9 posts tagged “the blue nile”
As readers will know I'm not religious. Indeed I'd describe myself an atheist prepared to be proved wrong. However this is certainly the most powerful video I have seen this festive season. It would be nice to think that Roman Catholicism's latest high profile convert Tony Blair and his "Christian" former colleague in the White House would see this.
Regular readers will be aware that this blog is a big fan of Paul Buchanan and The Blue Nile. It is dificult to think of a more respected musician and band than PB and TBN in Scotland in the last 25 years or so.
So what about this? It's a Christmas promo from United Artists Records circa 1996 Where Buchanan sings the first line of the Twelve Days of Christmas. He is then followed by other UA recording artists including Sheryl Crowe (ok) Jeffrey Osborne (eh?) and .......Michael Bolton (aaaaaaaaarrrrrgh!)
You don't have to listen but you know you want to! (curiosity and research!)
OK I'm going to stop mucking about on this so stand by for some quality. This is The Blue Nile recorded at their recent gig in Belfast by my German correspondent Marc.
Family Life is a beautiful song and contains the line "tomorrow will be Christmas - we'll sing all the songs that light up the tree" It therefore qualifies as todays Christmas track.
I've had an email from my fellow Blue Nile fan Paul Rodriguez who was the creator of the wonderful Nile/ Hopper montage Click Here regular readers will remember from a few months ago. Paul has been at it again and has put together this rather impressive, if unlikely video of Downtown Lights and scenes from Bladerunner. He explains in his mail he'd like to bring the music of the band to the attention of people who would otherwise not be aware of it. See what you think.
At first it may seem an unlikely combination. Renowned jazz trumpeter Chris Botti and The Blue Nile frontman Paul Buchanan. However they have collaborated several times. One track (Midnight Without You which I must dig out -edit -included below) is very good indeed and leans more towards The Blue Nile's style than Botti's.
Buchanan is a closet srooner and last year in his series of concerts rather nervously offered his version of "Strangers in the Night" as an encore. On the early part of the tour this was punctuated by his laughter (especially just before the doo-bee-doo-bee-doo verse) but one got the impression that this was a plea from him to the audience to indulge him. Recently he has done the song sans laughter.
This video shows his version of another standard. I think it works well. Because the video quality isn't the best I've uploaded the audio track too.
Ah! but this is good. Very good indeed!
I'm sure my correspondent Dave will not mind my reproducing these excellent photos he took on Saturday night at The Bridgewater Hall Manchester. By all accounts it was a great show and although they have reverted to using The Blue Nile as their name (rather than Paul Buchanan) P.J. Moore was still not involved and must now be regarded as an ex band member. PB announced that there'd be a new album "soon". Check back here in 2012.
I don't know what it's like in your corner of the world but here in the West of Scotland we are luxuriating in sunshine and high temperatures. In one of these spooky moments, when I jumped in to the car this evening to come home from work and set the MP3 to shuffle, the first two tracks which came on were Heatwave by The Blue Nile and Emotional Weather Report by Tom Waits.
Here's another spooky thing. The Tom Waits track is from his album Nighthawks at the Diner, surely inspired by Edward Hopper's most famous painting and only a matter of days ago I posted the link to the Edward Hopper/Blue Nile video (cue the theme from The Outer Limits!)
The Blue Nile track is from their wonderful debut album A Walk Across the Rooftops (1983).
Anyhow, regardless of how the weather is where you are, you owe it to yourself to close your eyes, relax and listen to these two wonderful tracks.
How good is this?
I have several Edward Hopper prints in the house and The Blue Nile are one of my perennially favourite bands. Last year not only did I go to the three Paul Buchanan gigs in Glasgow but I ventured north to see him (them) in Aberdeen too. Buchanan in interviews has often likened his songs to Hopper paintings. Someone has obviously taken him up on that!
