Subscribe
Home Blog Page 1053

Sufjan Stevens – Illinoise

Uncut
-
0

In an age when the commercial imperative has reduced the notion of ideal musical production to one of recycling old techno riffs, slapping a treated "cartoon" voice on top and flogging them as kiddywinks' ringtones, it takes a breathtaking leap of aesthetic faith to undertake a project like Sufjan Stevens' 50 States. Not even Yes or Magma at their most hubristic could match the ambition of Stevens' conception: a song-cycle of 50 albums, each concerning an individual American state - well, maybe 49 and an EP for Rhode Island. It isn’t just a succession of limp travelogues and familiar town songs like "Sweet Home Chicago", either. Stevens’ albums are idiosyncratic collections of mini-operettas, musings upon historical figures and legends, evocations of architecture, skylines and landscapes, ruminations upon localised industrial development, and even more arcane matters whose pertinence is not immediately obvious. All rendered in a weird, pan-stylistic blend of alt.country, minimalism and American brass band music, as if John Philip Sousa, Steve Reich and Bonnie “Prince” Billy had together stumbled across the clippings-file of some mid-west small-town newspaper and decided to set it to music. And then, just for good measure, given titles to the individual tracks which read like bogus headlines from The Onion: "Prairie Fire That Wanders About"; "The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us"; and my favourite, "To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region, I Have An Idea Concerning Your Predicament, And It Involves An Inner Tube, Bath Mats, And 21 Able-Bodied Men". Try fitting that on your bloody mobile, Crazy fucking Frog! Stevens started the project with his third album, 2003's Michigan, taking the easy way in with his home state. And now, after a personal detour for last year’s Seven Swans set and diligent researching of the relevant atlases, almanacs and biographies, Michigan's neighbour Illinois. A key track in establishing the general tone is "Come On! Feel The Illinoise!", whose punning title hides a rumbustious blend of piano, percussion and horns bustling along at some quirky tempo, with Stevens coming across like Ben Folds with a typically tricksy lyric that both celebrates and questions the notion of progress: "All great intentions/Get covered with the imitations/Have you no conscience?/Oh god of progress/Have you degraded or forgot us?". With a fusion-style keyboards solo, and a few streaks of violin shading the later stages, it recalls '60s Canterbury Sound bands such as Caravan, only more industriously energetic - as perhaps befits its subject. Individual towns are treated in a variety of ways. With a gentle piano and strings intro giving way to shambling banjo and guitar, "Jacksonville" is a heart-warming statement of faith in small-town cosiness: "I've seen things that are meant to save/The bandstand chairs, and the Dewey Day Parade/I go out to the Golden H/The spirit is right, and the spirit doesn't change". Set to lolloping banjo, guitar and accordion, "Decatur, Or, Round of Applause for Your Step-Mother!" mainly provides an opportunity to nonsense-rhyme the location with terms like alligator, hate her, data and aviator, as in a children's nursery-rhyme, ultimately establishing that "Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator" before concluding in round form with a series of staggered line-repetitions. On Michigan, Detroit's former industrial glories were the subject of celebration and eulogy. "Chicago", by contrast, is a much more personal piece, Stevens recalling romantic stays in that city, and subsequently his current home of New York, that helped him grow as a person: "I was in love with the place/In my mind/I made a lot of mistakes/In my mind". The only industry here is all in the arrangement, the youthful optimism summed up in the massed chorus and strings chugging eagerly along like a train. Here and in several other tracks, such as the aforementioned "Prairie Fire. . .", there's something of the anachronistic grandeur of The Polyphonic Spree about Stevens' musical vision. Elsewhere, more muted settings are appropriate, as in the brief, wistful piano and trumpet instrumental offered "To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region. . .", or the simple guitar and banjo that accompany Stevens' reminiscence of a prim bible-study-class romance in "Casimir Pulaski Day", with suitably upright horns lending dignity to the coda. In its evocation of lost innocence, and affectionate old-tyme musical texture, it recalls one of Van Dyke Parks' charming faux-historical curios. Less happily remembered is "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.", the serial killer's legend recounted over delicate piano and guitar. "His neighbours they adored him for his humour and his conversation/Look underneath the house there, find the few living things rotting fast in their sleep of the dead," sings Stevens, his hushed whisper shifting into pained falsetto as he recalls Gacy's victims, before considering his own secret shame: "But in my best behaviour, I am really just like him/Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid." Stevens manages to maintain a sort of mottled musical consistency throughout, applying his various tones, timbres and textures in the manner of an abstract painter, so that a splash of crunching rock guitar in "The Man Of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts" is balanced six tracks away by the mournful piano and spooky lowing of "The Seer's Tower", and the fluttering woodwind and declamatory choral chords of the Native American massacre elegy "The Black Hawk War. . ." (full title too long to include here) by the sparkling vibes and descending horn runs of "The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders" - without there being any apparent disjunction between the various parts. Rather, they combine as elements in a much larger overall picture, threaded together by the recurrent see-sawing minimalist orchestrations that feature in several tracks, culminating in the untitled bonus track that concludes the proceedings like a potted four-minute precis of Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians, its reeds, piano, tuned percussion and vocal sussurus shuffling daintily in and out of sync. Illinois is an extraordinary achievement, all the more so when one considers that besides researching and writing the album, Stevens also played most of the parts himself. And if he can be so inspired by a relatively unremarkable state such as this, just imagine what awaits us when he reaches places like Tennessee, Louisiana and California. . . By Andy Gill

In an age when the commercial imperative has reduced the notion of ideal musical production to one of recycling old techno riffs, slapping a treated “cartoon” voice on top and flogging them as kiddywinks’ ringtones, it takes a breathtaking leap of aesthetic faith to undertake a project like Sufjan Stevens’ 50 States.

Not even Yes or Magma at their most hubristic could match the ambition of Stevens’ conception: a song-cycle of 50 albums, each concerning an individual American state – well, maybe 49 and an EP for Rhode Island. It isn’t just a succession of limp travelogues and familiar town songs like “Sweet Home Chicago”, either. Stevens’ albums are idiosyncratic collections of mini-operettas, musings upon historical figures and legends, evocations of architecture, skylines and landscapes, ruminations upon localised industrial development, and even more arcane matters whose pertinence is not immediately obvious. All rendered in a weird, pan-stylistic blend of alt.country, minimalism and American brass band music, as if John Philip Sousa, Steve Reich and Bonnie “Prince” Billy had together stumbled across the clippings-file of some mid-west small-town newspaper and decided to set it to music. And then, just for good measure, given titles to the individual tracks which read like bogus headlines from The Onion: “Prairie Fire That Wanders About”; “The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us”; and my favourite, “To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region, I Have An Idea Concerning Your Predicament, And It Involves An Inner Tube, Bath Mats, And 21 Able-Bodied Men”. Try fitting that on your bloody mobile, Crazy fucking Frog!

Stevens started the project with his third album, 2003’s Michigan, taking the easy way in with his home state. And now, after a personal detour for last year’s Seven Swans set and diligent researching of the relevant atlases, almanacs and biographies, Michigan’s neighbour Illinois. A key track in establishing the general tone is “Come On! Feel The Illinoise!”, whose punning title hides a rumbustious blend of piano, percussion and horns bustling along at some quirky tempo, with Stevens coming across like Ben Folds with a typically tricksy lyric that both celebrates and questions the notion of progress: “All great intentions/Get covered with the imitations/Have you no conscience?/Oh god of progress/Have you degraded or forgot us?”. With a fusion-style keyboards solo, and a few streaks of violin shading the later stages, it recalls ’60s Canterbury Sound bands such as Caravan, only more industriously energetic – as perhaps befits its subject.

Individual towns are treated in a variety of ways. With a gentle piano and strings intro giving way to shambling banjo and guitar, “Jacksonville” is a heart-warming statement of faith in small-town cosiness: “I’ve seen things that are meant to save/The bandstand chairs, and the Dewey Day Parade/I go out to the Golden H/The spirit is right, and the spirit doesn’t change”. Set to lolloping banjo, guitar and accordion, “Decatur, Or, Round of Applause for Your Step-Mother!” mainly provides an opportunity to nonsense-rhyme the location with terms like alligator, hate her, data and aviator, as in a children’s nursery-rhyme, ultimately establishing that “Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator” before concluding in round form with a series of staggered line-repetitions.

On Michigan, Detroit’s former industrial glories were the subject of celebration and eulogy. “Chicago”, by contrast, is a much more personal piece, Stevens recalling romantic stays in that city, and subsequently his current home of New York, that helped him grow as a person: “I was in love with the place/In my mind/I made a lot of mistakes/In my mind”. The only industry here is all in the arrangement, the youthful optimism summed up in the massed chorus and strings chugging eagerly along like a train.

Here and in several other tracks, such as the aforementioned “Prairie Fire. . .”, there’s something of the anachronistic grandeur of The Polyphonic Spree about Stevens’ musical vision. Elsewhere, more muted settings are appropriate, as in the brief, wistful piano and trumpet instrumental offered “To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region. . .”, or the simple guitar and banjo that accompany Stevens’ reminiscence of a prim bible-study-class romance in “Casimir Pulaski Day”, with suitably upright horns lending dignity to the coda. In its evocation of lost innocence, and affectionate old-tyme musical texture, it recalls one of Van Dyke Parks’ charming faux-historical curios.

Less happily remembered is “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”, the serial killer’s legend recounted over delicate piano and guitar. “His neighbours they adored him for his humour and his conversation/Look underneath the house there, find the few living things rotting fast in their sleep of the dead,” sings Stevens, his hushed whisper shifting into pained falsetto as he recalls Gacy’s victims, before considering his own secret shame: “But in my best behaviour, I am really just like him/Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid.”

Stevens manages to maintain a sort of mottled musical consistency throughout, applying his various tones, timbres and textures in the manner of an abstract painter, so that a splash of crunching rock guitar in “The Man Of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts” is balanced six tracks away by the mournful piano and spooky lowing of “The Seer’s Tower”, and the fluttering woodwind and declamatory choral chords of the Native American massacre elegy “The Black Hawk War. . .” (full title too long to include here) by the sparkling vibes and descending horn runs of “The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders” – without there being any apparent disjunction between the various parts. Rather, they combine as elements in a much larger overall picture, threaded together by the recurrent see-sawing minimalist orchestrations that feature in several tracks, culminating in the untitled bonus track that concludes the proceedings like a potted four-minute precis of Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians, its reeds, piano, tuned percussion and vocal sussurus shuffling daintily in and out of sync.

Illinois is an extraordinary achievement, all the more so when one considers that besides researching and writing the album, Stevens also played most of the parts himself. And if he can be so inspired by a relatively unremarkable state such as this, just imagine what awaits us when he reaches places like Tennessee, Louisiana and California. . .

By Andy Gill

Interview: Frank Black

Uncut
-
0
Interview: Frank Black
Where did the idea of going down south to record Honeycomb come from? Well, it was my idea to go to Nashville, but that was years ago and it was just to walk in the footsteps very loosely of Blonde On Blonde: you know, go to Nashville and record an album with a bunch of guys who don’t know who I ...

Where did the idea of going down south to record Honeycomb come from?

Well, it was my idea to go to Nashville, but that was years ago and it was just to walk in the footsteps very loosely of Blonde On Blonde: you know, go to Nashville and record an album with a bunch of guys who don’t know who I am and a great record hopefully ensues. Jon Tiven and I talked about it for ten years and subsequently he actually moved to Nashville.

You first worked with Jon on an Otis Blackwell tribute album.

Yes, Brace Yourself. It had the worst album cover ever. Anyway, Jon’s the kind of guy who maintains his contacts. He’s got his little black book and calls once or twice a year to remind you he’s available to do the Black on Blonde project. And so finally we were able to do it. I didn’t worry about who he was going to ask. I knew he’d ask all stellar people, though I had no idea it was going to be guys like Steve Cropper. I think in a certain way they were glad to be asked, probably because they do a lot of straightforward country or pop stuff. And maybe Tiven talked me up to them.

Had they done anything like this?

I don’t know. They were challenged… well, more amused than challenged. I don’t think it was hard for them, but they had to think a little bit.

What did Reggie Young play on?

A bunch. Anything that’s like laid-back and smooth, that’s him. I didn’t know who he was. I know he’s famous, but I had no idea. I was so impressed that he played with Johnny Horton, who I love. He’s so smooth and soulful. When I listen to the record now, I’m thinking, “Those motherfuckers, they’re, like, commenting on my lyrics in the way they’re playing”. I didn’t necessarily notice at the time, but I can hear it now. If I’m saying something sexy, they play something sexy in response.

How was Spooner Oldham, the Harry Dean Stanton of deep soul? I saw him play on the Muscle Shoals night during the Barbican’s “It Came From Memphis” week in April.

He was great. Tiven complimented him on his restraint with some particular lick he played, and he just said, “Comes from many years of being in the recording business”.

And was Dan Penn just floating around in the background or what?

Yeah, just chewing his toothpick. And I knew he liked a particular song if he sang background vocals on it. He sang on ‘Dark End of the Street’ and it was just so smooth, man. He put down the lead vocal first, and I was like, “How can I sing it now?” But then he said, “I’m gonna go take a nap”, meaning I was free to sing it without him in the room and not feel weird about it. When Tiven said, “So, Charles, you wanna do ‘Dark End of the Street’”, I was like, “Oooh, I dunno, man”. And then those guys were suddenly out there doing it, and of course they all wanted me to do it. Someone like Dan Penn is no dummy. He figures, “I dunno who this kid is, but hey, I wanna get half the publishing on the song”. I’m being crass, of course. When he mixed it he goes, “Okay, Charles, I putcha voice nice’n’loud like one o’ them black guys”. I think he thought I was singing it like Aaron Neville or something, but really my reference wasn’t that, it was Gram Parsons and a whole other thing. It was also from listening to Freddy Fender records, which is a similarly high kind of fragile voice, light on its feet.

In a Tex-Mex connection, what made you choose Doug Sahm’s ‘Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day’ for the album?

Just fell in love with the song when I first heard it. Obsessed on it, drove my band the Catholics insane playing it over and over and over, recording it for like four different records but never getting it right. I just really love the song and the lyrics. “You’ll be king of what you survive”.

And then Elvis’ ‘Song of the Shrimp’ has southern connotations too.

