Cavalier (Lost Version)
Group: Members
Posts: 598
Joined: Nov. 2010 |
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Posted: April 30 2011, 11:49 |
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When the likes of the Daily Mail and Daily Express are reaching for their stock phrases for outrage at some misdemeanour or expense incurred by a UK broadcaster, their commentators and columnists are rarely troubled if they use descriptions not current for a decade or more, that their readers may share their disgust and declaim "that's typical of the BBC/ITV/Channel 4" etc.
So it is for Channel 5, which for current occasional visitors to our shores would seem to be largely filled with Australian soaps, populist documentaries, overnight roulette, and most prominently American crime dramas: all the variations of Law & Order and C.S.I. as well as my favourite, NCIS. But in its dark and seedy past, late Friday evenings (and some others) were filled with erotic content , which is what the aforementioned hacks hope is what you'll still instantly associate the channel with.
Accordingly, I give you my memories of the Daily Express review of Tr3s Lunas, from a time when such programming was being fazed out. I've not found this review on the internet yet, and I don't have it to hand. It might be that I still have the paper or the page somewhere; it's more likely that I just remember reading it (like the same chronicle's so-so review of Islands - she did think that The Wind Chimes built up to a satisfyingly epic ending, or something like that). This reviewer was also not entirely convinced by Mike's efforts and Misty's sax effect was one aspect that drew a comment. I regret to say that they considered that it made it all sound like a Channel 5 soft-porn film.
Now I was as male and straight then as I am now, so I can certainly tell you that of some of the evenings that I was in to catch these programmes, their saxophone observation holds true. Not necessarily for the showings of British "sex comedies" from the seventies, where its emphasis was largely for comic effect (I really ought to make that "alleged" comic effect, should anyone reading expect to crack a smile watching some of them). But in the seemingly endless supply of largely American films (I do remember one had South African accents) where scenes of exposed flesh were not necessarily curtailed for artisitc reasons. I haven't (and this is not a plea to start them again! seen any for years but I can't imagine that one foreign broadcaster not buying rights to show these films has stopped them being made. So countless good-looking people with flash houses and nice cars are still losing sleep over "The Account", and distracting themselves futher by murdering or solving murders, and by retiring to various palatial properties with views of the Californian coast, accompanied by other good-looking, murdering/investigating individuals, where they find more excuses to lose sleep. And to help keep us awake as well, the director's musical instrument of choice is the sax - tenors and altos, I always presumed - sometimes in a romantic, loving sense but oh-so-often as a "she's a good-looking murderer! Or is she...?" device. My sentence constuction will get me a longer term than murder if I'm not careful...
Misty doesn't conjure up these images for me, but sometimes the review comes to mind and I remember what they were getting at. I don't think it's a bad artificial sound, and it's as strong an opener to an album as Angelique is. For me, both tracks would be more highly regarded if they were fanfares to lots of other brillant tracks, instead of just a few. And no absolute barnstormers.
-------------- "Who was that?" "That was Venger - the force of Evil! I am Dungeon Master - your guide in the realm of Dungeons & Dragons!"
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