Hong Kong Beat

10/12/2023

Thoroughly enjoyable performance of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena by Musica Viva 非凡美樂 at the City Hall this afternoon. Wonderful set and costumes.

Stunning performance by Mdm. Marlena Devoe. Certainly got the dust in the eyes today.

05/10/2023

Today is Global James Bond Day, 51 years since the release of the first movie.

No, is it? Yes, it is, was No, Dr No... Erm

One hour of my personal favourite brassy, swanky and sometimes darkly introspective themes from the movies.

After 51 years of screen, mostly magic and a few ‘what were they thinking’ movies, the exploits of the fictional British spy still captivate movie and music fans, so Hong Kong Beat brin…

02/09/2023

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday nights alright for… post typhoon Saola music with The Doors

The Doors

LA Woman 50th anniversary deluxe edition is available now. https://TheDoors.lnk.to/50LAWomanThe Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” was one of the first tracks reco...

22/07/2023

It has been one of those ominously lurking in the shadows, and sadly the news has come that legendary jazz crooner Tony Bennett has passed away at the age of 96.

Bennett’s work and voice is one of my guilty pleasures among a pantheon of other great crooners from the age where it’s said that video killed the radio stars but, unlikely as it seemed to everybody at the time, he became the radio star that video brought back to life when his 1994 MTV Unplugged album took the Grammy for Best Album of the Year in 1995, due in no small part by this performance of Irving Berlin’s 1948 Steppin’ Out With My Baby being put on rotation to reach a generation of music fans more attuned to grunge, post punk, techno, or hip hop.

Despite suffering from Alzheimers disease in his final years he continued to bring the music of the 40s, 50s and 60s, pretty much unchanged, to new generations in the new millennium with his two albums of duets with contemporary stars. A must listen if you don’t know them.

Rest in peace Tony Bennett. A trooper to the end.

Tony Bennett

Tony Bennett performing Steppin' Out with My Baby from MTV UnpluggedListen to Tony Bennett: https://TonyBennett.lnk.to/listenYDSubscribe to the official Tony...

27/05/2023

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday nights alright for… Marilyn Monroe needs a daddy

Then it gets weird

Marilyn Monroe/Ladies Of The Chorus

25/05/2023

RIP, Tina Turner, the Queen of Rock and Roll and one of the most distinct and powerful voices in rock, r&b and pop music for 60 years. Inspiration to so many of the most successful women in music today including Beyoncé and Rihanna, greatly admired by many other rock icons such as Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart and the late David Bowie, she was a powerhouse of both voice and spirit who rose from poverty, survived spousal abuse, walked away from a successful musical career yet lifted herself to even greater success at middle age when many would have simply faded away.

Personally, at a time when British bands like the Beatles, Kinks, Rolling Stones, and Who dominated the charts, it was her voice on River Deep, Mountain High in 1966 that got me listening to R&B - it was actually the first album I personally bought - and got me to appreciate a wider eclecticism of music.

Simply the best.

Tina Turner 1985 with the fantastic Kenny Moore, not anymore amongst us, as well as the Percussion-Keyboard and Saxplaying Tim Cappello.

06/05/2023

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday night’s alright for a short eulogy to Gordon Lightfoot.

If the title ‘songsmith’ should be applied to any persons from the second half of the 20th century, among them ought to be the just passed Gordon Lightfoot. Maybe not as accessible as other notables like Bowie, Simon, Bacharach, or Dylan, his music, being mostly paintings with lyrics and sounds rather than pop masters, stands equally alongside any of those greats.

Undoubtedly, when you listen to his music you are listening to a book, a play, a movie being related to you through verse and the intricacies of the musical composition. From a seemingly careless but emotion grating finger sliding along a steel string, to a dramatic drum fill, to a restrained groove that is the counterpoint to the sadness of jealousy underlying an unspecified threat, every nuance strengthens the story being related to us.

If you haven’t listened to much of Lightfoot’s music other than his one or two well known hits, I’d urge you to spend a bit of time on Spotify and experience who was a pretty much unsung great of his time.

RIP Gordon Lightfoot

Provided to YouTube by Rhino/Warner RecordsSundown · Gordon LightfootSundown℗ 1974 Reprise Records.Writer: Gordon LightfootAuto-generated by YouTube.

07/03/2023

RIP Gary Rossington, guitarist and last member of the original Lynyrd Skynyrd lineup, who gave rock and roll arguably one of the best known opening guitar licks on ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and the sublime slide guitar on ‘Freebird’.

Rare Promo video

11/02/2023

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday nights alright for…

Yuja Wang. Incredible talented Chinese pianist. She is only 21 in this performance from 2008.

