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Ruth

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    MIKA @ Theaterfabrik, Munich, GERMANY - 6 November 2012 - REPORTS/PICS/VIDEOS

    in Concert Reviews

    Posted · Edited by Ruth

    Apologies! It's been over a week, sorry.

    Here though, finally, my blog:

    Part 1

    Tuesday 6th November 2012 at Theaterfabrik Munich

    I started writing this and trying to get all my memories and impressions in order but it’s all a bit blurry so apologies to anyone who was there and remembers better who said what and when . . .

    Firstly, the original plan was to go with my daughter-in-law, who lives near Munich and to treat her to the delights of a Mika concert as a birthday gift. Unfortunately, she had to return to the UK so my husband very gallantly stepped up to the mark. He obviously set his head to a very positive attitude and was keen to support me.

    Secondly, the audition; my husband used to sing in a local band and has begun to do solo open-mike nights, so when I told him about the auditions for the Polka Dot choir, he was up for it. You can see his video on YouTube.

    I realised that he was likely to get on and I would be on my own in the audience, so I waited till no-one was in and did a video which I sent to team Mika with an unlisted link - so you won’t be able to see my singing. It’s not that I can’t, I’m just fearfully lacking in confidence, singing on my own. So it was both a shock and a delight to get the e-mail on Sunday afternoon with instructions and a list of 7 songs to practise. I put them on our iPods and we did our homework on the plane over to Munich on Monday and on the train into the city on Tuesday morning.

    When we arrived at the venue, (and I have to credit Google maps for my local knowledge) we met melody, Statue of Liberty & tiibet who were very cold and organising the, as yet, non-existent queue and the heart kits. As we didn’t need to queue we went for a meal and a drink, returning in time for the rehearsal call at 4pm. We went in, met Tim and rehearsed. Tim is an excellent musician and he sorted the 10 of us into 3 groups to harmonise. He said we were very good. He also called both me and Bob by our first names which always makes me feel special. Joy and Max also sang with us but they said that Mika wouldn’t be at the sound check. We were led up onto a very small stage and told where to stand - not in our harmonising groups! I was on the front row and would have been nearest the centre stage but I swapped because I was taller than Tina. We went backstage, which was also a small space. There was a sitting area for the band although I’m not sure they’d all have fitted in at the same time. Our changing area was down a couple of steps and was so full that we stood shoulder to shoulder and filled it! Outside that was a room set up for the crew and the band to eat with a kitchen area and trestle tables. Even so, when Yasmine started trying to open the costume boxes and Mrs P was trying to hand out our Polka Dot gowns, it was obvious we couldn’t manage in that part of the room so we spilled into the dining area. I was interested to see if the gowns were hand-made but they weren’t; they were from New York. Mrs P had stuck the polka dots on and was very anxious that they shouldn’t fall off if she put them through the wash. Each one had a size by height label and I was given one that drowned me until it was changed to a better one.

    P1070894.jpg

    Suddenly Mika appeared. I told him that Tim said we were good and he got us to stand around the trestle tables and warm up. That involved bouncing down and jumping up. My husband can’t bend his knee at the moment as he’s had an operation so he was told to stand and look stern. He shared some signals about singing more loudly, more quietly, coming in on time and something else. . . We then moved into ‘his’ room which was set out with a coffee table laden with fruit. He did some singing and rehearsing with us which was magical. He also hurt his throat trying to reach high notes. I heard him talking to Max about ‘Toy Boy’ but didn’t know they’d swapped it for ‘Elle Me Dit’ on the set list. He also let us into the fact that we’d be singing not 7 but 9 songs! A set list was put up showing CH for our parts. They have been changing the playing order and including different songs at different gigs which is lovely for the fans who travel to a lot of them. He said having the choir stopped him from being bored.

    P1070895.jpg

    We went back to the front of the stage and hung around afterwards - with Bob practising ‘Popular’ and ‘Lollipop’ which hadn’t been on the list, as it was preferable to waiting outside and I don’t think anyone was hungry because of the excitement. The venue opened its doors early because of the cold and let the audience into areas just outside the main room.

    When the people started coming in the heart kits were given out. Lots of people made them straight away. They looked great.

    P1070891.jpg

    I gave my tickets away as they weren’t needed by the choir.

    MIKA @ Theaterfabrik, Munich, GERMANY - 6 November

    in Before the Show

    Posted

    Well, my plans have just been changed a bit! My son and d-i-l will be in the UK on the 6th so they're going to leave the tickets on their table in Germany for me to pick up. And now I'm going with Mr.

    He's being very good about it - and he wants to audition for the polka dot choir - but it's going to be a very different experience and there will be no queuing in the cold beforehand, that is certain.

