Watch My Lips: Playback and entertainment

“Cherry Blossom Girl” by the French duo Air. It’s a lovely song, hippy-chic-retro-meets-electro. Or something like that. It featured female vocals. When the band appeared on “Top Of The Pops”, there was no female vocalist to be seen. Jean-Benoît mimed it. Perhaps it was meant to be ironic. I thought it was excruciating, embarrassing and disrespectful of the audience.

We can probably all point to our least favourite examples of miming, otherwise known as lip-synching or as playback. Ah yes, playback. During the fair in Alcúdia last October there was an event called “Alcúdia Show Time”. It featured, amongst other questionable treats, a competition for playback. Yep, they actually awarded prizes for miming. Nevertheless, this celebration of the truly naff notion of not actually being able to sing has some cultural redolence, if one can call tourist entertainment cultural – and some will. And this is because playback is increasingly being deployed in being passed off as entertainment.

The reason for this growth in shamtertainment is not difficult to understand. Compared with employing performers who can actually hold a tune, it is cheap. But it comes with a risk and a potential price. The clamour for entertainment has become deafening, and so might be the boos from tourists who feel they’ve been short-changed. And if not boos on the night, then boos on the forums, slagging off such-and-such a hotel or establishment for using miming. Bad PR on the internet really cannot be underestimated.

More than poor publicity, the use of playback both takes away employment from and undermines those who can perform – from the Elvises and Robbies to the participants in tribute bands and in shows. Playback is lazy in another respect. It is indicative of a lack of originality in the provision of entertainment. There is very little tourist entertainment that can be said to be original, though maybe that is the fault of the tourist who craves the familiar over the different. Rather like there is a tendency towards a tandoori or burger and chips, so the entertainment comes served in digestible Abba-sized chunks.

But wait. Why not develop some original shows? Ben, he of periodic mentions here, once appeared on stage with Noele Gordon. Yes, that Noele Gordon. I know what they could do. “Crossroads – The Musical”. I can even offer a song – The Bachelors adapted for Benny: “smoile for me, Miss Doiyane”. An Amy Turtle would not be hard to find; indeed I know someone who’d be a ringer, even if she’d need to work on the accent a bit. And there would even be scope for some local Spanish performer: the soap’s original chef was Carlos. If not Crossroads, then Eldorado. It may have been considered to have been rubbish – I liked it – but some of the characters were recognisable: the alcoholic, the well-meaning wife who does the newsletter, the old trout fallen on hard times, the older bloke with the youthful totty, the posh bird, and the dodgy geezer who has something to do with boats.

You know, I think I’m onto something here. The expat musical. Can’t think why, but I’ve got this catchy name for it. Sounds upbeat, sunny perhaps but certainly girly and ice-creamy. Milli Vanilli.

Here is Air’s mime in which they also didn’t even bother to have someone pretending to play the flute part:

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Let’s Play Risk – The closure of Riskal

“Too risky.” Remember that catch-phrase? Some of you would probably prefer not to, but it came from the “nick-nick” time when Jim Davidson was any good, i.e. for a brief period when he first found fame. Too risky. Risk all. Riskal. Know what Riskal is/was? A grand centre for entertainment, culture, events and gastronomy, not far from Palma. It was the vision of one Joan Gelabert, ten years in the development at a cost of some 50 million euros. It opened in December 2008. In keeping with pretty much any new establishment, there was an inauguration, though Riskal’s was in the stratosphere of the lavish. Among the guests was Miquel Nadal, then the tourism minister. Maybe that was a fate of bad omen. Riskal seemed to risk all, it was hugely ambitious. It closed on Monday.

One needs to appreciate the scale of what was risked. Occupying 26,000 square metres and with 4,000 additional square metres of gardens, Riskal, technologically at the state of the art, comprised an art gallery, an auction room, a bookshop, a jazz club, a disco, three function areas, restaurants and cafés and a catering facility. Two hundred jobs were envisaged. The thirty employees are now out of work. The owner hopes it’s not the end, that Riskal may not be closed permanently, that it might be possible to sell it on.

It was rotten timing of course and was not the first grand Mallorcan project to open just when the world’s economy was in freefall. Hotel Formentor was another, back in the days of The Depression; it financially crippled Adan Diehl who had arranged its construction. Fifty million euros were splashed on the Riskal pleasure dome, and slap bang in the middle of economic chaos it opened to considerable publicity; full-pages ads in the newspapers and so on. The problem was, what was it? Perhaps it was some overblown vanity project. But such a description would be unfair to Gelabert’s vision. Riskal was intended to be a location that would show off the finest of talents, a location for conventions (achieved for example with staging a congress for the UGT union), a location for residents and tourists alike, well those with some money to throw around. It was intended, one guesses, as symbolic of a different type of Mallorca, a sophisticated Mallorca, one in keeping with other visions, those of government and authorities keen on an image of the island elevated from the sun and beach.

No, Riskal was not vanity. It was virtuous, too much so perhaps, but it defied simple definition. A maxim of business is to be able to sum something up in a short sentence. Riskal needed several, or certainly that was the impression its publicity gave. It was difficult to get a handle on the place. Whether it caused much impact among tourists last year is hard for me to say, but the name never seemed to crop up. Or maybe I just move in the wrong circles.

It’s a shame. Of course it’s a shame that Riskal has closed. New, different projects are just what Mallorca needs. Take another one, due to start this summer – the Mallorca Rocks Hotel in Magaluf. This sounds a fantastic idea, one that builds on the success of the Ibiza Rocks Hotel. The opening of the new hotel will feature The Kooks and DJ Zane Lowe. Apart from the obvious, namely the differences in markets and entertainment offered, Mallorca Rocks is also different to Riskal in that it has a clear focus and identity. It is a music destination. It is easy to understand and therefore easier to market.

Recession clearly played a part in Riskal having to close barely a year after opening, but maybe it was just too broad a concept. Too ambitious and too ill-defined. Too risky.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.