Watch another great Yuja Wang concert here: http://ow.ly/Yw9PhSubscribe to our channel for more videos http://ow.ly/ugONZ Yuja Wang plays Cziffra's arrangeme...

10/02/2023

If Cole Porter is recognised as having written the Great American Songbook, it can be argued that Bacharach in collaboration with lyricist Hal David (sadly also passed away last year), Carole Bayer…

10/02/2023

If Cole Porter is recognised as having written the Great American Songbook, it can be argued that Bacharach in collaboration with lyricist Hal David (sadly also passed away last year), Carole Bayer Sager and others, added volume 2 during his lifetime.

Across a 70-plus-year song writing and arranging career, he composed more than 500 songs that have been recorded by something like 1,200 artists, a number that is ever growing as younger generations have discovered and appreciated his talent – from the post punk and new wave rockers Elvis Costello, and The Stranglers, up to millennial rockers White Stripes, and samples have been used by Dr Dre, The Wu Tang Clan and Beyoncé. Performing, at the age of 87, on stage at the Glastonbury Festival has no doubt aided that recognition. Also a six-time Grammy Award winner, as well as three-time Oscar winner for song and score on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1970), and song for Arthur (1981), he even had a starring cameo appearance in the Austin Powers movies that Mike Myers said were inspired by the spoof Bond movie, Casino Royale, for which Bacharach penned the soundtrack and, in my opinion, the best Bond song ever ‘The Look of Love’.

His style has often been unfairly described as ‘easy-listening’, yet was musically intricate, sneaking elements of jazz, latin rhythm and classical music into pop tunes; playing around with harmony and rhythm, alongside unusual melodies, chord progressions, and odd selections and combinations of instruments. Yes, that was a flugelhorn giving a sad counterpoint to the lyrics on ‘Alfie’. The result were extremely sophisticated and complex songs, musically and lyrically, yet sounding so easy on the ears and simple to sing-a-long to. Take ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ with its time signature moving from 4/4 to 5/4 to 7/8, or ‘Say A Little Prayer’ with its 11/8 signature requiring the very top vocal agility. No wonder the Bacharach songbook is stuffed full of originals, covers, and covers of covers, by only the very best voices.

In tribute to an icon of the modern music catalogue, this selection is just some personal favourites.

Passing peacefully in his sleep at the age of 94, thank you for the music and RIP Burt Bacharach.

If Cole Porter is recognised as having written the Great American Songbook, it can be argued that Bacharach in collaboration with lyricist Hal David (sadly also passed away last year), Carole Bayer…

22/01/2023

Hong Kong Beat wishes all its friends and clients a healthy and prosperous Year of the Rabbit, with a little mix of songs about rabbits, well kind of...

A collection of songs about rabbits, kind of…

20/01/2023

And so 2023 has already claimed another legend of the 60s, David Crosby at the age of 81.

Musician, singer, songwriter and lyricist with the Byrds, and then the loose ‘supergroup’ collaboration with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, his music was on the crest of the wave of the psychedelia movement of the 60s, with ‘8 Miles High’ - incidentally about neither drugs nor the war in Vietnam, but about flying to perform a tour in UK - described by critics as the defining song that started the era of psychedelia and counterculture.

Noted for his lyrical ability to make songs sound like paintings, his work took and gave inspiration to many poets and songwriters of the era and since. ‘Guinnevere’, said to be his favourite of all the songs he wrote, is a perfect example of this.

RIP David Crosby. Another soul of an era of change, now passed on.

David Crosby The Byrds Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Provided to YouTube by Rhino AtlanticGuinnevere (2006 Remaster) · Crosby, Stills & NashVoyage℗ 2006 Atlantic Recording CorporationMastering Engineer: Barry ...

12/01/2023

To many of my generation, awkward teens in the late 60s at a time when the Beatles, Stones, and Who were at the height of their power, and before Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, when discussing the greatest guitarists somebody would mention Jeff Beck of the Yardbirds, and most would say ‘who?’

While Clapton, Richards, McCartney and Townsend were widely touted among the best and were without doubt, commercially the most successful, only those really into the guitar and music, especially blues, would shake their heads and announce sagely ‘Jeff Beck’. A scruffy hippy DJ friend, with whom I learned to spin records, was one of those and played ‘Beck’s Bolero’ one time saying something like “if you’re ever at a gig that asks you to play any Beck, try and secure them as lifelong clients. They know their stuff.”

It’s true and later, as older and a little less awkward teens, we began to learn that, while eschewing the limelight and commerciality, Jeff Beck was regarded by his peers as the ‘guitarist’s guitarist’ and became one of the greatest influences on his own and later generations who picked up a guitar wanting to make it “cry and sing”.

