Special
Chatting to danbri the other night, he was off to see the Specials. I’ve not had a report yet, I imagine they were brilliant. But what came to my mind on his mention wasn’t any of their own tracks, but one by the lead singer’s other project, Fun Boy Three.
This performance of Our Lips are Sealed I rate as one of the best I’ve ever seen, ever. You’re more likely to know the Go-Go’s version. But start watching the original and the first impression is that of a good performance. Which soon changes when it occurs to you that there’s something else going on here, like emotions stripped bare. The sidelong glances, the look on his face, the poor guy is so close to tears. Just watch it, if you’ve ever had things go bad in a relationship that mattered to you, it’s all there. I can’t watch it just once, have to have one time for the emotions and one time for the music (which is compelling in itself, few songs get so bleak).
A meta point, no doubt prompted by it being danbri who got me looking in this direction. Initially I was going to mention this in “private” chat on Messenger. But then I thought, if I’m going to type it there, I might as well make a Facebook post out of it. Then I thought, what would Tim do? Make it a post in the broader ecosystem first I guess. This post has subtleties hard to convey in a readable FB post – e.g. how would you do a gentle little hat-tip to Marcel Duchamp there? I can and will post the link to FB later, maybe via Twitter.
