Barry Gray Centenary Concert

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK Concert Review : Barry Gray Centenary Concert, Royal Festival Hall 08/11/08 In 1982 I went to my first science fiction convention run by the Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet etc.) fans, known as Fanderson. It was at the Bloomsbury Crest Hotel, and it was extremely exciting for me. In those pre-video days they showed episodes of shows that we hadn’t seen in ages. We also met the stars, like my favourite, American actor Ed Bishop, and composer Barry Gray.
Gray came across as a kindly grandfather figure, with glasses that made him look like Peter Glaze, who used to be on TV show Crackerjack. Gray is a massive hero to me, and I felt ashamed of what happened: To help raise money for the convention charity, Gray had scored a piano medley of his themes with comic lyrics. He was ready to perform the piece before its manuscript was auctioned. With notice I could have ensured that Gray was provided with a keyboard and amplification. But on the day there was nothing for him to play, and he was reduced to singing his words unaccompanied. He died not long after. I guess it’s possible that my forays into the science fiction convention world with Adventures of Parsley (my TV themes band) are in part an attempt to put Gray’s music into such events to almost set the record straight. The man was a genius, and his musical versatility and talent were an inspiration. As children watching a ‘childrens TV’ show like Gerry Anderson’s, he gave us ‘grown up’ quality music. We were taken seriously as viewers, and this helped inspire love for the shows. As a member of Fanderson I was advised of the concert, celebrating Barry Gray’s music on the occasion of what would have been his 100th birthday. Like the conventions it seemed the most obvious thing to do to attend in costume, and I was rather surprised at how few others did. There was someone with a puppet in the foyer, and soundtrack CDs were on sale, but the prize item was the programme. Some programmes are very disappointing affairs that milk the audience of spare money. This programme was an absolute gem and packed with delicious details about Barry Gray (despite a surprising lack of knowledge about Underground train carriages - wrongly identifying one as a District Line when it was not). There were loads of familiar Fanderson and other faces in the audience, including members of top band The Masonics. Master of ceremonies was Brian Blessed. Blessed is the person that the phrase ‘larger than life’ was made for. I’m a big fan of his early appearances in the black & white ‘Z Cars’ sixties police drama, and as Augustus Caeser in ‘I Claudius’ his performance was epic. He is also obviously quite a fan and aware of his talents too, and felt free to pass his comments on everything as the show went along. ‘He stole the show’ is another phrase that suited him! Of course, whilst being a star in his own right, Blessed’s voice is not that of any of the Anderson characters he attempted to ‘voice’ when their parts came up in the concert. That didn’t stop him delivering the words of Jeff Tracy (Thunderbirds), Captain Blue (Captain Scarlet) and Commander Shore (Stingray) as if they were the most important words of a Shakespearean drama. I wish my brother could have helped him with his impersonations. I suspect he didn’t have the same intimate knowledge of the shows as his audience, and this was backed up when he insisted on referring to Space:1999 (the Anderson show he was actually in!) as Space99. Companion series to CosmosChocIce, no doubt. I met Crispin Merrell at a fan convention a few years ago, and I have to say that he is a thoroughly nice chap and a worthy successor to Barry Gray, in creating the music for Anderson shows. He also totally shone at this concert, recreating the piano solo from the theme to the film "Doppleganger" (a.k.a. "Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun") with spine-tingling accuracy. This was typical of the evening: orchestral numbers were conveyed deliciously, whilst the Philharmonia Orchestra seemed to struggle with the more ‘5-piece-band’ numbers. Ironically this meant that some of Gray’s finest moments were buried in the performance, whilst some lesser-known pieces were impressively delivered. My friend Zooney was not impressed with the singing group "Voces8" who he felt were too focused on their own talents. For me their live rendition of the theme from "The Secret Service" (which was Gray’s favourite of his own work, and centres on multi-part singing) was fantastic, and a real highlight. There were back projections of footage from some shows (amusingly sometimes out of sync, unlike Gray’s immaculate work) and some home movies of Gray. It’s been a long time since Gray’s heyday, and in all honesty the Philharmonia either hadn’t rehearsed enough, or didn’t know the material, or had the wrong notes on their scores, because on several occasions they simply, and obviously, played some wrong notes. But that, and the absence of the advertised Harry Stoneham (who played Hammond on the original UFO music), were minor diversions set against a fantastic evening celebrating the magic of the music of Barry Gray. parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]