CD Review: When You Fall Down – The Buster Keaton Story – James Dangerfield

WHEN YOU FALL DOWN – THE BUSTER KEATON STORY – James Dangerfield (Private Recording: purchase from: fanlink.to/WYFD)

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Following the success of his one-man show on the life of Buster Keaton, James Dangerfield has released the recording of the show.

It is quite an accomplishment as Dangerfield has written the script, the music and the lyrics – he also produced the show himself. So, in the same spirit of Buster Keaton himself, he has made it all happen on his own talent.

I’m of the generation who grew up with Buster Keaton movies still being shown regularly and I remember loving them and the amazing stunts that were performed in them all in the cause of making his audience laugh. However, I didn’t really know an awful lot about the man himself. This one-man show fills in a lot of the detail and the music is reminiscent of the age, which helps. So many times people write musicals about famous people from the past but want to set it all to rock or some nonsense – Dangerfield has kept some modernity but also the flavour of Keaton’s period in time is still very much to the front.

Tracks are: ‘Overture’, ‘Daydreams’, ‘Backstage’, ‘The Goat/Cops’, ‘The Navigator’, ‘Battling Buster’, ‘The Love Nest’, ‘My Wife’s Relations’, ‘Steamboat Bill Jr’ and ‘When You Fall Down The Navigator’ (reprise). Arrangements and instrumentals are by Martyn Stringer and the recording is mixed and mastered by Benjamin Cooke.

The only reason I haven’t given this five stars is due to the fact that I think the material is very visual and so it loses slightly in being audio only. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the obvious professionalism of its creator and performer. Indeed, listening to the album I want to see the show and I only hope that that perhaps James will take this further and that the show itself will continue to draw in the audiences – he certainly deserves it.

Nick Wakeham