Thursday 14 March 2013

Exhaustion


I'm officially experimenting with a whole new level of exhaustion. I am only managing about 6 hours’ sleep a night at the moment and spend the days on my feet trudging about in sub-zero temperatures, or sitting in darkened corners of buildings drinking copious mugs of tea. Both are incredibly dehydrating. My lips are chapped, my arms ache, there’s dry skin on my forehead and knees, a weird pain in my arm pit and my hands and feet itch. Heaven knows what that’s all about.

We hung around the estate for just half a day today, and met one of the members of The Hoosiers; a lovely chap, who treated us to a beautiful ballad version of All You Need is Love...

Today’s special at the vegetarian cafe was quiche and salad and we had a piece of lemon cake for pudding. All washed down, of course, with tea. More tea. Tea tea tea. Tea is the currency of the estate.

I dragged myself home and then had to resuscitate myself in order to haul my sorry arse back into Soho to meet the lovely Julian who’ll be producing musical tracks for the film. We had a lovely chat about the stories I’m thinking about turning into songs; about the styles of music we might go for, and he sent me away to listen to Nick Drake and various other classic artists who, for some reason, haven’t really entered my radar.

Talking of classic artists, I understand that Agnetha from ABBA is releasing a solo album, which, rather upsettingly is simply called “A”. She was, of course, the first A of ABBA... And now she’s there on her own. She’s apparently done a duet with Gary Barlow. Gary Barlow? The woman could have the pick of male vocalists across the world, and she's gone for Barry Garlow! How horribly disappointing.

3 comments:

  1. I'm no fan of Agnetha's, but I do admit she has a nice voice. However, what you wrote couldn't be more untrue. Gary Barlow is one of the best male vocalists out there - you obviously haven't heard him sing or you wouldn't have made such a prejudiced comment. And, although it's not normal to compare male voices to female ones, I'll risk it and say that Gary is by far a better vocalist than Agnetha. It's one thing to say you don't like his music, it's another one to say he's a poor singer, when there's plenty of evidence on youtube to support the contrary. In his 20s, that man could probably reach higher notes than Mariah Carey and, despite his age, he can still hit some amazing high notes. And I think it's only fair that he sings with her since it's partly his song.

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  2. Sorry. You mistake me. Gary Barlow is plainly one of the best vocalists in the world. It is a well-documented fact that he has a higher whistle range than Mariah Carey and far greater emotional substance than Agnetha Faltskog. He is also a wonderful dancer.

    Forgive me for thinking that a duet with David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Bono, Scott Walker, Van Morrison, Prince or any of those other rubbish vocalists might have been a more iconic pairing. Plainly Agnetha's lucky to have worked with him. I'm just jealous.

    You must excuse me. I'm used to working in the West End where singers simply don't cut it like Mr Barlow. My ears have been dulled by years of hearing rubbish singers with tiny little vocal ranges. Gary Barlow actually has a 12 octave range. Imagine that. Bigger than a piano and Julie Andrews put together.

    I've just done a quick poll of 50 friends in the business, and they're all in agreement: Barry Garlow rocks.

    I retract every word of this blog and will go to bed singing Patience.

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  3. Gary Barlow has the range of the Hubble telescope. Prof Brian Cox told me. He was in a band.

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