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Upside Down: The Creation Records Story
05.03.2011
07:43 pm
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Upside Down: The Creation Records Story is a roller coaster of film, which tells the incredible tale of one of the most important independent record labels of the past fifty years - Creation Records

This excellent film reveals how the gallus Glaswegian Alan McGee started the label with a £1,000 bank loan in the 1980s, and went on shape music in the 1980s and 1990s, as he made Creation home to such talents as The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Medicine, The Pastels, Teenage Fanclub, BMX Bandits, Super Furry Animals, The Boo Radleys, Saint Etienne, Momus, My Bloody Valentine, 3 Colours Red and Oasis - who were signed for £40,000.

McGee originally thought Liam Gallagher was the band’s drug dealer, as he told the Sun:

“I was up in Glasgow seeing my dad and I wasn’t sure I’d even go to the gig. I got there early by mistake. Oasis were on first, before most people arrived. There was this amazing young version of Paul Weller sat there in a light blue Adidas tracksuit. I assumed he was the drug dealer and that Bonehead, the guitarist, was the singer.

“It was only when they went on stage I realised it was the lead singer Liam Gallagher. I knew I had to sign them.

“Noel and I talked after the show and just said ‘done’ and he turned out to be a man of his word.

“I was lucky to be there. We didn’t send out scouts. Most of my signings were because I happened to see new bands. That couldn’t happen any more. If a new band as much as farts it’s all over the internet.”

Upside Down: The Creation Records Story brilliantly captures the creativity that came out of the chaos of the legendary McGee’s drug-fueled reign as President of Pop.

“I was on one continuous bender from 1987 until 1994. Until Oasis came along the Creation staff were more rock and roll than the bands we signed. Then Oasis came along and things got even crazier.

“I was permanently off my head on cocaine, ecstasy, acid and speed. We’d be awake for three days.

“We went one further than having dealers hanging around. We just employed them instead.

“But they were different times. If you behaved now like we used to people would phone the police.”

Upside Down: The Creation Records Story is now available on DVD, with a short cinema release, details here.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.03.2011
07:43 pm
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Reading Gay Talese
04.29.2011
06:59 pm
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His first assignment for Esquire was to interview Frank Sinatra - no easy task, as Old Blue Eyes had knocked back such requests from the magazine over several years. But Gay Talese wasn’t so quickly put off. He spent 3 months following Sinatra and his entourage, racking up $5,000 in expenses. Not common then and unthinkable now in these days of Google and Wikipedia.

The result of Talese’s hard work was “Frank Sinatra has a cold”, possibly the best profile written on the singer and certainly one of the greatest pieces of New Journalism written at that time. As writer and broadcaster Michael Kinsley has since said, “It’s hard to imagine a magazine article today having the kind of impact that [this] article and others had in those days in terms of everyone talking about it purely on the basis of the writing and the style.”

What’s great about “Frank Sinatra has a cold” is what’s best about Talese as a writer - his ability to make the reader feel centered in the story by reconstructing the reported events using the techniques of fiction. You can see this technique in another of his essays, “Joe Louis: The King as a Middle-aged Man”, which begins:

“  ‘Hi, sweetheart!’ Joe Louis called to his wife, spotting her waiting for him at the Los Angeles airport.

She smiled, walked toward him, and was about to stretch up on her toes and kiss him, but suddenly stopped.

‘Joe,’ she said, ‘where’s your tie?’

‘Aw, sweetie,’ he said, shrugging, ‘I stayed out all night in New York and didn’t have time.’

‘All night!’ she cut in. ‘When you’re out here all you do is sleep, sleep, sleep.’

‘Sweetie,’ Joe Louis said, with a tired grin, ‘I’m an ole man.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but when you go to New York you try to be young again.’”

The article has its own symmetry and ended with one of the boxer’s ex-wives, Rose, watching home footage of Louis’s fight against Billy Conn:

“Rose seemed excited at seeing Joe at the top of his form, and every time a Louis punch would jolt Conn, she’d go ‘Mummmm’ (sock). ‘Mummmm’ (sock). ‘Mummmm.’

