Brave but deeply flawed...

Playlist

Various - Cloudland Blue Eclectic Selections 2016

Red Mitchell/Harold Land Quintet - Hear Ye!

Dave Newman - Fathead Comes On

W F Bach - Three Sonatas, Three Fugues, Three Sonatas

Tallis - Spem in Alium

Pink Floyd - A Collection of Great Dance Songs

Tveitt - Piano Concerto No 4; Variations on a Folk Song

Various - BBC Bowie Prom

Glass -  Low Symphony

Glass - "Heroes" Symphony (No 4)

This morning, on the way down the hill...

...an old guy running off into the future...

A good day...

At lunchtime, the festival is coming once again...

A walk to Fopp and two jazz discs acquired for just 300 English New Pence each...

Back home, this had arrived - wonderful piano music by JS Bach's eldest son...

Late on, hoped to enjoy the BBC's much vaunted Bowie Prom...

It was fairly terrible other then the opening salvo of "Warzawa"/"Station to Station"/"The Man Who Sold the World", Paul Buchanan's "Ashes to Ashes" and "I Can't Give Everything Away" and Palmer/Calvi's "Blackstar"...

And the coda of Calvi's "Lady Grinning Soul" was ok...

"Sorrow" had a Velvet's tinge to it courtesy of John Cale - but, not a Bowie song...

Amanda Palmer on ""Heroes"" with a string quartet - what could go wrong?

"This is not America" included Elf somebody running on to the sage to recite an ill-advised rap in the middle of an otherwise decent rendition by The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon...

Marc Almond was roundly (and, probably, rightly) vilified on the Twitter for murdering "Life on Mars?" (Cale did the same to "Space Oddity" and "Valentine's Day" re his dreadful "arrangements") - certainly Almond's timing and pitch were well off - he made a slightly better fist of "Starman" but, really, no...

The French countertenor's deconstruction of "Always Crashing in the Same Car" was "interesting"...

The Stargaze Ensemble seemed somehow under-rehearsed - they announced this gig in April though, so how come?

Their take on "Fame" was ok but Laura Mvula not so - although she, in turn, was ok on "Girl Loves Me"...

The instrumental "Rebel Rebel" was also not ok, due to not actually being "Rebel Rebel"...

"After All" was turned into a Live Aid like dirge and, for some unknown reason, Palmer deemed it necessary to bring a baby onto the stage...

The third instrumental of the evening, the final piece, "Let's Dance", at last sparked the audience into action right at the, ahem, death but too little too late...

All in all though, I think Bowie would have enjoyed the "braveness" of it....

Me? Not so much...

To bed with Phillip Glass's "Low" and "Heroes" symphonies on the cans...

Those would have been acceptable...

Highlight of Day : Paul Buchanan singing live...