REVIEW: THE WEEKND LIVE AT MARLAY PARK 28TH JUNE, 2023

 

I saw The Weeknd, AKA Abel Tesfaye, live for the first time in 2013, in Manchester, England. He was touring his debut studio album, Kiss Land, and I was in the first stages of a musical obsession that has lasted from then until now. Being there near the beginning of Abel's journey, feeling the unparalleled excitement in the air, that we were seeing someone who would someday be known as one of the greatest to ever do it, is something that I will never forget. That show was brilliant, absolutely. It was apparent though that Abel was still learning as a performer and as an artist, making the transition from mysterious underground hero, to mainstream success. Nearly a decade later, it is clear that that The Weeknd has reached master status as a performer. If it is the case that Abel is retiring "The Weeknd", this tour and especially this concert, is a phenomenal send off for the most enigmatic, charismatic and talented artist of his generation. 

To say I was anticipating this concert with much excitement is putting it very mildly indeed. The Weeknd is at the tip top with Prince, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson, in my musical obsessions. His music has, no lie, helped me endure the hardest times of my life. I will be forever indebted to Abel. Until the second leg of the After Hours Till Dawn tour, The Weeknd performed the same set-list across all performances in a tour. The show that I saw in Manchester in 2013 was replicated on every other show of that tour. There are positives to this - for one I am able to relive the Manchester concert with this recording of the Los Angeles performance. On the whole though it hinted at a certain insecurity in The Weeknd's performances, and resulted in a certain redundancy in watching or attending more than one date on a tour. In freeing himself from his perfectionist streak, and letting himself jump around his discography at different gigs, The Weeknd has become the performer and artist he was always destined to be. 

The Weeknd took the stage dressed all in white, with a mask inspired by the late MF Doom. From start to finish, Abel took us through his entire career, representing every era for the first time since 2015; a dizzying array of the biggest hits and the deepest cuts. To see The Weeknd embrace albums like Kiss Land and Echoes of Silence, and to do so with such a virtuoso performance, was joyful, transcendent and a dream come true. The concert started with the Dawn FM intro, before quickly transitioning into the pounding bass and synth, ominous, purgatory club banger, "Take My Breath". Everyone around us in the Gold Circle in Marlay Park - a beautiful, wide and open space - knew the words to most of the songs, and it was an experience that verged on the religious. It was also great that the band was visible this time around, unlike the first leg of the tour.

"Sacrifice" followed, a song that is so much easier to appreciate in a live setting. It reminded me of seeing Abel perform "Wanderlust" from Kiss Land in Manchester in 2013, a song that previously hadn't quite gelled for me. When you feel the bass, it suddenly becomes clear. The Weeknd's vocals were impeccable, his voice soaring, delivering every hook and nuance that exists within these incredible songs. It is remarkable just how many of these songs were hits, and even more so, their depth and variety and the unquestionable quality within. 

For many years, The Weeknd hardly mentioned Kiss Land. Although it was reviewed quite well, it did not sell. He didn't play any of the songs in concert and he didn't acknowledge it. And then in the middle of the first year of the pandemic something happened. Hardcore XO fans made a concentrated effort and got it to #1 on the charts. Abel was so moved that he put out a special episode of Memento Mori (his Apple Music radio show), which featured outtakes and demos from the Kiss Land sessions. Then he made a promise: when the pandemic was over and the delayed tour began, he would feature Kiss Land on the set-list. When the After Hours Till Dawn tour began, it was revealed that The Weeknd performed the title track from that masterpiece. It was a thrill to see those shaky videos on YouTube. Fast forward to the release of Live at Sofi Stadium on HBO, in March of this year, and we finally got to see the entire show in great quality. When he says, "this is for the OG XO fans" I lost it! I have watched the concert film more times than I can remember, and I was hoping and praying that my concert would live up to it. I needn't have worried. 