That was prompted by Townes Van Zandt’s version on his last record. He just barely plays the song, he just hits a chord and sings a line and cracks up, hits another chord, makes a joke… it’s a really deconstructed but very entertaining version, and that was my reference point. I’ve still never even heard the Elvis version. It didn’t click until I hit a minor chord once instead of a major, and I was able to free myself to do an interpretation of the song instead of being so literal with it.

Did the musicians know anything about you or the Pixies?

David Hood has a son who plays in the Drive-By Truckers, so I think he knew something. And Cropper checked in with somebody and said, “Who is this guy?” If they’d known they probably wouldn’t have said anything. In a way it made me feel more confident that I had a Pixies tour to do, like I wasn’t just a kid and these guys had played with Elvis or whatever.

How come you decided to make the record on the eve of the reunion tour?

Well, ‘cause I called Tiven and said the Pixies tour wasn’t happening: “We’re all fightin’ and everything.” And then I had just finished the Catholics, and even if we didn’t say it was the last tour it sure felt like the fuckin’ last tour. We’d been playing together a long time, ten years of hard touring and loading our own gear and not making a lotta money out of it, and we’re hittin’ the mid-life crisis. And they’re all getting mad at me ‘cause I’m forcing them to record live to two-track for the umpteenth time. So it was like, “Alright, Tiven, I don’t know what I’m doing this year, I just got divorced, the Pixies tour ain’t happening, I’m ready to do Black on Blonde.” He called back the next day, got the band. I called back the next day and said the Pixies tour was back on but I had four or five days. And that’s one thing I like about Jon, he doesn’t ever bitch about restraints or anything. He just says, “Whatever you wanna do, you’re the artist”. He’s a can-do kinda guy.

Presumably you had to do a fair amount of rehearsal with the Pixies.

No, we got together for a total of three or four days, I think. And after two days it kinda sounded like the same, so we thought, “Okay, let’s go for it”.

Were all the songs on Honeycomb written specifically for it?

All of them, with the exception of “Selkie Bride”, were written in that time period of when I called Tiven in January, so right before the sessions. So I just sat in my little loft in Portland. I had not yet moved in with this woman I had met who lived in Oregon – she had two kids and I didn’t want to move in right away or even in the same town, which is Eugene. I sat in my loft and started writing the songs. I guess I had those guys in mind after Jon had told me what the band was. Well, I didn’t try to make my writing different, it inevitably just was. For one I was intimidated, so I knew it had to be good. Also I didn’t wanna do anything too quirky. And nor was I totally prepared. “My Life Is In Storage” I wrote in the hotel room in Nashville the night before we recorded it. So it was all very quick.

Is there a prevailing emotional mood to the record for you?

Well, you get the shit kicked out of you in a divorce. I don’t mean by my ex, either, it was very friendly, but just the whole thing was kinda gut-wrenching. We had been together for, like, sixteen years, so it’s kind of a heavy time. And I’d been going to a therapist. Started out as kind of a marriage counseling thing, not even to save our marriage coz we kinda knew what we were going to do, but just to talk about what we were gonna do so it was done the right way and we weren’t just cutting a gash in our soul. That whole debris, I sort of got into it and sort of enjoyed it, so I got into a whole lot more, like, personal therapy. So combining that with the act of moving to a different state after many years, and a new relationship, I just kind of gave up whatever I was neurotic or uptight about before, like “I don’t wanna be too personal”… all that stuff just didn’t matter anymore. It felt really good to be in pain. It was horrible, but it was nice to feel human. It was like, “Oh yeah, I am human”. And in a funny sort of way, those kinds of experiences, they give you authority to write with – conviction, as opposed to just writing from an imaginary place or a projecting kind of place. You’re writing from the place that you’re at. It’s nice to be able to feel, “Oh yeah, I went deep because I could, and I couldn’t before”.

And yet as deeply personal as it is, there’s something quite calm and considered about these songs. Songs like “Another Velvet Nightmare” have a very Leonard Cohen feel.

Yeah, I think that listening to some of his records in recent years, there’s a thing, an attitude that he has going on that I really, really like. He can be dark and down but it’s very humorous and it’s very smart and witty. He’s very cool. It’s almost like a Bryan Ferry stance, with the whole wrinkled suit and the cigarette. It’s a little bit like, “I can handle myself. Yes, I was destroyed, but let me tell you about it…” For a lot of people my age, I’m Your Man was the record that got you into Leonard Cohen. I heard that record round about 1989 on a Pixies tour and became obsessed with it. It all clicked and I got who he was. Now I can go back to his earlier records and listen to them, no problem. I think my mother’s in love with him. She’s got this Austin City Limits performance by him that we always watch together when I visit her.

After writing and recording these songs, was it at all strange to be plunged back into Pixie-world?

Yeah, but I didn’t have to do it, really. It’s funny, because when I play with those guys I sing different. In rehearsals it was like, “Oh, there’s that voice again”. It’s kind of effortless, because that band was kind of au naturel, real rough. That’s what we were. It was very uncontrived. Whatever was pretentious about it was… real! The tour was great, and we’re gonna continue to do it because we can’t really think of a reason not to.

What about a new album?

I don’t know. I don’t think so. We’d have to kind of reinvent ourselves or something if we were ever going to do that. And I don’t know if the demand is there, really. It has to be about more than commerce. To take a ten- or eleven- year sabbatical and it goes well, then it feels funny to go make a record to take advantage of this situation. Whatever box we were performing or writing within before, it’s really gotta break through all that and just be upside down. Kim has to be the lead vocalist or something, or Joey has to sing. Or it has to be all waltzes.

You’ve said that Honeycomb was the most moving experience you’ve had in your musical career. Would that come as some surprise to hardcore Pixies fans, do you think?

Yeah, but that’s because making the Pixies’ records was different. That was young guys and a gal, a lot more ego involved. It’s not that it wasn’t interesting or fun or exciting, but “moving” is not the way I would describe it. “Spiritual” is not the way I would describe it. Energetic, for sure, but not poignant or whatever. We were just too young. It’s poignant looking back at it, but that’s a different kind of experience. Playing with these guys in Nashville, they’ve done it all, played with everybody, been to hell and back. They’ve just lived so much more life.

Interview by Barney Hoskyns

Silver City

Uncut
-
0
Silver City

Scattergun rants abound in American movies (ask Michael Moore), but pensive political satire is less common. John Sayles is supremely astute at picking at flabby, corrupt systems. Silver City is an intelligent, thought-through, novelistic piece of work, blessed by a brilliant Dubya send-up from Chris Cooper. If it's a little slow and preachy, and short on actual humour (for a satire), its messages ring loud and clear. We're introduced to the inarticulate Senator Pilger (Cooper). He has a ferocious campaign manager (Richard Dreyfuss) and a murky, influential backer (Kris Kristofferson). Also a knack for shooting himself in the foot. "Those were the good old days," he tells an assembly. "All you needed was a good strong rope and a tree to hang it from." Sayles then switches focus. Danny Huston's jaded detective takes centre stage, probing Pilger's background. He vies with journalist Maria Bello (his ex), lobbyist Billy Zane (her new beau), and Pilger's scandal-magnet pothead sister, Daryl Hannah. Tim Roth and Thora Birch are website radicals. Everyone Huston meets gives a speech, states a viewpoint. Because of this bring-on-the-next-opinion structure, the film never gathers dramatic momentum or achieves the noir intensity of the thrillers it admires - Chinatown, The Maltese Falcon. There's no doubting its fine intent though: as one cipher says, "Someone has to plant a seed". By Chris Roberts

Scattergun rants abound in American movies (ask Michael Moore), but pensive political satire is less common. John Sayles is supremely astute at picking at flabby, corrupt systems. Silver City is an intelligent, thought-through, novelistic piece of work, blessed by a brilliant Dubya send-up from Chris Cooper. If it’s a little slow and preachy, and short on actual humour (for a satire), its messages ring loud and clear.

We’re introduced to the inarticulate Senator Pilger (Cooper). He has a ferocious campaign manager (Richard Dreyfuss) and a murky, influential backer (Kris Kristofferson). Also a knack for shooting himself in the foot. “Those were the good old days,” he tells an assembly. “All you needed was a good strong rope and a tree to hang it from.”

Sayles then switches focus. Danny Huston’s jaded detective takes centre stage, probing Pilger’s background. He vies with journalist Maria Bello (his ex), lobbyist Billy Zane (her new beau), and Pilger’s scandal-magnet pothead sister, Daryl Hannah. Tim Roth and Thora Birch are website radicals. Everyone Huston meets gives a speech, states a viewpoint.

Because of this bring-on-the-next-opinion structure, the film never gathers dramatic momentum or achieves the noir intensity of the thrillers it admires – Chinatown, The Maltese Falcon. There’s no doubting its fine intent though: as one cipher says, “Someone has to plant a seed”.

By Chris Roberts

Punishment Park

Uncut
-
0
Punishment Park

Since the mid-1950s, Peter Watkins has been making radical and challenging films that have mixed improvisational, dramatic and documentary techniques to incredible and often innovative effect. You'd know him best for The War Game, a nightmarish BBC semi-documentary from 1966 about the effects of a nuclear strike on Britain, which was banned from broadcast. Since then, he's lived in self-imposed exile while his work has become increasingly marginalized, rarely seen outside retrospectives or film festivals. Punishment Park is his only American movie, made in 1971 as the social and political turmoil of the era reached a peak. Here, Watkins envisaged an authoritarian clampdown by the Nixon administration on radicals and activists. Stripped of their rights, they're presented with a stark choice by establishment tribunals: either lengthy prison sentences, or running the gauntlet of Punishment Park, a three-day marathon through the high desert with armed National Guardsmen on their trail. In a nutshell, it's Battle Royale with peaceniks, though the tribunal hearings are at least as important to Watkins as the action sequences he cuts into them. Anticipating the conventions of reality TV, the film shows 'ordinary people' (at least, non-professional actors) reacting to a highly charged situation in ways that are always credible and often disturbing. There is one story that Watkins halted filming at one point because he was worried that the actors playing the National Guardsmen had loaded real shells into their rifles. The extent to which Watkins found the pulse of the times can be measured in the extreme hostility of contemporaneous US reviews. The film was pulled after only four days in New York and has rarely screened since. Thirty years on, the counter culture rhetoric sounds strange to our ears - but in other ways this film is more relevant than ever. In the light of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the Patriot Act, the Bush administration's blatant disregard not only for civil liberties but for human rights, Watkins' paranoid metaphor feels all too valid. Screening with his other movies - including The War Game and the Vietnam allegory Culloden - as part of a retrospective at London's ICA, this is a valuable opportunity to explore the work of one of the most overlooked, but important, film makers of his generation. By Tom Charity

Since the mid-1950s, Peter Watkins has been making radical and challenging films that have mixed improvisational, dramatic and documentary techniques to incredible and often innovative effect. You’d know him best for The War Game, a nightmarish BBC semi-documentary from 1966 about the effects of a nuclear strike on Britain, which was banned from broadcast. Since then, he’s lived in self-imposed exile while his work has become increasingly marginalized, rarely seen outside retrospectives or film festivals.

Punishment Park is his only American movie, made in 1971 as the social and political turmoil of the era reached a peak. Here, Watkins envisaged an authoritarian clampdown by the Nixon administration on radicals and activists. Stripped of their rights, they’re presented with a stark choice by establishment tribunals: either lengthy prison sentences, or running the gauntlet of Punishment Park, a three-day marathon through the high desert with armed National Guardsmen on their trail.

In a nutshell, it’s Battle Royale with peaceniks, though the tribunal hearings are at least as important to Watkins as the action sequences he cuts into them. Anticipating the conventions of reality TV, the film shows ‘ordinary people’ (at least, non-professional actors) reacting to a highly charged situation in ways that are always credible and often disturbing. There is one story that Watkins halted filming at one point because he was worried that the actors playing the National Guardsmen had loaded real shells into their rifles.

The extent to which Watkins found the pulse of the times can be measured in the extreme hostility of contemporaneous US reviews. The film was pulled after only four days in New York and has rarely screened since. Thirty years on, the counter culture rhetoric sounds strange to our ears – but in other ways this film is more relevant than ever. In the light of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the Patriot Act, the Bush administration’s blatant disregard not only for civil liberties but for human rights, Watkins’ paranoid metaphor feels all too valid.

Screening with his other movies – including The War Game and the Vietnam allegory Culloden – as part of a retrospective at London’s ICA, this is a valuable opportunity to explore the work of one of the most overlooked, but important, film makers of his generation.

