The Ghosts of Saturday Night

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=XrkThaBWa5c&feature=related]

Stomping on stage, kicking up dust, part dancing bear, part Calvinist preacher, Tom Waits sure puts on a good show. Nigh on 3 hours of gravelthroat blues, a tight backing band and surrealist jokes, all served beneath a 6 peaked circus tent. Outside, vendors sell jelly sweets and high class coffee, a barbeque roasts burgers in the background. High rollers and people up for the show stroll along the red carpet, all hoping for a little magic. Tales of Christmas-time call girls and demented uncles fill the big top. The piano’s hungover, but it can still sing when it wants. The saxophonist plays two horns at once. Vaudeville and Buster Keaton and Chaplin all combine in one monkey-faced bowler-hatted Jewish California-born man. The show ends in a downpour of glitter. We stand. And clap. He returns. We remain standing during the 20 minute encore. Out of the big top, into the rain we troop, leaving the circus for reality.

I’m sure a set list will be up and about as soon as, but I wouldn’t want to spoil it for those who are going at the weekend. Worth. Every. Penny.

S Party Numero Dos

The second ever S party takes place this Friday night in a “mysterious” *cough* city centre location. Tickets cost €10 and are only available in advance by e-mailing conor@bodytonicmusic.com. This charming chap will also answer any questions you may have regarding the event so get onto him now. No ticket, no admission. End of story.

The party kicks off at around 3am and keeps on going til around 8 the next morning with guest DJs spinning tunes of the usual Stereotonic house-y variety.

Location of said mystery party shall be revealed at Friday’s Stereotonic, which shall be the official warm-up for the event. If stories from the last one are anything to go by, it should be rockin’!

Y.O.M. - “Not breaking up but growing up”

Over the past month there’s been a quite a lot of news over in the You’re Only Massive camp. Back at the start of July they announced the upcoming release of their debut, Dot-Dash a split 12″ with Queen Kong. Then last week they revealed that half of their duo, Megan Nolan, is leaving the band. She posted the following message on their myspace page:

“I am Megan. Maebh and I had a chat today while perusing some fashion magazines. We talked about the direction Y.O.M. is taking. We both agree that it has evolved past our lovably ramshackle beginnings, with my bandy decks and scratched records, not-practising in my bedroom. We are at a crossroads, just like the seminal Britney Spears movie Crossroads. I am more interested in trying to develop my writing and dedicate a chunk of my life to that, while Maebh is eager as a beaver to develop musically. I will continue to contribute to Y.O.M., beginning with a Y.O.M. zine, which will be out around the time Dot-Dash comes out.

We’re playing in Leitrim and Roscommon this Saturday, and at a DYT fundraiser in Crawdaddy on Sunday, Our final gig together will be in Trickster in Berlin on Saturday 26th; although I will be doing a DJ set on the 7th of August at Soundcheck at the Spy bar. After these gigs, Maebh will start working alone on a new set to promote Dot-Dash, the split LP with Queen Kong.

I of course wish Maebh all the best in her future endeavours, and will refrain from anonymously badmouthing her on the internet.
As Destiny’s Child so memorably sang,
“I’m not gon’ hate on you in the magazines
(I’m betta than that)
I’m not gon’ compromise my Christianity
(I’m betta than that)
You KNOW I’m not gon’ diss you on the internet-
CAUSE MY MAMA TAUGHT ME BETTA THAN THAT.”

Thanks to everyone who came to gigs and said nice things.
Lots of Massive love,
megan.”

Speaking to Analogue Maebh Cheasty, Y.O.M.’s surviving member, confirmed that “Megan has indeed left You’re Only Massive” but at the same time she wants everyone to know that “it is far from being the end, more like an evolution.” She went on to say that “basically when we started we were both just doing it for a laugh and for fun, but I became very committed to You’re Only Massive in a short space of time, writing and thinking about gigs all the time like a madwoman. Producing the album with Dave from Queen Kong made me feel like this music and performance thang is really what I want to do, I enjoy it so much. Megan just hasn’t started to feel the same way and wants to concentrate more on her writing and college of course. Saturday we played our last gig together, here in Berlin and it was very emotional, but it is the right decision and the best thing about this past year is that I have gained a best friend.”

