Post by YesterdayOnceMore on Jun 19, 2009 12:00:16 GMT -5
Hi everyone - I thought, perhaps, you might find these news articles I've come across in the past couple of days as interesting as I have found them.
This first one is about a duo who does Carpenter's tunes, in a kind of interesting way.
Carpenters duo on top of the world
SUZIE KEEN
15/06/2009 11:48:00 AM
Darren Mapes has been channelling ’70s icons the Carpenters for around 10 years – and it doesn’t look like he’ll be hanging up his Harry-high-pants and frilled shirts any time soon.
The cabaret veteran started out doing a serious tribute show about the lives of siblings Karen and Richard Carpenter, who recorded 11 albums and achieved five top-10 singles before Karen died of cardiac arrest in 1983 after years of battling anorexia.
“We were dressed up in these ‘70s outfits and we looked ridiculous … but because the lives of the Carpenters were so sad, it wasn’t really fun,” Mapes says of the show.
So the “serious Carpenters” were replaced by two lovable characters from the country – twins Darren and Sharon Carpenter – in a hilarious script by Mapes and co-writer Linda Nagle.
“Daz and Shaz” aren’t really cut out for the farming life, but they believe they have found their destiny when they discover one of their dad's old vinyl records from their American namesakes. This sets the scene for a stage show offering a uniquely Australian take on The Carpenters, complete with 16 songs and classic ’70s costumes.
The Carpenters From Kempsey was a sell-out success at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival two years ago, and Mapes and fellow performer Susie Dunn are bringing the show back to the Dunstan Playhouse this Wednesday and Thursday for the current festival.
He describes it as “Kath and Kim-style humour” and “a tribute to cabaret with a twist”.
“It’s a much better way of portraying it. And people who love the music also get a bit of a laugh.”
Mapes can’t recall a night where the audience hasn’t ended up singing along to well-known hits such as “Close To You”, “Calling Occupants”, “Top of the World”, “We’ve Only Just Begun” and, his current favourite, “Only Yesterday”.
He insists audience members don’t have to be Carpenters fans to enjoy the performance, and many people comments after they have seen it that they recognised more songs than they thought they would.
Mapes himself grew up on a farm in Warwick in New South Wales, which helped inspire the storyline. As for Kempsey, its selection as the setting was fairly random.
“We thought Kempsey had a good ring to it! They are basically the childhood experiences I had growing up, with the names and places changed.”
Despite having performed the show off and on for more than six years, Mapes isn’t sick of the music yet and looks likely to continue channelling Richard Carpenter via Darren Carpenter for a while to come.
“To be perfectly honest, I never was a Carpenters fan,” he says. “It was a gig I fell into. You could say I embraced them late in life.
“It’s the sort of show that just won’t die. I’m an actor and a singer and a musician, so this is the ideal gig for me.”
AND, this one is only a partial glimpse of the article, but I found this part interesting - especially since we've recently been discussing SUPERSTAR.
Interview: Lucas Hilderbrand
Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright is a new book examining the history of analog videotape, specifically VHS. Essentially introduced to consumers as a "blank format," its aesthetic properties and technological flexibility immediately placed it at the center of a legal maelstrom. At first movie studios and other copyright holders resisted VHS, but after U.S. courts reinterpreted copyright law to protect fair use by consumers they changed their tune and found ways to exploit the technology. This of course led to the VHS explosion of the 80's and 90's (by 1998 about 96.3% of all American households owned at least one VCR). Although VHS is now an "outdated" format (perhaps soon to be joined by DVD), it radically changed not only how audiences watched things but what they watched. For the first time viewers were able to easily manipulate content, via time shifting, and even create their own. In other words, at the risk of stating the obvious, VHS paved the way for TiVo and YouTube.
But what will the future of video look like, and will we be able to see it later? Aside from YouTube's lousy inadequacy as any kind of reliable archive, corporate copyright holders have proven time and again that they will protect their assets at all cost. The book uses Todd Haynes' infamous first first film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story as a case study; although universally lauded, it remains firmly in the underground because Richard Carpenter refuses to license his music for use in the film.
Lucas Hilderbrand is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and has written for Chicago-based Video Data Bank, Camera Obscura, Film Quarterly and other publications