By Tom Charity

Batman Begins

Uncut
-
0
Batman Begins

After Joel Schumacher's gaudy, camp debacle of 1997, Batman & Robin, George Clooney sighed, "Y'know, I think we might have buried that franchise." Chris Nolan - who in Following, Memento and Insomnia proved himself a modern master of suspense, foreboding and atmosphere - has brought the caped crusader back to life by sending him back to his roots. Taking Batman: Year One as the chief source graphic novel, and co-writing with David Goyer (Blade, Dark City), this intimate, brooding resurrection of the Dark Knight mythology shows us how and why Bruce Wayne became Batman in the first place. We're halfway through the (long) movie before he dons the batsuit and revs up the batmobile. And then, all hell - or at least all the crazy sickness of a sweating, sprawling, psychotic Gotham City - breaks loose. Blockbuster fans craving a rollercoaster ride will get it in the second half, and it'll be evident that Blade Runner is Nolan's favourite film, but in telling of Wayne's traumatic ticket to reluctant superhero status the movie's opening passages are anguished and elemental. Fear is the key. From a childhood scare, industrial heir Wayne's afraid of bats. He learns to turn that fear around and use it as a symbol against Gotham's grisliest criminals. When his parents are killed by a mugger, Wayne turns mean. He's picking fights willy-nilly ("you're not the devil - you're practice") until enigmatic mentors Liam Neeson and Ken Watanabe, members of The League Of Shadows, train him to be more selective and potent. But they're not simply forces for good, and Wayne returns to the perma-rain of Gotham aiming to clean up the streets himself. Caine, as trusted family butler Alfred, and Freeman, as an out-of-favour Wayne Enterprises employee, are to be his new mentors and allies, while the bat outfit and vehicle are modified from his father's experiments for the military. Corruption is rife. Tom Wilkinson's a crime lord; charismatic Cillian Murphy's creepy doctor Jonathan Crane with an alter ego as The Scarecrow. There's a plot to release hallucinogenic toxins into the air. With the help of sole good cop Jim Gordon (Oldman) and assistant DA and childhood friend Rachel Dawes (Holmes), "The Bat Man" is in business. With sheer strength, no little intellect and a dash of high-tech smoke and mirrors, he's a mighty avenger, flawed but now fearless. While Tim Burton introduced his cool, dark Batman sixteen years ago, showing affinity with the DC books but shocking fans of the poppy, iconic Sixties TV show, Nolan takes the character's pain and loneliness further. He anchors his formative years in a strangely plausible reality. Much credit goes to Bale, who manages to draw empathy despite (as in American Psycho) almost parodying macho - the gruff, growling voice, the slightly smug superiority. So dense is the psychological truth that we believe those are his defense mechanisms, hiding vulnerability. He's also - after The Machinist - completed another remarkable physical transformation. He and Nolan have some fun, too, with Bruce the playboy's attempts to hide his true nature. In case this is all sounding earnest - and much of the film is, grippingly so - it contains countless bravura moments, with only minimal use of CGI. There's Batman gazing down on the Lang-in-sulphur metropolis (actually Chicago). Wayne clambering up snowy mountains in Iceland. The batmobile roaring thrillingly through a waterfall to enter the batcave. Bats like Hitchcock's birds. And the sense that, unlike Raimi's Spider-Man or Donner's Superman, this nocturnal creature could go off at any minute. He's a loose cannon, a tad trigger-fingered. "I'm not one of your good people, Rachel." So there's no Boy Wonder here, no Riddler or Penguin or Catwoman, no sock, pow or holy exclamation mark, and just one cute (sequel-suggesting) in-joke about The Joker. For all the stunning scenery and cast, it's all about the inner howl under the cowl. This time it's serious. For Nolan, this guarantees A-list status. Bale, too. For Batman, it's back to the night; a princely, poignant return to darkness. By Chris Roberts

After Joel Schumacher’s gaudy, camp debacle of 1997, Batman & Robin, George Clooney sighed, “Y’know, I think we might have buried that franchise.” Chris Nolan – who in Following, Memento and Insomnia proved himself a modern master of suspense, foreboding and atmosphere – has brought the caped crusader back to life by sending him back to his roots. Taking Batman: Year One as the chief source graphic novel, and co-writing with David Goyer (Blade, Dark City), this intimate, brooding resurrection of the Dark Knight mythology shows us how and why Bruce Wayne became Batman in the first place. We’re halfway through the (long) movie before he dons the batsuit and revs up the batmobile. And then, all hell – or at least all the crazy sickness of a sweating, sprawling, psychotic Gotham City – breaks loose. Blockbuster fans craving a rollercoaster ride will get it in the second half, and it’ll be evident that Blade Runner is Nolan’s favourite film, but in telling of Wayne’s traumatic ticket to reluctant superhero status the movie’s opening passages are anguished and elemental.

Fear is the key. From a childhood scare, industrial heir Wayne’s afraid of bats. He learns to turn that fear around and use it as a symbol against Gotham’s grisliest criminals. When his parents are killed by a mugger, Wayne turns mean. He’s picking fights willy-nilly (“you’re not the devil – you’re practice”) until enigmatic mentors Liam Neeson and Ken Watanabe, members of The League Of Shadows, train him to be more selective and potent. But they’re not simply forces for good, and Wayne returns to the perma-rain of Gotham aiming to clean up the streets himself. Caine, as trusted family butler Alfred, and Freeman, as an out-of-favour Wayne Enterprises employee, are to be his new mentors and allies, while the bat outfit and vehicle are modified from his father’s experiments for the military.

Corruption is rife. Tom Wilkinson’s a crime lord; charismatic Cillian Murphy’s creepy doctor Jonathan Crane with an alter ego as The Scarecrow. There’s a plot to release hallucinogenic toxins into the air. With the help of sole good cop Jim Gordon (Oldman) and assistant DA and childhood friend Rachel Dawes (Holmes), “The Bat Man” is in business. With sheer strength, no little intellect and a dash of high-tech smoke and mirrors, he’s a mighty avenger, flawed but now fearless.

While Tim Burton introduced his cool, dark Batman sixteen years ago, showing affinity with the DC books but shocking fans of the poppy, iconic Sixties TV show, Nolan takes the character’s pain and loneliness further. He anchors his formative years in a strangely plausible reality. Much credit goes to Bale, who manages to draw empathy despite (as in American Psycho) almost parodying macho – the gruff, growling voice, the slightly smug superiority. So dense is the psychological truth that we believe those are his defense mechanisms, hiding vulnerability. He’s also – after The Machinist – completed another remarkable physical transformation. He and Nolan have some fun, too, with Bruce the playboy’s attempts to hide his true nature.

In case this is all sounding earnest – and much of the film is, grippingly so – it contains countless bravura moments, with only minimal use of CGI. There’s Batman gazing down on the Lang-in-sulphur metropolis (actually Chicago). Wayne clambering up snowy mountains in Iceland. The batmobile roaring thrillingly through a waterfall to enter the batcave. Bats like Hitchcock’s birds. And the sense that, unlike Raimi’s Spider-Man or Donner’s Superman, this nocturnal creature could go off at any minute. He’s a loose cannon, a tad trigger-fingered. “I’m not one of your good people, Rachel.” So there’s no Boy Wonder here, no Riddler or Penguin or Catwoman, no sock, pow or holy exclamation mark, and just one cute (sequel-suggesting) in-joke about The Joker. For all the stunning scenery and cast, it’s all about the inner howl under the cowl. This time it’s serious.

For Nolan, this guarantees A-list status. Bale, too. For Batman, it’s back to the night; a princely, poignant return to darkness.

By Chris Roberts

Uncut at the movies

Uncut
-
0
Uncut at the movies
We want to know what you think. Please give these artists a score out of ten to show how much you like them, and how much you would like to see them in Uncut Magazine....

We want to know what you think. Please give these artists a score out of ten to show how much you like them, and how much you would like to see them in Uncut Magazine.

Coldplay – X&Y

Uncut
-
0
Coldplay – X&Y

Soft, strong, and very long, Coldplay’s third album finds this remarkable band cruising into their prime, playing to their strengths and at the same time taking, for them, a few considered risks. Their momentum is such that even if X&Y contained several stinkers (it doesn’t, but could lose a couple of mawkish later tracks) it would still top charts everywhere, selling squillions. Call them what you like – the housewives’ choice, the Tim Henmans of rock – but make no mistake, X&Y is an exceptional pop record. An unabashed epic of Joshua Tree-sized proportions glazed with a woozy Kid A-like synthetic veneer, its first seven songs are the finest the band have written, which says something of their calibre. You can well believe Chris Martin when he claims songs such as “Fix You” and “A Message” were “sent” to him almost fully-formed, as if dispatched by some divine tunesmith, for Coldplay’s deft mastery of melody and emotion, that chiming melancholic euphoria, is frankly awesome. As a lyricist, family man Martin certainly has lots to scribble down these days but, alas, he’s no Morrissey. Intriguingly oblique at best, trite at worst (see “Swallowed In The Sea”), if it’s broken, lost or vulnerable, Chris is still your man to sing about it. Nevertheless, there’s plenty on X&Y for Coldplay’s insipid disciples Snow Patrol, Keane and Embrace to feast upon for years, god help us. It’s clear Coldplay wanted to advance musically without alienating their audience. They scrapped most of their first, more electronic attempt at this album because it lacked soul, retaining a few prized cuts for b-sides. But beneath stadium-slayers like “White Shadows” and “Low” pulses a healthy experimental zeal of which Brian Eno, whose productions Martin admits influenced the sleek feel of X&Y, would surely approve. “Talk”, above all, which builds upon Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love” refrain with New Ordered flair, is the perfect example of Martin’s intent. It shouldn’t work, but does, beautifully. Coldplay are now so obscenely successful that for many they’ve become a guilty pleasure. But you shouldn’t be ashamed to enjoy X&Y. Not only is it 2005’s biggest album, it’s also one of its best. By Piers Martin

Soft, strong, and very long, Coldplay’s third album finds this remarkable band cruising into their prime, playing to their strengths and at the same time taking, for them, a few considered risks. Their momentum is such that even if X&Y contained several stinkers (it doesn’t, but could lose a couple of mawkish later tracks) it would still top charts everywhere, selling squillions.

Call them what you like – the housewives’ choice, the Tim Henmans of rock – but make no mistake, X&Y is an exceptional pop record. An unabashed epic of Joshua Tree-sized proportions glazed with a woozy Kid A-like synthetic veneer, its first seven songs are the finest the band have written, which says something of their calibre. You can well believe Chris Martin when he claims songs such as “Fix You” and “A Message” were “sent” to him almost fully-formed, as if dispatched by some divine tunesmith, for Coldplay’s deft mastery of melody and emotion, that chiming melancholic euphoria, is frankly awesome.

As a lyricist, family man Martin certainly has lots to scribble down these days but, alas, he’s no Morrissey. Intriguingly oblique at best, trite at worst (see “Swallowed In The Sea”), if it’s broken, lost or vulnerable, Chris is still your man to sing about it. Nevertheless, there’s plenty on X&Y for Coldplay’s insipid disciples Snow Patrol, Keane and Embrace to

feast upon for years, god help us.

It’s clear Coldplay wanted to advance musically without alienating their audience. They scrapped most of their first, more electronic attempt at this album because it lacked soul, retaining a few prized cuts for b-sides. But beneath stadium-slayers like “White Shadows” and “Low” pulses a healthy experimental zeal of which Brian Eno, whose productions Martin admits influenced the sleek feel of X&Y, would surely approve. “Talk”, above all, which builds upon Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love” refrain with New Ordered flair, is the perfect example of Martin’s intent. It shouldn’t work, but does, beautifully.

Coldplay are now so obscenely successful that for many they’ve become a guilty pleasure. But you shouldn’t be ashamed to enjoy X&Y. Not only is it 2005’s biggest album, it’s also one of its best.

By Piers Martin

Foo Fighters – In Your Honour

Uncut
-
0
Foo Fighters – In Your Honour

Recent stints playing celebrity sticksman with Queens Of The Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails, or marshalling a regiment of extreme metal’s great and good in 2004’s Probot project have confirmed Dave Grohl’s reputation as one of rock’s great dilettantes. Faintly flabbergasting, then, to realise that Foo Fighters – usually billed as “Dave Grohl’s post-Nirvana outfit”, or something equally short on fanfare – is this year celebrating its tenth anniversary. Grohl, however, is aware of the Foos’ vintage. In Your Honour, he claims, is intended as a career landmark of the stripe of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti: an eclectic, heavyweight double-album, a “definitive” work. Sporting a concept (one ‘rock’ disc, one ‘acoustic’), a vague theme (the US Presidential Election), and a guestlist that should befuddle any attendant mosher kids (the Zep’s John Paul Jones plays piano and mandolin on “Miracle” and “Another Round” respectively, Norah Jones turns up for ‘Virginia Moon’, a sweet duet borne along on jazzy, brushed drums), it’s unquestionably the work of a band with ambitions rekindled. While the opening salvo of In Your Honour is clearly inspired by Grohl’s experiences supporting John Kerry on the trail, not even the souring of the Democrat dream has sullied its triumphalist edge. Such is the Foos’ talent for breezy, one-size-fits-all optimism that even the unambiguous likes of “No Way Back” (“Pleased to meet you, shake my hand/There is no way back from here”) work outside their original context. Grohl’s dogged pleasantness, however, occasionally proves his Achilles’ Heel. “Hell” and “Free Me” do the Hüsker Dü with entertaining vigour, but by the close of Disc One, you’re hunkering for some light and shade. Luckily, Disc Two mostly delivers. “Friend Of A Friend”, penned on a Nirvana tour back in 1992, is an uncharacteristically spiked critique of slackerdom that bears an eerie Cobain influence. Meanwhile, the chiming “Cold Day In The Sun”, fronted by drummer Taylor Hawkins, is a Ringo moment that’s pretty enough not to knock matters off course. And given the potential perils and pitfalls of the double-album, that’s surely enough to chalk this one up as a success. By Louis Pattison

Recent stints playing celebrity sticksman with Queens Of The Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails, or marshalling a regiment of extreme metal’s great and good in 2004’s Probot project have confirmed Dave Grohl’s reputation as one of rock’s great dilettantes. Faintly flabbergasting, then, to realise that Foo Fighters – usually billed as “Dave Grohl’s post-Nirvana outfit”, or something equally short on fanfare – is this year celebrating its tenth anniversary.

Grohl, however, is aware of the Foos’ vintage. In Your Honour, he claims, is intended as a career landmark of the stripe of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti: an eclectic, heavyweight double-album, a “definitive” work. Sporting a concept (one ‘rock’ disc, one ‘acoustic’), a vague theme (the US Presidential Election), and a guestlist that should befuddle any attendant mosher kids (the Zep’s John Paul Jones plays piano and mandolin on “Miracle” and “Another Round” respectively, Norah Jones turns up for ‘Virginia Moon’, a sweet duet borne along on jazzy, brushed drums), it’s unquestionably the work of a band with ambitions rekindled.

While the opening salvo of In Your Honour is clearly inspired by Grohl’s experiences supporting John Kerry on the trail, not even the souring of the Democrat dream has sullied its triumphalist edge. Such is the Foos’ talent for breezy, one-size-fits-all optimism that even the unambiguous likes of “No Way Back” (“Pleased to meet you, shake my hand/There is no way back from here”) work outside their original context. Grohl’s dogged pleasantness, however, occasionally proves his Achilles’ Heel. “Hell” and “Free Me” do the Hüsker Dü with entertaining vigour, but by the close of Disc One, you’re hunkering for some light and shade.

Luckily, Disc Two mostly delivers. “Friend Of A Friend”, penned on a Nirvana tour back in 1992, is an uncharacteristically spiked critique of slackerdom that bears an eerie Cobain influence. Meanwhile, the chiming “Cold Day In The Sun”, fronted by drummer Taylor Hawkins, is a Ringo moment that’s pretty enough not to knock matters off course. And given the potential perils and pitfalls of the double-album, that’s surely enough to chalk this one up as a success.

