What’s Going On: Tribute acts

For the tribute act there are certain truisms of the art which, according to how many can be said to apply, will tend to determine the success or otherwise of the act. It does help to begin with if the trib act can sing, unless he or she is on the lowest rung of all tourist resort entertainment – the playback rung. Secondly, having a recognisable body of work is essential; recognisable preferably to all age groups, thus ensuring fun (possibly) for all the family.

Less essential but handy is that the trib act looks vaguely like his or her subject. Sometimes non-lookaliking can be compensated for with the judicious use of props. Get a blonde wig, for example, and an Agnetha is Abba-ed up; a full set, and Benny’s your uncle. Very occasionally the lookaliking is so real that it can offer someone like the truly remarkable Rud Stewart; he not only looks more like Rod than Rod, he even sounds more like Rod than Rod.

The most tributed of all acts is Elvis. For the Elvises there are additional benefits, such as the stage gestures and vocal idiosyncrasies that allow the trib to become like an all-round song and dance man. The Elvises also have an advantage in that the younger generation know the Elvis oeuvre inside out; and they know this thanks to the sheer number of Elvises rather than their ever having actually heard an Elvis record.

Elvis is hugely worthy of tribute, and it is this – whether the subject is genuinely worthy – that draws into question the suitability of some subjects for tributing and asks another as to why certain artists are not tributed.

There is a distinction between artists of the past and those of the present or near present. Of those from the past, and from the early Elvis days of modern popular music up to around the start of the seventies, there were arguably only four acts to which one could assign the badge of true greatness: Elvis, The Beatles, Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys (Brian Wilson).

Of these, a tribute Dylan wouldn’t exactly go down a storm one imagines at the evening entertainment in a Mallorcan hotel. The Beach Boys would probably be largely unknown to a younger audience, while the sheer complexity and precision of their harmonies would tend to preclude them as a suitable subject for the trib act for whom simplicity is preferable.

If greatness is a necessity for tributing, then Tamla Motown as a collective would also qualify. However, Motown didn’t produce true individual greats; with one notable exception, and before Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson went on to become true greats.

Forty years ago the greatest album ever made was released. It was a record that came completely out of the blue. It was unlike anything else; certainly anything else that Motown had put out. A black man’s album, it wasn’t black music per se; its messages and its musical styles resonated across cultures.

The “hey, what’s happenin’?” chatter of Detroit Lions American footballers, the congas in an echo chamber and the sax at the start of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” introduced an album that totally changed the perception of Gaye himself, of Motown and of black commercial music. Motown, for all its success and for all that it was admired and was influential, was still looked upon as churning out formulaic pop, sanitised for a white audience.

Marvin Gaye made a musically original and brilliant album that combined protest against war, environmental damage and social injustice and which succeeded in suddenly making black music hip to those with all sorts of musical tastes. For example, a “progressive” music fan, one more inclined to searching for the meaning from a Pink Floyd record cover, could now openly admit to liking a Motown record.

But Marvin Gaye would never be the subject for a local trib act. Yet, in addition to “What’s Going On”, there was what came before and afterwards, while he suffered a fate that might in fact be another requirement for the trib act – an untimely and, in his case, violent end.

Trib acts are, for the most part, a bit of fun and a bit of froth. Not all, but most. True greatness isn’t a pre-requisite. If it were, then Dylan, Brian Wilson and Marvin Gaye would find themselves being tributed rather than, let’s say, Girls Aloud. Perhaps it’s as well. The greatest tribute to the greatest album ever made is that no one in their right mind would even attempt to emulate it.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Back For Good: Tributes and charity

Which band or act did you see before they were famous? Want to know mine? There are a few. Genesis at an early-afternoon, Christmas-time gig at the Lyceum in London when I was barely a teenager. Graham Parker, an acquaintance from the south-west Surrey scene of the mid-seventies, of whom other alumni were Paul Weller and The Jam, remembered as the “Woking” boys and slagged off as a result with the puerile changing and addition of a letter or two, despite the dynamism of their performances that led up to “In The City”.

Wind forward some years and to a different part of England, and it was Take That. Bradford, must have been 1990. It was at a club which, for the life of me, I can’t remember the name of, despite having gone there regularly. It was a barn of a place, getting home from which, at weekends, was advisable before a certain time when some other boys, the bovver variety from Keighley, would turn up in search of the ritual bundle.

I can’t say I remember much about them, Take That, that is. “Bunch of dancing boys” was probably my disparaging comment to my girlfriend who was rather more taken with them and rather more lustful than I was. Nevertheless, their appearance allowed me to adopt a sense of superiority when they made it big. “Oh yes, I saw them when …” I go back a long way with Take That.

