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Category:    Home > Reviews > Music > Irish > Country > The Life & Times Of... Foster & Allen (Music)

The Life & Times Of… Foster & Allen

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Main Program: C-

 

 

One of the most bizarre music shows we have seen in a while is a strange public television co-production called The Life & Times Of… Foster & Allen, which tries to match a strange hybrid of Irish and Country music with some of the strangest taped footage meant to match music since the Scopatones of the 1950s and 1960s, early pre-Music Videos that were as natural as vinyl.

 

The location shooting is just so fake looking, and this is of Ireland!!!  Something is wrong with that, and it has to do more with the problem of the analog PAL converting badly to NTSC.  The people in each “music” segment is so badly staged that you wonder if the producers had ever seen a Video.  Had they ever seen a Musical?  Do they watch TV?  Is this the first time they handled a camera?

 

To make matters worse, the songs are often a wreck and the few known ones are done very flatly and badly.  The “chestnuts” include:

 

1)     Everything Is Beautiful

2)     Sweet Forget Me Not

3)     Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes

4)     Among The Wicklow Hills

5)     The Gypsy Rover

6)     A Mothers Way

7)     Born To Be With You

8)     Galway Bay

9)     Mursheen Durkin

10)  Lonely But Only For You

11)  Lord Of The Dance

12)  If I Had My Life To Live Over

13)  You Stand Alone

14)  Cottage In The Country

15)  Jigs: The Knights Of St. Patrick; The Irish Washer Woman

16)  Still

17)  Wabash Cannonball

18)  Danny Boy

19)  One Hundred Children

20)  Partners In Rhyme

 

 

The acting is really bad where is surfaces.  The music is ultimately worse, with the songs sounding phony and overproduced, which have nothing to do with the simple stereo of the Dolby Digital 2.0 encoding for a change.  Track 16 is not The Commodores classic, but that would have been a riot if it were.  If you must hear Irish music at any cost, just grab some Riverdance, or really do it right and buy a DVD of The Chieftains.  There are no extras here, because let’s face it, enough is enough!

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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