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Germaine Greer in ‘Darling, Do You Love Me?’
03.14.2011
01:18 pm
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Before writing her revolutionary feminist text The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer tried her hand at becoming a TV personality. In 1967, she briefly appeared alongside Michael Palin and future Goodies, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie in Twice a Fortnight. She then co-hosted the comedy series Nice Time in 1968, with DJ Kenny Everett and Jonathan Routh. Alas, neither made her a star.

In 1968, Greer also starred in this odd little film, Darling, Do You Love Me?, written and directed by Martin Sharp. In it, Germaine played an over-bearing, vampish female, who demands of a rather sappy, little male, “Darling, do you love me?” After much shaking, cajoling and strangulation from Greer, the man eventually says, “I love you,” and dies.

What are we to make of this? How love makes us needy? Or, perhaps, the old adage, if at first you don’t succeed..? For Greer did try and try again, until writing her landmark book. No more TV comedy after that, though she did pop-up in George (007) Lazenby’s 1971 movie, The Universal Soldier.  One can only wonder what would have happened if Nice Time had been a hit.
 

 
With thanks to Ewan Morrison
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.14.2011
01:18 pm
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Rock Cameos: When bands guest star in films
03.13.2011
11:27 am
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You can picture the scene, lunch somewhere, another glass, and then the producer says. “I know this band, they’re hot, they’re what the kids want, let’s get them in the movie.”

It’s a win-win situation. Surely? The band starts their film career and receive major media exposure; while the movie has cachet from the group’s fans. This, of course, all depends on the quality of the film and the songs.

Does anyone remember what The Yardbirds were playing in Blow-Up? All I recall is Jeff Beck going Pete Townshend on his guitar, while a white trousersered David Hemmings intently joined a rather bored-looking audience.

Amen Corner had topped the UK pop charts with “If Paradise is half as Nice” and must have seemed a perfect call for the Vincent Price, Christopher Lee schlock fest, Scream and Scream Again. Singer Andy Fairweather-Low is beautifully filmed in the background as loopy Michael Gothard prowls a nighclub in search of fresh blood. The trouble is the song’s a stinker.

Sparks were allegedly second choice to Kiss for the George Segal, Timothy Bottoms, Richard Widmark dull-a-thon, Rollercoaster. The brothers Mael had moved back to the US after four successful years in the UK, and had just released their album Big Beat, from which they played “Fill Her Up” and “Big Boy” to a wildly over-enthusiastic crowd. The audience obviously hadn’t read the script, as the film is turgid, and the band’s cameo is its only highlight. When asked about the biggest regret in their career, Sparks said appearing in Rollercoaster. Understandable.

Brian De Palma stopped copying Hitchcock form a few minutes in Body Double to make a pop promo for Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax”, right in the middle of the movie. Surprisingly, it works. But perhaps the best, almost seamless merging of pop singer / artiste in a film is Nick Cave in Wim Wenders in Wings of Desire. Cave is perfect, as is the film, and he was a resident in West Berlin at the time, writing his first novel And the ass saw the Angel.

Of course, there are plenty of others, (Twisted Sister in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, The Tubes in Xanadu, anyone?), but oddest may be Cliff Richard and The Shadows in Gerry Anderson’s puppet movie Thunderbird Are Go. Difficult to tell the difference between puppet and the real thing.
 

Michelangelo Antonioni originally wanted The Velvet Underground for ‘Blow-Up’ (1966), but a problem over work permits led to The Yardbirds, with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck playing “Stroll On” in the cameo.
 
More pop and rock cameos after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.13.2011
11:27 am
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Who is Bruce McLean? And what does he want?
03.12.2011
07:44 pm
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Back in the 1980s, when I had nothing better to do than watch TV and collect unemployment benefit, I saw a video of the artist Bruce McLean. It was shown as part of Channel 4’s art series Alter Image in 1987, and after watching, my first thoughts were: Who the fuck is Bruce McLean and what does he want?

I was lucky, I had time to go and investigate. In the library, I found this:

Maclean / McLean an Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic MacGilleEathain. This was the patronymic form of the personal name meaning “servant of (Saint) John”.

Interesting. But not quite right. Later, there was more.

Working in a variety of mediums including painting, film and video projection, performance and photography, Bruce McLean is one of the most important artists of his generation.