Yet although You’re Only Massive will now be moving in a new direction under Cheasty’s lead, she was also keen to impress that “not that I’ve become all serious like, there is a big difference between being serious which is boring, and committed to something, which can still enable you to have tons of fun.” So hopefully, despite the changes, the early spirit of the band will remain. Considering the release of Dot-Dash next week, which has been described by Queen Kong as not a “split between the bands, but between moods and tempos. The first side is upbeat disco moderne, the flip side is all love songs and Slow Jams”, Cheasty had this to say about the future of the band: “Regarding playing the album tracks live: it was always going to be an issue because we have moved beyond the vinyl in the past months and I have been playing solo gigs in Germany over the winter. For now Dave is playing guitar live, with synth drums, but I am working on a new set up right…….NOW!”

Seeing how You’re Only Massive’s sections of Dot-Dash will translate to the stage then will be the real test for the band over the next while, for the vinyl backing tracks that Nolan used to spin have been dropped from the album (such as Justice’s ‘Phantom’ on ‘Here is Home’). As for what effect the addition of live guitar and synth drums will have on the band’s always fun and captivating shows, we will just have to wait and see.

If you can’t wait to find out catch the launch gig of Dot-Dash, at which You’re Only Massive and Queen Kong will be playing, at the Space Upstairs at the Project Arts Centre on Friday 15th August. It’s going to be seated, tickets are 12 euro and are available on the door. Plus the first 100 people there will receive a free copy of the album which will be released on 12″ silver vinyl and as a download.

Melt! Festival 2008

Essentially a boutique music festival, held annually in Berlin,Melt!’sline-up is mainly electronica-based. The bill this year included artists such as: Hot Chip, Roisín Murphy, Bjork, Bookashade, MEN and more. Camping is abundant, tickets are cheap (95 quid for the weekend) but along with the perks that the boutique label brings- smashing food, eclectic line-up- come the pitfalls inherent- shoddy organising, lacklustre security, and an odd location. Advertised as being ‘20 minutes from Berlin’, it is in fact 20 minutes outside of Dessau. Dessau is 2 hours outside of Berlin. So Melt! is 2 and a half hours outside of Berlin. Dessau, though full of Unesco World Heritage Sites, is no Berlin. Fact. I decided that I was too old and cranky to put up with camping for a weekend, and so stayed in a hotel with some friends. There was, supposedly, a regular shuttle bus that would bring us from the hotel to the festival ground, and back again. Supposedly. 30 euro worth of supposedly. It never came. I lie. It brought us to the festival each day, without fail, but seemed to stop working after 11pm. Which is no use when there’s a Sleepless Floor to be availed of.

The 5 stages- including the sublime ‘Sleepless Floor’ that played pumpin’ beats non-stop from mid-day Friday until 2pm Monday-are well spaced out on the small(ish) site, and around them plentiful concession stands are dotted. One of the musical highlights was Jape on Saturday night, followed an hour later by Roisín Murphy’s incredible set. 6 costume changes during 8 songs. What a woman. What stamina. Incidentally, Jape was staying in my hotel. I’d seen him over breakfast that morning. Had I enough energy to say hello, I would have done so. But I didn’t. Apologies. Bjork on Sunday was equally amazing. Her set began with a full brass band with flags on their heads, and ended with said brass band dancing wantonly around the stage. Lowlight? Uffie. Without a doubt. I know the writers here have already expressed how they feel about Miss Anna, but I genuinely liked her before I saw her perform live. Standing stock still amongst a crowd of sweaty neon, listening to her rap over Tiesto tracks, screaming ‘Fuck dem Hatas!’ ? In a word? Dire. It was like someone’s end of party performance from My Super Sweet 16. ‘OMGZ! B-cuz I’m mega-into hip-hop I’m gunna MC! Best Party Evah!’. However, none of the stages were actually signposted. This lead to, among other things, wild confusion. I thought that I had spent an hour happily watching Bookashade at the Gemini tent. I hadn’t. I was, instead, watching an entirely different band at the Gemini dance tent. And on it went.

Though I had a good time in end of all, I can’t promise that I’ll return. A cheap ticket is no pay-off against organisation. On the first night, while waiting to get in, an actual stampede broke out, while the security guard (there was but the one) stood by and let 200 people push down barriers to move 3 places up in the queue. A friend was made wait 4 hours while her booking through lastminute.com was scrutinised, and her credit card poked about with. Others simply dug a tunnel around the back of the site and climbed through that. Perhaps, as the festival expands (as I’m sure it will), these glitches will be ironed smooth, and a more efficient teutonic system put into place. However, like I said, I don’t know if I’ll stick around to see it happen.

