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        Pete Atkin >> Chums >> Julie Covington
        
(Message started by: S J Birkill on Today at 21:15)

Title: Julie Covington
Post by S J Birkill on Today at 21:15

Does MV still have a quorum of Julie Covington fans? I see BBC4 continues its Australian season tonight at 22:45 with a rare (justifiably?) showing of Barry Humphries' 1972 comedy The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068173/). Along with other luminaries including Peter Cook, William Rushton and Spike Milligan, the spectacle is illuminated by Julie's appearance as Blanche, a vaguely hippie character. Classic quote:

Barry: Now listen mate, I need to splash the boots. You know, strain the potatoes. Water the horses. You know, go where the big knobs hang out. Shake hands with the wife's best friend? Drain the dragon? Siphon the python? Ring the rattlesnake? You know, unbutton the mutton? Like, point Percy at the porcelain?

Blanche: I think he wants to go to the loo.

I don't recall for sure whether Clive makes a fleeting appearance.

Steve

Title: Re: Julie Covington
Post by Pete Atkin on 03.08.06 at 08:38

I'm not sure if Bruce B, or indeed anyone involved, would rate it among their best work, but it offered a good quota of shriek-of-recognition moments as familiar faces cropped up all over the place, not least Russell Davies as the MC in the club where Julie's band plays, and Bruce's own uncredited appearance in the pub.

(It's the second Barry McKenzie movie (B.M. Holds His Own) in which Clive appears. I remember going to a screening of that one and Dick Bentley standing up at the end an announcing to everyone "Well, I wasn't very good, but considering what they paid me I wasn't bad.")

Pete

Title: Re: Julie Covington
Post by Jan on 03.07.07 at 08:16

Looks as though there's a rare appearance by Julie Covington in:
Samual Johnson - the Dictionary Man
(2006)
BBC2
Tonight Tuesday 3 July
11.20pm
Julie plays Johnson's mother

Jan

Title: Re: Julie Covington
Post by BogusTrumper on 03.07.07 at 14:38

on 07/03/07 at 08:16:22, Jan wrote :

Julie plays Johnson's mother

Jan

OMG - now I really feel old :D I was watching Rock Follies recently...

Title: Re: Julie Covington
Post by Kevin Cryan on 21.12.07 at 21:04

Has anyone other than myself noticed that Julie Covington is becoming something of a presence on You Tube of late.

I know that the sound quality on YouTube is not all that great, but if it's the only place I get to hear Julie wonderful interpretation of John Lennon's In My Life (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oZS0tP0oP0) - the best piece of lyric-writing Lennon ever did, to my mind - or her grammatically corrected (though idiomatically awkward) version of the same lyricist's If I Fell (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_5TXsNB5Js&feature=related), then I'm quite happy to settle for poor sound quality. I ever grateful for small mercies.

Kevin Cryan

PS.

I have often wondered whether there ever could be cicumstances in which the lady being addressed by Lennon's protagonist in If I Fell would accept his proposal. If I were a woman, I'd be tempted tell him to take hike before he'd got half way through his spiel. I like think that the only reason he actually gets through at all is that she is dumbstruck by his sheer effrontory.

Title: Re: Julie Covington
Post by Pete Atkin on 27.12.07 at 09:05

Thanks, Kevin - yet again! - for calling attention to these performances, which I for one would almost certainly have missed otherwise, the original broadcast having passed me by at the time. They're both great examples of Julie's exceptional ability to add a dimension to a song undreamt of by its writer. Most cover versions of Lennon and/or McCartney songs have ranged from the bizarrely inappropriate to the just about justifiable of the grounds of sending you back to the original, but I think both of these belong with the tiny number of L&M covers which, while they don't - and don't pretend to - eclipse the originals, find something more in them. (I'd include in that number Shawn Colvin's recentish encore version of "I'll Be Back", so far unrecorded as far as I know.)

Title: Re: Julie Covington
Post by Kevin Cryan on 27.12.07 at 16:03

on 12/27/07 at 09:05:42, Pete Atkin wrote :

..... Most cover versions of Lennon and/or McCartney songs have ranged from the bizarrely inappropriate to the just about justifiable of the grounds of sending you back to the original, but I think both of these (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oZS0tP0oP0) (In My Life & If I Fell. kc) belong with the tiny number of L&M covers which, while they don't - and don't pretend to - eclipse the originals, find something more in them. (I'd include in that number Shawn Colvin's recentish encore version of "I'll Be Back", so far unrecorded as far as I know.)

Hi Pete,

It's good to be able to report that Shawn Covlin has recorded I'll be Back and that it's on her 2005 album, Polaroids - A Greatest Hits Collection (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Polaroids-Greatest-Collection-Shawn-Colvin/dp/B0006BHRX6). In fact, she recorded it specially for inclusion on that album, and in doing so was deliberately extending the definition "hits" beyond recorded "hits" to include "hit" live and broadcast performances.

Kevin Cryan

Title: Re: Julie Covington
Post by Pete Atkin on 28.12.07 at 14:17

Ooo, thanks for that, Kevin. I guess I assumed that that collection was all stuff I already had. That'll larn me.