    "The Origin of Love" - the pieces of a puzzle

    in Mika News and Press

    Posted

    I was just remembering when I was young, and on Sunday night (as now) the top twenty songs were on Radio One. I'd be sitting next to the transister radio with a tape recorder, getting ready to press record when a song I liked came on. I'd have tapes by the dozen of my faves, with the DJs voice breaking in every so often. Sometimes the tapes would have other noises, like someone coming into the room and a "shhhhhhh" from me.

    Just thought I'd share that bit of nostalgia. But that's how we illegally downloaded in my day, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

     

    Indeed - and mine was a reel to reel tape recorder! Was yours?

     

    Yes it said very clearly that the orders would be shipped on 8 October. There is no advantage to preordering albums IMO although it looks like you've got a chance of getting an autographed copy if you preorder from Mikasounds.

     

    I bought TBWKTM from amazon at a normal price and mine was autographed. I never understood that but I was happy enough.

    ’Mika recommends’- music he likes

    in Mika's Music and Artwork

    Posted

    You're welcome.

     

    'Un best of' is correct, at first I wanted to keep it this way in English but I realised it didn't make much sense.

     

    From my recent translations I've often been amazed at how many spot-on phrases he has used. He has definitely improved a lot recently :thumb_yello:

     

    I noticed. It's harder for me now he's better at French. I remember when he used 'salle' for room (which is what we are taught,) but he was corrected to 'pièce' which he uses now.

     

    You are very good at translating :)

    ’Mika recommends’- music he likes

    in Mika's Music and Artwork

    Posted

    I think this interview fits in this thread, Mika was interviewed by France Inter when he was in Montreal about his passion for Barbara

     

    Thanks Ysa for posting

     

     

    Translation

     

    It was 3 years ago actually. I heard a compilation in a car in London. I was waiting for someone and I heard this and I stayed in the car for an hour and a half, almost 2 hours, listening to music, just listening to her songs, and I couldn't believe that there was somebody who could mix sadness, joy, classical music, tradition of French songs, poetry, all this in such a beautiful and pure way that such a discovery when you're 20 something, I was 25, it's like a gift. Like a huge gift, and for months after that, I only listened to Barbara, I completely threw myself in her world, in her universe in order to understand why there is such a woman, where she comes from, how she can do what she does and how come people around the world don't know her. And it unsettled me, and it still unsettles me a bit because we should know Barbara all over the world. There is Piaf, there is Brel, there is Barbara. Why don't people know Barbara?

     

    I completely understand it when people say that Barbara's music is like a drug because it's a kind of refined melancholy, and we know for certain that melancholy and sadness can be consumed like a drug, just like chocolate, like cocaine, it's a kind of extremity of sadness and that's why it can become addictive and often when you talk to people who love Barbara, they have a moment in their lives when they are completely into Barbara's universe, then they reject it completely and do not listen to Barbara for a year because they've had it; they have an overdose. It's sadness, we can draw a parallel with.. I don't know, it's not absurd, and it's not surrealist, it's very realistic, but it's poetic, it's a bit like Almodovar, it's a bit sexy, it's a bit dark, it's a bit dirty and we never feel very clean with Barbara's music, we feel very real. Her characters are not very beautiful, they always have a lot of flaws and she finds beauty in it. It's not seen through pink glasses, it's not life in pink, it's more life in purple.

     

    Barbara's music is not necessarily very complex, we can get close to it easily, but with Barbara, the means of communication is melody. And actually in all she does, there's always melody. In what she sings there's melody, in what she plays there's often melody, a counter melody and in her bass there's also melody or arpeggio or sequences, it's very classical, it's almost neo classical in style, it's not baroque at all but it's neo classical. It's a kind of very refined melody and what is beautiful with her is that she finds melody in the lyrics. So she writes poetry but we can think that poetry and the melody she's singing are completely mixed together. For example she says a word and she finds melody in this word, and the rhythm is never in contrast with the melody she's singing. And it's very difficult to do, only a few people can do this, we all try to do it but she's the big priestess. I think it's the universe that I like more than anything. More than any precise song, it's the universe. Now I have Spotify, Universal's antichrist, ITunes' antichrist, they are all scared of it, but for me it's great because I can type in 'Barbara' and I hear a hundred songs and I can lose myself very easily in her universe.

     

    She has a way of seducing us, and it's only after she has seduced with her melody and her very pure, very childlike voice, like a 16 year old girl; if you take any of her songs like 'Quand reviendras-tu' or 'La Solitude', you can hear all of her life and all the different versions she made for radio, because I collect her radio recordings and it's funny to hear how her voice changed but the intention is clear. She wanted to present herself with a very pure voice, so she seduces us in all these ways, with melody, with her pure voice, with this neo classical side but after you're seduced you realise that the knife hits you, the knife gets in slowly and then she turns the knife at the last minute and it's vicious and it inspires me a lot. I think we always have to do this in a way. We always have to seduce people and then when we have them really close, we tell them exactly what we think. I consider myself a student and she's the teacher.