The Weeknd's performance at Marlay Park at the end of June was the greatest I have ever seen from him, and honestly, from any performer. And I've seen Prince! By freeing himself from the obligation to perform the same songs in the same sequence, it transformed each concert into a unique work of art. Many of the transitions remained, as did the spine of the set-list of the first leg of After Hours Till Dawn, but throughout, there were songs that haven't been performed in a decade, and one song from Kiss Land that has *NEVER* been performed before! 

To hear "Tears in the Rain", during the closing moments of the concert was something that I will never forget. For Abel to embrace Kiss Land to this degree, is something that I never thought I'd see. I imagine that there were many younger XO fans in attendance on that day whose ears were opened to the brilliance and wonder of Kiss Land. "Tears in the Rain" was played over the outro of the biggest Billboard hit of all time, "Blinding Lights", its sparse beauty never more apparent. 

They all feel the same

Adjust to the fame

Cause no one will love you like her

It's pointless

Like tears in the rain

So now that she's gone

Embrace all that comes

And die with a smile

Don't show the world how alone you've become

If this concert and upcoming third entry in the second trilogy, is truly to be the final outing for Abel Tesfaye's alter ego, The Weeknd, then it could not have been a better summation of the unbelievable run of great albums and legendary performances. This tour and this concert are surely to be remembered as the peak of his career. I hope that Abel continues to record music and perform, but even if not, this could not possibly be a better conclusion to the story. 

1. Dawn FM
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2. Take My Breath
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3. Sacrifice
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4. How Do I Make You Love Me?
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5. Can't Feel My Face
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6. Lost in the Fire
   (Gesaffelstein & The Weeknd cover)
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7. Hurricane
   (Kanye West cover)
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8. The Hills
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9. Kiss Land
   (First half only)
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10. Often
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11. Crew Love
    (Drake cover)
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12. Starboy
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13. House of Balloons
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14. Heartless
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15. Low Life
    (Future cover)
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16. Reminder
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17. Party Monster
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18. Faith
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19. After Hours
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20. Out of Time
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21. I Feel It Coming
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22. Montreal
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23. Die for You
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24. Is There Someone Else?
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25. I Was Never There
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26. Wicked Games
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27. Call Out My Name
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28. Like A God
    (Live debut)
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29. High for This
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30. The Morning
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31. Save Your Tears
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32. Less Than Zero
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33. Blinding Lights
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34. Tears in the Rain
    (Played during Blinding Lights outro)
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35. Creepin'
    (Metro Boomin cover)
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36. Popular
    (The Weeknd, Playboi Carti & Madonna cover)
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37. In Your Eyes
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38. Moth to a Flame

THE FEARLESS GENIUS OF BUSTER KEATON

 

Given the prominence of computer generated special effects today, which allow the filmmaker to take anything from their imagination and put it on the screen, the work of Buster Keaton is all the more remarkable. Everything that appears on screen, he did for real. One common misconception about Buster Keaton is that it was simply the risk and the danger to his person that made what he did so special. Not so. It was his ceaseless invention, the poetry in his movement, and above all how much he made you laugh. 

Buster Keaton started working in comedy before his fourth birthday. Much like his friend and peer, Charlie Chaplin, comedy was in his blood. He worked with his parents, his father frequently throwing Buster around the stage, and on some occasions even at the audience! Buster's given name was Joseph. "Buster" means a fall, which he was proficient at, even as an infant! There are conflicting reports on who named him Buster, but Buster himself credits Harry Houdini, as seen here. 

Buster Keaton immediately captured my imagination, when I first saw his 1924, meta masterpiece, Sherlock Jr. I grew up on Jackie Chan and have watched almost all of Jackie's films, so I already had a very developed appreciation of the artform of stunts and action/comedy set-pieces. Jackie has long credited Buster as being one of his primary influences, with The General being one of his favourite movies. What Jackie continued, Buster started. As with Jackie though, it is not merely the danger that Buster put himself in, but the exceptionally inventive nature of the stunts that he performed, as well as the beauty and poetry that they brought on the big screen, that is most remarkable. 