David Turpin: My Favourite Things

I meet David Turpin in a bar that doubles as a sort of library. Books surround us. Some cackling ladies are apparently over for a hen party. The strange mixture of literature and let-your-hair-down fun could seem incongruous, but here it feels oddly appropriate. It is the perfect place to ask the bookish, thoughtful, Sandymount based grave-digger (i.e. he “digs” graves, ho ho!) about his new album, his favourite records, books and films, and about the relationship between sex and death. And, of course! The politics of dancing – on graves.

David’s debut LP, “The Sweet Used-To Be”, is this year’s most strikingly original Irish album. Gentle electronics and the occasional sample provide the backdrop for a lyrical world populated by ghosts and wild animals and the atmosphere is just a little bit spooky. It is redolent of 4AD’s more wistful, ethereal output: This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins and even Frazier Chorus. Momus and Pet Shop Boys also spring to mind. One of the sprightliest things on the record is called “Dancing On My Grave”. Turpin is, it seems, enamored with the supernatural. I inquire if he is interested in Romantic Poetry. “The Romantic Poets were always praising nature, talking about how wonderful it is and feeling in awe of it. I’m more interested in the idea that nature can be cruel too, and even evil. Besides I’m not just interested in the natural world, I’m interested in the world of the fairies.”

Later, he tells me that his dog died recently. “The difference between being alive one minute and being dead the next is so small but still so huge. I know it’s only a dog and I’m not comparing it to a human dying, but I looked around the house and all the dog’s baskets were there. We buried him in the garden. Really it was the last act of kindness I could show him. You don’t have to be particularly religious to feel that sense of the sanctity of a grave. My song ‘Dancing On My Grave’ is an invitation to somebody to dance on my grave when I’m dead.” I ask him what he thinks of the idea of people who plan to dance on Margaret Thatcher’s grave when she passes on. “Whether you’re an atheist of not, to do that is such a profoundly disrespectful thing to do, to make light of somebody’s death like that. You know that feeling when you’re in a graveyard and you accidentally step on someone’s grave…? But to actually invite someone to dance on your grave after you’re dead is either an act of incredible masochism, or it’s a very empowering thing to do”.

A brief discussion of the history of masochism in pop ensues. “That Antony and the Johnsons song “Fistful of Love” is so great because he freely and openly admits to being a masochist. He says he likes being slapped around. Some people pretend to be into masochism but feel the need to let you know that they don’t approve of that sort of thing really. That’s what that song by The Crystals, ‘He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)’ was all about. There’s a real honesty about that song. People don’t want to hear a woman say those things, but The Crystals are obviously singing in character there. Immediately everyone is looking for the man pulling the strings who is making her sing this. Little Eva [of “The Locomotion" fame] told Carole King that her boyfriend had hit her because he heard she’d cheated but she was pleased in a way because it meant he loved her, so Carole wrote a song about it. It’s a representation of something that isn’t nice but we’re still entitled to sing about it. It’s a taboo – we can’t talk about the impulse to be the victim.” Ah yes, pop’s dark side. It’s not all ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ and ‘Touch My Bum’ you know.

He tells me he’d love to work with Kylie, and I have to applaud the ambition that is latent in this statement. So many Dublin musicians seem to think that having your demo get a spin on Phantom FM is as good as it gets. So who else would you like to record with, David? “Grace Jones. Have you heard her new song? It’s alright, it sounds like a Massive Attack song, but it opens with the line ‘Pleased to eat you, pleased to have you on my plate’ which is brilliant, very Grace Jones. I saw her live once and she was two hours late coming on stage. All these people around me were booing – you could tell they didn’t know Grace Jones. When she did arrive you knew immediately that she was doing you a favour by just being there. Liza Minelli, especially since Cabaret, always has this…grip on herself. She’s always seeking attention, always asking to be loved in one way or another. But with Grace Jones you believe it.” Maybe that’s the difference between growing up in Hollywood and growing up in the riot-strewn Jamaica of the late 60s and early 70s? “Maybe, yeah. If I made a record with Grace Jones and she didn’t treat me harshly throughout the recording process, I’d be disappointed.” Spoken like a true masochist. So, David Turpin, tell us about some of your favourite things…

