The
full cover of the official cassette single containing two different versions of
the song 'Magic's Back' from The Ghosts
of Oxford Street; also, all of the music from this TV production has been released on a CD album (© McLaren/Stock/Waterman/RCA/Channel 4 – reproduced here
on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only).
Earlier today I watched a truly obscure
yet engrossing if unseasonal televisual oddity entitled The Ghosts of Oxford Street.
If I say that this peculiar production is
a made-for-TV musical fantasy-cum-historical documentary set at Christmas and featuring
several pop/rock/rap chart performers, you'll understand that what I'm really
saying is that it is one of those totally unclassifiable crossover creations
that come along every so often to intrigue or irritate, depending upon your
tastes. Tantalising or twee, erudite or eerie, whimsical or just plain weird? A
confection of curiosity for the imagination and for enquiring minds, or nothing
more than a small-screen Jack of all genres and Master of none?
Produced by the British TV station
Channel 4, which first screened it during Christmas 1991 (but has it ever been
screened again?), The Ghosts of Oxford
Street has a very novel theme – the shady past of what is today one of
central London's most upmarket, iconic shopping experiences, Oxford Street. It is
presented by Malcolm McLaren, he who launched the Sex Pistols, Buffalo Gals, Duck
Rock, and Double Dutch upon an unsuspecting world, and who plays in this hour-long
(including adverts) TV Yuletide special a mysterious, initially-masked figure
carrying a big red sack of presents on his back. And no, it's not Santa Claus.
The Ghosts of
Oxford Street
opens with a suitably spellbinding, sepulchral, Beethoven-sampled and
beatifically-sumptuous musical mash-up entitled 'Magic's Back', in which McLaren's softly-spoken wish during these
shadow-ensheathed final hours of Christmas Eve to restore the magic and mystery
of this historical street of bygone wonder and mayhem is accompanied by an
exhilarating singing performance from Stepney-born vocalist Alison Limerick. It
proved sufficiently popular to be released as a single, which entered the lower
reaches of the UK chart.
During his journey along Oxford Street, McLaren
flits back and forth in time via a series of self-contained scenes showcasing
various real persons who were and in some cases still are intimately associated
with this very special, specific location in London. And at each particular
spot where he pauses in his reflections and recollections, he hides a present
that he considers would be appropriate for and appreciated by the ghost of the
erstwhile Oxford Street inhabitant whose life he has been recalling. A
gift-wrapped revolver, for example, is left by him for proficient criminal and
prevalent prison escapee Jack Sheppard, who was finally captured and hung from
the Tyburn Tree where Marble Arch now stands, with so many others (around
50,000 in total) back in the bawdy, bad old Oxford Street of the early 1700s. (Incidentally, Sheppard is believed to have at least partly inspired the creation by John Gay of the robber leader Macheath in his 1728 ballad opera The Beggar's Opera, which was revamped exactly two centuries later by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht as The Threepenny Opera (1928), in which villainous Macheath is introduced to the audience via the now-classic swing song 'Mack the Knife'.)
Also linked to each such scene is a
musical performance by a famous chart act. In the case of the Tyburn hangings,
the act in question is the English rock band The Happy Mondays, an apt choice inasmuch
as these hangings normally took place on Mondays (though they were happy ones
only to those attending to watch, not to those poor wretches actively
participating in these grisly public spectacles).
Later in this strange and sometimes quite
unsettling extravaganza we meet former Oxford Street inhabitant Thomas de Quincey
(played by John Altman, best known as Nasty Nick Cotton from the London-based
soap Eastenders). Today, de Quincey
is remembered almost exclusively as the author of the autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821),
recording his real-life descent into a drug-fuelled phantasmagorical world of
delusion, delirium, and decadence. Here he hallucinates a vision of a pretty
young prostitute named Ann, only ever encountered by him once in reality but frequently
haunting his fevered dreams and fantasies, who is played by a very ethereal
Sinead O'Connor singing 'Silent Night' in the purest of voices as he chases
vainly after her phantom form until she vanishes before him like the insubstantial
illusion that she is (click here to view and listen to this evocative scene).
