Post by davidhr on Jun 10, 2014 9:01:07 GMT -5
Lara’s official FB page replied to several questions this past week concerning the upcoming concerts, indicating, yes, they are official, and, links to buying tickets will be there soon if they’re not there already. The inquiries were undoubtedly related to Lara’s slowness in confirming the events, on FB at least. However, there is now no reason to avoid buying these tickets if one is so inclined, except perhaps the overriding concern: whether she will indeed be well enough to perform at all of them, especially if there is no ‘tryout’ period ahead of time. It still seems rather audacious to schedule so many events over such a short period of time when coming back from an acoustic shock disorder, even if the concerts will be ‘unplugged’. Hopefully she knows what she’s doing…
Otherwise, even by current standards, this was a very slow week publicly for Lara and her fan sites; many of these had no new entries at all (particular exceptions being the FB sites ‘Lara Fabian Voice of Passion USA’ and ‘Entre nous et Lara’, both discussed previously, which are filling their pages every day with Lara pictures and videos). Even the chagrin at Lara’s ending her isolation in countries far removed from her French-speaking home base seems to have faded. Lara’s approach of ‘not answering, not explaining’ seems to be working in that regard at least, although one must say, having a blasé fan base is not exactly a recipe for success for performers.
One other active fan site (even currently) that we can review is one that we have mentioned previously in another context, the ‘Lara Fabian Connecting People’ URL (http://vk.com/lf_cp). In Russian, it has actually been around for seven years, and has often featured unique material; given its location, it has also presented material that the ‘tamer’ Lara sites shied away from.
Now for the next three ‘best of’ videos:
Love Like A Dream: app.box.com/s/o4avln2021b3c70x3494
app.box.com/s/raswt95kvg1knpo9oxjz
Mademoiselle Hyde: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3TvHilkXBw
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndf1XnAEn48
Mama Moya: app.box.com/s/e5dixuqu4mxb7zduhild
There are a number of links between the songs this week. One of them continues the theme from last week in that, coincidentally due to their alphabetical position, all three songs are from the Mme. Zhivago album. The first, ‘Love Like A Dream’ (often referred to in these Updates as ‘the Russian song’) was solely the work of Igor Krutoi (Lara did not write the lyrics), but it found favor in her eyes in that it allowed her to sing in Russian, and so better relate to the Russian audience. So while it was sometimes lip-synced for TV shows, Lara wanted to show the audience she could sing in Russian ‘live’, and therefore we have a number of live concert versions. The first choice above is from the complete Perm video concert. The second choice introduces another of the links, that of ‘family’. It is from her performance in Caesarea, Israel, and it has the added bonus that Lou comes on stage, and stays there.
‘Mademoiselle Hyde’ became part of her regular ‘Eastern’ tour rotation in a new, syncopated version featuring prominent drums. Prior to that she had sung it, like all the songs from this album, primarily lip-synced. So there are very few high quality ‘live’ versions of its original incarnation; one of them is the first choice listed above, from a concert in Moscow (not the TV concert). The second choice is the rhythmic version from her tour, also from Moscow, a year earlier. Other notable tour versions of approximately equal quality are from the Perm concert (https://app.box.com/s/ejlnwndqkyliz47amelu), a wonderfully extreme close-up version from Krasnodar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_dPbFBvv3M), and one from St. Petersburg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAcLmrsdqic).
The third song, ‘Mama moya’, again from the Mme. Zhivago album, suffered a far worse fate than the other two. It is a song dedicated to Lara’s mother, has beautiful music, and includes perhaps the best, most moving English lyrics Lara has ever written. Nevertheless it experienced even greater indignity than ‘Llora’ by being left off the French version of the MZ album entirely. True, it is in English, but so are other songs that were included (e.g., Mme. Hyde). We wondered at the time what Lara’s mother felt about that (and we still wonder); this too falls in the category of what Julian Piraud called ‘incomprehensible choices’. The song obviously connects to the ‘family’ theme as well, and this is emphasized in the ‘lip-synced’ version chosen here from the Moscow TV concert (to my knowledge, Lara has never sung this song live) by the direct reference to her mother sitting in the audience. Another wonderful song from the album completely undervalued.