Music

Kate Bush “The Hounds of Love” (1985)

“It’s a record that has its own sealed world. You can like it or dislike it but you can’t really say it’s deficient, you know, because it is what it is what it is. There’s a real sense of joy about it. You have to look past the big 80s drums, but it’s still a masterpiece. ‘Hounds of Love’ is really where Kate Bush ceases to just be a singles artist and becomes an albums artist. All the little girlishness of her earlier records falls away at this point. You know that line “is there so much hate for the ones we love?” It’s the sound of the record too. Her voice is obviously very evocative and the lyrics are very good… blah blah blah…but all the sounds that are going on in this record are great too. She shamelessly writes about topics that some people might think of as being incredibly boring, but she manages to extrapolate something from them that justifies the reference. ‘Cloudbusting’ is about Willhelm Reich, who I don’t know that much about, and the whole second side is about Tennyson! So it might be intellectual but it could, you know, go on Top of the Pops, and it did in fact. I love the almost onomatopoeia of “Running Up That Hill”, the drums sound like someone running and so on, I like that attention to detail. There are sounds on the record where you’re not sure if you actually heard it or dreamed it or imagined it. Those voices on ‘Waking The Witch’ for example, and that song that follows it (’Watching You Without Me’ – Ed), where a voice appears as a ghostly thing. Her last album was good too, and she came back with dignity, which is…admirable. I always think of her as being this sort of ancient being, but she’s not – she’s probably only something like fifty years old…”

Jimmy Scott “Heaven” (1996)

“He made records as Little Jimmy Scott and he had a sort of alto female voice, so it was kind of separated from gender. He then went away for a bit and came back and made a record with Ray Charles, which didn’t get released. After that he went off into obscurity for a long time until he was sort of rediscovered by Lou Reed in the early 90s. He released this record called “Heaven” which a collection of spirituals. One of them is called “There’s No Disappointment In Heaven”. He sings it like a ninety-year-old man that has the innocence of a child. It’s jazz, but it’s a very spacious sort of jazz sound, it’s not a cocktail jazz sound. It’s kind of hard to say what’s so great about it. He had a bad family history, it sounds like he’s singing the story of his life. It’s weird to hear him since that song “Heaven” [a Talking Heads cover], because the song is maybe atheist or agnostic at best, but he makes into a sort of spiritual song and brings out the ambiguity of it. It’s a cynical song drained of cynicism and there’s still something there. Even though it’s very anti-God because he’s very religious he manages to find the faith in it. When I grew up were weren’t raised religious, I thought that was fairly normal but then years later I realized it wasn’t so normal at all. So I don’t really have a background in religious music, it’s something I discovered much later - maybe as a teenager. I’m interested in that notion of wanting to pray even though you don’t know who or what you’re praying to. I don’t dance but I would never dance on somebody’s grave, no.”

Missy ‘Misdemeanor’ Elliot “Supa-Dupa Fly” (1997)

“I’ve just been getting into hip-hop recently. Journalists tend to ask me who I think I sound like and I’m often tempted to mention The Sugarhill Gang and things like that, but they’re not really an influence on my record, though they could be on the next one. My friend who plays keyboards with me and writes with me is really into block parties – with a ‘k’ mind you. And so I’ve started to sort of plunge into that a bit. “Supa-Dupa Fly” is sort of like “The Hounds of Love” in that it just takes this pleasure in invention. I find some of the sounds on it really funny. I don’t know why but anytime you hear all the sounds fit in to place it makes you laugh. When I record something with my friend and it just sounds right, we laugh. Missy Elliot is also a very underrated singer, a soul singer. I’m not saying she’s the best singer there is, but she is good, and she’s a good rapper too. There aren’t many female producers around who produce for other people. There are lots who produce themselves of course, Joni Mitchell, Bjork produces her own stuff obviously, but I can’t think of many jobbing female producers.”