Billy Conn was impressive through the middle rounds, but as the screen flashed Round 13, somebody said, ‘Here’s where Conn’s gonna make his mistake: he’s gonna try to slug it out with Joe Louis.’ Rose’s husband remained silent, sipping his Scotch.

When the Louis combinations began to land, Rose went ‘Mummmm, mummmm,’ and then the pale body of Conn began to collapse against the canvas.

Billy Conn slowly began to rise. The referee counted over him. Conn had one leg up, then two, then was standing - but the referee forced him back. It was too late.

But Rose’s husband in the back of the room disagreed.

‘I thought Conn got up in time,’ he said, ‘but that referee wouldn’t let him go on.’

Rose Morgan said nothing - just swallowed the rest of her drink.”

It’s a clever and poignant ending, revealing as much about Rose and her relationship with her husbands, as it does about Talese’s talent as a writer. It also signals his need to record everything, which is all the more impressive when you know Talese never used a tape recorder when working on these profiles.

Gay Talese was born into a Catholic, Italian-American family in Ocean City, New Jersey in 1932. It was an upbringing he would later claim made him “not unfamiliar with the condition of being an outsider”:

“Indeed it was a role for which his background had most naturally prepared him: an Italo-American parishioner in an Irish-American church, a minority Catholic in a predominantly Protestant hometown, a northerner attending a southern college, a conservative young man of the fifties who invariably wore a suit and a tie, a driven man who chose as his calling one of the few possessions that was open to mental masqueraders: he became a journalist, and thus gained a licence to circumvent his inherent shyness, to indulge his rampant curiosity, and to explore the lives of individuals he considered more interesting than himself.”

His father was a tailor and his mother ran a dress boutique, it was here the young Talese learned his first journalistic skills:

“The shop was a kind of talk show that flowed around the engaging manner and well-timed questions of my mother; and as a boy not much taller than the counters behind which I used to pause and eavesdrop, I learned much that would be useful to me years later when I began interviewing people for articles and books.

I learned to listen with patience and care, and never to interrupt even when people were having great difficulty in explaining themselves, for during such halting and imprecise moments (as the listening skills of my patient mother taught me) people are very revealing - what they hesitate to talk about can tell much about them.”

In his brilliant “Frank Sinatra has a cold” Talese created a portrait of the singer that captured his over-bearing “mood of sullen silence”, his capricious nature, which made him at times both cruel and aggressive; or kind and overly generous. Talese revealed the background of Sinatra, the only child from Hoboken, who was scarred at birth by forceps, considered a weakling, reared mainly by his grandmother, his father a Sicilian who boxed under the name of Marty O’Brien, his mother worked at a chocolate factory, was strict and ambitious, who originally wanted her son to become an aviation engineer.

“When she discovered Bing Crosby pictures hanging on his bedroom walls one evening, and learned that her son wished to become a singer too, she became infuriated and threw a shoe at him. Later, finding she could not talk him out of it - ‘he takes after me’ - she encouraged his singing.”

Unlike other members of the New Journalism group (Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson), Talese didn’t put himself at the heart of his essays, rather he saw himself as a non-judgmental writer, who allowed each subject to speak for him / her self. Nowhere was this more true than in “The Loser”, his incredible profile of boxer Floyd Paterson, which included a shocking admission by the former World Champion:

“Now, walking slowly around the room, his black silk robe over his sweat clothes, Patterson said, ‘You must wonder what makes a man do things like this. Well, I wonder too. And the answer is, I don’t know…but I think that within me, within every human being, there is a certain weakness. It is a weakness that exposes itself more when you’re alone. And I have figured out that part of the reason I do the things I do, and cannot seem to conquer that one word - myself - is because…is because…I am a coward.’”

