The reason that I love Annie Lennox so much, apart from her obvious awesomeness, is that it is because of her that I listen to music at all. Before I had listened to her rendition of Ash’s ‘Shining Light’ and prior to her winning the Academy Award for Best Song, ‘Into the West’, my iTunes collection was, at best, shit. Mind you, it still is very much a huge pile of crap (not many people seem to like The Proclaimers very much), but I love it and it’s great and I couldn’t live without it, so there!
Needless to say, Friday March the eleventh couldn’t be further off. I suffered a mild stroke when I realised that one of my assignments is due in on that date, but I’ll just have to finish it one day earlier, won’t I?
For all of you who don’t know, Annie Lennox is one half of the British synth/pop duo Eurythmics who achieved fame with hits such as ‘Sweet Dreams (Are made of this)’ and ‘There must be an Angel (Playing with my heart)’.
Oh and The Proclaimers are the ones who sang ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 miles). They’re the Scottish ones in glasses, not the ones in wheelchairs…
