Jarvis Cocker’s Disney Bash

17 June 2007

We are now in a post-Disney mush haze

Mrs Monk got out the Dumbo DVD to teach me about the Disney characters that escaped my recollection, the day after the Jarvis Cocker Meltdown event at the newly restored Royal Festival Hall. She wants us to weep some more about pretend animals, wallowing and wishing upon Disney stars. She has even invented a brand new Disneyesque tune called ”I’m waiting” so convincing that we think it might actually be a real Disney tune.

Sunday's Concert was produced by Van Dyke Parks and in the spirit of the earlier album by Hal Willner. Watch out for forthcoming DVD

This was a concert of celebrity interpretations of Disney Classics, audacious and awe inspiring, surprising and familiar, a dark Disney, occasionally sentimental but never un-cool

Nick Cave sang Hi Diddlee Dee and Heigh Ho in his very own way.

Baaba Maal sang Bare Necessities

Shane MacGowan sang Zip A Da Dee Dah

Peter Doherty almost sang Chim Chim Cheree

Beth Orton sang Baby Mine and Second Star from the Right. Mrs Monk wept profusely.

Grace Jones sang Trust In Me. ( Grace Jones was fired by Disney Corporation for exposing her breasts in Disneyland, which is why Derek keeps going back to Disneyland )

Jarvis Cocker who put the show together, sang I Waanna Be Like You and When You Wish Upon a Star.

And many more were accompanied by a magnificent all star avant garde / modern jazz big band.

The four hours in the concert hall passed by in a flash of starlight.

How to Pee in the new Royal Festival Hall

The Royal Festival Hall has just been renovated, and is still not quite finished.

A curious new arrangement of almost unisex toilets meant that the interval crush of busting bladders meant that men and women were obliged to share one small single door, and the inevitable slow moving line of ladies, some of whom were dressed in costume, as Snow White in suspenders for example, were each given a view of men urinating every time a certain door opened which it did every few seconds.

How very French, you might think, but when it became my turn, I was faced with only one available urinal designed for small children and dwarfs; how apposite.

Not only was I about to expose more than Grace Jones had exposed to Walt Disney, but I was faced with the Uncle Buck option of getting down on one knee to do what needed to be done, and knowing that a continues loop of hyped-up Snow Whites were l looking-on, humming, "Hi Didlee Dee, we all need a pee"

Furthermore the new construction of the toilets provided no sound insulation between the men and the women. As we all answered nature. I found out just how much talking women do as they pee.

Men just don't do that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlLTjXfNMYg

NICK CAVE DVD chosen by Mrs Monk