Non-judgmental, perhaps. But somewhere down the line, Talese makes the decision of what to keep and what to cut out, and by nuance and omission, he shapes our impressions, and gives the reader an intimacy mere facts could not supply.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.29.2011
06:59 pm
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What if Batman was a figment of Bruce Wayne’s imagination?
04.27.2011
05:25 pm
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The second trailer to The Batman Complex, an imaginary film made from assorted movies is now up on YouTube. Like the first, it plays with the Batman myth of what if Batman was merely a figment of Bruce Wayne’s imagination. The trailer’s creator explains:

Here we have a full length (well, a bit longer than the norm, but hey, what can you do…hahaha) theatrical trailer that delves a little deeper into the story behind The Batman Complex. As explained in the teaser, the gist of the idea revolves around a few fun topics, mainly the whole “what is real?” train of thought, and also every fans desire, deep down or upfront, to be Batman at least once in their lives. LOL. And so, I tried to craft a story where we see what happens when someone takes their dream of being Batman a little bit too far. An idea, after all, is a truly resilient parasite.

While some of it is still left a bit ambiguous (both unintentionally and intentionally - while there’s only so much that can be strung together, I often like to leave a little bit open so as to see what fellow fans are able to imagine/create), I believe it offers a bit more than the teaser. As you might be able to tell, the theatrical trailer takes on less of a “horror” vibe than the teaser. For this extended look, I wanted to focus more on the character aspects (and a bit of the tragedy as well), and attempt to move past the initial shock of the psychological twist. One aspect I tried to hint at was the paralleling descent of both Bruce and Cobb. As Cobb and the team go deeper into Bruce’s mind, they start to encounter the truly dark issues that his subconscious houses. As a result, Cobb himself gets caught up in the obsession of all that lingers in the mind of a Batman. There are a couple fun things in there that are best left to surprise, but all in all, I’m relatively happy with how it turned out. It’s fairly fast paced and doesn’t leave much room to breath, which helps amplify the tension I think.

It’s a well constructed trailer and a more than interesting take. Check here for the first trailer.
 

 
Previously on DM

Robin the Boy Wonder as Holden Caulfield in ‘The Catcher in the Rye’


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.27.2011
05:25 pm
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Robin the Boy Wonder as Holden Caulfield in ‘The Catcher in the Rye’
04.24.2011
02:00 pm
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Andrew Makes Comics imagines Robin the Boy Wonder as Holden Caulfield in J. D.Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. AMC also has a fine Trouble With Tribbles and Grand! Theft! Andy!.
 
Via Andrew Makes Comics
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.24.2011
02:00 pm
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Rare interview with Morrissey on The Smiths, politics, song-writing and his autobiography
04.21.2011
04:58 pm
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Morrissey gave a very rare interview to John Wilson on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row yesterday, to promote the release of The Very Best Of Morrissey, on April 25th in the UK and May 3rd the US.

In the interview, Morrissey discussed the forthcoming album, the legacy of The Smiths, his work as a song-writer, his thoughts on British Prime Minster, David Cameron‘s disclosure that he was a “major Smiths fan”, and also had time to mention his, as yet, unpublished autobiography, which he has just finished writing and would like to see published as a Penguin Classic.
 

 

 
Previously on DM

The night The Smiths stole the show and changed music


British Prime Minister confronted in House of Commons over liking for The Smiths 


 
Bonus previously unreleased tracks from Morrissey after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.21.2011
04:58 pm
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The lost episodes of Roald Dahl’s classic TV series ‘Way Out’, from 1961
04.15.2011
08:56 am
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It may have ended in disaster for Jackie Gleason, but it launched the TV career of Roald Dahl. In 1961, Gleason was supposed to make his “triumphant return” to television with his celebrity quiz show You’re in the Picture, where famous guests had to place their heads through holes in a picture and by asking pertinent questions guess what picture was about. It was a bomb, but let’s not smirk too soon, as I am sure some dick TV exec is currently contemplating how to make this idea work again.

You’re in the Picture was so bad that when Gleason went on air the following week, he apologized to the American public. A big gesture, and one that today’s politicians and TV producers should think of adopting. The series was binned and a replacement show had to be found, pronto. In came producer David Susskind with an idea to capatilize on the success of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone which was then dominating the schedules. Susskind contacted Roald Dahl to help front a science-fiction and horror anthology series ‘Way Out. Dahl was suited to this role of series host, as he was best known for his sinister and darkly amusing tales of horror and fantasy, published in the New Yorker.

The idea was for Dahl to introduce each show with a brief amusing monologue, which related to that episode’s story. It was also decided that Dahl’s science-fiction/horror story “William and Mary” would kick the series off. It was a fun and frenetic time, as Dahl later recalled:

“There was a hell of a rush. And there was always a rush subsequently. The whole thing was done at a hectic pace. I mean, having gotten mine done, he (Susskind) then had to rush around and find other suitable stories, get them adapted quickly, and line up the cast. Jackie Babbin (‘Way Out‘s producer) did sterling work. David Susskind likes operating at a white heat and he’s very good at it.”

On March 31 1961, the first episode of ‘Way Out premiered to rave reviews.”:

Calling this first episode an “auspicious debut,” the New York Times praised the show for a tale “told tightly and lightly, with wry and brittle dialog.” A West Coast review added that “‘Way Out‘s chief asset could be its host Mr. Dahl, who practices literary witchcraft in the realm of the macabre and whose introduction to the series and the opener (which he wrote) was a joy… The story we were about to see, he said with a gentlemanly leer, was not for children, nor young lovers, nor people with queasy stomaches. It was for ‘wicked old women.’”

Dahl was described as “a thin Alfred Hitchcock, an East Coast Rod Serling.” But, while the series proved a hit in all the major cities, it didn’t fare so good across middle America, and after 14 episodes, the plug was pulled. A dam shame, one which Mike Dann, then head of CBS Network Programming has explained by saying the stories featured on ‘Way Out were:

“perhaps a little too macabre, a little too odd for television. Roald Dahl’s show simply was just too limited to be that successful.”

Perhaps, but sometimes it’s worth the risk of forgetting what the middle ground wants to achieve something better for all. Was ‘Way Out any good? I think so, but decide for yourself with these “lost episodes” from the series, including the first episode taken from Dahl’s story “William and Mary”. Enjoy.
 

‘Way Out: “William and Mary” (1961)
 
Roald Dahl introduces more episodes of ‘Way Out, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.15.2011
08:56 am
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Superb documentary on Malcolm McLaren from 1984
04.13.2011
11:14 am
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This excellent documentary on Malcolm McLaren was originally shown as part of Melvyn Bragg’s South Bank Show in 1984, when McLaren was recording Fans—his seminal fusion of R&B and opera.  Apart from great access and behind-the-scenes footage, the film and boasts revealing interviews with Boy George, Adam Ant, Bow-Wow-Wow’s Annabella Lwin, Sex Pistol, Steve Jones, as well as the great man himself.

Everyone whoever came into contact with McLaren had an opinion of the kind of man he was and what he was about. Steve Jones thought him a con man; Adam Ant didn’t understand his anarchy; Boy George couldn’t fathom his lack of interest in having success, especially when he could have had it all; while Annabella Lwin pointed out how he used people to do the very things he wanted to do himself.

All of the above are true. But for McLaren, the answer was simple: “Boys will be boys,” and he saw his role was as:

“To question authority and challenge conventions, is what makes my life exciting.”

It did, Malcolm, and still does. Enjoy.
 

 
Previously on DM

Who Killed Bambi?: the Roger Ebert Sex Pistols screenplay


Scenes from the Malcolm McLaren funeral


 
More from Malcolm McLaren after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.13.2011
11:14 am
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Weird and wonderful sixties ad for Afri-Cola
04.10.2011
06:40 pm
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Now in its 80th year, Afri-Cola, Germany’s answer to those other well-known soft drinks, has used some wonderfully thirst-quenchin’ advertising to promote itself over the years. None more bizarre than this lip-smackin’ beauty from 1968, which says everything you need to know about the sixties and the “sexy-mini-super-flower-power-pop-op-cola”, Afri-Cola in sixty seconds.
 

