Skip to main content

An Evening With David Hasselhoff Live – Pleasance Grand


3 stars
The mock-up of the Berlin Wall painted with a German flag over-laden 
with peace symbols onstage is the perfect embodiment of East-West 
unification, especially when two dancing girls and a man in a sparkly 
1980s jacket kick their way through the bricks that are holding it all 
together. By this time the beach-balls bouncing around the auditorium 
and the mass onstage Conga has already ensnared a room packed with 
willing worshippers.

But this isn't some iconoclastic melding of east European avant-gardism 
and pop culture appropriating post-modernism. This is TV's best known 
former lifeguard's bombastic solo show, and we are all culpable. 
Opening with a big-screen montage of his greatest hits, Hasselhoff 
enters from the back of the auditorium singing a rat pack style 
rendition of Nina Simone's Feeling Good, before strutting his way to 
the stage for a tea-time diversion of taking stock, Hoff-style.

What this means is a loose-knit narrative from Knight Rider to Baywatch 
to saving the western world. Somehow fed into this are lounge-bar 
versions of Copacabana, You Can Keep Your Hat On, complete with shower 
scene with a couple of blondes in shadow, some out-takes from his shows 
and the real reason behind Baywatch's much imitated slow-motion 
sequences revealed.

There's nothing subtle in the Hoff's self-deprecatory show-man schtick, 
which starts at fever pitch and just keeps on building. Just when you 
think things can't get any more absurd, he comes on sporting a kilt to 
finish the show with a jaw-dropping version of The Proclaimers 500 
Miles. That was the Hoff. He came, he sang, he conquered. Showbiz will 
never be the same again. Until Aug 27th.

The Herald, August 24th 2012

ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL