Doctor Who's Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Matt Smith walk by me en route to a filming location in NYC's Central Park.
When I heard my favorite television show of all time, “Doctor Who”—the greatest sci-fi series in television history (this is fact…deal with it, Trekkies)—was coming to New York City to film part of the episode that would serve as the finale for the characters of Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill), I immediately planned to take the train up to NYC and try to catch some of the filming.
In my younger days, I always dreamed about one day living in London and possibly catching some “Doctor Who” filming. Of course, the show went on a 16-year hiatus starting in 1989 (aside from the 1996 FOX/BBC television movie), so I thought that dream was dead. When the BBC finally brought the show back in 2005, I didn’t think it would ever achieve the kind of hip/cool status and worldwide popularity—particularly now in the United States—that would warrant filming in the U.S. But, amazingly, “Doctor Who” is more popular than it has ever been in its nearly 50-year history. And, after coming over to “this side of the pond” in November 2010 to shoot part of series six, the “Doctor Who” cast and crew returned to the U.S.—this time to a city just about 90 minutes away from me by train—for more filming.
I used Twitter and the fantastic (albeit “stalker-ish”) web site, OnLocationVactions.com (OLV) to track when and where they would be filming. After reports of “Doctor Who” stars Matt Smith (The Doctor) and Darvill being seen in NYC earlier this week, the OLV community worked its magic and reported that filming had started near the ice rink in Central Park yesterday morning. I immediately grabbed my work laptop (to continue working on the train) and my camera and rushed to the train station. While I was on the train, I kept thinking it was going to be a complete waste of time, money and energy…that it would be a big, ol’ wild goose chase.
And that’s the way it felt when I arrived at the filming location to find just a handful of crew members and equipment covered in tarps and plastic. I immediately went to OLV on my iPhone and saw that the cast and crew had broken for lunch and would be filming a few more hours in the park.
About 30-40 minutes after I arrived, the cast that was still at the filming location began moving to another area of the park. I, along with a small group of fellow Whovians, followed them. We were about to cross Terrace Drive as we approached Bethesda Fountain from the south, when I looked to my left…coming up the road from that direction were Gillan, Darvill and Smith—Amy, Rory and The Doctor! I said, “Look to your left*,” to the small group that was with me while I frantically searched my bag for my camera (my iPhone was at the ready, but I wanted a true camera for this shot). Fortunately, I found my camera and took a shot of them walking toward me.
*Only true “Doctor Who” fans will get this…but, when it comes to The Doctor, it is always wise to turn left.
But it was the picture above, the second photo I took, that is the real “money” shot for me…I totally lucked into it, but the current stars of my favorite show of all time walked right by me! It made the big, ol’ goose chase totally worth it. A childhood dream had been fulfilled…although I was hoping to see the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space), the blue phone box that traverses through time and space. But I can always go use the restroom at the Who-themed Way Station bar in Brooklyn for that (time constraints prevented me from getting there yesterday).
Obviously, I then followed them to the new shooting location on Central Park’s Bow Bridge and watched with several other onlookers as Smith and Gillan filmed a conversation on the bridge, with The Doctor reading out of a book to Amy Pond. It appeared they were trying to find something the book was telling them should be there. Following that, the crew filmed a scene of The Doctor running across the bridge (see video below). Actually, the video seen here is of the second take of the run…Smith had a bit of difficulty stopping on the first take and seemed to be limping slightly after running into some of the crew and onlookers. But he looked OK enough on the second take.
That’s all I’ll say about the shoot. There was something else that took place during filming that may or may not play a crucial part in the final story of Amy and Rory—something I didn’t even think of until one of the girls next to me said she had a theory about what we were seeing. She didn’t expound on that theory, but I immediately came up with some of my own so I am purposely not posting those photos. I will add this, though…from the presence of the book The Doctor was reading and the way Amy was interacting with what he was saying, I think the prevailing storyline of “Amy’s life being a fairy tale” is coming full circle…but will it be a happy ending?
Tandem With The Random podcast No. 15 (11/21/2011) features an interview with Matt Borgen and Monica Giacomucci of Recycled Rowhouse, a craft-based business that takes discarded objects like unwanted desks, tables, doors and moldings and encourages environmental sustainability by recombining them into functional items, such as birdhouses, planters, jewelry boxes and candlesticks. File size: 3.2 MB. Time: 13 min, 15 sec. Host: Brian Kelley.