 
With thanks to Steve Duffy
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.10.2011
06:40 pm
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Chicks with Steve Buscemi eyes
04.09.2011
02:33 pm
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Disturbed? Aroused? Both? Find more chicks with Steve Buscemi eyes here.
 
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Previously on DM

Bizarre, sexy pin-ups of Robert Downey jnr.


 
More ladies with Steve Buscemi eyes after the jump…
 
With thanks to the divinely talented Steve Duffy!
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.09.2011
02:33 pm
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Dirk Bogarde still cool
03.29.2011
08:12 pm
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Dirk Bogarde was cool. He had style. I knew that as soon as I saw him in one B&W ‘50’s movie, loafing around a beach, chatting to his bikini-clad co-star, wearing white trousers, white shirt, white socks and plimsolls. Who else could carry that off? Okay, Cary Grant could, but Grant would have added a cravat, and topped it off with a checked linen jacket.

It’s telling that Bogarde wore such clothes in a beach scene - surrounded by naked flesh cooking under a studio sun - he maintained a distance, an image, a decorum, an untouchability. He was actually hiding who he was, hiding behind his clothes; and that distance, rightly or wrongly, made him seem cool.

Bogarde started off in theater before making his impact as the cowardly killer of P.C. Dixon (Jack Warner) in The Blue Lamp.  Warner went on to become a stalwart of TV with Dixon of Dock Green, while Bogarde became the Rank Organization’s prime beefcake, the biggest British star of the 1950s, with a string of audience-pleasing movies. While these films brought fame and fortune, they sold short his very real talents as an actor.

This was to change, when in 1961, Bogarde made Victim, the highly controversial film that moved his career in a different, more intelligent, more worthy direction.

Victim dealt with the then-taboo subject of homosexuality, telling the story of a man who falls prey to a blackmail gang. It was the first film to use the word “homosexual” and caused considerable outrage amongst those angry letter writers of Tunbridge Wells, but it did help change opinions, and was a step in the right direction to Britain decriminalizing homosexuality in 1967.

Worried that Bogarde (who was himself gay) might lose some of his mass of adoring female admirers, Rank roped him into this promotional interview for Victim, where the actor talked about his career, his ambitions and hopes for the future. It’s a fairly candid interview for a man who, in his later years, fictionalized most of his life.

Dirk Bogarde would have been 90 this week, and for me, he’s still cool as fuck.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.29.2011
08:12 pm
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Leonard Nimoy is 80
03.26.2011
08:08 pm
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Happy Birthday to the actor, film director, singer, poet, and photographer Leonard Nimoy, who has lived long and prospered and is 80 today.
 

 
Previously on DM

Leonard Nimoy is a chubby-chaser


Nimoy sunset pie


 
Bonus clip of…you guessed it, Leonard Nimoy singing ‘Bilbo Baggins’, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.26.2011
08:08 pm
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The Pint-sized Mark E. Smith: Coming to a bar near you
03.22.2011
03:02 pm
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This must be on some “100 Things To Do Before You Die” list - have a beer named after you. Something Mark E Smith can tick off, as The Fall’s legendary frontman has just had an Indian Pale Ale named after him.

Produced by Northern Brewing, an artisan brewery in Nantwich, Mark E. Smith IPA is currently only available in one bar in the UK, the Snooty Fox in Islington, London.

It was Snooty Fox’s owners Nicole Gale and Jonathan Tingle, who commissioned MES IPA for their “Hit the North Festival”– (also named after the Fall song – which is celebrating northern beer and music. As Nicole explained to the Manchester Evening News:

“Jonathan is a massive, massive Fall fan so we thought it was only right to name a beer after the great man. It was the most popular beer at the festival.”

The Snooty Fox sold their order of 72 pints in just two hours.

Mike Hill, director of Northern, said: “I had never heard of him to be honest. We prefer Northern Soul, which inspired the names of most of our beers.”

If you want a taste of Manchester’s famous son, then have your local put in an order for Mark E. Smith IPA.
 