By Louis Pattison

Ry Cooder – Chávez Ravine

Uncut
-
0
Ry Cooder – Chávez Ravine

After a decade of travels that have taken him from Timbuktu to Cuba, Ry Cooder has come home to shine a light on a shameful episode in LA’s civic history. For this son of white middle-class Santa Monica, the 1950 razing of Chicano enclave Chávez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium is a matter of enduring injustice. The good news is that the event has inspired a record bursting with anger, sensuality and humour – in City Of Quartz author Mike Davis’ words, “a magical-realist street opera” about East LA and its vibrant life. The album is a giant tostada of influences: Davis himself, James Ellroy, Leiber & Stoller, doo-wop nights at the legendary El Monte Legion stadium, and the kings of good-time conjunto and corrido dance music. Assisting him in realizing this 70-minute song-suite is a loose group of Mex-American legends: Chicano figurehead Lalo Guerrero, Pachuco boogieman Don Tosti, Little Willie G of Eastside rockers Thee Midniters. Highlights on the album include the playfully swaying “Poor Man’s Shangri-La”, the slow and spookily beautiful “El UFO Cayo”, featuring Juliette Commagere, and the Tom-Waits-esque “It’s Just Work for Me”, a shrugging apologia from one of Chávez ‘s bulldozers. Despite being ensconced in the Warner-Reprise mafia of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, Cooder’s music has generally been made in opposition to SoCal norms, burrowing into forgotten nooks with a scholarly curiosity. With Chávez Ravine he has performed another ethnomusicological miracle, opening a can of worms while drawing us deep into the musical heart of a lost community. “Only memories remain,” Ersi Arvizu of the Sisters sings, “which you don’t forget over time.” Ry Cooder has done his bit to ensure his hometown doesn’t forget either. By Barney Hoskyns

After a decade of travels that have taken him from Timbuktu to Cuba, Ry Cooder has come home to shine a light on a shameful episode in LA’s civic history. For this son of white middle-class Santa Monica, the 1950 razing of Chicano enclave Chávez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium is a matter of enduring injustice.

The good news is that the event has inspired a record bursting with anger, sensuality and humour – in City Of Quartz author Mike Davis’ words, “a magical-realist street opera” about East LA and its vibrant life. The album is a giant tostada of influences: Davis himself, James Ellroy, Leiber & Stoller, doo-wop nights at the legendary El Monte Legion stadium, and the kings of good-time conjunto and corrido dance music.

Assisting him in realizing this 70-minute song-suite is a loose group of Mex-American legends: Chicano figurehead Lalo Guerrero, Pachuco boogieman Don Tosti, Little Willie G of Eastside rockers Thee Midniters. Highlights on the album include the playfully swaying “Poor Man’s Shangri-La”, the slow and spookily beautiful “El UFO Cayo”, featuring Juliette Commagere, and the Tom-Waits-esque “It’s Just Work for Me”, a shrugging apologia from one of Chávez ‘s bulldozers.

Despite being ensconced in the Warner-Reprise mafia of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, Cooder’s music has generally been made in opposition to SoCal norms, burrowing into forgotten nooks with a scholarly curiosity. With Chávez Ravine he has performed another ethnomusicological miracle, opening a can of worms while drawing us deep into the musical heart of a lost community.

“Only memories remain,” Ersi Arvizu of the Sisters sings, “which you don’t forget over time.” Ry Cooder has done his bit to ensure his hometown doesn’t forget either.

By Barney Hoskyns

The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan

Uncut
-
0
The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan

“Today I got some new plans,” wrote Jack White on November 18, 2004, the last entry on his website before work began on the fifth White Stripes album. “I thought about having a failure, but not a fake one a real one. . . Sort of enjoying the success of not succeeding on purpose? That’s funny!” In March, Jack and Meg White started recording at his home in Detroit. Even by their standards, it was an unfussy process: 13 ideas finessed into songs, caught on tape by their live soundman Matthew Kettle and completed in a fortnight. By most other people’s standards, it appears a slapdash way of working - how better to manufacture a failure than by rushing through a bunch of half-formed song-sketches? And there are other signs that the duo’s latest game is one of self-sabotage. Abandoning electric guitar for much of the album should theoretically scurf off a few fans, and choosing Get Behind Me Satan for a title compounds an impression of Jack White on the run from fame, rejecting the temptations of success just as emphatically as Jesus turned his back on the Devil in the wilderness. It’s a plausible reading of the plot, but one which conveniently ignores two fairly major issues. One, thus far into his career, Jack White seems congenitally incapable of making a bad record. And two, most of us learned long ago not to take anything this teasing, charming trickster says at face value. Get Behind Me Satan is certainly an odder record than the four White Stripes albums which preceded it. Track One, “Blue Orchid”, which you’ll already know, roughly translates “Back In Black” into a morse code signal for its priapic disco-metal. Track Two, “The Nurse”, a tropical marimba noir, is randomly punctuated by white noise flares. At least one song, “The Denial Twist”, seems to draw on primitive rhythm’n’blues, the golden age of Hollywood and - with its breakbeat, bells and spat-out rhymes - old school hip hop. Get Behind Me Satan, though, is hardly an alienating, experimental listen. While the instrumentation has generally shifted away from garage rock fuzz, White hasn’t written such an accessible set of songs since 2000’s De Stijl. There’s a sense of The White Stripes reconfiguring their sound, as if realising that the original guitar/drums blueprint could only be extended so far, but the minimalist formula could be stretched much further. By pushing other instruments into the foreground, and creating a mix full of space, surprise and disorienting analogue effects – from that jet-engine whoosh 14 seconds into “Blue Orchid” onwards - White stays true to the band’s aesthetic vision, while mapping multiple paths away from stagnation. All include Meg. Professional divorce, so frequently predicted, seems much less imminent. The marimba that makes an arresting, shimmering first appearance on “The Nurse” will attract most of the attention, but Get Behind Me Satan is fundamentally a piano record. The stereotypical image of The White Stripes as a blues and garage rock band ignores their love of Tin Pan Alley and showtunes, of ‘30s and ‘40s Hollywood, which has always quietly flourished. Cole Porter’s picture featured in the booklet of 2003’s Elephant, and even 1997’s debut single “Let’s Shake Hands” had as its b-side a camp sashay through Marlene Dietrich’s cabaret hit, “Look Me Over Closely”. Consequently, the most immediately lovable song on Get Behind Me Satan is “My Doorbell”, springy piano funk with a ‘30s novelty tune lodged in its DNA and White playing the vulnerable lover in a pinched falsetto reminiscent of Little Richard, albeit Little Richard thoroughly desexualised. “When you have a job to write something for a Broadway musical, you don’t have much time, you have to write a hit,” White told Uncut in 2001, and admiration for this kind of rapid craftsmanship is all over the album and its paraphernalia: the ragtime sheet music sat on his piano in the picture; the fact that the title could just as easily echo an old Irving Berlin song, “Get Thee Behind Me Satan”, as the New Testament. If Elephant gained notoriety thanks to its Luddite flaunting of pre-1963 equipment, much of Get Behind Me Satan’s action seems to take place deeper in the past, or further away from rock’n’roll. Two blousy showstoppers – “Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)” and “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)” – reference Burt Bacharach and White’s former employer Loretta Lynn respectively. The album’s totemic figure, Rita Hayworth (briefly wife of Orson Welles, himself the inspiration for 2001’s “The Union Forever”), stars in two songs: the mix of solemn piano chords and doggerel that is “White Moon”; and the outstanding “Take, Take, Take”. In the latter, White satirises the relationship between celebrity and public by casting himself as an infatuated fan. He politely bugs Hayworth, asks for her autograph, asks for her picture, portrays himself as someone “not too hard to please” who, hypocritically, wants more and more from his heroine. “She didn’t even care that I was even there – what a horrible feeling,” he concludes, as if in empathy with the fans who want a piece of him. It would be easy to imagine Hayworth, with her duplicitous Tinseltown ways, as a cipher for White’s ex-girlfriend, Renee Zellweger. Given that the couple split towards the end of 2004, Zellweger – or what Zellweger represents – could tritely be seen as the “Satan” cast off in the title. But it’s just as likely that Hayworth is a cipher for White himself: a superstar whose tolerance of his public is generous, but not boundless; and whose nurtured image is at odds with a well-known secret. Hayworth was an all-American girl with a barely-concealed prehistory as Spanish starlet Marguerita Cansino. White constantly reminds us he is Meg’s little brother, even though the certificate confirming their brief marriage has long been filed on the internet. The new album, he claims, is about “characters and the ideal of truth”, as if to warn us off fishing for too much autobiographical detail in the songs. It’s a familiar strategy: “I like things that are as honest as possible, even if sometimes they can only be an imitation of honesty,” he told NME in 2001. “But a good impression is interesting if you can’t get the real thing.” In this way, Get Behind Me Satan is the logical development of The White Stripes as a conceptual art project, a theatrical scam which brilliantly synthesises authenticity through the characters of two gauche Detroit siblings. Regular themes in this fiction rise to the surface. Meg’s fleeting showcase, “Passive Manipulation”, plays with family roles and warns, “Women, listen to your mothers, don’t just succumb to the wishes of your brothers.” Jack is constantly at the mercy of the women he adores: chivalrously waiting at home in “My Doorbell”; gently humiliated by Hayworth in “Take, Take, Take”; dancing with thin air on “Little Ghost”, a kind of bluegrass “Hotel Yorba”. On “Instinct Blues” he’s even “The worm that’s under your shoe”, as a grinding 12-bar riff is slowly tugged off its axis by White’s Hendrix-esque explosions. And yet again, The White Stripes have engineered a blend of music and myth so compelling that the reality behind their oblique, eccentric stories is barely worth seeking out. Occasionally, one seems to stumble on White in an unguarded moment. “Ugly As I Seem” – imagine an agitated Led Zeppelin in Bron-Y-Aur – finds Meg with a set of Steve Took’s bongos and Jack cradling an acoustic, squirming away from analysis. “You want to take away from me things that are mine and it’s not your right,” he complains and, as in “Seven Nation Army”, a conceivably real Jack White emerges: one who constructs a legend for himself, like his idol Bob Dylan, out of paranoia as much as playfulness. But by the next track, “The Denial Twist”, he’s slipped away again, and his proudest claim - “The truth is still hidden” - is reiterated with more force and success than ever. God’s honest truth, after all, could never be as satisfying as this. By John Mulvey

“Today I got some new plans,” wrote Jack White on November 18, 2004, the last entry on his website before work began on the fifth White Stripes album. “I thought about having a failure, but not a fake one a real one. . . Sort of enjoying the success of not succeeding on purpose? That’s funny!”

In March, Jack and Meg White started recording at his home in Detroit. Even by their standards, it was an unfussy process: 13 ideas finessed into songs, caught on tape by their live soundman Matthew Kettle and completed in a fortnight. By most other people’s standards, it appears a slapdash way of working – how better to manufacture a failure than by rushing through a bunch of half-formed song-sketches? And there are other signs that the duo’s latest game is one of self-sabotage. Abandoning electric guitar for much of the album should theoretically scurf off a few fans, and choosing Get Behind Me Satan for a title compounds an impression of Jack White on the run from fame, rejecting the temptations of success just as emphatically as Jesus turned his back on the Devil in the wilderness.

It’s a plausible reading of the plot, but one which conveniently ignores two fairly major issues. One, thus far into his career, Jack White seems congenitally incapable of making a bad record. And two, most of us learned long ago not to take anything this teasing, charming trickster says at face value. Get Behind Me Satan is certainly an odder record than the four White Stripes albums which preceded it. Track One, “Blue Orchid”, which you’ll already know, roughly translates “Back In Black” into a morse code signal for its priapic disco-metal. Track Two, “The Nurse”, a tropical marimba noir, is randomly punctuated by white noise flares. At least one song, “The Denial Twist”, seems to draw on primitive rhythm’n’blues, the golden age of Hollywood and – with its breakbeat, bells and spat-out rhymes – old school hip hop.

Get Behind Me Satan, though, is hardly an alienating, experimental listen. While the instrumentation has generally shifted away from garage rock fuzz, White hasn’t written such an accessible set of songs since 2000’s De Stijl. There’s a sense of The White Stripes reconfiguring their sound, as if realising that the original guitar/drums blueprint could only be extended so far, but the minimalist formula could be stretched much further. By pushing other instruments into the foreground, and creating a mix full of space, surprise and disorienting analogue effects – from that jet-engine whoosh 14 seconds into “Blue Orchid” onwards – White stays true to the band’s aesthetic vision, while mapping multiple paths away from stagnation. All include Meg. Professional divorce, so frequently predicted, seems much less imminent.

The marimba that makes an arresting, shimmering first appearance on “The Nurse” will attract most of the attention, but Get Behind Me Satan is fundamentally a piano record. The stereotypical image of The White Stripes as a blues and garage rock band ignores their love of Tin Pan Alley and showtunes, of ‘30s and ‘40s Hollywood, which has always quietly flourished. Cole Porter’s picture featured in the booklet of 2003’s Elephant, and even 1997’s debut single “Let’s Shake Hands” had as its b-side a camp sashay through Marlene Dietrich’s cabaret hit, “Look Me Over Closely”.

Consequently, the most immediately lovable song on Get Behind Me Satan is “My Doorbell”, springy piano funk with a ‘30s novelty tune lodged in its DNA and White playing the vulnerable lover in a pinched falsetto reminiscent of Little Richard, albeit Little Richard thoroughly desexualised. “When you have a job to write something for a Broadway musical, you don’t have much time, you have to write a hit,” White told Uncut in 2001, and admiration for this kind of rapid craftsmanship is all over the album and its paraphernalia: the ragtime sheet music sat on his piano in the picture; the fact that the title could just as easily echo an old Irving Berlin song, “Get Thee Behind Me Satan”, as the New Testament.