Film

“Blue Velvet” (1986)

“I love the film. I like Laura Dern’s character in it. A lot of people don’t understand it, they think it’s funny, particularly that scene outside the church but I don’t think it’s funny at all. I like how her character is treated here - sympathetically. Not like in ‘American Beauty’, which is a facile treatment of a similar subject; the film thinks it’s so much better than the character Mena Suvari plays. It spends all its time mocking her and reveling in her misery, it’s laughing at her all the time. I like how in ‘Blue Velvet’ it treats the girl as a “girl in trouble”. Sure, she’s not very clever and she’s spoilt and so on but that doesn’t matter. I love the score. I know it’s full of big 80s synth-pads, but it adds to it. It’s mysterious and electronic; we don’t really know where we are. Lots of Angelo Badalamenti’s scores are like that. Even in ‘Twin Peaks’, the jazz bits are played on sort of electronic instruments, there’s something not quite right about it. I love the main song in ‘Blue Velvet’, the simplicity of it. I think it’s just a couple of lines – ‘Sometimes the wind blows and the mysteries of love come clear…’”

Book

Michael Lesy “Wisconsin Death Trip”

“It’s a book of photographs taken in the nineteenth century in this town where tragedy seemed to be around every turn. There was a cholera epidemic, lots of people died, all the kids turned out gay, and it just seemed that everything turned out wrong in this town. There are a lot of photographs of dead babies’ bodies. It’s like the last act of kindness the parents’ could show to their dead infant children. When somebody dies and you get to see them after their death, it’s the first time you ever get to see them still, genuinely still. A friend of mine died, though I didn’t see him die, and I didn’t see his body, but I imagine it’s the same with a person as it was with my dog. Not that I mean to compare the two things!”

David Turpin’s album, “The Sweet Used-To Be”, is out now on Kabinet Records.

David Turpin on MySpace

Indian Jewelry - Free Gold!

Imagine three glorious mountains of sound, one The Jesus and Mary Chain, two My Bloody Valentine and three Swans. Somewhere nestled among the foothills of these peaks lies Indian Jewelry. They’ve got the overdriven guitar sound, the feedback and the slow pacing. Unfortunately though they haven’t yet climbed to the same melodic or atmospheric peaks that surround them. Instead they’re languishing in the lowlands, gazing upwards and overshadowed at all times.

John Matthias - Stories from the Watercooler

Matthias is not only a schoolmate of Thom Yorke; he also played strings on The Bends. Yet his preoccupations are more in keeping with Yorke’s solo project – ‘The Eraser’- than with that other band from Oxford. Disillusionment with modern life is coupled with banjo and harmonium accompaniment- an arrangement that Matthias’ modernist poet namesake would enjoy. Amid Cold Cut’s sparse production Matthias’ sombre, gravely voice tells tales of terrorism (‘One Sunny Morning in the No-Fly Zone’), small town rivalry (‘King of a Small Town’) and busking (‘Stocktaking’). Wry lyrics sometimes belittle content- not least when he describes bombs with Britney Spears’ face painted on them. Ultimately, however, the suite of ‘12 Short Stories Put To Song’ overcomes such obstacles.

‘Stories from the Watercooler’ offers an experience akin to visiting a house where you once lived. Things that were once familiar have changed, and things that you were once assured of have become unstable. Lyrically alienating, but melodically embracing, it’s a record that is at odds with its surroundings.

New Young Pony Club Competition

Ahead of their performance at Electric Picnic next month, New Young Pony Club will be mixing things up at Transmission in The Button Factory this Saturday. Their own music is a hybrid of supposed nu-rave and a more pop-based sensibility, and a recent blog post on Myspace suggests that they’re currently into everything from Vampire Weekend and Lykke Li to Yellow Magic Orchestra and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. With all of that in mind, I imagine it will be a suitably eclectic and interesting set.

I recently had a dream in which NYPC’s Tahita Bulmer was, together with her aged grandparents, living in my house. As I was trying to walk up the stairs, her grandmother began to tell me in a bizarre language about a soldier she danced with during “the war”. I’ve absolutely no idea what all of this means, so the two people with the most interesting interpretations of this dream get themselves on the guestlist for Saturday’s event.

With the show looming, the first two to post below will get on Saturday’s guestlist.

Indie In Decline In The Indie.