 
Previously on DM

Mark E. Smith Fabric Doll


Mark E. Smith’s Guide to Writing


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.22.2011
03:02 pm
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‘Shout!’: Scenes from an imaginary film on the life and music of superstar Lulu
03.21.2011
05:17 pm
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Scene 1

Exterior Night: Glasgow.

W/S of cranes and ships along the river and docks, tinged orange by winter’s twilight. City lights sparkle, the small theaters of tenement windows, the sound of distant traffic, blue trains rattling to the suburbs.

Caption

: Glasgow, 1963

Interior Night: The Lindella Nightclub. Wisps of smoke, tables along one side of room, a bar with a scrum of customers, eager to get drunk, enjoying themselves. Backstage - a band, The Gleneagles, are ready to go on. They can hear the audience getting restless. The bass player asks if everything is okay? Over the sound system, the voice of the compere introducing the band. This is it. A ripple of applause, a rush, then the band is on stage. At the rear, a young girl, who looks hardly in her teens, her hair bright red, sprayed with lacquer, and set in rollers. She has a cold, but smiles, and looks confident. A pause. She checks with the band. The audience are uneasy, mutter quick comments (“Away back to school, hen”). Laughter. Then 14-year-old Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie, opens her mouth and sings:

Lulu

: Wwwwwwwweeeeeeeelllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!!!!!

The voice is incredible. Little Richard, Jerry Lewis and The Isley brothers all rolled into this tiny figure at the front of the stage.

At the back of the room, a woman stands slightly away from the crowd, which is now mesmerized by the young girl’s singing. The woman is Marion Massey, and she will become Lulu’s manager.

Lulu

: (V/O) When I was fourteen, I was very lucky. I was discovered - to use a terrible term - by a person who was absolutely sincere. Since I was five, people had been coming up to me saying: ‘Stick with me, baby, and I’ll make you a star’. In fact, nobody ever did anything for me. Then Marion came along.

CU of Marion watching Lulu perform.

Marion Massey

: (V/O) She looked so peculiar that first time I saw her. Her hair was in curlers underneath a fur beret. She had a terrible cold, was very pale and wore three jumpers. But I was very intrigued by her. It wasn’t her singing;There was something tremendously magnetic about this girl. I knew she had the makings of a great star.

Cut To:

Scene 2

Caption

: London, 1964

Interior Day: Lulu performs on Ready Steady Go
 

 
More scenes from Lulu’s life co-starring David Bowie, Sidney Poitier, Maurice Gibb and Red Skelton, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.21.2011
05:17 pm
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Ron Grainer’s classic film and TV themes from the Sixties
03.20.2011
09:16 pm
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For my tenth birthday I received a copy of the MFP record Geoff Love and His Orchestra Play Your Top TV Themes. MFP was the acronym for “Music for Pleasure” a low budget English record label formed between EMI records and book publishers, Paul Hamlyn. MFP released session musicians performing hits of the day, or artists from the EMI back catalog. The local supermarket had a carousel of MFP discs, ranging from Frank Sinatra, Semprini, Edith Piaf, Dean Martin, Benny Hill, Liberace, to The Beach Boys, The Monkees, The Move, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and T.Rex.

There was an unspoken consensus amongst my peers, that If it was MFP then it was suspect; as MFP was either ersatz, or some original recording that had bombed. I knew what they meant, but didn’t agree. I thought of it more like a book club edition, if you couldn’t afford the top dollar for the first print run edition, then there was always MFP.

Music for Pleasure, in many ways, gave me a good musical education. The first record I bought, at a rummage sale, when I was 5, was Russ Conway’s “Snow Coach”. From this jaunty instrumental, I progressed on to the magic of Herb Alpert via The Tijuana Sound of Brass, Edith Piaf, Johnny Cash and Beethoven. While my older brother fed me The Stones, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Move, and later T.Rex, and Bowie.

Music was key, along with books, films and TV, and whenever any of these fused, it was something special. Remember this was the sixties, the early seventies, there were no pop promos - only The Monkees on TV, and later Ken Russell’s Tommy in the cinema.