We also see McLaren's never-named
character (though I suspect it is meant to be McLaren himself) chasing after a
vagabond boy (played by John Pickard) who has stolen one of his presents. McLaren
pursues him relentlessly through alleys and down a flight of metal stairs into
an underground tunnel, as the boy sings a decidedly spooky version of 'Pick a
Pocket or Two' from Lionel Bart's smash-hit London-based musical Oliver! Finally, McLaren draws near and
calls out despairingly to the boy, asking him who he is – to which the boy
grins at him, shouts "You!", then gives a maniacal laugh before
disappearing. Deep, man, very deep - yes indeed, The Ghosts of Oxford Street is that kind of production…
Another scene focuses upon the infamously
expensive Oxford Street courtesan Kitty Fisher (played by Kirsty MacColl) and
the infatuated but financially embarrassed Duke of York (Shane MacGowan from The
Pogues – I'm sure that you can guess where this particular scene is heading
musically…). The upshot is that the two argue on the doorstep of her palatial
residence, singing, as if you hadn't already guessed, 'Fairytale of New York' –
the fact that they are in London, not the Big Apple, seems to have somehow
escaped their attention. Ah well, it's Christmas!
Another scene features rap group Rebel MC,
but perhaps my favourite one documents the arrival on Oxford Street during the
20th Century's opening years of Selfridges, the colossal department
store that would dramatically transform forever the face not only of Oxford
Street but also of the shopping experience as a whole throughout Britain. Its
founder, the larger-than-life American retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge, is
played by none other than Welsh singing mega-star Tom Jones, whose upbeat rendition
of Barrett Strong's classic 'Money (That's What I Want)' very effectively
embodies Selfridge's exuberant, exorbitant, and totally execrable attitude to
money and especially to spending it, until eventually he is forced to retire,
having lost his fortune and ultimately the monumental London store that
continued without him but retained his name.
Encapsulating this very different set of
circumstances to which Selfridge is now reduced, abandoned by his former
friends and colleagues, a social pariah, one of the disaffected and ostracized (to
quote McLaren's on-screen description of him), Tom Jones now sings very
expressively and with great pathos the jazz standard 'Nobody Knows You When
You're Down and Out', which was originated by Scrapper Blackwell and subsequently
immortalized by the likes of Bessie Smith, Nina Simone, and Eric Clapton (in
Derek and the Dominos).
I found The Ghosts of Oxford Street to be both an entertaining and an
educational watch, although the two components often sit quite awkwardly and
uncomfortably alongside one another. What was presumably intended to be screwball
sometimes comes across as oddball, and McLaren's lecturing is hectoring in
places. Moreover, following a grand masked ball in Oxford Street's grandiose
Pantheon, once a glittering venue for concerts and dancing, now long since demolished
and replaced by Marks and Spencers, the whole production basically fizzles out,
its anti-climactic ending very much a damp squib in my opinion. Indeed, for me the
one saving grace of this otherwise underperforming finale is the masked ball's rendition
of Ponchielli's glorious 'Dance of the Hours' – which originated in his ballet La Giaconda but is best known nowadays as
that delightfully playful piece of classical music featuring hilarious dancing ostriches,
hippos, elephants, and alligators in Disney's wondrous animated feature film Fantasia.
Nevertheless, as an aficionado of the
absurd, a connoisseur of the curious, a devotee of the droll and the
dream-like, overall I enjoyed The Ghosts
of Oxford Street. Certainly I am glad to have discovered and watched it,
especially in view of how ostensibly difficult this production is to find,
bearing in mind that it has never been released in any home media format as far
as I am aware, and according to some sources has never even been reshown on mainstream
television.
So where did I locate it? On Channel 4's
very own free-to-register (and watch) on-demand catch-up service, All4 – so click here
if you'd like to view The Ghosts of
Oxford Street while it is still available. And click here
to view its very atmospheric, stage-setting opening scene, featuring the afore-mentioned song
'Magic's Back'.
Almost forgot: just in case you're
wondering, the classical composition by Beethoven that is sampled in this latter
song is the Allegretto from the 2nd Movement
in A Minor of his Symphony No. 7. You can thank me later.
And to view a complete listing of all of my
Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film/TV reviews and articles (each one instantly
accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!