If Elephant gained notoriety thanks to its Luddite flaunting of pre-1963 equipment, much of Get Behind Me Satan’s action seems to take place deeper in the past, or further away from rock’n’roll. Two blousy showstoppers – “Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)” and “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)” – reference Burt Bacharach and White’s former employer Loretta Lynn respectively. The album’s totemic figure, Rita Hayworth (briefly wife of Orson Welles, himself the inspiration for 2001’s “The Union Forever”), stars in two songs: the mix of solemn piano chords and doggerel that is “White Moon”; and the outstanding “Take, Take, Take”. In the latter, White satirises the relationship between celebrity and public by casting himself as an infatuated fan. He politely bugs Hayworth, asks for her autograph, asks for her picture, portrays himself as someone “not too hard to please” who, hypocritically, wants more and more from his heroine. “She didn’t even care that I was even there – what a horrible feeling,” he concludes, as if in empathy with the fans who want a piece of him.

It would be easy to imagine Hayworth, with her duplicitous Tinseltown ways, as a cipher for White’s ex-girlfriend, Renee Zellweger. Given that the couple split towards the end of 2004, Zellweger – or what Zellweger represents – could tritely be seen as the “Satan” cast off in the title. But it’s just as likely that Hayworth is a cipher for White himself: a superstar whose tolerance of his public is generous, but not boundless; and whose nurtured image is at odds with a well-known secret. Hayworth was an all-American girl with a barely-concealed prehistory as Spanish starlet Marguerita Cansino. White constantly reminds us he is Meg’s little brother, even though the certificate confirming their brief marriage has long been filed on the internet. The new album, he claims, is about “characters and the ideal of truth”, as if to warn us off fishing for too much autobiographical detail in the songs. It’s a familiar strategy: “I like things that are as honest as possible, even if sometimes they can only be an imitation of honesty,” he told NME in 2001. “But a good impression is interesting if you can’t get the real thing.”

In this way, Get Behind Me Satan is the logical development of The White Stripes as a conceptual art project, a theatrical scam which brilliantly synthesises authenticity through the characters of two gauche Detroit siblings. Regular themes in this fiction rise to the surface. Meg’s fleeting showcase, “Passive Manipulation”, plays with family roles and warns, “Women, listen to your mothers, don’t just succumb to the wishes of your brothers.” Jack is constantly at the mercy of the women he adores: chivalrously waiting at home in “My Doorbell”; gently humiliated by Hayworth in “Take, Take, Take”; dancing with thin air on “Little Ghost”, a kind of bluegrass “Hotel Yorba”. On “Instinct Blues” he’s even “The worm that’s under your shoe”, as a grinding 12-bar riff is slowly tugged off its axis by White’s Hendrix-esque explosions.

And yet again, The White Stripes have engineered a blend of music and myth so compelling that the reality behind their oblique, eccentric stories is barely worth seeking out. Occasionally, one seems to stumble on White in an unguarded moment. “Ugly As I Seem” – imagine an agitated Led Zeppelin in Bron-Y-Aur – finds Meg with a set of Steve Took’s bongos and Jack cradling an acoustic, squirming away from analysis. “You want to take away from me things that are mine and it’s not your right,” he complains and, as in “Seven Nation Army”, a conceivably real Jack White emerges: one who constructs a legend for himself, like his idol Bob Dylan, out of paranoia as much as playfulness. But by the next track, “The Denial Twist”, he’s slipped away again, and his proudest claim – “The truth is still hidden” – is reiterated with more force and success than ever. God’s honest truth, after all, could never be as satisfying as this.

By John Mulvey

Richmond Fontaine

Uncut
-
0
Richmond Fontaine
UNCUT: I understand the songs for the new album were written when you were holed up for two weeks at The Fitzgerald Casino hotel in Reno WILLY VLAUTIN: Yeah, I wrote most of the lyrics at the Fitzgerald. All except for “The Janitor” and “Black Road.” But “Black Road” is set there at the...

UNCUT: I understand the songs for the new album were written when you were holed up for two weeks at The Fitzgerald Casino hotel in Reno

WILLY VLAUTIN: Yeah, I wrote most of the lyrics at the Fitzgerald. All except for “The Janitor” and “Black Road.” But “Black Road” is set there at the Fitz. I wrote it after I got back. Mostly I wrote lyrics and stories when I was there. The music changed. I always stay there when I’m visiting home. Their rooms are $28 a night so you can stay a long time and they’re safe enough that you can keep your guitar there.

Tell us something about the hotel and its atmosphere.

It’s downtown in Reno on the strip and it’s a pretty nice place really. It’s the Irish casino. It has “Mr. O’Lucky”, a drunken lucky leprechaun statue, as you walk in. But he’s never been very lucky to me, I’m sorry to say. Everything in the place is green. It’s right near the railroad tracks so you can hear the trains going by. They still have lounge singers and they have Guinness on tap and roulette. I can always write when I‘m there. Reno‘s my favourite place to work on stories and songs. You can look out the window at the Fitz and see all of downtown. The strip itself and Fourth Street, which runs near it, are pretty rough.

There are a lot aimless men wandering around. I’m not talking about the tourists. I’m talking about these sorta damaged looking guys. Not bums, just men that have low level jobs and are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. You don’t see many women. Those sort of guys always make me feel comfortable. Being around them makes me feel normal. Plus in the summer, the Fitz hires Eastern European cocktail waitresses on some sort of exchange program so in the summer they have the best looking cocktail waitresses in the world.

Had you gone there specifically to write?

I go to Reno for maybe a month or more a year if I can afford it. I always go to write and just to walk around. Sometimes when I drive down there, I go another place called the Gold Dust West that’s sort of a motor lodge. But usually I stay at the Fitz. That time I did go to write songs and stories and to visit with my mom who thinks I’m crazy ‘cause I won’t stay at home. And that time, I sorta hit a vein I’d been thinking about. Once Post to Wire was done I felt relieved and I felt I could take a breather. And more than anything I like to write folk songs, story songs. I was pretty worried about anyone liking a folk record, but I figured I’d try hard to write a good one and if no one in the band liked it then I would shelve it. So right when Post To Wire was done I

worked on the Fitz songs.

Did you have any particular idea what the new album would be about before you started writing?

I really wanted it to be based around the lyrics and not the other way around. Most times I change around the lyrics to fit the music. I did that a lot on Post To Wire. On this record I didn’t want to do this. I just wanted to tell the story and have the music follow it. I wanted the whole thing to feel like the first song “The Warehouse Life.” That feeling that there’s mistakes and death and darkness all around and you’re trying hard not to run into any of it. You might see it and it

might scar you that way, but the hope that you don’t run into it. That you don’t become it. That you’re not the guy paying the price for gambling in “The Warehouse Life.” Or the murdered kid in “The Incident At Conklin Creek.” You’re just trying to hide from all that like in “Black Road.” Or in the “The Janitor” where the guy tries to help the woman away from it. Or like the kid in “Exit 194B” who’s trying hard just to get by after the death of his brother only to find his cousin

unable to. They are all kind of the same idea.

In other words, was The Fitzgerald conceived as a kind of concept album?

I guess more than anything it’s got the same mood to it. When you can’t shake a feeling then maybe everything is seen in that sorta lens. That everything thing you think about, or the way you perceive things is seen like that. And for me I guess I was just going down that path and couldn’t stop thinking like that. I have a hard time not thinking like that.

Musically, the album is incredibly sparse – is this a new direction for Richmond Fontaine or something you have been working towards?

When we got together with JD Foster [producer of Post To Wire and The Fitzgerald], and we were playing the songs to him as a band it didn’t seem to be right. He was staying at my place and we’d sit around and I’d play him the songs with just a guitar and it made more sense like that.

It was a hard decision not to have pedal steel on it, ‘cause I’m a huge pedal steel fan, but the songs were better without it. It’s an intimate sober kind of record and the steel was too dreamy and took you out of the story. But all in all I don’t think this is the future direction of the band. If it was I think the band would put concrete blocks on my feet and dump me in a river.

How do you think your songwriting has developed on The Fitzgerald – although the lyrics are really stripped down, they seem more vivid than ever.

I have to say writing “The Fitzgerald” was the most fun I’ve had as a songwriter because I could base the whole thing around the lyrics. JD was really supportive about it. I think after doing a rock record like “Post To Wire” I just wanted to hide out and be selfish and write a bunch of story songs. It was a real relief for me. I didn’t put any pressure on myself to write for the band or worry if people would like it all. I just wrote the sorta songs I like.

Are these songs wholly imagined, or are some of them based on real events – if not in your life, then in the lives of others?

I guess a lot of time I take a real life story and then make it much more dramatic. Like the “The Warehouse Life.” I used to work at a warehouse and me and this guy would get drunk on lunch break and he had a huge gambling problem. He had a bookie in Reno. If you have a bookie in Reno you’re in a mess. But he didn’t get beat up. He was threatened an awful lot, but his folks got him out of it. “Incident At Conklin Creek.” My mom’s boyfriend and I go camping a lot out in Nevada, in the desert, and we look around old mines and I remember seeing a pair of women’s underwear and a shoe at the foot of this mine. We were fifty miles from any resemblance of a town. It took us a half hour on foot to get to this old mine. What the hell were a pair of women’s underwear and a single shoe doing there? I stayed awake all that night and worried about it. I could see these horrible scenarios in my mind and those sorta situations always haunt me. That sorta darkness just worries me and eats at me. ’Cause anyone could end up there. Even you or your mom’s boyfriend.

What’s the story behind “Wellhorn Yards”, for instance – it reads like the aftermath of a heist gone wrong.

There are railroad tracks that run through downtown Reno. When you look out the window at the Fitzgerald you can see them. When I lived there in my 20s I used to get drunk and walk along them until I hit the industrial part of town and I’d sit in the dark against this wall and watch the trains. In the song I called this area the Welhorn Yards, although there’s no name I know for this area. I was pretty lonely for a lot of the time I lived in Reno. I was really shy and was really hard on myself and I didn’t fit in with my old friends. So I spent a lot time getting drunk and walking around downtown. When I wrote the song I started thinking how my friends growing up were the kind of guys who were mini-crooks, who would do these somewhat horrible things and I was

always the kid who was just drinking beer and hearing about it. I never did the things they did. I just heard about it and saw the aftermath. Like the kid in “Welhorn Yards.”

On first listen there are songs here that sound as bleak as anything you’ve written – but there’s always a sense of hope struggling to survive.

I always hope that my characters make it out all right, ‘cause in a lot of ways they are me. I hope to hell the couple in “The Janitor” live happily ever after and that the AWOL kid in “Exit 194B” makes it out all right. I hope the kid in “Laramie,Wy” nerves get better and he finds a safer,

easier life with his aunt. And the girl in “Don’t Look And It Won’t Hurt” I hope her nerves ease up and she gets stronger and can make it on her own. I hope she didn’t use up all her strength on the move, on the escape, and then get tired and cave in and go back. I like all those people. I don’t think they’re bad people or failures or bums. I think they are good people who have fallen into bad situations. But they’re all trying to be better. To get to a better spot.

You’ve previously cited Dylan, Springsteen, Tom Waits and Dave Alvin as songwriters you admire and who have influenced you to some degree. On The Fitzgerald, there are songs that remind me of Lou Reed’s more reportorial writing – am I imagining an influence that isn’t there?

Hell, I wish I could say I knew Lou Reed’s work better than I do. The truth is he’s always sorta freaked me out, and so when I’m at the record store I just kind of pass over him. But maybe I shouldn’t. I guess more than anything Springsteen and Dave Alvin and Tom Waits inspired me to do this record. I really admire those guys. They all create their own world and that’s what I was hoping to do. To create my own world.

