Iâve bought Don Blackâs The Sanest Guy in the Room, which is a great readâyou know that itâs piqued your interest if you can do 110 pages in a single sitting. Thereâs more to go, and itâs entertaining learning a bit about the backgrounds to his songs, âBorn Freeâ arguably his best known. (I do know there are insurance commercials with the song, so I hope he, and the families of John Barry and Matt Monro are getting decent royalties from themâthough itâs pretty bad I have no idea which company itâs for. I assume itâs a successor firm to AA Mutual.)
Don has been very humble in this book and in one part, excerpts his favourite lyrics that others have written. In my mind, however, Don is the top man in his business, and it seems right that I highlight a few of my favourites out of his extensive repertoire and honour him. These come to mind, in no particular order. Many show a good use of rhyme, and all evoke imagery. The repetition of a root word is also clever. And theyâre âsingableâ. As someone who works with the English language professionally they appeal to me for their ingenuity and, in some cases, brevity. Surprisingly, by the time I chose 10, I realized I had not included any of his James Bond lyrics.
Any errors are mine as I recall the songs in my head.
But how do you thank someone
Who has taken you from crayons to perfume?
(âTo Sir with Loveâ, from To Sir with Love)
Youâve been dancing round my mind
Like a bright carousel.
(âIf There Ever Is a Next Timeâ, from Hoffman)
While your eyes played games with mine
(âOn Days Like Theseâ, from The Italian Job)
This way Mary, come Mary,
While the sun is high,
Make this summer the summer that refused to die
(âThis Way Maryâ, from Mary, Queen of Scots)
Walkabout,
And as you wander on
Reflect and ponder on
The dreams today forgot to bring.
(âWalkaboutâ, from Walkabout)
The me I never knew
Began to stir some time this morning.
The me I never knew
Arrived without a word of warning.
You smiled and you uncovered
What I had not discovered.
(âThe Me I Never Knewâ, from Aliceâs Adventures in Wonderland)
Most people stay and battle on with their boredom
But whatâs the sense in dreaming dreams if you hoard âem?
(âI Belong to the Starsâ, from Billy)
Love has no season,
There are no rules.
Those who stop dreaming are fools.
(âOur Time Is Nowâ, from the Shirley Bassey album The Performance)
Main attraction, couldnât buy a seat
The celebrity celebrities would die to meet
(âIf I Never Sing Another Songâ, as originally performed by Matt Monro)
Thereâs so much more for me to find,
Iâm glad Iâve left behind behind.
(âIâve Never Been This Far Beforeâ, from Aliceâs Adventures in Wonderland)
Here are the images that have piqued my interest for December 2020. For November’s gallery, click here (all gallery posts are here). And for why I started this, here’s my earlier post on this blog, and also here and here on NewTumbl.
Time for another podcast, this time with a Scottish theme. I touch upon how fortunate we are here in Aotearoa to be able to go to the ballet or expos, and, of course, on the US elections (thanks to those who checked out my last podcast entry, which had a record 31 playsâsure beats the single digits!). That leads on to a discussion about A. G. Barr, Richard Madden, and Sir Sean Connery, who never said, ‘The name’s Bond, James Bond.’
I see Billie Eilish is singing the next James Bond title song, and it sounds pretty good.
The last one, âWritingâs on the Wallâ, wasnât one of my favourites and while I didnât mind Sam Smithâs composition, I felt a female voice might have suited it better. On a Bond music forum on Facebook (when I was still using it), I voiced disappointment, only to get comments in the thread essentially saying, âEveryone who dislikes this song is a homophobe.â
Up until that point I had no clue about Smithâs sexualityâdidnât care then, donât care now. I didnât think much of this until tonight, when it dawned on me that when I say Iâm not a fan of Brexit, on busier social media threads Iâll get, âStop calling British people racists.â
In neither case was homophobia or racism even hinted but it puzzles me that people can somehow go into Mystic Meg clairvoyant mode and see things that arenât thereâand get it completely wrong. And that has to be one of the things wrong with social media these days: people far too much in their own heads to even see what is right in front of them, letting their imaginations run riot. Could they be projecting? In any case, a discussion, or even an argument, is pointless if parties are unwilling to stick to the facts in front of them, preferring to go into snowflake mode and fling out accusations. It does them little credit.