It was with live works that McLean first grabbed the attention of the art world. An impulsive, energetic Glaswegian, he became known as an art world ‘dare-devil’ by critiquing the fashion-oriented, social climbing nature of the contemporary art world in the ‘70s. At St Martins his professors included the great sculptors of the day, Anthony Caro and Phillip King, whose work he mocked ruthlessly. In Pose Work for Plinths I (1971; London, Tate), he used his own body to parody the poses of Henry Moore’s celebrated reclining figures, daring to mock the grand master himself.

 
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Pose Work for Plinths (1971)
 

The notion of using his whole body as a sculptural vehicle of expression led him to explore live actions: ‘it was when we (a collective) invented the concept of ‘pose’ that We could do anything’. Pose was live sculpture: Not mime, not theatre, but live sculpture. My colleagues, Paul Richards, Ron Carr, Garry Chitty, Robin Fletcher and I created Nice Style ‘The World’s First Pose Band’, which performed for several years, offering audiences such priceless gems as the ‘semi-domestic spectacular Deep Freeze, a four-part pose opera based on the lifestyle and values of a mid-west American vacuum cleaner operative’. Behind the obvious humour was a desire to break with the establishment, something that he has continued to do throughout his life and work. In 1972, for instance, he was offered an exhibition at the Tate Gallery, but opted, for a ‘retrospective’ lasting only one day. ‘King for a Day’ consisted of catalogue entries for a thousand mock-conceptual works, among them The Society for Making Art Deadly Serious piece, Henry Moore revisited for the 10th Time piece and There’s no business like the Art business piece (sung).

Now, I knew. Bruce McLean is a performance artist, a conceptual artist, a painter, a sculptor, a film-maker, a teacher, a joker, who knows art can be fun, which is always dangerous.
 

 
Bonus clips, including Tate Gallery interview with Bruce McLean, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.12.2011
07:44 pm
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Donald Sutherland: His films and hairstyles
03.07.2011
06:09 pm
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Donald Sutherland is one of those rare actors who is not only wonderfully talented, but is gifted with a damn fine head of hair. It’s hard to think of any other actor who has made his follicles work so hard in every performance. I first became aware of this phenomenon, when in the mid-1970s Mr Sutherland opened the envelope at, I think it was, a BAFTA Award ceremony in London, where the tall, elegant Canadian, walked up to the podium and revealed a shaved hairline at odds with his long flowing locks. Sutherland was about to appear in the film Casanova, and remarked to audience’s gasps:

“When Fellini says get a haircut, you get a haircut.”

 
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Though Sutherland started as a clean-cut co-star of Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (alongside Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee), and had appearances in The Saint and The Avengers (and even the voice of the computer in The Billion Dollar Brain), there was always this sense he was a geeky straight in a tight suit desperate to try some acid and, maybe if he liked it, wear beads and grow his hair long. Which is kind of what i thought when I saw him as Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H and of course, most memorably as Sgt. Oddball in Kelly’s Heroes.
 
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More from Donald Sutherland’s hair after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.07.2011
06:09 pm
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Robert Altman’s ‘The James Dean Story’, 1957
03.06.2011
07:46 pm
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After the success of his B-movie The Delinquents, Robert Altman was given the job of co-directing (with George W. George) a documentary on James Dean. The association of Altman’s surprise hit—about out-of-control kids who just “gotta have action”—and the young actor—who appealed to these troubled teenagers—was considered by Warner Brothers as too good an opportunity to miss.

Made in 1957, two years after the actor’s death, The James Dean Story is well-made documentary composed from archive and photographic footage, interviews and out-takes, which gives a great sense of Dean’s life and talents. The film was also a key piece in the actor’s mythologizing.

According to Forbes magazine, the James Dean estate makes $5m a year, which is more than the star made his lifetime. That his fame continues to grow says much about Dean’s ability to epitomize that certain something generations of film-goers have identified with over the past six decades. As Dennis Hopper once said about Dean:

“He seemed to capture that moment of youth, that moment where we’re all desperately seeking to find ourselves.”

Or, as Dean himself said, in a line from Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince:

“What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.06.2011
07:46 pm
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‘Cracked Actor’: BBC’s landmark documentary on David Bowie, 1975
02.28.2011
07:32 pm
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Cracked Actor captured David Bowie at “a fragile stage” in his life. His relationship with his wife, Angie, was beginning to falter, there was business problems looming, and he was addicted to cocaine, which caused “severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional problems.” Filmed during Bowie’s legendary “Diamond Dogs Tour” in 1974, Alan Yentob’s film revealed a man on the run, taking stock, even questioning his own ambitions:

‘I never wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star. I never, honest guv, I wasn’t even there. But I was, you see, I was there. That’s what happened.’

