Spirit of Play

I thought it would be nice to mark Valentine's Day with a little themed blog for all you lovers out there. It also gives me a chance to get all evangelical about two of my musical superheroes.

If I could choose to play piano like anyone, it would either be Myleene Klass in those hair adverts where she's barefoot (by the way, do you know how she pretends to be "classically trained" at The Royal Academy or wherever? She went to the Junior Saturday School, not the actual academy. God she's a cretin) or Bill Evans.

I love the way he just walks on stage, counts the band in and just plays this amazing version of Beautiful Love, with no fuss. The ultimate example of "taking care of business". He plays the famous "I've been to the Guildhall lick" twice in 3 seconds, once at 1.48 and again at 1.51. Naughty Bill. In your bed. I don't know who the drummer is, but he's bloody brilliant.

The other clip I wanted to post is quite possibly my favourite 3 minutes of footage of anything ever (apart from maybe the Pathe news clip of Barrow beating Workington Town in the 1955 Rugby League Challenge Cup Final at Wembley).

You might not think it possible to get better than Tony Bennett singing "For Once in My Life". But then just imagine him being joined by Stevie Wonder on absolute top form.

I could go on about thie clip for hours, but it probably speaks for itself. Tony with his gravelly, perfect delivery and Steveland with his fabulous musicianship and amazing tone.

One last thing, and this really is going from the sublime to the ridiculous. I saw the latest pop video from a young lady called "I blame coco" on TV this week. It was that horrible kind of synth pop, similar to that peddled by that girl with the red hair who's the daughter of that woman off The Bill. I immediately hated it. It later came to light that the young lady in question is the spawn of Sting. Shame old Gordon didn't keep it strictly tantric on that particular occasion.