Tandem With The Random podcast No. 15 (11/21/2011) features an interview with Matt Borgen and Monica Giacomucci of Recycled Rowhouse, a craft-based business that takes discarded objects like unwanted desks, tables, doors and moldings and encourages environmental sustainability by recombining them into functional items, such as birdhouses, planters, jewelry boxes and candlesticks. File size: 3.2 MB. Time: 13 min, 15 sec. Host: Brian Kelley.
Earth Bread + Brewery (Facebook page) -- the restaurant and brewpup in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia where the interview for this podcast was recorded.
Since I’ve recently posted individual items about Howard Jones and Fitz and The Tantrums with accompanying YouTube videos of each of those acts, here is a video of Mike Doughty performing “Russell” and “Busting Up a Starbucks” — featuring shout-outs to East Orange and Piscataway, N.J. — at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on Nov. 4, 2011.
Fitz and The Tantrums at the TLA in Philly, 11-12-2011
Just wanted to write a short post to give some love to a band that’s become a big favorite of mine over the past year — Fitz and The Tantrums.
It was around this time of year in 2010, when WXPN started playing “MoneyGrabber,” the first single off FATT’s Pickin’ Up the Pieces CD and I became a fan. I even wrote an “Artist to Watch” post about them last December.
My wife and I went out to see Fitz and The Tantrums play at World Cafe Live in Philly back in January 2011 and discovered something that mainstream music fans don’t know…Fitz and The Tantrums are arguably the best live band around right now.
That show in January was one of the best shows I have ever attended so when FATT announced they were coming back to Philly to play a show on their current tour at the Theatre of Living Arts (TLA) in Philly, I immediately bought tickets for another shot of Fitz and The Tantrums. Last night, my wife and I
And I am pleased to report that Fitz and The Tantrums were even better the second time around. Band leader and frontman Michael “Fitz” Fitzpatrick makes the Energizer Bunny look lazy. Fitz brings it every song of the set and female vocalist Noelle Scaggs matches Fitz’s energy level every step of the way with some playful interaction that turns up the heat even more from time to time.
The other cool thing about this band is that they totally love and respect their fans. Fitz makes it a point to thank the fans every show that they are the reason they get to do what they do. At one point last night, he seemed to genuinely get choked up with the crowd’s response to their music. After the show, they came down to the pit in front of the stage for a meet and greet. So not only is this band awesome from a musical standpoint, they also just “get it.”
I’ll add videos from Fitz and The Tantrums’ set at the TLA below as I find them on YouTube, but further down this page you will find video(s) of the opening act, Walk the Moon, who were pretty damn entertaining in their own right…
Walk the Moon The opening act for Fitz and The Tantrums on their current tour is Cincinnati’s Walk the Moon. While I’m not crazy about the “war paint” they wear on their faces — and that band members apply to fans’ faces before their shows — I was quite impressed with their set and are definitely worth checking out. Here is a video of Walk the Moon performing their song, “Anna Sun,” from their I Want! I Want! CD.
The other night/day, I recorded another song using GarageBand on my iPhone, this time with vocals. “Form of Life” is a prog-rock sort of thing I started writing back in the 80s. I never constructed a bridge so it’s basically just verse-chorus with a bit of an intro at the front, which made it easier to record on the iPhone. Somehow, I remembered the lyrics to the chorus and the few I had written for the verses, but I did quickly write some new words.
The vocals were recorded using the iPhone’s built-in mic and I then added some effects to them. But the key thing here is that this entire recording was done on the iPhone, which is amazing to me. The fact that someone can record a decent-sounding, complete song with instrumentation and vocals with something that fits in your hand is absolutely mind-boggling…and very cool.
Also, while the lyrics allude to hunting activities, this song is not anti-hunting or anti-sportsman. It’s really against any kind of senseless killing of human beings, which I guess would exclude warfare, law enforcement or self-defense.
Well, I downloaded GarageBand for iPhone today and decided to play around with it a bit. Since using GarageBand on an iPhone made me feel extra geeky, I tried recording a version of the “Doctor Who” theme. It came out OK except the transitions between song sections are a bit tricky so the change from the verse to what is known as the “middle 8″ is a bit off. However, I think the inclusion of some TARDIS noise at the end thanks to the built-in sampling function more than makes up for one shaky transition. Take a listen…
Obviously, there hasn’t been a new Tandem With The Random podcast in quite some time. The reason for this is that I’ve been way too busy with personal and work obligations to also include time for setting up interviews, conducting interviews and recording, editing and posting a bi-weekly podcast into my schedule.
