Showing posts with label George O'Dowd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George O'Dowd. Show all posts

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Fascinating Danny Baker interview with the always-interesting Boy George (George O'Dowd) on his life: a worldwide music star, his fall, his rebirth, and his sudden interest in singing in foreign languages, esp. Italian; Judge on "The Voice" in Italy?


Culture Club - Do You Really Want To Hurt Me (1982) http://youtu.be/2nXGPZaTKik
A truly genius song, sung by someone with the pipes to deliver it on a silver platter.
After all these years, it's still impossible to hear this song somewhere and not start singing it or humming it yourself, within seconds -and notice that everyone else is doing the same.

Fascinating Danny Baker interview with the always-interesting Boy George (George O'Dowd) on his life: a worldwide music star, his fall, his rebirth, and his sudden interest in singing in foreign languages, esp. Italian; Judge on "The Voice" in Italy?

Audio of BBC Radio, 5 live, The Danny Baker Show: March 31, 2012.

This audio is available on the BBC website until Friday night GMT, the 6th of April.
You can also do the pop-out via http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01f51ly

The segment with Boy George in this two-hour audio is from 1:04:01-1:29:40, with a short three-minute news break between the two segments 

Owing to some things that I needed to work on editing, I was up early Saturday morning and rather than have ESPN's SportsCenter drone on in the background and be lulled to sleep by the fourth time I heard the same baseball spring training story, word-for-word, I turned the Tv off and flipped my computer on to BBC Radio 5 live for a jolt, and the Danny Baker Show more than delivered

Danny's weekly show, which airs from 9-11 a.m. GMT, is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting things airing in the English-speaking world, as his knack for dropping great trivia and pithy anecdotes on you spontaneously regarding almost any subject -and which give you some real context, is something I really appreciate.

Plus, Danny was great when reporting LIVE for 5 live from South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, with lots of fascinating stories, before and after matches that made the whole experience for me infinitely better than if I'd only relied on what I saw and heard on ESPN.

That was especially the case once England lost and lost in such humiliating fashion, since it seemed like there were seemingly hours and hours of angry, spot-on criticism coming from callers all over the world, but especially in the U.K., about what the English National Team and their administrators needed to do to be more competitive in future World Cups.
Chiefly, NOT appear to be standing in place while teams like Spain or Germany toyed with them, out-running them, out-finessing them and out-coaching them.

I originally recorded this interview on my camcorder by placing it in between my two computer speakers, but unfortunately, my rechargeable batteries died after I fell asleep, which makes this being online a good thing for everyone involved, esp. yours truly. 

Boy George Trivia: 
The first big concert he ever attended was David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust tour.
He likes raw food, hemp milk and tweets lots of photos of what he likes to eat.
He talks here about why he chooses NOT to be a TV music talent show judge in the U.K., discusses his life as a kid at school -reveals he isn't allowed back to visit- how prison taught him to love hard pillows

One of the more interesting things that George says, and this is certainly good news for fans, is that he says he's "more focused than [he's] ever been before in his life," but admits that he now is willing to admit that he has some regrets, unlike he felt years ago.
George candidly admits, "Moderation is not something I do well."

According to George, the new Culture Club album will be out in 2013, and his new solo album with foreign songs will be out later this year, when he will likely be appearing on the Italian TV version of "The Voice" -IF he learns enough Italian by November.

For more information about the Mark Ronson project at the Opera House he discusses, see

Danny Baker Show homepage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mjjxr

For the show, Danny uses an email address that includes the name "Lord Reith." 
This is a reference to the first General Manager of the BBC, whose personal problems and behavior could best be described as hypocritical and odious according to this 2007 Daily Mail article