http://www.blogger.com/template-edit.g?blogID=27684744 ARTYFACTS: Marc Almond: Ten Plagues (Traverse) - like a bad X-factor audition

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Marc Almond: Ten Plagues (Traverse) - like a bad X-factor audition


What would someone who had never heard of Marc Almond made of this? A guy who can’t sing and can’t act, camping up the Black Death. Like one of these sacrificially awful X-factor auditions, it was comically bad, at times unbearable to watch. His faltering singing voice was not up to the task of a sustained performance of this length and if you thought the singing was bad, the acting, really just strutting about throwing exaggerated gestures, was laughable. You can’t just stick your chin out, look into the air and point. Just as I thought it couldn't get any worse, Marc sings a dialogue with a silent projected, black and white figure in a kilt. I swear the projected image was more realistic than the Almond, who has clearly gone nuts.
You could have been forgiven if you had seen this as some sort of weird, comic and ironic take on musical performance. Melodrama is wearing, so I was relieved when he eventually exited stage right but my heart (no my entire body) sank when he strutted back on for yet more histrionics. The good news is that, in the end, I survived, unlike the many songs I heard, massacred by a plague of plonking piano notes and out of tune singing.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

BOLLOX to YOU !

3:00 pm  
Blogger Donald Clark said...

Anonymous, crude and banal - bit like the performance really!

3:23 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

From your comments you are obviously a total snob. Almond is a star and gives it everything he has. He has reduced me and others I know reduced to tears with this moving piece. I'm sure you'll add some witty comment to this but I don't give a shite ...

10:28 am  
Blogger Donald Clark said...

Mmmm...so I'm a snob on the grounds that I disagree with you? He may have reduced you to tears but he reduced many others to a state of catatonic boredom. True he gave it everything he had, which was a poor voice and histrionics. We have one thing in common - I don't give a shite either...

4:34 pm  

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