Finally got and watched this at the weekend there.
Interesting! Not exactly John's best ever songs, from not exactly his best ever period, but well worth making available as the recording and filming (well, videoing) quality are well above average for an early 80s Euro TV show.
I think this video tells us quite a bit about why John's career never turned into superstardom:
- he looks stunning, but his body language and dancing look awkward, really - you can tell he's not entirely comfortable with this lark!
- his singing mostly fine but there are some awful howling moments - most unfortunately at the start of the first song, where he's dreadfully out of tune. Ouch.
- the band are competent but hardly making the best use of the sonics that John oughta have been capably of:
- the synth drums aren't *too* offensive sounding but they don't really help either - it was just the fashion back then, but acoustic drums would've served just as well if not better
- the bass guitar is all "funky licks" and "slap" which again was the fashion then, but was it really the best style for numbers like "Pater Noster"?! (Is *anything* the best style for that?! lmao )
- Robin Simon's playing is beautiful as ever, but very underused - better arrangements could've made more of what he was playing and let it stand out. Quite often you'd hardly hear he was there.
- the synths, again, seem a bit sonically underused.
The Roland Vocoder VP330 is often being used to add a choral halo to John's vocal (hence the dual mics)... the ARP Odyssey seems to be basically set to the same lead sound throughout (it's a great lead sound though) - but it can do more than that!
- there are at least two other synths in the rig (Juno 60? Prophet 5?) but they just seem to be set to bland fuzzyish pads and don't really grab the ear.
- there also seems to be other synth/keyboard sounds on a backing tape? (e.g. in The Hidden Man, there's a sequenced bleep and piano chords mysteriously happening throughout).
If I were John, I'd have expanded the band by one extra keyboard player, allowing them to go to town on the sonics more. And found a more appealing way to do the drums.
Anyways, 21 years later, these are just quibbles over milk long spilt - overall I enjoyed watching it, The Hidden Man in particular kicked ass when John joined in on the Odyssey.