Interview by Allan Jones

Interview: Bo Diddley

Uncut
-
0
Interview: Bo Diddley

His eponymous debut single, 1955’s “Bo Diddley”, introduced a whole new rhythmic dimension that would revolutionize the future of popular music. Soon everybody from Elvis Presley (with “His Latest Flame”) to Buddy Holly (with “Not Fade Away”) was mimicking Bo’s patented jungle beat. Over in England, to the groups that emerged from the early ’60s R&B boom - The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Kinks, and not least The Rolling Stones - Diddley was nothing short of a living god. His influence would extend well into the ‘70s, with The Clash paying tribute by inviting Bo as support on their 1979 tour of America. Even in the ‘80s, the spectre of Bo Diddley lurked within the voodoo shimmer of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” and the back-to-basics clatter of U2’s “Desire”. Fifty years on, Bo still continues to tour. During his recent visit to the UK, Uncut caught up with one of the few surviving pioneers of rock’n’roll to find out why, at the age of 76, he refuses to quit. UNCUT: So, the legendary Bo Diddley - you practically invented rock’n’roll. How does that feel? DIDDLEY: Well, it’s no different from anything else, I guess. I started sumthin'. I just happened to be the first one. And I’m still here, I feel great. But I never thought it would turn into what it did. Somebody had to be first, and it happened to be me. Did you have any idea rock’n’roll was going to go on for as long as it has? Man, it ain’t quittin’ yet. It’s been goin’ 50 years already, goin’ on 51. So why do you think you’ve survived all this time? Well, a lot of it is the way that I care for myself, and my interests in talkin’ to kids about stayin’ away from drugs, that they should obey their parents, do the right thing, be constructive and not destructive. All these things I was taught as a kid, so I’m tryin’ to pass it on to the youngsters ‘cos it works. It definitely works, I’m livin’ proof that it works. And it don’t matter what colour you is, ’cos when I go on stage I don’t see colours, I see people. That’s the way I’ve always been, and I’ll be that way until there’s no more Diddley… …God forbid! Yeah, well I ain’t goin’ nowhere! What do you think of music today - the fact the word ‘R&B’ is used to describe a type of music that is nothing like the ‘R&B’ that described yourself, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters? No, it’s nothing’ like it. You’re the first one I ever heard that put it that way. It’s nothing like the R&B or the rock’n’roll as we called it. The cats today claim that they’re rock’n’roll with all their screaming geetars and stuff like that. Well that’s not rock’n’roll! That don’t sound like Elvis Presley, that don’t sound like The Beatles… well, The Beatles wasn’t really rock’n’roll. I don’t know what you’d call it but I don’t accept the word rock’n’roll with The Beatles. They don’t belong in the list of rock’n’rollers. They was like, more or less, folk country or sumthin’. I don’t know what it was. What about The Rolling Stones? The Rolling Stones is definitely rock’n’roll. They’re right up there with myself, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, all these people. This is sumthin’ we built, and a lot of the cats came along who didn’t know what they were playin’, they tried to sneak in and say “we’re rock’n’rollers”. No way, José! Is that why you still get on stage, to show people what rock’n’roll really is? Well I still feel good and I’m able to do it. When you won’t see me no more that means I’m not able. But after fifty years of this, it’s too late to change the horses on the freeway in the middle of the freeway, d’y’understand? You might as well keep rollin’. I built this monster and I have to feed him. Nobody else gonna feed him, so I gotta feed him. I’m 76 years old and I feel great. I try and take care of myself the best I can. No drugs. Never have got involved with that. To all the kids out there in groups I say this - don’t fool wi’ dat mess! It ain’t no good, leave it alone, you don’t need that crap to play. Perform clean and you will be recognised in a clean manner. I refuse to be around anybody that’s doin’ it, and I’m still that way. I used to be a sheriff. I’m not doin’ it now but I still got those police traits. Get out of my face wi’ dat mess! People I work with are all clean ‘cos, boy, if I catch you doin’ sumthin’ in my band, you got to go, real quick. Ain’t no waitin’ till tomorrow cos you’re goin’ home to mama. Grab yer coat and hat. Gudbye! Your 1959 single “Say Man” was, in a round about way, one of the first rap records? Uhuh. But it wasn’t called rap, it was called ‘signifyin‘’. But the new kids today on the block call it rap and I guess you could say rap is a good name for it since you can’t understand a damn thing they’re sayin’. I think Eminem is the only one you can understand what he’s saying. Will Smith was really good. Sir Mix-A-Lot, you can understand him. But the rest of ‘em, you can’t understand except that it’s dirty, and I don’t like the dirty lyrics. That’s no good for our youngsters. Let a child be a child until he’s no more a child and then he can listen to what he wants to. Why the rectangular guitar? I just decided to design it that way because it’s different. Thought I’d go freak everybody out with a square guitar, heh-heh. What’s a typical day in the life of Bo Diddley? You mean what do I do every day? I fool around with old cars and my boat. I’m working on my boat right now. I can’t wait till I get back home to Florida so I can go fishing. Gonna catch me a big one! What’s Bo Diddley’s secret of happiness. Music? Fishing? I ain’t decided, man. It’s just everyday livin’. I have nothing special that I wanna do. Everyday livin’ is where it’s at. What do you want to be remembered for? Why? Where am I gone? I don’t like that question, sorry. Being remembered, like I’m goin’ out the door any minute… …well, hopefully not. Hee! I ain’t goin nowhere, man. I am so superstitious about that, as I am about wills. When you do a will it tells me that you’ve just started descending into neverland. Understand me? That’s my belief. A lot of people say I shouldn’t think that way, but let them do it the way they wanna do it and I’ll do it the way I wanna do it cos I ain’t ready to pull the plug yet. I’m chained to the plug. You could walk around the corner and somebody could say to you “Man, Bo’s just dropped dead”. And you’d probably say “What? You’re full of shit, I was just talkin’ to him two minutes ago”. But that’s the way it is. We never know when we’re gone, and I’m very superstitious about playing around with anything that means I’m out the door for the last time. I’ll talk about anything but that. See, I remember Sam Cooke sayin’ that he was hangin’ up his rock’n’roll shoes and this chick killed him. The chick shot him, man! To me, superstition, that means something. You dig? Absolutely. In our schematic of our lives, I believe there’s a road map to what road you travel, and you’ll finish when you take that trip. Say you walk in the street and it’s in your schematic to get bumped by a car - not fall out a window, but bumped by a car - it might be one day that you’re careless and you walk out in front of a car. Well, that’s in your schematic. That’s what’s gonna happen to you. I kinda believe that. A lot of people mysteriously gets done that way. We never know when we’re gonna be called. It’s like me, six years ago I got up outta bed, feeling great, sat on the bed, leaning to pick up my socks and broke two discs in my back. I was in hospital, got operated on, and now I’m walking. But I coulda been in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. It still hurts, that’s why I gotta sit down now when I play. But you don’t have to get hit by a truck to end up messed up. I found that out. I thought I was the Rock of Gibraltar and for me to end up injured that easy really freaked me out. The doctors said “Bo, them days of leg wigglin’, them is over”. But I can still play, I can still walk. Bo Diddley’s still here. Interview by Simon Goddard

His eponymous debut single, 1955’s “Bo Diddley”, introduced a whole new rhythmic dimension that would revolutionize the future of popular music. Soon everybody from Elvis Presley (with “His Latest Flame”) to Buddy Holly (with “Not Fade Away”) was mimicking Bo’s patented jungle beat. Over in England, to the groups that emerged from the early ’60s R&B boom – The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Who, The Kinks, and not least The Rolling Stones – Diddley was nothing short of a living god.

His influence would extend well into the ‘70s, with The Clash paying tribute by inviting Bo as support on their 1979 tour of America. Even in the ‘80s, the spectre of Bo Diddley lurked within the voodoo shimmer of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” and the back-to-basics clatter of U2’s “Desire”.

Fifty years on, Bo still continues to tour. During his recent visit to the UK, Uncut caught up with one of the few surviving pioneers of rock’n’roll to find out why, at the age of 76, he refuses to quit.

UNCUT: So, the legendary Bo Diddley – you practically invented rock’n’roll. How does that feel?

DIDDLEY: Well, it’s no different from anything else, I guess. I started sumthin’. I just happened to be the first one. And I’m still here, I feel great. But I never thought it would turn into what it did. Somebody had to be first, and it happened to be me.

Did you have any idea rock’n’roll was going to go on for as long as it has?

Man, it ain’t quittin’ yet. It’s been goin’ 50 years already, goin’ on 51.

So why do you think you’ve survived all this time?

Well, a lot of it is the way that I care for myself, and my interests in talkin’ to kids about stayin’ away from drugs, that they should obey their parents, do the right thing, be constructive and not destructive. All these things I was taught as a kid, so I’m tryin’ to pass it on to the youngsters ‘cos it works. It definitely works, I’m livin’ proof that it works. And it don’t matter what colour you is, ’cos when I go on stage I don’t see colours, I see people. That’s the way I’ve always been, and I’ll be that way until there’s no more Diddley…

…God forbid!

Yeah, well I ain’t goin’ nowhere!

What do you think of music today – the fact the word ‘R&B’ is used to describe a type of music that is nothing like the ‘R&B’ that described yourself, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters?

No, it’s nothing’ like it. You’re the first one I ever heard that put it that way. It’s nothing like the R&B or the rock’n’roll as we called it. The cats today claim that they’re rock’n’roll with all their screaming geetars and stuff like that. Well that’s not rock’n’roll! That don’t sound like Elvis Presley, that don’t sound like The Beatles… well, The Beatles wasn’t really rock’n’roll. I don’t know what you’d call it but I don’t accept the word rock’n’roll with The Beatles. They don’t belong in the list of rock’n’rollers. They was like, more or less, folk country or sumthin’. I don’t know what it was.

What about The Rolling Stones?

The Rolling Stones is definitely rock’n’roll. They’re right up there with myself, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, all these people. This is sumthin’ we built, and a lot of the cats came along who didn’t know what they were playin’, they tried to sneak in and say “we’re rock’n’rollers”. No way, José!

Is that why you still get on stage, to show people what rock’n’roll really is?

Well I still feel good and I’m able to do it. When you won’t see me no more that means I’m not able. But after fifty years of this, it’s too late to change the horses on the freeway in the middle of the freeway, d’y’understand? You might as well keep rollin’. I built this monster and I have to feed him. Nobody else gonna feed him, so I gotta feed him. I’m 76 years old and I feel great. I try and take care of myself the best I can. No drugs. Never have got involved with that. To all the kids out there in groups I say this – don’t fool wi’ dat mess! It ain’t no good, leave it alone, you don’t need that crap to play. Perform clean and you will be recognised in a clean manner. I refuse to be around anybody that’s doin’ it, and I’m still that way. I used to be a sheriff. I’m not doin’ it now but I still got those police traits. Get out of my face wi’ dat mess! People I work with are all clean ‘cos, boy, if I catch you doin’ sumthin’ in my band, you got to go, real quick. Ain’t no waitin’ till tomorrow cos you’re goin’ home to mama. Grab yer coat and hat. Gudbye!

Your 1959 single “Say Man” was, in a round about way, one of the first rap records?

Uhuh. But it wasn’t called rap, it was called ‘signifyin‘’. But the new kids today on the block call it rap and I guess you could say rap is a good name for it since you can’t understand a damn thing they’re sayin’. I think Eminem is the only one you can understand what he’s saying. Will Smith was really good. Sir Mix-A-Lot, you can understand him. But the rest of ‘em, you can’t understand except that it’s dirty, and I don’t like the dirty lyrics. That’s no good for our youngsters. Let a child be a child until he’s no more a child and then he can listen to what he wants to.

Why the rectangular guitar?

I just decided to design it that way because it’s different. Thought I’d go freak everybody out with a square guitar, heh-heh.

What’s a typical day in the life of Bo Diddley?

You mean what do I do every day? I fool around with old cars and my boat. I’m working on my boat right now. I can’t wait till I get back home to Florida so I can go fishing. Gonna catch me a big one!

What’s Bo Diddley’s secret of happiness. Music? Fishing?

I ain’t decided, man. It’s just everyday livin’. I have nothing special that I wanna do. Everyday livin’ is where it’s at.

What do you want to be remembered for?

Why? Where am I gone? I don’t like that question, sorry. Being remembered, like I’m goin’ out the door any minute…

…well, hopefully not.

Hee! I ain’t goin nowhere, man. I am so superstitious about that, as I am about wills. When you do a will it tells me that you’ve just started descending into neverland. Understand me? That’s my belief. A lot of people say I shouldn’t think that way, but let them do it the way they wanna do it and I’ll do it the way I wanna do it cos I ain’t ready to pull the plug yet. I’m chained to the plug. You could walk around the corner and somebody could say to you “Man, Bo’s just dropped dead”. And you’d probably say “What? You’re full of shit, I was just talkin’ to him two minutes ago”. But that’s the way it is. We never know when we’re gone, and I’m very superstitious about playing around with anything that means I’m out the door for the last time. I’ll talk about anything but that. See, I remember Sam Cooke sayin’ that he was hangin’ up his rock’n’roll shoes and this chick killed him. The chick shot him, man! To me, superstition, that means something. You dig?

Absolutely.

In our schematic of our lives, I believe there’s a road map to what road you travel, and you’ll finish when you take that trip. Say you walk in the street and it’s in your schematic to get bumped by a car – not fall out a window, but bumped by a car – it might be one day that you’re careless and you walk out in front of a car. Well, that’s in your schematic. That’s what’s gonna happen to you. I kinda believe that. A lot of people mysteriously gets done that way. We never know when we’re gonna be called. It’s like me, six years ago I got up outta bed, feeling great, sat on the bed, leaning to pick up my socks and broke two discs in my back. I was in hospital, got operated on, and now I’m walking. But I coulda been in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. It still hurts, that’s why I gotta sit down now when I play. But you don’t have to get hit by a truck to end up messed up. I found that out. I thought I was the Rock of Gibraltar and for me to end up injured that easy really freaked me out. The doctors said “Bo, them days of leg wigglin’, them is over”. But I can still play, I can still walk. Bo Diddley’s still here.

Interview by Simon Goddard

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2005 – FINAL REPORT

Uncut
-
0
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2005 – FINAL REPORT

This is the end! A clutch of 21st century reinventions of film noir, coming-of-age slacker yarns and neo-westerns have helped make the last week of Cannes a rich experience for Uncut’s festival foot soldiers. Making his debut behind the camera, Lethal Weapon screenwriter SHANE BLACK turns his acid humour on pulp thriller convention with Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a highly knowing Hollywood noir starring ROBERT DOWNEY JR and VAL KILMER. Likewise Canadian indie veteran ATOM EGOYAN, whose Where The Truth Lies is a similarly arch blend of whodunit and showbiz satire. The young Icelandic writer-director DAGUR KARI, highly praised for his bleak debut Noi Albinoi two years ago, came back in more romantic vein with Dark Horse. A gentle slacker comedy about a Danish graffiti artist facing the strains of love, life and adulthood, this little monochrome gem is a winning blend of early TRUFFAUT and classic JARMUSCH. A member of the Icelandic indie-folk duo SLOWBLOW, Kari also provides the film’s soundtrack. But so much for the young turks. The real revelations of the closing stages of Cannes have come from a posse of maverick old-timers making their strongest statements in years. German arthouse legend WIM WENDERS has turned in his finest film for over a decade by re-uniting with Paris, Texas co-writer SAM SHEPARD on Don’t Come Knocking, another sumptuous road movie about broken families and Old West myths seen through the jaded eyes of an ageing western star, played by Shepard himself. Also delving into modern-day cowboy mythology is The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, the terrific feature directing debut of grizzled hard-ass TOMMY LEE JONES. Written by GUILLERMO ARRIAGA of Amores Perros and 21 Grams fame, this poetically bleak Tex-Mex fable adds one shot of Unforgiven to two shots of Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. With a face as battered and pockmarked as Mount Rushmore, Jones gives a magnificently weary performance as Pete Perkins, a desert rancher who vows to avenge a Mexican friend shot dead by a US border patrol guard. “Pete IS Tommy,” Arriaga told Uncut. “They are the same person…” Now it is time for Uncut to saddle up and head home. But watch out for these and more post-Cannes treasures in the coming months. And finally, Ladies and gentlemen… the victors at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival: Palme d'Or The Child (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) Grand Prix Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch) Best Actress Award Hanna Laslo (Free Zone) Best Actor Award Tommy Lee Jones (The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada) Best Director Award Michael Haneke (Hidden) Best Screenplay Award Guillermo Arriaga (The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada) Jury Prize Shanghai Dreams (Wang Xiaoshuai) STEPHEN DALTON

This is the end!

A clutch of 21st century reinventions of film noir, coming-of-age slacker yarns and neo-westerns have helped make the last week of Cannes a rich experience for Uncut’s festival foot soldiers.

Making his debut behind the camera, Lethal Weapon screenwriter SHANE BLACK turns his acid humour on pulp thriller convention with Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a highly knowing Hollywood noir starring ROBERT DOWNEY JR and VAL KILMER. Likewise Canadian indie veteran ATOM EGOYAN, whose Where The Truth Lies is a similarly arch blend of whodunit and showbiz satire.