This was why I liked MFP, which released records that were often compiled of tracks unavailable elsewhere, like Geoff Love and His Orchestra Play Your Top TV Themes. Where else would you find the sophistication of John Barry’s “Theme to The Persuaders” next to “Sleepy Shores”, the theme for Owen M.D.? Or, Mort Stevens’ “Hawaii Five-O” on the same side as Geoff Love’s jolly sit-com theme “Bless This House”

Geoff Love was a hero. A black trombone player from Yorkshire, who when not writing theme tunes, worked with Shirley Bassey and entertainer Max Bygraves. Geoff Love arranged and recorded a whole library of theme tunes for MFP, including Big War Movie Themes and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Other Disco Galactic Themes. Each album was a wonderful aural adventure, where part of the enjoyment was working out what Love had done to replicate or improve upon the original theme. For that reason Your Top TV Themes, was and still is a class album. 

This liking for signature tunes brought me to Ron Grainer, who in many respects wrote some of the themes that best defined British TV in the 1960s.

Grainer was born in Queensland, Australia, and studied under Sir Eugene Goosens at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music. His studies were cut short by the Second World War, which saw the young composer seriously wounded - nearly losing his leg. After the war, Grainer moved to England where he began his career in earnest as a composer and musician.

In the 1950s, Grainer collaborated with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop on variety of projects, most famously on his theme for Doctor Who. The success of this track was in part due to Delia Derbyshire, whose hard work re-interpreting Grainer’s composition, note-by-note, made it unforgettable. When Grainer heard what Derbyshire had done, he could hardly contain his delight. Grainer said “Did I really write this?” to which Derbyshire replied, got the answer “Most of it.”

Together they had produced a work of brilliance. Grainer wanted to give a co-credit to Derbyshire, but the dear olde fuddy-duddies at the bureaucratic BBC preferred to keep their talents under a bushel. Damn shame, as Derbyshire deserved much recognition for her pioneering work.
 

Original ‘Doctor Who’ Theme (1963)
 
In 1967, Grainer wrote “The Age of Elegance”, which became a perfect synthesis of image and sound in Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner.
 

 
More classic Grainer themes from the sixties, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.20.2011
09:16 pm
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Before they were famous: Hugh Cornwell, Richard Thompson, Lemmy and co.
03.18.2011
06:13 pm
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A 15-year-old, Hugh Cornwell poses with his first band Emil and The Detectives in 1964. The band was formed by guitarist Richard Thompson (on the far right of picture). who went on to Fairport Convention, while Cornwell found fame as frontman with The Stranglers. Cornwell talked about this early snapshot in the Telegraph Magazine:

I remember getting the violin bass guitar I’m holding here, I was about 15 and had saved up £50 for it. Before then I’d been playing a homemade version with a neck the thickness of a plank of wood. Richard Thompson (on the far right) suggested I learn to play bass because he was forming Emil and the Detectives (the band in the picture) and he needed a bass player, so he taught me. We were good friends from school and we played each other music that we had discovered, like the Rolling Stones and the Who. Richard’s older sister, Perri, who was the social secretary at the Hornsey College of Art in north London, would book us to play parties and pay us £30 per gig. Our biggest claim to fame was supporting Helen Sahpiro at the Ionic cinema in Golders Green. But after we took our O-level [exams] we lost touch. The next I heard he was the lead guitarist in Fairport Convention…

...In August 2008 I was doing a festival outside Madrid and the promoter said, ‘If we hurry we can catch the end of Richard Thompson’s set.’ I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t seen Richard in 30 years. We had a big huggy reunion and now we’re back in touch it’s really lovely. When I played in LA last year he came to watch and I suggested that we play a song together. I chose “Tobacco Road” by the Nashville Teens, which was a number one hit in the 1960s and was one of the first songs we learnt together.

Hugh Cornwell tours the UK April 6-17, details here.
 
More early pics and performances of pop stars, including Lemmy, Bowie and Davy Jones, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.18.2011
06:13 pm
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