However, in the next few weeks, that schedule should become a bit clearer so I hope to relaunch the podcast at that time. And if you came to this post via the @TWTRpodcast Twitter feed, then you have probably noticed that you are reading this on a new site. And it’s not just the look that has changed…it’s an entirely new site – tandemwiththerandom.com!
It’s still under construction, but all the previous posts from the old blog should still be here (although some associated images and videos may be missing at the moment). I just need to whip up a new site header image and make some minor tweaks, and it should be ready for its official debut when the podcast returns. Stay tuned…
This post started out as a recap of the notable moments from Thursday night’s Howard Jones show at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Pa…but evolved into something completely different.
So, yeah…I went to see Howard Jones perform this past Thursday night, marking the fourth time I’ve seen him live. The first time was a solo performance of “No One is to Blame” on a digital piano during the June 1986 Amnesty International Conspiracy of Hope Tour finale at Giants Stadium (where he was introduced on stage by Michael J. Fox). I saw HoJo again in June 1989, this time in full electronic mode in Holmdel, N.J. (with the incredible Midge Ure from Ultravox and Visage as the opening act). Then, I had the chance to briefly meet and talk to HoJo after seeing him perform in an “acoustic duo” format (even though he was playing a digital piano) in Blackwood, N.J., in January 2008 (I would have had a picture, too, if my camera batteries hadn’t died).
Thursday night, HoJo was in full electronic mode and, for this tour, is playing all the songs from his first two albums, both of which I probably listened to thousands of times as a teenager. The first half of the set included all the songs — although not in track-list order — from HoJo’s 1983 debut, Human’s Lib; the other portion of the show featured all the tracks (again, not in album sequence) from his 1985 follow-up album, Dream Into Action.
Personally, what was great about this show was that Howard Jones was the artist who really inspired my teenage love of electronic music and served as the catalyst for my purchasing two pro-grade synthesizers, a sampler, a sequencer and a drum machine by the time I was 17. I felt I had the skills to create songs even though my technical musical ability was — and is — extremely limited. This prevented me from really working with musicians in a traditional band setup so I felt this equipment gave me the means to do everything myself, as well as correct all the flubs due to my craptacular playing ability.
Eventually, I found a like-minded spirit (at that time) in the form of my friend Christian Beach, who was my bandmate from around 1988 until late summer 1990. He lived just across town from me and also owned an array of synths, samplers and drum machines. There were two other advantages working with Christian -- 1) his gear was better, and 2) he is much more talented and gifted than I could ever hope to be.
While many people in the mainstream have this idea that electronic music is easy to execute, the reality is this is not the case. You still have to write the music and lyrics, and play all the backing parts into the sequencer…and this took forever back in the 1980s and early 90s. To prepare for playing live, you needed to do a lot of programming of your instruments and saving those settings into a MIDI file stored on a floppy disk in the sequencer. The song sequences (which include the drum and bass tracks, and any other parts not being played live) were also saved on floppy disks. Since the instrument and song data took up a lot of room on those old floppy disks, we needed several disks…that needed to be loaded (quite slowly, mind you)…in specific order during our shows.
As you might expect, this led to some embarrassing moments like having a saxophone coming in as a hi-hat part, or the wrong song sequence popping up, or a footswitch not set up to start a song when it was supposed to be…stuff like that.
And Thursday night’s HoJo show reminded me of all the joy and pain electronic music has brought to me over the years. As exciting it is to create all the parts of a song on your own, I remember all too well the difficulties of making the so-called “easy-to-use” technology work for you when you need it to.
Two such instances cropped up Thursday night for HoJo. During the Human’s Lib portion of the set, it seemed like the sound assignments for his keyboards on “Don’t Always Look at the Rain” weren’t set up right. That threw the whole song off after a few measures, resulting in a total restart of the song.
But that was a minor hiccup compared to what happened during the Dream Into Action half of the show, when “Assault and Battery” — a song I was really looking forward to hearing played live — had to be restarted…TWICE! On the first attempt to play the song, HoJo got through the piano intro only to have the sequence from the previous song kick in (been there, done that…a few times). On attempt No. 2, HoJo completed the piano intro and the right sequence started…and then stopped inexplicably about four measures in. The third time proved to be a charm, however, and the audience was treated to “Assault and Battery” in all its glory.
