Started off with a snack (hot, cheesy sandwich, a thinking man's version of the northern toastie) at the Benugo on the Waterloo Mezzanine, served by a very cheerful young waitress called Flavia. We were most impressed with the pzazz she put into what was presumably zero hours, minimum wage work.
Experience further improved in my case by a disturbance to my statin dosage, which seemed to result in some sort of heightened consciousness. Perhaps the sort of thing one might get with cocaine. Whatever it was, it made the Waterloo concourse seem very bright and sparkly and took a little while to wear off.
Hall fairly full, so maybe a couple of thousand people there, mostly pensioners like ourselves but with a sprinkling of people of working age. As it happened, the couple next to us were from Rochester and had the sad news that Capon (see reference 2) was no longer making pork pies. It seems Capon senior had retired and Capon junior didn't fancy the pie trade. Serve us right for not buying one while the going was good.
There was also a talkative sound engineer at the back of the front stalls with the usual large box of tricks of such people. He explained that in a hall of this size, even a large band like this one (see illustration) needed his support if they were to sound any good at the back and he saw his job as delivering a smooth, rounded sound to every seat in the place. This included making sure that sounds made at the same time were heard at the same time - which he said was not what always happened if the hall was left to natural causes. He liked to allow about a day to set up and test things out, this giving him time to sort out the odd problem. I think he said that one half of his kit was already prepped with what it needed to know about the hall but that he had to tell the other half about the band. In the event, with us sitting fairly near the front, I thought the sound was a bit too smooth with the separate voices of the various instruments rather getting lost in the crowd.
The format was song & dance show with the conductor acting as master of ceremonies. One dance couple was of the Strictly Ballroom variety and the other did tap. Neither had much stage sense and the Ballroom pair rather reminded me of performing seals. It was also clear that the lady had very well developed thigh muscles. Tap better. Singers - mainly opera people - did much better still. They also knew when and how to smile.
Guitar player a little lazy in that he allowed himself both to look very bored and to yawn occasionally.
Swanee River was completely lost by being used as an accompaniment to the tap dancers. But curious, I have now heard a proper version on YouTube and learned 1) that the Swanee is a river in northern Florida and 2) that the song was a pastiche of an original by Stephen Foster.
Rhapsody in Blue fared rather better. But overall, I found the music rather flat and dull, Compared with our usual fare, rather like the flatness of Christie prose compared with that, for example, of Conrad.
Wound up the proceedings by a visit to the Archduke for an early supper, which they did very well. I think it was the first time we had eaten in the place.
Next stop the 1945 film of 'Rhapsody in Blue'.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/rhapsody-in-blue.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-rocks-of-rochester.html.
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