And folks wonder why so many of us have social media fatigue and would be quite content if certain sites vanished overnight.
I really had hoped that for the next Bond, we wouldnât see âBrofeldâ.
Iâve never had a problem with M being a woman or Q being a nerd, but ignoring Flemingâs entire background for Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Daniel Craig movies, and supplanting him into the Franz Oberhauser family as a foster brother to Bond, felt a step too farâa step, incidentally, that we have Sam Mendes to credit. We have yet another Bond villain, as penned by screenwriters Purvis and Wade, with Daddy issues, the same plot device used in The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day in the Brosnan era.
Looks like the third Austin Powers movie contributed something back to the cinematic Bond-lore, when we learn Dr Evil was really Dougie Powers. The ret-conning of the first three Craig Bonds in Spectre felt forced. And professional reviewers have said plenty. No Time to Die looks decent enough from the trailer, but once again weâre exploring back stories. While this may be how blockbusters do it in the 2010s and the start of the 2020s, I just really donât care about Brofeld and the silly world we find ourselves in now. The sooner they can get away from this tangent, the better, and as much as I liked Daniel Craig as Bond, Iâm looking forward to the start of the new actorâs tenure some time early next decade. Iâve no idea what the world would expect in cinematic tastes come 2023 or so, but letâs hope all the pieces fall together once more for a satisfying Bond entry, well away from Mendes.
Trivium that no one cares about: No Time to Die is the first James Bond movie to be released in a year ending in 0.
[Prof Anne-Marie Brady of the University of Canterbury] said the Chinese-language media in New Zealand was subject to extreme censorship, and accused both Mr. Yang and Raymond Huo, an ethnic Chinese lawmaker from the center-left Labour Party, of being subject to influence by the Chinese Embassy and community organizations it used as front groups to push the countryâs agenda.
Mr. Huo strongly denied any âinsinuations against his character,â saying his connections with Chinese groups and appearances at their events were just part of being an effective lawmaker.
I wound up at three events where the Chinese ambassador, HE Wang Lutong, was also invited. This makes me a spy, I mean, agent.
I even shook hands with him. This means my loyalty to New Zealand should be questioned.
I ran for mayor twice, which must be a sure sign that Beijing is making a power-play at the local level.
You all should have seen it coming.
My Omega watch, the ease with which I can test-drive Aston Martins, and the fact I know how to tie a bow tie to match my dinner suit.
The faux Edinburgh accent that I can bring out at any time with the words, âThere can be only one,â and âWe shail into hishtory!â
Helming a fashion magazine and printing on Matt paper, thatâs another clue. We had a stylist whose name was Illya K. I donât always work Solo. Sometimes I call on Ms Gale or Ms Purdy.
Jian Yang and I have the same initials, which should really ring alarm bells.
Clearly this all makes me a spy. I mean, agent.
Never mind I grew up in a household where my paternal grandfather served under General Chiang Kai-shek and he and my Dad were Kuomintang members. Dad was ready to ćć·„ and fight back the communists if called up.
Never mind that I was extremely critical when New Zealanders were roughed up by our cops when a Chinese bigwig came out from Beijing in the 1990s.
Never mind that I have been schooled here, contributed to New Zealand society, and flown our flag high in the industries Iâve worked in.
All Chinese New Zealanders, it seems, are still subject to suspicion and fears of the yellow peril in 2017, no matter how much you put in to the country you love.
We might think, âThatâs not as bad as the White Australia policy,â and it isnât. We donât risk deportation. But we do read these stories where thereâs plenty of nudge-nudge wink-wink going on and you wonder if thereâs the same underlying motive.
All you need to do is have a particular skin colour and support your community, risking that the host has invited Communist Party bigwigs.
Those of us who are here now donât really bear grudges against what happened in the 1940s. We have our views, but that doesnât stop us from getting on with life. And that means we will be seen with people whose political opinions differ from ours.
Sound familiar? Thatâs no different to anyone else here. Itâs not exactly difficult to be in the same room as a German New Zealander or a Japanese New Zealander in 2017. A leftie won’t find it hard to be in the same room as a rightie.