In Sherlock Jr., Buster plays with the conventions of filmmaking, then still a relatively young artform. This is an important thing to remember: Buster was not just a performer, he was a true filmmaker. His films were not just a way to deliver gags, they were true works of art. Buster does not get nearly enough credit for how moving and sweet his films are, especially given his moniker as "The Great Stone Face". Go West, from 1925, sees Buster's character - credited here as "Friendless" - travel across the country in an effort to find employment, and perhaps someone with whom to share his life. 

    

Go West is hilarious, with some exquisite and chaotic set-pieces - including a herd of cows wrecking their way through Los Angeles - but what is equally as notable is how sweet and moving the story is. Brown Eyes befriends Buster and Buster is no longer "Friendless". People don't often think of this kind of story when it comes to Buster Keaton, but they should. While he does not smile or laugh, his face is wonderfully expressive all the same. 

While some differ in opinion over Buster's "College", I can honestly say that each of the eleven silent features, I have seen, are of exceptional quality. Each possesses a genius level gift for physical performance, invention and fearlessness. The General will likely go down in history as his greatest work, and it is hard to argue with that. It is truly epic in scale - especially for a comedy - and the stunt work with the trains is awe inspiring. While the setting of the film is ostensibly the American Civil War, Buster's true motivation in The General is, as is the case with most of his films, down to his being in love with a woman, and wanting to prove himself to her. Orson Welles called The General, "the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest civil war movie ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made." It isn't hard to see why.

There is such a beauty to Buster's movement, across all of his work. He captured something truly profound about the fragility of life, in his restless attempts to provoke injury or worse. Perhaps Buster's most iconic stunt appears in Steamboat Bill Jr., where, in the middle of a bad storm, the front of a house falls around him. 

This has been replicated by many in tribute through the years, though given my love of Jackie Chan, my favourite is his tribute from his excellent action movie, Police Story 2. While you have someone like Tom Cruise, obsessed with doing his own dangerous stunts in the Mission Impossible films, the true genius of Buster Keaton is how these amplify the laughs and how they fit in the story. They are not there simply to emphasize the danger of the scenario. As is also the case with Jackie Chan's Hong Kong work, it is the balletic nature of the stunts, and the elite artistry on display that is the truly compelling thing about them. 

Charlie Chaplin advised Buster to stay independent, creatively. Buster, unfortunately, did not listen. He did not transition to talking pictures very successfully, trapped as he was in a studio which had little care or understanding of his rare kind of genius. Buster's silent shorts and features have however aged incredibly well. They remain undiminished in the wonder and awe they inspire in the audience, as well as the laughs that they provoke. His genius, captured on film, some a hundred years+ ago, will live for as long as there are people to watch it. 

CHARLIE CHAPLIN

 

"What's the use of trying?" 

"Buck up - never say die. We'll get along!" 

Charlie Chaplin is someone who I grew up hearing about. Even though I never saw a film of his, apart from clips over the year on television, I knew his name and his reputation. It took me 30 odd years but I finally understand why in the early 90s - eight decades or so after he began his career in films - people still spoke of his work in reverential tones. And now, three more decades after that, Charlie remains one of the greatest artists of the 20th century; His comedy timeless and his emotional resonance still unmatched in the genre. 

Charlie Chaplin grew up in terrible poverty, living day by day, trying desperately to scrape by. For anyone to reach the artistic highs and the title of most famous man in the world, as Charlie did, would be incredible. That he did it through what can only be described as a crushing, Dickensian nightmare, is almost unbelievable. His mother and father were performers on the stage, so it can rightly be said that he had it in his blood. His father wasn't around very much and died young. His mother lost her voice and so couldn't perform, leading to their falling into poverty. Charlie and his brother Sydney had to learn very early on to devise ways for the family to keep their head above water. Above all Charlie was a hard worker, something that is so evident in his films; meticulously crafted in every aspect. 