     

    We are very easily victims of Barbara and of her songs, and even of her look when we are 25. After going out in clubs, after taking a bit too much drug, having such experiences, we want to throw ourselves in a melancholic world which is a bit adolescent, which is comfortable. I think that indeed we are very easily victims of Barbara. I use the word 'victim' because I have this idea that she's.. she's like a witch in a studio Ghibli movie, a Miyazaki movie, a Franco-Japanese witch who lives in a tower in the middle of the ocean with a lot of cats and with a lover. It's really Miyazaki, with antiques everywhere in a fantasy world, a bit childlike but very philosophical and very beautiful at the same time, and very adult. She's also vile and mean and horrible just as much as she's inspiring, nice and tolerant. That's why she's a bit like Miyazaki.

     

    About singing 'La Solitude' in Nice in 2010

     

    It was crazy, I don't know why I did it. There were 55000 people in front of me (wasn't it more like 10000 Mika? :teehee:) who had drunk a lot, there were young people, there were old people, a bit of everything, a lot of people taking drugs and I thought, after a whole show with everybody dancing like crazy, with a man with a pig mask and leather clothes who went on stage and who was stinking so much, who danced with us for 15 minutes; after all this, after such a climax, I decided to sing a Barbara song. And when I started singing 'La Solitude', there were even people shouting 'no, no, not this!' or people booing, but in the end, the audience's reaction was huge. It probably took 45 seconds but after 45 seconds there was silence and at the end of the song there was a very strong reaction and I thought why not? Why not sing something we love, why not finish a show with something very small. There was pyrotechnic in the show and I thought why not go back to a very intimate moment. For me it was a bit funny because I always say we can be on stage in front of 60000 people and 30 seconds later we are backstage and then in our hotel room and we are alone. It's my life. It's always like this, I'm surrounded by people, of course I work with my family, but after some time I'm on my own in a room and I look at myself and I think 'is it stupid or what? What is this life I live? This kind of ridiculous, absurd life' So I thought it would be funny to sing a song about solitude in front of 60000 people. For me it's a little joke, I think nobody got it but I liked it.

     

     

    I listened in French and got the gist but it's so much better with this up on my screen too. Thankyou so much. (I didn't know 'un best of' was the French for a compilation. Or did he just not find the right word?)

    ’Mika recommends’- music he likes

    in Mika's Music and Artwork

    Posted

    He sang La Solitude when I saw him in Nice (Palais Nikaia 1-5-2010) with the accordionist from the support band. Lovely. We told him afterwards how much we liked it.

     

    And a million smiles for the chance to watch this again :blush-anim-cl::

     

    (it's me he's talking to at the start and I join in - saying 'perfect' - about La Solitude later)

    "The Origin of Love" - the pieces of a puzzle

    in Mika News and Press

    Posted

    Well I clicked onto the pre-order thingy, but as usual, I can't understand how to use it.

    They talk about something called cookies. I can't be doing with it.

    Alan has a one-click Amazon account so he will order it from there.

     

    It is probably asking for your permission to allow the site to store some cookies on your computer, or perhaps your browser is not allowing this and it needs you to change the settings. It's perfectly safe and should not be anything to worry about. Just go with it...

     

    You may have noticed that for a couple of months all your favourite sites and new ones ask permission (once) about cookies. It's a new law: they have to ask (and you have to give it or else you can't use the site!) It's like 'accept' for software.

    "The Origin of Love" - the pieces of a puzzle

    in Mika News and Press

    Posted

    I love the photo and the gold paint - Mika - crown. :wub2:

     

    I like the lettering on the back but not on the front because it looks so 'secondary school pupil' and at odds with the rest. :sneaky2:

     

    I'm not happy about different release dates and different versions - I was never able to buy Elle Me Dit and don't want to struggle to get all and any tracks from different countries. :fisch:

     

    I love the research MFCers have done about the tracks and other people associated with the album. :)

     

    I'm puzzled by 'Emily.' I thought there already was an English version of Elle me dit ? ?

    Mika - Ken Bruce interview - 17 August 2012

    in Mika News and Press

    Posted

    I've sent a message. It was a great interview and I loved Celebrate on the radio. I didn't notice any changes really, but it seemed to flow better and end better.

    Ken is a sweetie. He asked Mika about the album and the music, and didn't mention, or ask Mika, anything about the little-G-word at all. It was great.

    But Mika sounded tired. He needs to go home, have some hot chocolate and go to bed for a good sleep. He's earned it.

    Indeed :)

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