So Iâll keep turning up to community events, thank you, without that casting any shadow over my character or my loyalty.
A person in this country is innocent till proved guilty. We should hold all New Zealanders to the same standard, regardless of ethnicity. This is part of what being a Kiwi is about, and this is ideal is one of the many reasons I love this country. If the outcry in the wake of Garnerâs Fairfax Press opinion is any indication, most of us adhere to this, and exhibit it.
Therefore, I don’t have a problem with Prof Brady or anyone interviewed for the pieceâit’s the way their quotes were used to make me question where race relations in our neck of the woods is heading.
But until heâs proved guilty, Iâm going to reserve making any judgement of Dr Yang. The New York Times and any foreign media reporting on or operating here should know better, too.
Has John Cleese become embittered? He suggests that the Bond films after Die Another Day (his second and final) were humourless because the producers wanted to pursue Asian audiences. Humour, he says, was out.
âAlso the big money was coming from Asia, from the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, where the audiences go to watch the action sequences, and that’s why in my opinion the action sequences go on for too long, and it’s a fundamental flaw.â And, âThe audiences in Asia are not going for the subtle British humour or the class jokes.â
I say bollocks.
Itâs well known that with Casino Royale, the producers went back to Fleming, and rebooted the series. Quite rightly, too, when the films had drifted into science fiction, with an invisible car and, Lee Tamahoriâs nadir, a CGI sequence where Pierce Brosnan kite-surfed a tsunami.
1. The cars
The Triumph Dolomite Sprint Lewis Collinsâ character, William Andrew Philip Bodie (he was a âregal-looking babyâ) had in The Professionals had more power than Doyleâs TR7. And his Capris were far cooler. So cool that eventually, even Doyle had to follow suit and get one to replace his Escort RS2000. (In real life: the RS2000 was stolen.)
2. The clothes
In his roles, Bodie was well dressed in The Professionals, sharp suits in the first season contrasting Doyleâs casual look. As Cmdr Peter Skellen in Ian Sharpâs Who Dares Wins, Collins showed that he could wear well tailored clothes as well as an SAS uniform exceptionally well. In one of the last appearances I saw him in, the German series Blaues Blut (which was created by The Professionalsâ Brian Clemens), Lew showed he could pull off a bowler hat.
3. The hair
Not having a bubble cut is a good thing.
4. The machismo
After playing an SAS commander in Who Dares Wins, Lewis Collins signed up and passed the entrance tests, but was rejected for being too famous. He auditioned for James Bond but was deemed âtoo aggressiveâ. In a pub brawl, youâd want Lew, and not Ross Kemp, on your side.
5. The twinkle
Lewis Collins had a twinkle in his eye in everything he did, whether it was a bit-part in The New Avengers (where he teamed up with Martin Shaw) or spoofing his character on The Freddie Starr Show. Thatâs what weâll miss the most.
What are my top 10 John Barry picks? The man had done such a variety of compositions that it’s hard to pick them out without qualifying a top 10 with genres. But for me, these stick in my mind as being the most significant, often because they are tied to important moments in my life.
Theme from Somewhere in Time
This moved me so much that I played it at my Mum’s funeral. I wrote lyrics to it before the Michael Crawford version emerged. Barry said he received more mail about his work on Somewhere in Time than anything else. It’s not hard to see why. It was tied to the passing of his parents and the theme remains the most haunting and emotional tune he wrote in his career.
Theme from The Persuaders
You can’t divorce the feeling of running around the Riviera from the hipness of Barry’s themeâI used to bomb along the Moyenne Corniche with the theme going, reliving Danny and Brett’s adventures.
âA Lot of Living to Doâ
Not a Barry composition, but he produced an album for Annie Ross at Ember. It’s the arrangement and Johnny Spence’s orchestra’s performance that lifted this song for me, and it never fails to get me in a good mood.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
While many 007 aficionados point to Goldfinger, for me, it was the lush orchestral arrangements in OHMSS that stand out to make it John Barry’s finest James Bond score. The theme is more Bondian than anything else he did, in my opinion, and lent the film more richness than its lead actor, a young George Lazenby, was then able to convey. ‘We Have All the Time in the World’ nearly deserves its own entry, especially the string-heavy instrumental version played after the death of Tracy in the film, but much of the incidental music just has vistas of Swiss mountains somehow built in. You can’t help but see those images in your head when tracks such as ‘Journey to Blofeld’s Hideaway’ and ‘Attack on Piz Gloria’ are played.
