boulevardiers

Apologies to my many fans for not blogging for a few weeks - I promise to get back in the saddle on a regular basis in future, having read strong medical opinion that it does you good to be regular.
And there is so much going on. Last night I was at Boulevard Music, a guitar shop in a fairly run-down part of Culver City - though I do recommend Tanner's Coffee further down the road if you ever have an hour to kill.
Boulevard turned itself into a mini-auditorium for the evening, to host a show by Noel Harrison, ever doomed to suffer the soubriquet "son of Rex", and the irrepressible Ian Whitcomb, whose love affair with the microphone makes Napoleon and Josephine look like George Bush and Hillary Clinton.
Despite his claim to an Oscar-winning classic song, the diffident-seeming Harrison accepted the role of warm-up act for Whitcomb, and on the night that was about right: Harrison the virtuoso and Whitcomb the showman.
Like any true monolingual Brit, I was dazzled by Harrison's command of French, not only in his rendition of a string of Jacques Brel songs but also to deal with a French-speaking heckler demanding more Brel and less Harrison. Nevertheless, the highlight of his half was Windmills of Your Mind, the Oscar-winning theme song by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand for the 1968 version of the Thomas Crown Affair, the one with Steve McQueen and Fay Dunaway. Harrison has been singing it ever since, so he has got it pretty well sorted out by now, but it still evokes memories of that extraordinary movie.
The contrast with the second half of the show was total. We had Ian Whitcomb singing with and without the wonderfully dulcet tones of his lovely wife Regina, with and without his ukelele, his accordion and his piano, playing an instrumental and even an over-the-top piece of Vicotrian declamatory monologue that would have left Donald Wolfit blushing. Oh, and a delightful guest singing appearance by a lady called Michael, in a long ivory dress with a bubble of brown hair on top, who brought the house down with a real hoochie-mamma song.
It will be very hard to explain to future generations what Ian's performances were like, just as it is to recapture the mood of any artiste from the past unless they are captured on film or video. Even then, they are of their time and cannot easily be seen in context by those who see them years later. But on a night like last night Ian was in his pomp, in command of the stage and the whole room, exuding personality and keeping the audience enthralled with his asides and his ability to recover from occasionally forgetting words and even whole songs. It didn't matter: I really believe that Ian could pick up a phone book and entertain a crowd with it, and that is why he will always be remembered by those lucky enough to see him. And if you want to catch the flavor without stirring from your armchair, I am sure he would want me to tell you that on Wednesday, November 7, he is starting a radio show going out at 10pm LA Time on luxuriamusic.com, an internet station. But don't worry if you miss it, because I'll probably blog it!