Tuesday, February 15, 2005

So since I've last been here I've seen another miserable performance from BCFC, been to a 65th birthday party (no not mine!), watched Elvis Costello in imperious form and watch the highly rated film "Sideways".

Firstly the sad case of the football, Friday nights home defeat looks like it could be the hammer blow to our hopes of making the promotion play-off's. It's hard to know where to start when talking about city at the moment, the team just are not functioning at any sort of reasonable level.

Still we did have one highlight, the amazingly awful half time entertainment! Now the weather on Friday evening was pretty shocking, the wind and rain swirled around Ashton Gate with an energy that our woeful team never came close to matching. The perfect conditions then for a portly middle aged gentlemen and his two underdressed assistants to wander on to the pitch, in order to confirm his status as "Britain's top Neil Diamond tribute act" The concept of a pecking order for tribute acts such as this is a strange one indeed.

The voluminous sparkly blue shirt and flowing (but thinning) hair where funny enough to observe in this wonderfully inclement weather, then when this entourage reached the centre circle, they turned to face us, just as the backing tapes kicked in. Sadly for them the P.A. is Ashton Gate has long history of being very low quality, so as our main man was frantically gesturing for the volume to be turned up, with the microphone well away from his mouth, it came as quite a shock to hear Mr Diamonds voice coming from the speakers high above our heads. Our poor friend in the middle realised that he had been rumbled, but quickly moved the mic so that he could lip-synch his way through the next five or six minutes of excruciating embarrassment.

So in effect what does the act of "Britain's top Neil Diamond tribute act" consist of? Well as far as I could make out it's a sparkly shirt and an American accent (he did speak to the bemused crowd on a couple of occasions). I hope he was well paid for his work, in a strange sort of way it was the most entertaining thing we saw all evening.

The film "Sideways" has received almost universal price from the critics, however I must admit that initially I did not warm to it. It had the makings of a generic "mismatched buddy" film with little new to say. Yet as the film developed the quality of the script and the performances to it to another level.

As for Elvis - well he was just fantastic, one of his best shows for years in Bristol.

1 comment:

Giovanni Carlo said...

I grew up listening to Neil Diamond songs since that is one of my parents favorite artist I like his Sweet Caroline song
neil diamond tribute show