Hiss Golden Messenger
Slaughtered Lamb, London
“I’ll do my best to put you in a trance here,” says Michael Taylor, aka Hiss Golden Messenger, as he tweaks and tunes his guitar at the start of tonight’s Club Uncut show. This is Taylor’s third London show in a week, including an in-store performance at Rough Trade on Saturday. Clearly, he’s on a roll.
Primal Scream have long held firm to the belief that the past is a hostile foreign country, much of it best left unvisited. It’s a condition that extends, for the most part, to their first two albums. Rarely – if ever – do they perform any of those tracks live, while 2004’s Dirty Hits compilation did a very good job of pretending nothing existed prior to the band’s self-declared Year Zero: Screamdelica. But it’s a strange policy, really. After all, without that self-titled second album – in particular the ballad “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have” – Screamadelica arguably wouldn’t exist, and we wouldn’t be here tonight.
This week has mostly been about Steve Coogan. The Trip – his BBC series with Rob Brydon – has prompted much discussion here in the Uncut office. As has the return of Coogan’s most famous creation, Alan Partridge – who as I’m sure you know by now is back in a series of short episodes released online.
To the capital’s glamorous West End, then, and the Opening Night Gala of this year’s London Film Festival at the Odeon Leicester Square. Introducing this film adaptation of his novel Never Let Me Go, the author Kazuo Ishiguro hailed the film’s stars – Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield – as being at the forefront of a new generation of actors. Arguably, Ishiguro was whipping up a bit of hyperbole, but Never Let Me Go is part of a slow shift away from heritage Brit drama towards a more subversive and questioning style of movie-making.
Just a little something that I thought would ease you into the week... Graffiti artist Banksy has storyboarded the opening credit sequence for the new episode of The Simpsons that airs in the States this evening...
What's this, you say? The Coen brothers remaking a John Wayne classic? With the Dude, no less, as Rooster Cogburn? Is this just the latest curveball from the Coens, the kind of twisted joke they're often accused of playing on their audience?
This was, roughly, the initial reception last year when news broke that the Coens were eyeing up True Grit. And, last week, the trailer finally arrived to prove they were serious.
More sad news, I'm afraid, coming so soon after the passing of Arthur Penn. Tony Curtis' death, aged 85, feels like the last severing of our link to a golden age of movies. Andrew Sumner spoke to him in late 2006, when he was promoting the DVD release of The Persuaders, his 70s TV series with Roger Moore. Curtis was on typically entertaining form: "Talk to me about anything you want, my English chum!" So we did, chatting at length through his career highs - including Some Like It Hot and Spartacus.
Sad news reached us last night of the death of Arthur Penn, aged 88. Penn, of course, was the director of many great films including Bonnie And Clyde, Night Moves and The Missouri Breaks.
Here, by way of a tribute, I thought we'd run the transcript of an interview Damien Love did with Penn for Uncut. The interview took place in 2004, while Penn, then 81, was directing a Broadway revival of the play Sly Fox. Speaking in detail about his career, he shared his memories of working with Beatty, Brando, Newman and Hackman, as well as discussing the enduring legacy of his masterpiece, Bonnie And Clyde.
The line-up for this year’s London Film Festival has now been announced - which means it’s time for me to give you a quick heads-up on some of the films we’re most looking forward to seeing during the festival. Apart from the new Mike Leigh and other festival die-hards, there’s plenty of promising stuff – docs on Lemmy, Mott the Hoople and Creation records plus Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Patrick Keiller’s Robinson In Ruins and Anton Corbijn’s The American.
“This,” says Robert Plant, gesturing round the former church that he’s chosen as the venue for tonight’s gig, “used be a house of the holy, now it’s obsolete. But it’s available for wedding receptions…”
It’s funny the way Plant puts a slight tremble in his voice when he says “house of the holy”, the only reference he makes all night to his other band. Zepwatchers might also chose to read plenty into Plant’s use of “obsolete”, especially after his comment in The Independent last week – “I feel so far away from heavy rock” – further reiterated his position that more Zeppelin activity is about as likely as a Beatles reunion.