For that headline, I can only apologise. Moving swiftly along…

One of my favourite singles of 2008 is Gabriella Cilmi’s “Sweet About Me“, which on first listen might have sounded like just another post-Winehouse piece of whimsy, but with repeated listens it reveals itself to be what a musicologist might call an “earworm”. Her album is co-written and produced by Xenomania and her next single is a Saint Etienne co-write. Pop is in good hands so there is good cause to be happy. This contentment with the healthy state of pop - something I might otherwise lie awake at night worrying about - was interrupted slightly when I perused the latest issue of Hot Press. The contents page of the current issue introduces the Aussie popster thus: “She has more in common with Nina Simone or Janis Joplin than any of this year’s production line pop moppets. Thank God for her parents’ record collection.” Now while I have a lot of time for old Nina, I must say that to mine ears Janis Joplin has always sounded like a gravel-gargling, caterwauling bag-lady. Taste is such a subjective thing, eh? But leaving aside the rock snobbery implicit in the Hot Press quote - and it’s difficult to leave aside because it gets my goat let me tell you - what is this about “this year’s production-line pop moppets”? Surely in 2008, it is production line indie which plagues us. Westlife are not the enemy any more. The Enemy are.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZHj28CT_KE]
(”What’s this shit?” - Andrew Collins) Scouting For Girls “She’s So Lovely”

Today’s Independent On Sunday has a great article on this point, so I thought I’d alert Analogue readers to it now in case they want to nip around to the shops before closing time to buy themselves a copy. It’s the cover feature of the New Review section which grabbed my attention - a parody of the Conservative Party’s 1979 “Labour Isn’t Working” election campaign posters. Here the dole queue has been replaced by a series of current-day indie musicians queuing for a band audition. Tim Walker’s article also mulls over the current state of the NME, features good insights from Simon Reynolds and Andrew Collins, and contains a sort of quiz where the reader is invited to identify a bunch of “landfill indie” bands. It is easy to sneer at the utterly pedestrian so-called indie scene these days what with all of the generic music it produces, all of those generic band names…they might as well be called The Thises, The Thats or The Others (oh hang on, they do exist…). But at heart what is at issue here is the freeing up of youth imagination. The suggestion that the guitar pop of 2008 is so mired because the musicians and songwriters involved grew up with the fag-end britpop - Shed Seven, Sleeper and Gene - is persuasive. If there is a genuine spirit of independent music at the moment, perhaps it is to be found in the genre-hopping gender bending torch pop of Antony and the Johnsons, or the global pop of M.I.A. or the psychedelic disco of MGMT. All of those acts are fairly close to the mainstream though. A cursory glance at this week’s Independent Singles Chart makes it feel like a lifetime has passed since the days when you could see videos by Nurse With Wound, Half Man Half Biscuit and Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel on The Chart Show.

Rock On Film

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW5R81-fS9M]
“The Girl Can’t Help It” (1956)

This week, “Mamma Mia!” has been on the receiving end of a deserved critical mauling. ABBA songs crow-barred into a ropey, wafer-thin – and dubiously misogynistic - “story”. Pierce Brosnan’s useless “singing”. Who needs it? As if “ABBA: The Movie” wasn’t shoddy enough. That 1977 film plumbed the depths of dullness, following the misfortunes of a journalist as he chases the Swedes around Australia hoping to secure an interview. Like so many rock biopics, it is confused, and lacking confidence in its subject. It’s only with the recent achievements of “Dig!” and “Control” that rock biopics have really found their feet, and Don Letts deserves some credit here for having been an innovator in this area. Let’s have a look then, at some other celluloid approaches to rock and pop. It’s rare that a rock film manages to be wholeheartedly entertaining, but this doesn’t seem to dissuade studios from bankrolling them all the same. Back in the mid fifties, aged rocker Bill Haley featured in “Rock Around The Clock”, but that was really a long-form music promo. It was “The Girl Can’t Help It” which really ushered in the rock flick era. Its plot was too flimsy and downright stupid to be worth relating here but it did feature performances by Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, Julie London, Little Richard and Eddie Cochran all in glorious colour. Its use of cinemascope also made it something of an “event” picture. Remember, this is fifty-two years ago, when Sarah Jessica-Parker was only…well about fifteen years old, probably. Oddly the English rock and roll film efforts, which followed in its wake, now seem more compelling and exciting. “Expresso Bongo” (1959), which featured a youthful Cliff Richard, is tremendous. Cliff plays a teen singer called Bert Rudge who listens to the advice of his manager, realises he’ll never have a hit with a name like that, and changes it to erm, Bongo Herbert. The mood, feel and soundtrack of the film are terrific though – you can almost smell the Brillcreem. It’s easily the best of Cliff’s films, and it is in fact better than any of Elvis’ better-known movie efforts. It captures pre-Beatles British pop beautifully.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A06eeIHKcbA]
“Play It Cool” (1962)