The young Icelandic writer-director DAGUR KARI, highly praised for his bleak debut Noi Albinoi two years ago, came back in more romantic vein with Dark Horse. A gentle slacker comedy about a Danish graffiti artist facing the strains of love, life and adulthood, this little monochrome gem is a winning blend of early TRUFFAUT and classic JARMUSCH. A member of the Icelandic indie-folk duo SLOWBLOW, Kari also provides the film’s soundtrack.

But so much for the young turks. The real revelations of the closing stages of Cannes have come from a posse of maverick old-timers making their strongest statements in years. German arthouse legend WIM WENDERS has turned in his finest film for over a decade by re-uniting with Paris, Texas co-writer SAM SHEPARD on Don’t Come Knocking, another sumptuous road movie about broken families and Old West myths seen through the jaded eyes of an ageing western star, played by Shepard himself.

Also delving into modern-day cowboy mythology is The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, the terrific feature directing debut of grizzled hard-ass TOMMY LEE JONES. Written by GUILLERMO ARRIAGA of Amores Perros and 21 Grams fame, this poetically bleak Tex-Mex fable adds one shot of Unforgiven to two shots of Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. With a face as battered and pockmarked as Mount Rushmore, Jones gives a magnificently weary performance as Pete Perkins, a desert rancher who vows to avenge a Mexican friend shot dead by a US border patrol guard. “Pete IS Tommy,” Arriaga told Uncut. “They are the same person…”

Now it is time for Uncut to saddle up and head home. But watch out for these and more post-Cannes treasures in the coming months.

And finally, Ladies and gentlemen… the victors at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival:

Palme d’Or

The Child (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)

Grand Prix

Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch)

Best Actress Award

Hanna Laslo (Free Zone)

Best Actor Award

Tommy Lee Jones (The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada)

Best Director Award

Michael Haneke (Hidden)

Best Screenplay Award

Guillermo Arriaga (The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada)

Jury Prize

Shanghai Dreams (Wang Xiaoshuai)

STEPHEN DALTON

Cannes Film Festival 2005 Report 3

Uncut
-
0
Cannes Film Festival 2005 Report 3

The usual array of buffed and beautiful celebrities were out in force at this year's Cannes Film Festival - whether it be a curiously bouffant GEORGE LUCAS leading the charge at the premier of Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith, or MATT DILLON hanging out round the bar terrace at the Grand Hotel, dresed unassumingly in black jeans and a t shirt, and happily chatting away with anyone who dropped by to say hello. UNCUT spotted the likes of BENICIO DEL TORO, VIGGO MORTENSEN, MICHAEL MADSEN, CHRISTOPHER DOYLE and DENNIS HOPPER out and about on the Croisette. Our favourite Hopper story went something like this: when asked whether he still took drugs by a friend of UNCUT, the Easy Rider star admitted he still smokes weed "because it keeps the bowels regular." Haven't you heard of dried apricots, Dennis? And the parties? Yep, we went to a few, and we drank southern France's reserves of rosé dry. They got off to a bumpy start, though, due to some serious transport difficulties getting to the hyper-hot annual MTV party, this year held in honour of UNCUT's forthcoming Film Of The Month, Kung Fu Hustle - while the Star Wars' party was widely considered a disappointment, save for the giant YODA ice sculptures. Elsewhere, at the party for Last Days - GUS VAN SANT's incredible fictionalised take on the last days of KURT COBAIN - we were treated to a set by grunge rockers Pagoda, featuring the film's star MICHAEL PITT on vocals. We also caught MALCOLM McLAREN playing his *own* records at the yacht party for GAEL GARCIA BERNAL's new film, The King. Or rather, someone else was playing them while Talcy Malcy hung around in the background. Cannes 05 also saw a large number of major new projects announced, including new films from DAVID LYNCH, SHANE MEADOWS and ROBERT ALTMAN, screening of footage from TERRY GILLIAM's Brothers' Grimm footage and the creation of a major new distributor from Time Warner companies New Line Cinema and HBO Films. Lynch's latest project is INLAND EMPIRE, starring LAURA DERN HARRY DEAN STANTON and JUSTIN THEROUX - who've all worked with the Wild At Heart director before. "It's about a woman in trouble, and it's a mystery, and that¹s all I want to say about it," Lynch is quoted in Variety. Meadows - whose last film, Dead Man's Shoes, was one of UNCUT's favourite films from 2004 - is drawing on his own experiences as a skinhead for Oi! This Is England, set in England in 1983. Also revealed at Cannes is a documentary called Requiem for Billy The Kid, currently in post-production, produced by legendary French director of Diva and Betty Blue, JEAN-JACQUES BIENEIX. The doc includes footage from SAM PECKINPAH's Pat Garret And Billy The Kid, plus interviews with KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, who played Billy in the movie, and screenwriter RUDY WURLIZTER. ALTMAN's new movie will star MERYL STREEP, WOODY HARRELSON and JOHN C REILLY and is a spin-off from GARRISON KEILLOR's long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. Elsewhere, among the myriad of new movie projects their newly formed WeinsteinCo are involved with, HARVEY and BOB WEINSTEIN announced their forthcoming return to concert promoting - presenting the ROLLING STONES at the Giants Stadium, New Jersey, in September. Finally, HBO Films and New Line Cinema have formed Picturehouse, a new theatrical distribution whose slate has nine films lined up, including Last Days, Fur - starring NICOLE KIDMAN and ROBERT DOWNEY JNR - and MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM's A Cock And Bull Story, aka Tristram Shandy, starring STEVE COOGAN. Right. That's it. The booze is finally wearing off so we're off to bed. Check back here to www.uncut.co.uk for our final report on the movie's that mattered at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

The usual array of buffed and beautiful celebrities were out in force at this year’s Cannes Film Festival – whether it be a curiously bouffant GEORGE LUCAS leading the charge at the premier of Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith, or MATT DILLON hanging out round the bar terrace at the Grand Hotel, dresed unassumingly in black jeans and a t shirt, and happily chatting away with anyone who dropped by to say hello. UNCUT spotted the likes of BENICIO DEL TORO, VIGGO MORTENSEN, MICHAEL MADSEN, CHRISTOPHER DOYLE and DENNIS HOPPER out and about on the Croisette. Our favourite Hopper story went something like this: when asked whether he still took drugs by a friend of UNCUT, the Easy Rider star admitted he still smokes weed “because it keeps the bowels regular.” Haven’t you heard of dried apricots, Dennis?

And the parties? Yep, we went to a few, and we drank southern France’s reserves of rosé dry. They got off to a bumpy start, though, due to some serious transport difficulties getting to the hyper-hot annual MTV party, this year held in honour of UNCUT’s forthcoming Film Of The Month, Kung Fu Hustle – while the Star Wars’ party was widely considered a disappointment, save for the giant YODA ice sculptures. Elsewhere, at the party for Last Days – GUS VAN SANT’s incredible fictionalised take on the last days of KURT COBAIN – we were treated to a set by grunge rockers Pagoda, featuring the film’s star MICHAEL PITT on vocals. We also caught MALCOLM McLAREN playing his *own* records at the yacht party for GAEL GARCIA BERNAL’s new film, The King. Or rather, someone else was playing them while Talcy Malcy hung around in the background.

Cannes 05 also saw a large number of major new projects announced, including new films from DAVID LYNCH, SHANE MEADOWS and ROBERT ALTMAN, screening of footage from TERRY GILLIAM’s Brothers’ Grimm footage and the creation of a major new distributor from Time Warner companies New Line Cinema and HBO Films. Lynch’s latest project is INLAND EMPIRE, starring LAURA DERN HARRY DEAN STANTON and JUSTIN THEROUX – who’ve all worked with the Wild At Heart director before. “It’s about a woman in trouble, and it’s a mystery, and that¹s all I want to say about it,” Lynch is quoted in Variety. Meadows – whose last film, Dead Man’s Shoes, was one of UNCUT’s favourite films from 2004 – is drawing on his own experiences as a skinhead for Oi! This Is England, set in England in 1983.

Also revealed at Cannes is a documentary called Requiem for Billy The Kid, currently in post-production, produced by legendary French director of Diva and Betty Blue, JEAN-JACQUES BIENEIX. The doc includes footage from SAM PECKINPAH’s Pat Garret And Billy The Kid, plus interviews with KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, who played Billy in the movie, and screenwriter RUDY WURLIZTER. ALTMAN’s new movie will star MERYL STREEP, WOODY HARRELSON and JOHN C REILLY and is a spin-off from GARRISON KEILLOR’s long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion.

Elsewhere, among the myriad of new movie projects their newly formed WeinsteinCo are involved with, HARVEY and BOB WEINSTEIN announced their forthcoming return to concert promoting – presenting the ROLLING STONES at the Giants Stadium, New Jersey, in September. Finally, HBO Films and New Line Cinema have formed Picturehouse, a new theatrical distribution whose slate has nine films lined up, including Last Days, Fur – starring NICOLE KIDMAN and ROBERT DOWNEY JNR – and MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM’s A Cock And Bull Story, aka Tristram Shandy, starring STEVE COOGAN. Right. That’s it. The booze is finally wearing off so we’re off to bed. Check back here to www.uncut.co.uk for our final report on the movie’s that mattered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Cannes Film Festival Report 2

Uncut
-
0
Cannes Film Festival Report 2

Uncut's favourite film director, the late maverick Sam Peckinpah, was honoured at this year's Cannes Film Festival in a series of events which took place on Monday, May 16 - including a panel discussing his life and work which featured Uncut's Associate Editor, Michael Bonner. The events kicked off with a screening of a new print of Peckinpah's second film, 1962's Ride The High Country. The film starred Randolph Scott and Joel McRae as two ageing gunfighters out of place in a world that no longer needed them - a theme Peckinpah would return to again and again in his films, most notably in his 1969's classic, The Wild Bunch. The screening was part of the Festival's prestigious Director's Fortnight section and played to a full house at the 800-seater Fortnight theatre. As the final credits rolled, the audience burst into a spontaneous applause, with many cheering. The panel following was hosted by Fortnight director Olivier Pere and included Uncut's Michael Bonner alongside Variety's Executive Director Steven Gaydos, Peckinpah biographer Gerard Camy and cult American director Monte Hellman. Hellman, who co-edited 1972's The Killer Elite and cast Peckinpah in his own Western China 9, Liberty 37, provided a unique insight into his personal and professional relationship with the director: 'Sam hid more and more behind a mask of machismo, but he never stopped being a poet,' he concluded. Gaydos remembered introducing himself to Peckinpah as 'one of his biggest fans,' to which he received the reply: 'Hell, boy, don't you know you're a dying breed?' A champagne reception on the roof terrace at the Noga Hilton took place immediately after the panel and was attended by some heavyweight industry players, ranging from programmers for the London Film Festival to execs from Turner Classic Movies, one of the companies who made the day's events possible. Highlights from the panel can found at www.tiscali.co.uk. Don't forget the Uncut Film Of The Month on Turner Classic Movies on the first Wednesday of every month, next up - Rio Bravo on June 1.

Uncut’s favourite film director, the late maverick Sam Peckinpah, was honoured at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in a series of events which took place on Monday, May 16 – including a panel discussing his life and work which featured Uncut’s Associate Editor, Michael Bonner.

The events kicked off with a screening of a new print of Peckinpah’s second film, 1962’s Ride The High Country. The film starred Randolph Scott and Joel McRae as two ageing gunfighters out of place in a world that no longer needed them – a theme Peckinpah would return to again and again in his films, most notably in his 1969’s classic, The Wild Bunch. The screening was part of the Festival’s prestigious Director’s Fortnight section and played to a full house at the 800-seater Fortnight theatre. As the final credits rolled, the audience burst into a spontaneous applause, with many cheering.

The panel following was hosted by Fortnight director Olivier Pere and included Uncut’s Michael Bonner alongside Variety’s Executive Director Steven Gaydos, Peckinpah biographer Gerard Camy and cult American director Monte Hellman. Hellman, who co-edited 1972’s The Killer Elite and cast Peckinpah in his own Western China 9, Liberty 37, provided a unique insight into his personal and professional relationship with the director: ‘Sam hid more and more behind a mask of machismo, but he never stopped being a poet,’ he concluded. Gaydos remembered introducing himself to Peckinpah as ‘one of his biggest fans,’ to which he received the reply: ‘Hell, boy, don’t you know you’re a dying breed?’ A champagne reception on the roof terrace at the Noga Hilton took place immediately after the panel and was attended by some heavyweight industry players, ranging from programmers for the London Film Festival to execs from Turner Classic Movies, one of the companies who made the day’s events possible.

Highlights from the panel can found at www.tiscali.co.uk.

Don’t forget the Uncut Film Of The Month on Turner Classic Movies on the first Wednesday of every month, next up – Rio Bravo on June 1.

Watch the trailer for Batman Begins

Uncut
-
0
Watch the trailer for Batman Begins

Firstly, you'll need Windows Media player. Then just click one of the links below. Choose your bitrate: Low/Med/High

Firstly, you’ll need Windows Media player. Then just click one of the links below.