Revealing his difficulties with fame:

‘Do you know that feeling you get in a car when somebody’s accelerating very fast and you’re not driving? And you get that “Uhhh” thing in your chest when you’re being forced backwards and you think “Uhhh” and you’re not sure whether you like it or not? It’s that kind of feeling. That’s what success was like. The first thrust of being totally unknown to being what seemed to be very quickly known. It was very frightening for me and coping with it was something that I tried to do. And that’s what happened. That was me coping. Some of those albums were me coping, taking it all very seriously I was.’

And the singer’s paranoia, at the time of Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation:

‘There’s an underlying unease here, definitely. You can feel it in every avenue and it’s very calm. And it’s a kind of superficial calmness that they’ve developed to underplay the fact that it’s… there’s a lot of high pressure here as it’s a very big entertainment industry area. And you get this feeling of unease with everybody. The first time that it really came home to me what a kind of strange fascination it has is the… we… I came in on the train… on the earthquake, and the earthquake was actually taking place when the train came in. And the hotel that we were in was… just tremored every few minutes. I mean, it was just a revolting feeling. And ever since then I‘ve always been very aware of how dubious a position it is to stay here for any length of time.’

In a series of interviews, filmed in limousines, backstage and in hotel rooms, Cracked Actor reveals an uncertain, vulnerable, and at times incoherent Bowie; but in performance, he is magnificent.

Originally made for the BBC’s arts strand Omnibus, this is a brilliant, mesmeric, landmark documentary, even if Yentob is slightly disparaging of Bowie’s re-invention as “a soul singer.”

Footnote: when film director, Nicholas Roeg watched Cracked Actor, he decided to cast Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.28.2011
07:32 pm
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David Bowie and Lindsay Kemp’s rarely seen production ‘Pierrot in Turquoise’, 1968
02.27.2011
04:07 pm
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In 28 December 1967, David Bowie made his theatrical debut at the Oxford New Theater, in Lindsay Kemp’s mime Pierrot in Turquoise or, The Looking Glass Murders. Bowie wrote and performed the music. He also starred as Cloud alongside Kemp’s Pierrot, Jack Birkett’s Harlequin, and Annie Stainer’s Columbine.

The production was still in rehearsal when it played for its one night at the New Theater, which perhaps explains why the Oxford Mail described the show as “something of a pot-pourri,” though it highlighted Bowie’s contribution for praise:

David Bowie has composed some haunting songs, which he sings in a superb, dreamlike voice. But beguilingly as he plays Cloud, and vigorously as Jack Birkett mimes Harlequin, the pantomime isn’t a completely satisfactory framework for some of the items from his repertoire that Mr Kemp, who plays Pierrot, chooses to present….

...No doubt these are shortcomings Mr. Kemp will attend to before he presents Pierrot in Turquoise at the Prague Festival at the invitation of Marceau and Fialka next summer. No mean honour for an English mime troupe.

The mime told the story of Pierrot and his attempts to win the love of his life, Columbine. Of course things are never simple, and Columbine falls for Harlequin, and is then killed by Pierrot.

After a few tweaks, Pierrot in Turquoise opened at the Rosehill Theater, Whitehaven, before its proper run at the Mercury Theater, and Intimate Theater, both London, in March 1968.

Bowie’s career throughout the sixties exemplifies Thomas Edison’s adage “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration,” as the young hopeful musician worked hard and toured the length and breadth of the UK under various guises: The Konrads, The Hookers, Davie Jones and The King Bees, The Manish Boys, the Blues influenced Davie Jones and The Lower Third, Davie Jones and The Buzz, and The Riot Squad, a band described as:

“The Complete Musical Entertainers covering Pop, Tableaux, Burlesque and Parody”


Even at this early stage, Bowie was shedding musical styles quicker than he changed his hairstyle - from beat thru Blues to Music Hall and Pop. With hindsight you can see where his career was going. But by 1967 the teenager’s first recording career had come to a halt with the release of Laughing Gnome after which Bowie didn’t release a record for another two years.

It was during this time Bowie fell under the influence of mime artist and performer Lindsay Kemp. He helped Bowie channel his talent towards Space Oddity and later Ziggy Stardust. As Kemp told journalist Mick Brown for Crawdaddy in 1974:

“I taught David to free his body,” says Kemp, smiling wickedly.