Almost as good is the Billy Fury vehicle “Play It Cool” (1962). Once again “plot” is an irrelevance here, see it for evidence that Fury was the greatest British rock ‘n’ roller of them all. It was directed by Michael Winner and the musical direction was by Norrie Paramor – the man behind hits by Cliff Richard, Frank Ifield, Helen Shapiro, Billy Fury and Shane Fenton (later Alvin Stardust) some of whom appear in the film. It might be a footnote to pop history now, but that just makes it all the more intriguing. Enough has probably already been written about The Beatles’ excellent filmic endeavours so we’ll pass over them here. Without them however, we certainly wouldn’t have had The Monkee’s TV series, and thus would have been robbed of the superb 1968 film “Head” – wherein the boys roam through a deeply surreal and unsettling world created by Jack Nicholson (yes that one) and director Bob Rafelson. Aside from some truly gorgeous music (Goffin and King’s head-spinning “Porpoise Song” and “As We Go Along” being perhaps the highlights), it has lots of self-deprecating humour (“Well whaddayaknow! If it isn’t God’s gift to the eight year olds!”), dark references to the Vietnam war and a cameo by Frank Zappa with a talking cow. It’s a long way from Cliff Richard and Una Stubbs on a double-decker bus.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJizIIs783Q]
“Head” (1968)

Some people admire Pete Townsend’s forays into rock opera. The Who’s film “Tommy” is perennially popular, but any “deep’n’meaningful” message which may lurk in there is cancelled out by some moments of supreme daftness. Which takes us to Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains The Same”. I appreciate that Led “Zep” are considered to be about the most important and influential rock band to ever have refused to release a single, but I must admit I find their supposed “mysticism”, leather breeches and curly strutting to be faintly pathetic. The concert footage, filmed during their time touring “Houses Of The Holy” is alright if you like that sort of thing, but the “fantasy” sequences are rather hilarious. Robert Plant, in soft focus, on horseback! John Paul Jones, also in soft focus and on horseback!! Jimmy Page, in soft focus, on a rugged, snowy, mountain!!! John Bonham, in soft focus (what was the problem here, wrinkles? Surely not…), larking about his country estate in a vintage car!!!! All palpable nonsense of course, but hey, that’s showbiz.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXfOwdVrBaM]
“Take It Or Leave It” (1981)

Madness’ 1981 biopic “Take It Or Leave It” is more fun. It recounts the story of how the band emerged from the primordial slime of the Dublin Castle in Camden to become perhaps the UK’s biggest pop group. The plot unfolds via a canny combination of some truly terrible “acting” and studio and concert footage. What it does do, though, is vividly capture something of youth culture in 1981. It’s uncannily like those early British rock and roll films in that regard – and a world away from “The Song Remains The Same”. If you’ve been intrigued by all this talk of rubbish acting, plotlessness, surreal whimsy and pretentious claptrap, then Pet Shop Boys’ 1988 flop film “It Couldn’t Happen Here” is a must. I’d tell you what it’s about but even having seen it umpteen times I’m afraid I’m none the wiser. Perversely though, it is rather good. Chris Lowe apparently wanted the film’s tagline to be “A Wank Of Epic Proportions”. That’s a concise enough description. It’s available in full through Google Video so you can judge for yourself.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0agwWPljY0]
“Stardust” (1974)

Finally, a word about the greatest film about rock ever, which is “Stardust”, a film from 1974, and sequel to the almost as good “That’ll Be The Day”, starring David Essex as a wannabe rock star whose life is in disarray. He goes through every rock star cliché going – groupies, drugs, relationship strains, dodgy business deals, bad advice and financial ruin. Just look at the cast; David Essex, Adam Faith, Keith Moon, Marty Wilde, Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe – even JR out of Dallas, Larry Hagman, turns up as a horrid manager. It’s a very dark film, touching on the industry’s sexism (women, in this film, are usually groupies) and it’s one of the few rock films that seems to be eager to make a point. Its message: the music business is sleazy, wretched and morally corrupt and preys on those dreamers who want so much to make the leap from fandom to having a piece of the action for themselves. Steve Brookstein probably watches it and cries. This film is wholeheartedly entertaining, and even sort of profound.

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