Knew I'd seen it somewhere before

Zoolooter

Guitar_Slinger

Shamone! (and lol)

I read Moonwalk last month... He said Fred Astaire was a big influence and that video might explain some moves.  Plus the white suit in the Smooth Criminal video and the end of the director's cut where MJ taps the big boss on the shoulder and says "chase me" before scampering off stage left.

jellyroll

To be fair, Jackson did give him credit, even naming his album accordingly......

http://cdn2.pitchfork.com/news/62778/ce99ca59.jpeg

vale

i would love to see a revival of music hall as an art form. not so much a nostalgic look back but a revival of that spirit & format but new people & new ideas. the quick skit with some kooky ridiculous gimmick, the ridiculous costumes & cross dressing, the satire & the slapstick. get on & off quick.
the usual 90 min stand up & dvd at christmas stuff most jobbing comedians do now is ok, but there's room for other & new things & a reinvention of music hall could be one of them.

max wall was mad. & i like this lot (special guest appearance by gandhi at 1 min).

Zoolooter

vale said:

i would love to see a revival of music hall as an art form. not so much a nostalgic look back but a revival of that spirit & format but new people & new ideas. the quick skit with some kooky ridiculous gimmick, the ridiculous costumes & cross dressing, the satire & the slapstick. get on & off quick.
the usual 90 min stand up & dvd at christmas stuff most jobbing comedians do now is ok, but there's room for other & new things & a reinvention of music hall could be one of them.

max wall was mad. & i like this lot (special guest appearance by gandhi at 1 min).

They are all too scared in this day and age to make fools of themselves - which is what it was all about back then. People like Max Wall and a few others were genius, pure gold.

Zoolooter

Also, they have 15 mins of fame, then they're off doing 600 fuckin marathons with a TV crew.

vale

i decided to look into wilson, keppel & betty's history (in the clip i posted above) because i was feeling a bit obsesssed with how beautiful betty looks & how wonderfully she moves in her routine in the first minute of the clip. and found out this.

"Betty Knox retired from the act in 1941 to go into journalism, becoming a war correspondent during the Second World War, and reporting on the Nuremberg trials for three years as a correspondent for the London Evening Standard. She was among the first to report the suicide of Hermann Göring." (from wiki).

people really lived in the old days. the war was probably a factor in that. feeling you really could be dead tomorrow woke people up a bit to living fully & in the moment.
but when i talk to a lot of really old people 80+ (i'm a carer) i get the impression that people just said 'fuck it, i'm going for it' in the old days a lot more than they do now. a lot of people nowadays seem very complacent & whatever. maybe even me too i spose.

anyway, way off-topic comment (bedtime) but i thought that was such a cool thing about betty i would post it so others could appreciate what a fascinating character she was.

Zoolooter

Very interesting, nice story about Betty. Case in point, I have an aunty Betty she drove an ambulance during the war. She's still going strong at 98, amazing.

57Deluxe

I bloody loved Max Wall as a kid! Better than Tommy Cooper when you're 5!

He had a walk-on theme tune...

Zoolooter

I think we need a separate appreciation tread for Max Wall and other kindered spirits!