Before this past year (2022-2023), my only experience with silent films was the early work of Laurel and Hardy. I enjoyed those early films, but I much preferred their talkies. I felt, as I imagine many do, that I wouldn't even know how to appreciate a silent feature film. Would I look like an idiot for not getting it? Or even worse: for getting it all together too well! I felt this before when dipping my toe into Jazz. Most of the hooks that I had gathered down through the years to put me on firm footing when evaluating an album's quality, were out the window. I didn't have the chops for music theory and it was a bit scary. As with Jazz however, I needn't have worried: this was instinctual. Whether you are new to it or not, as with all great art, you feel it. 

Charlie Chaplin called his silent comedies, "pantomime". The first thing to understand about this pantomime is that it isn't "missing" sound - it is its own unique form of expression, and no more needs dialogue than a great black and white movie needs colour. Charlie's short films are brilliant. Incredibly funny and inventive. It is however when he makes his first feature that he moves into unexplored creative areas and becomes the truly great artist he is still known as today. 

The Kid, released in 1921, was a lightning bolt of creativity. By melding comedy with genuine emotion, Charlie created something truly new. People told him it wouldn't work, but it did. It was a fantastic success artistically, but also, no less importantly, commercially. The Kid tells the story of a child who is left by his mother, who can't raise him. Charlie's iconic character, most commonly known as The Tramp, finds the child and decides to care for him. There are many hilarious set-pieces here but what really hits the viewer is how moving the story is. Some call Charlie Chaplin sentimental, in a pejorative sense. This entirely misses the point. Why do some expect art to stand entirely separate from human experience? People are sentimental. Nearly our entire experience in life - at least the most meaningful parts - are based on love and loss. There is nothing saccharine, or artificial about The Kid and indeed the rest of Charlie's films. It is genuine emotion we feel when the child is pulled from The Tramp's arms. 

Charlie's greatest work is hard to pin down, given the consistent quality across the board, but if I had to pick my favourite, it would be City Lights. City Lights is the perfect balance of hilarity and pathos and romance. The viewer wants The Tramp to succeed. He is the quintessential underdog. Mistaken as a rich man, by a blind woman selling flowers, Charlie's character makes it his mission to help her get an operation that will cure her blindness. Woven through this story are a rush of expertly designed and realized comedy set-pieces, that have not lost one bit of their ability to raise very big laughs. My favourite here is the boxing match, which is a ballet of hilarity. The comic timing here is on an entirely different level and there is a poetry to the movements that very, very few have ever approached. 

 

The ending of City Lights is earned every step of the way, and is exceptionally romantic and sweet. It is still though tinged with sadness - the pain that they have both gone through to get here. Life doesn't always give people the happy endings they deserve, but art is something that can give us those moments and the strength to endure. With the state of things the way they are today, we need these hopeful moments more than ever.

Charlie Chaplin was a true artistic genius. He remained independent throughout his career, and actually managed to transition to talking pictures very successfully. He also went through some very hard times. He never stopped making us laugh though, even when the media and the US government was trying to blacklist him for not conforming. Everything that is beautiful and heartbreaking about life is contained within Charlie's films. The inherent tragedy that is this temporary existence. The inherent comedy in the same. 

ORSON WELLES' TOUCH OF EVIL

 

“Come on, read my fortune for me.”

“You haven’t got any.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your future is all used up.” / “Break him! Break him!”

Film Noir is, even more than private detectives and femme fatales, focused on fated destruction, and a blurred sense of morality, which often makes it difficult to identify the true villains. Hank Quinlan is a Captain in the Police and has a long history of getting his man - through any means necessary. It is interesting to consider that there are many cases in Film Noir where the hero of the picture is someone who is acting on his own authority - often policemen or ex-policemen who step over the line to bring the villain to justice. 

