A World of My Own - Ed Harcourt



Finishing up Big Band Week we have a Terrible Track that comes from a live concert in London last year.

English alternative rocker, Jarvis Cocker, thought it would be a great treat to put on a two and a half hour concert of Disney music by some of the UK's most alternative musicians as part of his Meltdown festival in June 2007. He called it Forest of No Return and his main influence was Hal Willner's 1988 compilation album STAY AWAKE.

I didn't get to go to this show but a friend found a bootleg copy of it and sent it to me. The bootleg really is just a guy with a recording device in his jacket pocket. The sound quality is awful and that is one big reason why this is a terrible track.

ED HARCOURT, an English singer-songwriter sang a few numbers throughout the night but this one was probably his weakest. There are parts where I question if even knows what the melody is supposed to be. And about three minutes in, when he starts getting more...creative with the melody, it causes me to skip to the next track.

However, his piano playing is quite excellent and I read a review that said he had a whole-head rabbit mask put on his head right before his piano solo. Ed was still able to pull of a good solo.

The big band arrangement of this piece sounds great but the crappy recording and bad singing causes me to put this on the "terrible" list. I would love to hear a studio recording of this song! Will we get it? Maybe in a world of my own.

Labels: a world of my own, alice in wonderland, big band, ed harcourt, forest of no return concert, jazz, terrible

  ¶ 9:08 AM 4 Comments Links to this post