As an example of his talent and innovation, only somebody like Beck could make Stevie Wonder’s music even more soulful as an instrumental, as in this rendition of ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers’ from one of my favourite all time albums ‘Blow by Blow’.

RIP Jeff Beck, suddenly and sadly at 78. Guitar genius.

Provided to YouTube by EpicCause We've Ended as Lovers · Jeff BeckBlow By Blow℗ 1975 Epic Records, a division of Sony Music EntertainmentReleased on: 1975-03...

06/12/2022

Today marks the end of the ‘Summer of Love’, when violence and chronic drug abuse led to the stabbing to death of Meredith Hunter, an 18 year old festival goer at the Altamont Raceway Free Festival in 1969, as well as two other accidental deaths, fighting, drug overdoses, and vehicle thefts.

Hailed as the West Coast USA’s answer to the Woodstock festival that had taken place a few months before in New York State, the concert became more macabrely recognised as the death of the hippie free-thinking aspirational movement that had bloomed in California two years before.

Conceived by the bands Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead that also sought to headline the Rolling Stones, who were one of the biggest non-attendees at Woodstock, late changes, poor logistics and planning quickly turned the event into one of dread and missteps.

On arrival Grace Slick, co-lead singer of Jefferson Airplane, commented on the bad vibes and peculiar atmosphere of the concert, while The Grateful Dead later refused to play their set due to the level of violence that had earlier seen Marty Balin, founder and co-lead singer of Jefferson Airplane, punched and laid out unconscious.

The stabbing of Hunter by a Hell’s Angel member - they had been ‘hired’ to provide a degree of stage-side security - was later attributed to self-defence following a murder trial, as it transpired that in a methamphetamine fuelled rage after an altercation with a Hells Angel member, he had pulled a gun with the apparent intention to storm the stage.

The Rolling Stones released a live album, ‘Gimme Shelter’ of their set at the concert, along with a film of footage taken the time. This brought them a lot of negative feedback from fans and music media alike for claiming they didn’t know about the stabbing during the performance of ‘Under My Thumb’, although footage suggested otherwise, and carrying on with eight more songs to complete their set. The Hells Angels were also less than happy with the Stones, allegedly vowing and on one occasion apparently setting out to kill Jagger for the less than sympathetic portrayal in the film of their role in the trouble.

Overall, instead of being a literal high to end the decade on, the Altamont Free Concert is remembered for all the wrong reasons.

Death of Meredith Hunter during the Rolling Stones concerthttp://rockandrollstories.blogspot.com/

03/12/2022

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday night's alright for...

a tribute to Christine McVie, nee Perfect, who passed away at the age of 79 on 30 December 2022.

She first came to my attention as the keyboardist and vocalist of the 60s UK blues band, Chicken Shack, and their '68 version of Etta Jame's "I'd Rather Go Blind" is one of the songs from the time that turned me on to R&B.

McVie however became better known to most people around the World as one of the songwriters and lead vocalists of the revived blues band, Fleetwood Mac, from the late 70s and into the 90s, credited with helping shape the perfect pop sound of their 'Rumours' and 'Tango In the Night' albums, for which she penned notable Top 40 songs "Don't Stop', "You Make Loving Fun", "Everywhere". "Little Lies" and "Songbird".

Her collaboration on many other songs, co-penned with Fleetwood Mac members and other songwriters over the years, cemented her as a powerful and influential contributor to the pop-rock canon of music. Easy on the ears, catchy singalong lyrics, and infectious mid-tempo dance beats, her music has always been a favourite at any party.

She went into semi-retirement in 1998, due to a fear of flying and burn-out from touring, which lasted for almost 15 years, finally rejoining the band following a brief 2013 stage appearance at the O2 Arena in London for an emotionally welcomed rendition of "Don't Stop", at the age of 70. She'd go on to perform more full concerts around the World, touring with the band between 2014 and 2019.

Not a bad age to restart a rock and roll career.

RIP Christine McVie, now rocking in peace.



Fleetwood Mac Christine McVie

Fleetwood Mac perform "Everywhere" live at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, CA in May 1997 - newly remastered in HD to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the...

26/11/2022

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday nights alright…

For a bit of Jean Genie, 50 years old on 24 November 2022.

January 1973 live performance on BBC’s Top Of The Pops, a rare event for the show as most bands were made to mime. Even rarer as this show was thought to have been lost when the BBC erased old tapes to reuse them 😳 luckily one cameraman kept a copy and later rediscovered it.

David Bowie

Recorded on 3rd January 1973, broadcast on 4th January 1973. Lost and never seen again until broadcast by the BBC on 21st December 2011. God bless the BBC ! ...