Think of Glenn Ford in Fritz Lang's The Big Heat: his wife murdered by the Mob, who are protected high up by corrupt police. Ford's character turns in his badge and sets off determined to settle things his way. In a skewed and perverse way, Hank Quinlan does the same: he brings criminals to justice, without a thought for how lawful his methods may be. This is an interesting aspect of Touch of Evil, in that it is revealed in the closing moments of the film that Quinlan was right about Sanchez. He did murder his father in law. Quinlan planted evidence, but he didn't have to. In adopting the philosophies of "the ends justify the means" and "an eye for an eye" however, another kind of evil is born. The way in which Orson Welles examines this, and how corruption sometimes begins with good intentions, is remarkably nuanced and well observed. 

~ Quinlan's zeal to see Sanchez in the Death House also raises another compelling element of the story, which is the shaky foundation on which the death penalty is often built. Reminiscent of Orson's bravura performance in Richard Fleischer's 1959 Courtroom Drama, Compulsion, Touch of Evil affirms that the death penalty is final, and cannot be remedied, should new evidence come to light. All it takes is one Hank Quinlan and his "game leg" to put an innocent person to death. This should come as no surprise to those who followed Orson's career and life. He was a deeply principled man, as well as being, in my view, the greatest filmmaker who ever lived. ~

Charlton Heston, dodgy politics or not, is excellent as the closest thing to a hero that Touch of Evil has: Miguel Vargas, a special prosecutor from Mexico. Janet Leigh plays his wife Susan, and is the recipient of the darkest and most hateful acts of the movie. These scenes still shock the viewer, even though films have obviously gotten far, far more explicit in their depiction of this kind of assault, because of the masterful direction of Orson Welles, the astonishing cinematography of Russell Metty and Janet Leigh's wonderfully off balanced performance of a woman who has gotten in way over her head.

Touch of Evil, in its Reconstructed Cut from 1998, is Orson's greatest work. The way this movie gets under the skin of the viewer is remarkable. Creeping, sinister; even in daylight there is an ever present shadow across the world in which these characters inhabit. Touch of Evil is a masterpiece, from the incredible, long, opening shot that is so rightly celebrated, to the natural end result of the corruption of Hank Quinlan - cold blooded murder. Not only of, the admittedly villainous, Uncle Joe Grande - superbly realized by Akim Tamiroff - but of Quinlan's best friend and partner, Sergeant  Pete Menzies. Menzies' heartbreak at his discovering the lengths to which his hero and mentor, Captain Quinlan has gone to get his man, is beautifully captured by Joseph Calleia. Pete followed his Captain as far as he possibly could, but could go no further. 

The key performance in Touch of Evil though, is Orson Welles as Captain Hank Quinlan. Orson brings a tragic humanity to an abhorrent human being, in such a way as to make the film perhaps the purest definition of Noir. Quinlan's wife was murdered when he was just starting in the police. He was not able to get the man who did it. The profound pain in Orson's face when he remembers his wife brings to mind the phrase, "a picture is worth a thousand words". Everything about the character's motivations, and his long held reasons for acting the way he does, is all there in his face. It is of course natural to focus on Orson's remarkable gifts as a director, given his achievements and innovations in that role, but Orson's gifts as an actor, both in his own films and in those of others, should not be undervalued.    

"Pete, that's the second bullet I stopped for you." / "Each man kills the thing he loves." - Oscar Wilde 

The ending of Touch of Evil is the extinguishing of the last bit of good that existed in Hank Quinlan. He has murdered his best friend in an attempt to protect himself from justice finally being done on him. This ending is poetic and profound and deeply moving. Touch of Evil is, along with Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place and Roman Polanski's Chinatown, as pure a definition of what Film Noir is, as has ever been made. The tragedy and pain that grows from a seed of good intentions, and becomes the evil that the individual thought they were fighting in the first place. Orson Welles is too often dismissed as the man who made Citizen Kane, as if everything after that point was a let-down. While Orson's filmography does not contain a masterpiece every time out, each film is vital and full of creativity and ingenuity, and power and humanity. And none are more powerful or human than Touch of Evil; a truly great work of art by a master of the form.