Soul Sister (spending the day with Tina Turner!)



Tina as "Aunty"



So, I got three tickets for a new musical, "Soul Sister"

Last night, I told Duncan we would going to a musical biopic, inspired by the life of Ike andTina Turner.  He seemed less than pleased, and he told me it would be boring, since he had never heard of them.

Tina as the Acid-Queen

"WHAT?!"  said I, singing a few measures of  "We Don't Need Another Hero", and then chanting "two men enter, one man leaves!" to remind him that Tina Turner played Auntie in Mad Max: Thunderdome,  

He looked at me blankly.  

 Nor did it help when I told him she was the Acid-Queen in "Tommy: The Rock Opera". 

He gave me the same blank look.

Well... I guess 1975 was a bit before his time, and i guess the song does belong to the genre of 'psychedelic rock', and I guess some might say it is a bit age-inappropriate,..... but come off it!  I mean, my dad took ME to go see it when I was 12 years old, and there was no lasting damage!  (well... hmmm... lets change the topic) ...

Since anxioust to win the "Mother-of-the-year" award, I told him that, boring or not, he had to come anyways.  It would be educational.  After all, it would deal with racism, segregation, pre-marital sex, marriage, drug use, domestic violence, abortion, suicide attempts, ... oh yes... and it would have Bhuddism and end happily!  :-)  

I also let him watch a couple of youtube clips of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue doing "Proud Mary" back in 1971.  Thought he might as well know a few lines of her signature song before heading off to the show!  Tina and the Ikettes do their things was amazing (especially after about 3 minutes, when they break out of 'easy' and into 'rough').  Just for fun, check out this link to watch her doing the song in 2009 (when she was 70 years old).


waiting for the train to Hackney...again

 "Soul Sister" was playing at the Hackney Empire (where we went to see "Britain's Got Bhangra" months and months ago). We remembered the way there, so headed off to Camdentown to catch the Overground to Hackney, wondering if we could get photos at the same places we took them last time. It seemed pretty much like last time, but Duncan's hair was longer.

Again we agreed that overground is WAY quieter than the underground... a pleasure to ride on it!  We also saw the funniest ad for Otrivin.  I took a  photo but it turned out blurry.  Ged Carrol (check out the link here) got a great shot of it up on the web.

It took us a while to get that it was an ad, since the tube and bus stop names here in london are so weird anyways!  I mean, seriously: East Ham, Barking, Cockfosters, Nagshead, Tooting Bec, Clitterhouse Road...


The sqaure in front of the Hackney Town Hall

 Well... the ad kept us entertained all the way to Hackney Central.

It was a lovely day here in London.  The sky was still covered with clouds, but bit patches of blue were beginning to break through.

That palm tree (or, as Duncan called it, the giant pineapple) was casting a distinct shadow!

And the side of the Theatre was fun.... though looking up at the sign below, I kept having the image of the words moving away from me, with the words "Strikes Back" at the bottom (just looked too much like the intro to the Star Wars movies)

The Marquee at the Hackney Empire


And the show itself?  Fun. As ever, it is interesting to she how the biopic part of it gets set up, which songs they work in, and how it gets staged. 

They had projected what looked like pages from a graphic novel (aka 'comicbook') on the back screen, and the various boxes often contained video clips of various events, so you were tracking the political and social climate of the time, as you were listening to the music (ie. rosa parks, martin luther king, JFK, vietnam, malcolm X, etc.). 

We got to hear music (and see the clothes) from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.  And when they sang "Proud Mary", Duncan reached over to poke me in the ribs (since it was the same intro to the version we saw on youtube). 

I gotta say, the woman who played Tina had a killer voice, and had the "Tina-ism" (the moves) nailed. 

She must have watched the videos a billion times.  It was great fun to watch.  ... and to listen! 

 


whose milkshake is it?

After it was over, we took the bus down to Oxford Circus, and headed off to Duncan's restaurant of choice (Byron's... the only restaurant he has found that carries A&W rootbeer) for a "proper burger" and a milkshake... the old fashioned kind.

We managed to get a game of "Big 2" in while waiting for our food (I have taken to travelling with a deck of playing cards, just in case).  Duncan whipped our butts!   The two of the boys finshed their own delicious milkshakes off in now time, and then were struggling to see who would be able to finish off mine.  Guess who won?