[Note: we are about half-way through the alphabet, and about half-way between Lara’s retreat into relative seclusion and her scheduled return on tour…]
So far, the approach of summer and the French ‘malaise’ has trumped any renewed impulse on Lara’s part to ‘make news’. We’ll see if anything changes in the interval between now and her scheduled appearance in Latvia towards the end of next month.
David
Otherwise, even by current standards, this was a very slow week publicly for Lara and her fan sites; many of these had no new entries at all (particular exceptions being the FB sites ‘Lara Fabian Voice of Passion USA’ and ‘Entre nous et Lara’, both discussed previously, which are filling their pages every day with Lara pictures and videos). Even the chagrin at Lara’s ending her isolation in countries far removed from her French-speaking home base seems to have faded. Lara’s approach of ‘not answering, not explaining’ seems to be working in that regard at least, although one must say, having a blasé fan base is not exactly a recipe for success for performers.
One other active fan site (even currently) that we can review is one that we have mentioned previously in another context, the ‘Lara Fabian Connecting People’ URL (http://vk.com/lf_cp). In Russian, it has actually been around for seven years, and has often featured unique material; given its location, it has also presented material that the ‘tamer’ Lara sites shied away from.
Now for the next three ‘best of’ videos:
Love Like A Dream: app.box.com/s/o4avln2021b3c70x3494
app.box.com/s/raswt95kvg1knpo9oxjz
Mademoiselle Hyde: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3TvHilkXBw
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndf1XnAEn48
Mama Moya: app.box.com/s/e5dixuqu4mxb7zduhild
There are a number of links between the songs this week. One of them continues the theme from last week in that, coincidentally due to their alphabetical position, all three songs are from the Mme. Zhivago album. The first, ‘Love Like A Dream’ (often referred to in these Updates as ‘the Russian song’) was solely the work of Igor Krutoi (Lara did not write the lyrics), but it found favor in her eyes in that it allowed her to sing in Russian, and so better relate to the Russian audience. So while it was sometimes lip-synced for TV shows, Lara wanted to show the audience she could sing in Russian ‘live’, and therefore we have a number of live concert versions. The first choice above is from the complete Perm video concert. The second choice introduces another of the links, that of ‘family’. It is from her performance in Caesarea, Israel, and it has the added bonus that Lou comes on stage, and stays there.
‘Mademoiselle Hyde’ became part of her regular ‘Eastern’ tour rotation in a new, syncopated version featuring prominent drums. Prior to that she had sung it, like all the songs from this album, primarily lip-synced. So there are very few high quality ‘live’ versions of its original incarnation; one of them is the first choice listed above, from a concert in Moscow (not the TV concert). The second choice is the rhythmic version from her tour, also from Moscow, a year earlier. Other notable tour versions of approximately equal quality are from the Perm concert (https://app.box.com/s/ejlnwndqkyliz47amelu), a wonderfully extreme close-up version from Krasnodar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_dPbFBvv3M), and one from St. Petersburg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAcLmrsdqic).
The third song, ‘Mama moya’, again from the Mme. Zhivago album, suffered a far worse fate than the other two. It is a song dedicated to Lara’s mother, has beautiful music, and includes perhaps the best, most moving English lyrics Lara has ever written. Nevertheless it experienced even greater indignity than ‘Llora’ by being left off the French version of the MZ album entirely. True, it is in English, but so are other songs that were included (e.g., Mme. Hyde). We wondered at the time what Lara’s mother felt about that (and we still wonder); this too falls in the category of what Julian Piraud called ‘incomprehensible choices’. The song obviously connects to the ‘family’ theme as well, and this is emphasized in the ‘lip-synced’ version chosen here from the Moscow TV concert (to my knowledge, Lara has never sung this song live) by the direct reference to her mother sitting in the audience. Another wonderful song from the album completely undervalued.
[Note: we are about half-way through the alphabet, and about half-way between Lara’s retreat into relative seclusion and her scheduled return on tour…]
So far, the approach of summer and the French ‘malaise’ has trumped any renewed impulse on Lara’s part to ‘make news’. We’ll see if anything changes in the interval between now and her scheduled appearance in Latvia towards the end of next month.
David