“Even before meeting, David and I had felt the need to work together. I’d identified myself with his songs, and he’d seen my performances and identified himself with my songs. I was singing the songs of my life with my body; he was singing the songs of his life very fabulously with his voice, and we reckoned that by putting the two together the audience couldn’t help but be enthralled. In other words, one large gin is very nice, but two large gins are even nicer.”

The two large gins became Pierrot in Turquoise, which was filmed by Scottish Television in 1969 and broadcast in July 1970. How a small regional TV station like STV came to film this rather strange theatrical show is no doubt a tale in itself, but thankfully they did, even if one cataloguer at Scottish Screen Archives “found this quite creepy,” it is still well worth watching.

The cast:

David Bowie as Cloud
Lindsay Kemp as Pierrot
Jack Birkett as Harlequin
Annie Stainer as Columbine
Michael Garret as Piano Player

It was filmed at the Scottish Television’s Gateway Theater in Edinburgh, and was directed by Brian Mahoney. Now if only STV made programs like this today…
 
  Previously on DM

Lindsay Kemp’s Last Dance


David Bowie comes to life in ‘The Image’


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.27.2011
04:07 pm
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Simon Schama on the power of Mark Rothko
02.25.2011
07:00 pm
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The artist Mark Rothko died today on the 25th February 1970. His body was found in his studio by his assistant. He had ingested an overdose of barbiturates and had slashed an artery on his right arm. He lay in a sticky pool of blood, dressed in white long-johns and black socks. Rothko was sixty-six. He had been suffering from depression, and had also been diagnosed with a mild aortic aneurysm.

His death increased the value of his paintings overnight - the price nearly doubled. More interestingly, his death led to legal suit by his children against his gallery and the executors of his estate.

The trial revealed that Rothko’s dealers, the Marlborough Gallery, and his executors had conspired to “waste the assets” and defraud his children out of their rightful share of their father’s estate. It was also found the gallery had deliberately stockpiled and undervalued Rothko’s paintings for years, with the intention of selling them at an increased value after his death. The Marlborough had purchased “one group of 100 paintings for just $1.8million, a sum it would pay over 12 years and with no interest, with a down-payment of only $200,000.” The total assets of 798 paintings were worth a minimum of $32million.

In 1975, the defendants were found liable for “negligence and a conflict of interest”. They were removed as executors of the Rothko estate, by court order, and, together with the Marlborough Gallery, required to pay a $9.2 million damages to the estate. Sounds a lot, but not much when compared to the value Rothko’s paintings have since attained - his 1954 painting, Homage to Matisse sold in 2005 for $22.4million, while his 1950 White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), sold for a record $72.8 million

Simon Schama’s excellent documentary on Rothko starts off with Schama’s own epiphany when first seeing the artist’s paintings:

“One morning in the spring of 1970, I went into the Tate Gallery and took a wrong, right turn and there they were, lying in wait. No it wasn’t love at first site. Rothko had insisted that the lighting be kept almost pretentiously low. It was like going into the cinema, expectation in the dimness.

Something in there was throbbing steadily, pulsing like the inside of a body part, all crimson and purple. I felt I was being pulled through those black lines to some mysterious place in the universe.

Rothko said his paintings begin an unknown adventure into an unknown space. I wasn’t sure where that was and whether I wanted to go. I only know I had no choice and that the destination might not exactly be a picnic, but I got it all wrong that morning in 1970. I thought a visit to the Seagram Paintings would be like a trip to the cemetary of abstraction - all dutiful reverence, a dead end.

Everything Rothko did to these paintings - the column-like forms suggested rather than drawn and the loose stainings - were all meant to make the surface ambiguous, porous, perhaps softly penetrable. A space that might be where we came from or where we will end up.

They’re not meant to keep us out, but to embrace us; from an artist whose highest compliment was to call you a human being.”

Schama is a cultured story-teller, who has a great enthusiasm for his subject, and he fully appreciates the value of the small tale by which an artist’s life can be apprehended. One particular sequence, highlights the irony of how Rothko, who famously removed his paintings from a swanky Four Seasons restaurant at the Seagram Building, in New York, because:

“Anybody who would eat that kind of food, for that kind of money, will never look at a painting of mine.”

has become the center of such phenomenal financial speculation.
 

 
Previously on DM

Revealed: Caravaggio’s criminal record


Notes towards a portrait of Francis Bacon


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.25.2011
07:00 pm
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Predator: the musical
02.23.2011
08:11 pm
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Arnie performs “If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It” from Predator: The Musical.