The band were in Alcúdia on Saturday. Not the Take That, but a make-believe one. Could it be magic? No, just a tribute act. “Just”. Just a tribute act. It can sound as disparaging as I was in 1990. Another form of superiority can abound when it comes to tribs, a supercilious dismissal of the talent that many possess and pour out, as they did on the stage at Hidropark.

It had the atmosphere of an old Radio 1 roadshow. A fading sun and fading summer, down by the seaside with clouds scudding by, threatening rain. All that was missing was the Hairy Cornflake or ooh, Gary Davies. It had held a promise, I had hoped. Would Robbie perform with Take That? Forget all that reunion talk. It didn’t happen. Robbie, appropriately enough breathing beery fumes over me, said it couldn’t be worked out with the Gary. I couldn’t figure out which one was the Gary, much as, in the absence of a blond one, I couldn’t identify the Mark. But it didn’t matter. Robbie. Rob Idol. Did we let him entertain us? He did. Supremely. So did Take That.

What was all this?

Putting this piece together, I googled Bradford and clubs, trying to jolt the memory for the name of that club. It didn’t work, but by coincidence I found a reference to a party night at a club in Bradford’s neighbour, Leeds. “Movimiento.” A Latin night. Hidropark on Saturday was a benefit concert for the breast cancer charity, “Un Lazo en Movimiento”. Sometimes, very good ideas come along, together with very good people who will make them happen. A benefit gig with trib acts is one such. From the despondency or desolation of being diagnosed with breast cancer, as the charity’s founder was, to an afternoon in late September. Relighting fires that might otherwise have died in the ashes of this most shattering of diseases.

Abba, Elvis, The Beatles, Tom Jones; they were all there, along with Robbie and Take That. Tributes, a tribute to acts and others prepared to get off their backsides and do something. It could, of course, all sound a bit Radio 1-ish, as in the “charidee, mate” spoof of Smashie and Nicey. But no. Amidst the doom-laden self-pity of resorts in crisis, it is uplifting to know that humanity prevails. And fun. And that Take That and the charity’s founder are back for good.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Imitation Of Life: Robbie and Take That

So Robbie is back with Take That. If art imitates life, then there needs to be some readjustment in trib world.

When I was putting together HOT!, one possible feature was on the local Robbie, Rob Idol. It didn’t happen for reasons I can’t be entirely sure of. But had it, a tack I had thought of taking was for Rob to actually be Robbie. It was perhaps as well it didn’t happen as I might have lost my audience in a confusion of surrealism. Nevertheless, a question would have been about re-joining Take That. Now that Robbie, as opposed to Rob, has teamed up once more with G. Barlow et al, the possibilities for trib imitation of life are increased.

There is fundamentally something rather surreal about trib acts, but to have them mirror real life, as in Rob and the local Take That performing together, would be not only hugely entertaining it would also be hugely bizarre. They must do it. Or you would hope they would. Even now, local TV should be interviewing the reunited fivesome in broken English, and plans should be afoot for a grand reunion concert of the whole of an alternative Take That on Puerto Alcúdia’s promenade. Have these people no imagination? Forget Michael Jackson and his story, forget some sappy alleged Beatles. Give us the reformed and totally tribute TT.

Imitation of life and strange juxtapositions. It goes back a long way. I was probably only six when I was introduced to how art can create the unexpected combination – if the TV Western could have been described as art. But the episode when Bronco Layne crossed over into an episode of “Tenderfoot” (or it might have been the other way round) had, I now appreciate, a profound influence. It has of course happened on many other occasions, such as Kirk and Picard together, but to a small child the insane notion of two cowboys from two cowboy series appearing opposite each other on a black and white screen with a bad signal was sufficient to inform him that normal rules don’t always apply, that the strange can and should happen. Which is why the doppelgänger Robbie and Take That must perform together this summer. And, moreover, mean it.

A Load of Balls – On Water
And word up for Mark and Andrea and their Walk On Water Balls next to the Las Palmeras tennis centre in Puerto Alcúdia. This looks, and is, huge fun. The set-up at WOWB is rather different to what can also be experienced at hotel swimming-pools. Firstly, it is sheltered, which means there is no direct sun onto the über-PVC balls (I’ve forgotten what Mark said was the exact material). Secondly, it is open all day, so no restrictions to a couple of hours here or there.

It’s all very safe, and the pool being shallow makes it doubly so. Five euros a roll, or however one wants to describe it. From midday to around 22:30.

But if you’re looking for a bizarre angle in this, then think “The Prisoner”, think Rover.

(In the photo: a couple of kids enjoying the water balls while Mark watches on.)

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.