Chaplin
The 1990s were the last active decade for Barry, if you don’t count Playing by Heart and Enigma at the turn of the century, and with Chaplin, his last collaboration with director Richard Attenborough, a mature Barry is able to reflect on the passing of time as well as that of Charlie’s life. The score is moving, more so in my opinion than his Oscar-winning Out of Africa or Dances with Wolves (the latter, I thought, was overrated) as it takes the action from London slums to Charlie receiving an Academy Award in 1972.
Theme from Eleanor and Franklin
This was a TV-movie about the First Family, but its theme still has a sense of occasion and “American-ness” to it. I always thought if I ever chose to get married, it would be a lovely theme to use. Unlike many of Barry’s grand themes, Eleanor and Franklin doesn’t have a sense of sorrow or melancholy to it, yet it gives any occasion a feeling of dignity.
Born Free
Deserves inclusion here, not because it was one of Barry’s greatest works (he wrote it as a Disney pastiche), but because there’s no way you can be my age and not know it. It’s a song from childhood; my late mother was called Elsa (sharing her name with the lioness); and it’s incredibly singable. Like a pastiche of a Disney song.
From Russia with Love
Another non-Barry theme song, but tied to Barry because of his long involvement in the James Bond films. He arranged and conducted the theme for the movie, and the Matt Monro vocal version remains one of my favourite Bond songs.
Moonraker
Bond purists hated Moonraker because it was the furthest Eon Productions took things from the novels of Ian Fleming, but it was blessed with a lush orchestral score from Barry. The Bonds, by this time, didn’t need to have a cutting-edge sound, and Barry himself, maturing as a musician, took a classical route toward the end of the 1970s. The theme was sung by Shirley Bassey and, in my opinion, remains one of the better ones; and Barry proved that you didn’t need heavy drumbeats, rapid rhythms, or Bee Gees-style synthesizers (cf. The Spy Who Loved Me) to make a Bond score work in 1979. The theme was rumoured to have originally been destined for Frank Sinatra to perform, but, according to Barry, ‘it just didn’t work out.’ The master tapes aren’t around, but good quality recordings of the full score exist, though nothing has come of them. Because of the low opinion many Bondophiles have of the movie, it’s unlikely to be re-recorded any time soonâthough with Barry’s passing, it may finally be rediscovered as the gem that it is.
âMoviolaâ, or ‘Flight over New York’ from Across the Sea of Time
A strange entry. It was understood that ‘Moviola’, which appeared in the album of the same name, was in fact Barry’s unused theme for Barbra Streisand’s The Prince of Tides. Why let it go to waste? Perhaps such a great composition deserved a cinematic airing, and Barry incorporated it into his score for the IMAX film Across the Sea of Time. I never saw the film, but it is a classic, sweeping Barry composition that us fans love, though it would be an exception in being a number that was not written for the film it appeared in. (There were elements of Zulu in Cry, the Beloved Country, but Barry defended this by saying it was based on an actual Zulu song.)
Apart from sounding like a burger, the Mitsubishi Zingerâor, to give its full model name these days in Taiwan, the Super Zinger (not kidding)âis one of those oddball vehicles I come across when editing Autocade. It’s a minivan based on a truck chassisâin this case the first-generation Mitsubishi Challengerâand a pretty ugly one at that.
When double-checking some details in the Autocade entry, I came across the official site. I wonder what the Broccoli family has to say about the gun-barrel and 007 imagery, and would James Bond, Chinese or otherwise, really be seen driving a naff minivan? Unless it was to carry around 007âs illegitimate children, which must number greatly by now? And will the next villain be called Auric K. F. C. Zingerburger?
Theme from Somewhere in Time
Theme from The Persuaders
âA Lot of Living to Doâ
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Chaplin
Born Free
From Russia with Love
Moonraker
âMoviolaâ, or ‘Flight over New York’ from Across the Sea of Time