Music and lyrics by Jon Kaplan and Al Kaplan (Conan the Barbarian: The Musical, Silence! The Musical)
Contains variations on Alan Silvestri’s landmark Predator score.

 
With thanks to Elizabeth Veldon
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.23.2011
08:11 pm
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The Transformation of Genesis P-Orridge
02.23.2011
07:46 pm
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A moving and intimate short film portrait of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: artist, musician, pandrogyne, by Kel O’Neill and Eline Jongsma.

“Because Genesis and Jaye were so obsessed with each other, they wanted to literally become each other. Plastic surgery seemed like the best way to accomplish this goal, but once Jaye passed on, their grand project was left unfinished. Still, Genesis’s body tells the tale of a love story that transcends gender and the limits of human flesh.”

 

 
Previously on DM

New QA with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge


Thee Psychick Bible: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge


 
With thanks to Robert Conroy
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.23.2011
07:46 pm
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Just released interview with Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern from 1995
02.23.2011
05:12 pm
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DM pal David Flint has just uploaded a rare video interview with Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern from 1995, over on his always interesting site, Strange Things are Happening. As David explains: 

In 1995, your Strange Things editor began work on a project for the freshly-launched Television X, which was aspiring to be more than simply a soft porn channel. I convinced them that a documentary about ‘transgressive culture’ would be a good thing, especially as many of the leading lights in the field were going to be in London over the next few months. In the end, the higher-ups decided that such noble aspirations were foolish and returned to the T&A, but not before we shot this interview with Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch.

The pair were in London for NFT screenings of Kern’s films and the launch of his book New York Girls. This interview took place the day after the launch party, which is one reason why everyone is so tired! Also in attendance was photographer Doralba Picerno.

It was filmed by a TVX staffer on Hi-8, without any lighting - so was never going to be broadcast standard. It was several years before I was given the tape, and a few more after that before I could actually play it. But while the quality might be a bit murky, the content is, hopefully, worthwhile.I believe this was the first - and possibly only - time the pair were interviewed together.

 

 
Part two of the Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern interview, after the jump…
 
Via Strange Things
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.23.2011
05:12 pm
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The changing face of London during the Swinging Sixties
02.21.2011
07:36 pm
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These two short films from Rank’s classic Look at Life, hint at two of J G Ballard’s preoccupations - high rises and cars.

“Rising to High Office”, made in 1963, examines the development of high rise corporate life; while “Goodbye Piccadilly” looks at the planned redevelopment of the famous London landmark at the start of the sixties that intended to create a “double-decker” Piccadilly Circus, with a new pedestrian concourse above the ground-level traffic. The plans were lasted for most of the decade, but were killed off in 1972 when it was discovered the plans would not help the required increase in traffic flow.

Amazing quality and in fabulous color, they capture a little seen aspect of the changing face of London during its most famous decade.
 

 
Previously on DM

London in the sixties: 2 groovy films on fashion and cafe culture


 
High Rise London in the swinging sixties, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.21.2011
07:36 pm
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Lipstick and powder: Boy George presents a Top 10 of New Romantics
02.19.2011
08:21 pm
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Out of the ashes of Punk came the New Romantics, rising like a painted phoenix over London’s club scene. From clubs like Billy’s and Blitz, where Steve Strange and Rusty Egan played Bowie, the Velvets and T.Rex, and Boy George was the coat-check guy, came the New Romantics. Clubbers known as the Blitz Kids, who were made-up and beautiful, and knew imagination was more important than money when it came to having fun. 

The Blitz Kids were Steve Strange (Visage), Rusty Egan (The Rich Kids), Boy George (Culture Club), Tony Hadley, Martin Kemp, Gary Kemp, John Keeble, Steve Norman (Spandau Ballet), Tony James, James Degville (Sigue Sigue Sputnik), Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama), Marilyn, Princess Julia, Isabella Blow, Stephen Jones and Michael Clarke, and together they were the generation of New Romantics.

Last year, in the Guardian, Priya Elan talked to some of the “movers and shakers behind the scene that spawned the New Romantics.”

STEVE STRANGE, BLITZ CLUB HOST, VISAGE FRONTMAN: By 1977 I’d gotten very bored by punk. It’d become very violent. The skinheads and the National Front had moved in.

RUSTY EGAN, BLITZ DJ, VISAGE MEMBER: The punk venues got invaded by football hooligans wearing Le Coq Sportif clothes. They’d call us “poofs” because we weren’t dressed in a normal way. Hence why we formed the club. It was for those ex-punks who liked Lou Reed, Bowie and Iggy.