Anyway, I was just happy to see one of my earliest musical influences. Granted, aside from the more recent organ/accordion work I’ve contributed to some of Christian Beach’s live shows and recordings, I haven’t done anything musically significant in my life (although Christian did use lyrics I wrote for a chorus in the song “What Does It Mean to You?” by one of his old bands, Slave of Id, that received some airplay on long-departed 106.3 WHTG-FM around 1993…that was kind of cool). But I still write songs when I can and still do all the parts myself, thanks to Apple’s GarageBand application…and Howard Jones’ influence.
Here’s Howard Jones performing “Look Mama” from his Dream Into Action album at the Keswick Theatre on Oct. 20, 2011 (courtesy of YouTube user Nostalgicflashback)…
While the podcast remains on hiatus, I wanted to report that the makers of Beach Haus Beer, featured on the March 7, 2011, edition of the TWTR Podcast, are about to release their second brew…Beach Haus Winter Rental Black Lager. According to the Beach Haus guys, Winter Rental will be available in limited release by this Friday and should be more readily available by the end of next week. Look for it soon…
Note: Most of what was written here is from a June 11 “Artist to Watch” post showcasing Fatty Gets A Stylist (FGAS), which is the name of a side project featuring Kate Miller-Heidke (KMH) on vocals. The CD was released digitally in the U.S. for a brief period during the summer and then pulled (although I purchased it as soon as it was released). It was then repackaged here as a new KMH album titled “Liberty Bell” and released this past Tuesday, so I figured I would repost my thoughts on the album and change all the FGAS references to KMH.
“Libery Bell” (iTunes link) by Australian singer-songwriter Kate Miller-Heidkeis an 80s-influenced, mostly techno-inspired album that has been released in other parts of the world under the name Fatty Gets A Stylist, a side project with Miller-Heidke’s husband and collaborator Keir Nuttall (guitars, programming).
I have been a fan of Miller-Heidke’s since April 2010, when I saw her (with Nuttall accompanying on guitar) open for Ben Folds in Montclair, N.J., a show I wrote about here. I immediately became a fan — so much so that I did something I rarely ever do and bought Miller-Heidke’s fantastic CD “Curiouser” (iTunes link) at the show. It’s one of my favorite all-time CDs.
Miller-Heidke has a tremendous voice with great range. In fact, she’s a classically trained opera singer who has performed professionally with Opera Queensland. On “Liberty Bell,” she is actually singing mostly in a lower register than normal so, at times, I forget that the vocalist I’m hearing is really Miller-Heidke. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or not, but it’s not until a couple of vocal holds at the end of the album’s closing track, the Gary Numan-esque “The Plane Went Down,” when you really hear the operatic quality of Miller-Heidke’s voice break through.
People in the New York area may not realize it, but they have likely heard the album’s lead track “Are You Ready?” as it is being used in a current New York Lotto advertising campaign.
There is so much energy and fun to be found on “Liberty Bell.” After kicking off with the previously mentioned “Are You Ready?”, the album continues with “The Devil’s in the Details,” a pure dance track complete with banjo that recalls Rednex’s version of “Cotton Eye Joe.”
One of my favorite tracks on the CD, “Holloway Park,” immediately brings to mind techno/new wave acts like Missing Persons. Actually, it seems like little pieces of the album have been plucked right out of the 80s and placed into the 11 tracks on “Liberty Bell.” In addition to the previously mentioned Gary Numan touches on “The Plane Went Down,” the ballad “Let Me Fade” has elements of classic Howard Jones and Kate Bush while “Better in Spain” evokes Roxy Music.
By the way, since touring with Folds in the U.S. in 2010, Miller-Heidke has also opened for him in Australia and contributed backing vocals on Folds’ recent album, “Lonely Avenue,” featuring lyrics by writer Nick Hornby. While I haven’t been able to confirm it, I think Folds returns the favor by singing a five-second backing vocal around 1:55 into “The Plane Went Down.” I really hope it is him since I think it would be appropriate that the writer and singer of a song called “Landed” would also provide some vocals to a song referencing a plane crash, which is really just another kind of landing.