SS: It was about being creative, we wanted to start something that didn’t have anything to do with punk.

RE: It was a horrible time of recession. Covent Garden was isolated and badly lit. But then you’d walk into the club and it was like “Ta-da!” Everyone was drinking and taking poppers. The atmosphere was like Studio 54.

SIOBHAN FAHEY, BLITZ CLUBBER AND BANANARAMA MEMBER: We’d spend the whole week preparing our outfits for the club. We’d go and buy fabrics, customise our leather jackets, make cummerbunds, find old military things and throw them together in a mix of glam, military and strangeness. It was all DIY because we didn’t really have any money to properly eat. We lived off coffee and cigarettes, really.

RE: The song that became the anthem of the club was Heroes by Bowie. “Just for one day” you could dress up and be more than what Britain had to offer you.

 

 
Previously on DM

‘The Chemical Generation’: Boy George’s documentary on British Rave Culture


 
Part 2 of Boy George’s Top 10 plus more memories from the Blitz Kids, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.19.2011
08:21 pm
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Classic Documentary of The Kinks in concert at the Rainbow Theater, 1972
02.18.2011
06:53 pm
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Here’s an excellent performance-documentary of The Kinks in concert at the Rainbow Theater in London, 1972. It was shot around the time of their classic album Muswell Hillbillies, and the performance footage was originally shown as part of the BBC’s In Concert series.

What makes this program especially wonderful is the way highlights form the concert have been inter-cut with documentary footage with interviews from the band, vox pops, celebrity fan / film and TV producer, the late Ned Sherrin, together with clips from The Virgin Soldiers, and Ray Davies wandering around the disappearing London haunts of his childhood. Tracks include:

“Till the End of the Day”
“Waterloo Sunset”
“Top of the Pops”
“The Money-go-Round”
“Sunny Afternoon”
“She’s Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina”
“Alcohol”
“Acute Schizophrenia Paranoid Blues”
“You Really Got Me”
 

 
Previously on DM

The Kinks Live in Paris, 1965


Stations Enroute to Ray Davies’ Film Masterpiece ‘Return to Waterloo’


 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.18.2011
06:53 pm
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‘Modern Masters Andy Warhol’: BBC documentary on the King of Pop
02.15.2011
11:09 am
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Modern Masters was a 4-part BBC Arts series first shown in 2010. In each program, Daily Telegraph art critic, Alastair Sooke examined the lives and work of one of the 20th century’s most important artists, Henri Matisse; Pablo Picasso; Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol.

Sooke set out to discover “why these artists are considered so great and how they still influence our lives today,” not exactly an original approach, but hey, it’s the BBC. The series kicked-off with his documentary on Andy Warhol, “the king of Pop Art”, which certainly had great access, and some very fine archive, and while I’m sure Mr. Warhol would have loved it, it is all a bit hit-and-miss and depends on how well you take to Sooke’s approach as a presenter. Andrew Billen in the London Times wrote of the program:

The Warhol era seems so distant that it was a happy surprise that in New York Sooke found so many of Warhol’s contemporaries to interview. In the Serendipity coffee shop where Warhol sold his first paintings, its owner recalled that his favourite drink was frozen ice chocolate and lemon ice box pie (I think he said it was a drink). The nice couple who employed him to design the logo for their leather business said that he always came with five new ideas for marketing campaigns and if they didn’t like them he would come back next day with another they did. Gerard Malagna, master of the Warhol silk screen, Warholed Sooke’s face into a screen print. Sooke said that he looked like a mouse with lipstick. Malagna agreed: it was just so perfect. Sooke even got an audience with a still well Dennis Hopper. Duchamp had said that the artist would end up just pointing his finger and declaring something art. Warhol pointed his finger at us, said Hopper.

Sooke’s answers to his question “What had Warhol ever done for us?” — predicted celebrity culture, found beauty in banality, toppled the idea of the artist as suffering mystic — were less interesting than his tiggerish approach and his willingness to follow Warhol into absurdity. A stylist apparently called Brix Smith-Start, herself a ringer for Warhol, dressed Sooke in an “Andy-suit” and wig. “Gee Brix! Golly!” exclaimed Sooke, pouting into a cheval. “Yes! You’ve so got it,” gasped Brix. And so he had: the whole thing.

 

 
The rest of ‘Modern Masters: Andy Warhol’, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Douglas Steindorff
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.15.2011
11:09 am
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