Choose your bitrate: Low/Med/High

Robert Plant & The Strange Sensation – Mighty Rearranger

Uncut
-
0

There's always a temptation when a significant artist returns with a decent album after a period of low-key activity to talk in over-excited terms of a 'comeback'. Such reactions, though, are understandable in the case of Robert Plant. In the seven years since 1998's disappointing Walking Into Clarksdale with Jimmy Page, he's played semi-anonymously with pub band Priory Of Brion and made a highly enjoyable but unchallenging album of Covers (2002’s Dreamland). Now comes Mighty Rearranger, an album of a dozen new compositions that sounds like the personal manifesto of a man who, once again, has much to get off the chest he used to bare so brazenly. Lyrically, he's certainly got plenty to say. Three songs – “Another Tribe”, “Takamba” and the brilliant “Freedom Fries” ("And burns and scars") - provide a concerned commentary on the post 9/11 world. “Tin Pan Valley” is an honest analysis of the dangers of living on former glories and an attack on those who "flirt with cabaret" (take a tuxedoed bow, Rod Stewart?) or still "fake the rebel yell" (Sir Mick?). There are typical forays into mysticism (“The Enchanter”, “Dancing In Heaven”) and satisfying lyrical nods to his blues heroes (“Somebody Knocking”, “Let The Four Winds Blow”). Musically, all his eclectic passions are represented, from rock riffs (“Shine It All Around”) and blues wailing (the title track) to burnished West Coast filigree (“Dancing In Heaven”) and Zep III-style acoustics (the stunning “All The King's Horses”), via Arabic and North African influences “Another Tribe”, “Takamba”). Often, these diverse elements collide in unexpected and thrilling fashion. As for his voice, Plant reckons it's the best he's ever sung. From time to time he unleashes that open-throated, leonine roar, just to show he still can. But he also deploys a lot of subtle shading and nuance. Call it a comeback, if you like. The simple truth is that as a mature statement by someone who's done it all but still retains a desire to create something new and fresh, Mighty Rearranger is a record of considerable depth, admirable adventure and surprising passion. If anyone from today's crop of bands is making music half as interesting as this in 30 years time, we will be blessed, indeed. By Nigel Williamson

There’s always a temptation when a significant artist returns with a decent album after a period of low-key activity to talk in over-excited terms of a ‘comeback’. Such reactions, though, are understandable in the case of Robert Plant. In the seven years since 1998’s disappointing Walking Into Clarksdale with Jimmy Page, he’s played semi-anonymously with pub band Priory Of Brion and made a highly enjoyable but unchallenging album of Covers (2002’s Dreamland).

Now comes Mighty Rearranger, an album of a dozen new compositions that sounds like the personal manifesto of a man who, once again, has much to get off the chest he used to bare so brazenly. Lyrically, he’s certainly got plenty to say. Three songs – “Another Tribe”, “Takamba” and the brilliant “Freedom Fries” (“And burns and scars”) – provide a concerned commentary on the post 9/11 world. “Tin Pan Valley” is an honest analysis of the dangers of living on former glories and an attack on those who “flirt with cabaret” (take a tuxedoed bow, Rod Stewart?) or still “fake the rebel yell” (Sir Mick?). There are typical forays into mysticism (“The Enchanter”, “Dancing In Heaven”) and satisfying lyrical nods to his blues heroes (“Somebody Knocking”, “Let The Four Winds Blow”).

Musically, all his eclectic passions are represented, from rock riffs (“Shine It All Around”) and blues wailing (the title track) to burnished West Coast filigree (“Dancing In Heaven”) and Zep III-style acoustics (the stunning “All The King’s Horses”), via Arabic and North African influences “Another Tribe”, “Takamba”). Often, these diverse elements collide in unexpected and thrilling fashion. As for his voice, Plant reckons it’s the best he’s ever sung. From time to time he unleashes that open-throated, leonine roar, just to show he still can. But he also deploys a lot of subtle shading and nuance. Call it a comeback, if you like. The simple truth is that as a mature statement by someone who’s done it all but still retains a desire to create something new and fresh, Mighty Rearranger is a record of considerable depth, admirable adventure and surprising passion. If anyone from today’s crop of bands is making music half as interesting as this in 30 years time, we will be blessed, indeed.

By Nigel Williamson

Eels – Blinking Lights And Other Revelations

Uncut
-
0

To Mark ‘E’ Everett, life must have long seemed a cosmic black joke. Famously losing his mother to cancer shortly after his sister’s 1996 suicide, his cousin dying on 9/11 was one more blow to a man already fragilely depressed. But he reacted fiercely, self-financing redemptive albums recorded in his basement, short-circuiting major-label compromise. These records patented a sort of surging chamber-pop about how hard and necessary it is to live. Tentatively begun the year after eels’ hit debut Beautiful Freak (1996), five albums on Blinking Lights further defines E’s ornery kingdom of uncomfortable truth and beauty. It stretches into pop’s outer limits, mourning the absence of God and Mom in a fallen America. When he says making it “almost killed” him, you doubt it’s a metaphor. For E, rock’n’roll really is life and death. Blinking Lights’ lengthy gestation has left its mark. You can feel the jeweller’s care with which its 33 tracks have been chipped into place. Unfolding with the pregnant pauses of the Bergman movies that were its models, its pace may seen alien, even arthritic. But keep listening, and Blinking Lights comes into focus. It’s an album composed partly from disgust and defeat, as in “The Other Shoe”’s litany of literal and societal tumours, or “Railroad Man”’s admission of personal obsolescence. The 78 crackle of “Last Time We Spoke”, meanwhile, sees E wounded by the death of someone who knew his soul. But if the quiet of other people’s graves sometimes haunts Blinking Lights, that makes its moments of defiant affirmation more moving. “Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)” would be a hit if radio was supposed to make you feel, positing gut-spilling pain and heartache as the price of admission to life. In a record that deals soberly with suicide, that could be the belief that allows E to not only still be here, but conclude: “I’m a very thankful man.” Intermittently funny and never depressing, this confirms him among America’s greats. By Nick Hasted

To Mark ‘E’ Everett, life must have long seemed a cosmic black joke. Famously losing his mother to cancer shortly after his sister’s 1996 suicide, his cousin dying on 9/11 was one more blow to a man already fragilely depressed. But he reacted fiercely, self-financing redemptive albums recorded in his basement, short-circuiting major-label compromise. These records patented a sort of surging chamber-pop about how hard and necessary it is to live.

Tentatively begun the year after eels’ hit debut Beautiful Freak (1996), five albums on Blinking Lights further defines E’s ornery kingdom of uncomfortable truth and beauty. It stretches into pop’s outer limits, mourning the absence of God and Mom in a fallen America. When he says making it “almost killed” him, you doubt it’s a metaphor. For E, rock’n’roll really is life and death.

Blinking Lights’ lengthy gestation has left its mark. You can feel the jeweller’s care with which its 33 tracks have been chipped into place. Unfolding with the pregnant pauses of the Bergman movies that were its models, its pace may seen alien, even arthritic. But keep listening, and Blinking Lights comes into focus.

It’s an album composed partly from disgust and defeat, as in “The Other Shoe”’s litany of literal and societal tumours, or “Railroad Man”’s admission of personal obsolescence. The 78 crackle of “Last Time We Spoke”, meanwhile, sees E wounded by the death of someone who knew his soul. But if the quiet of other people’s graves sometimes haunts Blinking Lights, that makes its moments of defiant affirmation more moving. “Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)” would be a hit if radio was supposed to make you feel, positing gut-spilling pain and heartache as the price of admission to life. In a record that deals soberly with suicide, that could be the belief that allows E to not only still be here, but conclude: “I’m a very thankful man.” Intermittently funny and never depressing, this confirms him among America’s greats.

By Nick Hasted

Cannes Film Festival 2005 Report 1

Uncut
-
0
Cannes Film Festival 2005 Report 1

DARTH VADER’S asthmatic rasp has been playing at high volume up and down the Croisette for much of this year’s Cannes festival, but so far all of Uncut’s opening week highlights have been far removed from such hollow Hollywood grandstanding. The emotionally drained, fly-on-the-wall anti-drama of Gus Van Sant’s LAST DAYS left many baffled, especially those expecting a conventional exploration of Kurt Cobain’s tragic final hours. But Van Sant insists his strangely hypnotic memoir is more “a poem about Kurt” than a depiction of real events. Even Cobain’s suicide is left open-ended. “Did he even kill himself?” Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, who plays a small role in the film, asked Uncut. “There are plenty of people around Kurt who think he was murdered…” Downbeat Americana provides the inspiration for Daniel Jacobson’s DOWN IN THE VALLEY and James Walsh’s THE KING. The first stars Ed Norton as a modern-day cowboy with all the lethal, innocent charm of Martin Sheen’s silver-tongued killer in BADLANDS. The latter stars GAEL GARCIA BERNAL as an existential anti-hero who wreaks havoc on the family of his estranged preacher father, a towering tour-de-force performance by William Hurt. Both films boast rich alt-country soundtracks, with Calexico as a shared reference point. Some bolshie Cannes veterans have received warm welcomes, including Danish enfant terrible Lars Von Trier for his provocative slavery drama MANDERLAY, which picks up where DOGVILLE ended in 2003. Meanwhile NYC post-punk veteran Jim Jarmusch and the perennially fabulous Bill Murray collaborate on the terrific bittersweet comedy BROKEN FLOWERS, proving that their sassy vignette in COFFEE AND CIGARETTES was no fluke. Murray is soulfully hilarious as a womanising rogue tracking down the child he never knew. But as Cannes passes its halfway point, Uncut’s tip of the festival so far has to be David Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, a roaring rampage of revenge based on a blood-splattered graphic novel. Viggo Mortensen stars as a mid-Western family man with a murky past that eventually catches up with him, leading to a some strikingly explicit carnage. In the hands of any normal director this would have been a generic pulp thriller, but Cronenberg somehow manages to give these B-movie ingredients pace, depth and subversive comedy. Once again, William Hurt burns up the screen in a scene-stealing support role, as does Ed Harris as a glass-eyed mob enforcer. So much for the festival’s opening reel. Darth Vader may have packed up his inhaler, but Uncut will be here to the bitter end. Keep watching this space...

DARTH VADER’S asthmatic rasp has been playing at high volume up and down the Croisette for much of this year’s Cannes festival, but so far all of Uncut’s opening week highlights have been far removed from such hollow Hollywood grandstanding.

The emotionally drained, fly-on-the-wall anti-drama of Gus Van Sant’s LAST DAYS left many baffled, especially those expecting a conventional exploration of Kurt Cobain’s tragic final hours. But Van Sant insists his strangely hypnotic memoir is more “a poem about Kurt” than a depiction of real events. Even Cobain’s suicide is left open-ended. “Did he even kill himself?” Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, who plays a small role in the film, asked Uncut. “There are plenty of people around Kurt who think he was murdered…”

Downbeat Americana provides the inspiration for Daniel Jacobson’s DOWN IN THE VALLEY and James Walsh’s THE KING. The first stars Ed Norton as a modern-day cowboy with all the lethal, innocent charm of Martin Sheen’s silver-tongued killer in BADLANDS. The latter stars GAEL GARCIA BERNAL as an existential anti-hero who wreaks havoc on the family of his estranged preacher father, a towering tour-de-force performance by William Hurt. Both films boast rich alt-country soundtracks, with Calexico as a shared reference point.

Some bolshie Cannes veterans have received warm welcomes, including Danish enfant terrible Lars Von Trier for his provocative slavery drama MANDERLAY, which picks up where DOGVILLE ended in 2003. Meanwhile NYC post-punk veteran Jim Jarmusch and the perennially fabulous Bill Murray collaborate on the terrific bittersweet comedy BROKEN FLOWERS, proving that their sassy vignette in COFFEE AND CIGARETTES was no fluke. Murray is soulfully hilarious as a womanising rogue tracking down the child he never knew.

But as Cannes passes its halfway point, Uncut’s tip of the festival so far has to be David Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, a roaring rampage of revenge based on a blood-splattered graphic novel. Viggo Mortensen stars as a mid-Western family man with a murky past that eventually catches up with him, leading to a some strikingly explicit carnage. In the hands of any normal director this would have been a generic pulp thriller, but Cronenberg somehow manages to give these B-movie ingredients pace, depth and subversive comedy. Once again, William Hurt burns up the screen in a scene-stealing support role, as does Ed Harris as a glass-eyed mob enforcer.

So much for the festival’s opening reel. Darth Vader may have packed up his inhaler, but Uncut will be here to the bitter end. Keep watching this space…

The Assassination Of Richard Nixon

Uncut
-
0

In 1974, a Baltimore man called Sam Byck tried to kill then US President, Richard Nixon. He never came close, of course, and, although his scheme might seem eerily prescient - he planned hijacking a plane and crashing into the Whitehouse - history consigned him to the dustbin. Why first-time director Niels Mueller has salvaged Byck, or Bicke as he's rechristened in this fictionalised account, seems a mystery; until you realise failure, and what it does to people in a society like America's, is the entire theme of his hazy, nagging movie. Sean Penn plays Bicke. A King Midas in reverse, everything he touches turns to shit. His own brother has fired him from their tyre business for incompetence. He's close to losing his new job, as an office furniture salesman. His marriage is over, but while his estranged wife, Marie (Watts), squirms impatiently away from his attempts at communication, he still imagines he can get back with her and their children. Bicke stubbornly believes the problem lies with society, not him. All he wants is to be recognised. All he sees are lies and power games. Finally, utterly alone, he becomes obsessed with Nixon, the biggest, most powerful liar around. "Bicke" is close to "Bickle," of course, and Bicke records random thoughts ("I am a grain of sand") onto tapes he senselessly plans sending to Leonard Bernstein, just as Travis once scrawled fantasies in his journal. With an authentic, shabby early-70s feel, Assassination plays like the suburban offspring of Taxi Driver and King Of Comedy, with some of the latter's desperate, clueless-loser's comedy: seeking support, Bicke sympathises with The Black Panthers, and, in the craziest scene, visits them to suggest opening the organisation to whites and renaming it "The Zebras." Where the movie falls down is in its complete lack of narrative pace. Quickly, it becomes simply a draining succession of scenes of Bicke screwing up, then sitting alone and staring at Nixon on TV, then screwing up again. But within this lies one of the finest character studies you'll see. Penn is at his lightest and most intense, moving hesitantly toward breaking point. He's an uncertain smile and mild, nervous energy, losing himself in Bicke's troubles like Art Pepper in a lonely solo. Trouble is, soon, the solo is all there is. By Damien Love

In 1974, a Baltimore man called Sam Byck tried to kill then US President, Richard Nixon. He never came close, of course, and, although his scheme might seem eerily prescient – he planned hijacking a plane and crashing into the Whitehouse – history consigned him to the dustbin.

Why first-time director Niels Mueller has salvaged Byck, or Bicke as he’s rechristened in this fictionalised account, seems a mystery; until you realise failure, and what it does to people in a society like America’s, is the entire theme of his hazy, nagging movie.

Sean Penn plays Bicke. A King Midas in reverse, everything he touches turns to shit. His own brother has fired him from their tyre business for incompetence. He’s close to losing his new job, as an office furniture salesman. His marriage is over, but while his estranged wife, Marie (Watts), squirms impatiently away from his attempts at communication, he still imagines he can get back with her and their children.

Bicke stubbornly believes the problem lies with society, not him. All he wants is to be recognised. All he sees are lies and power games. Finally, utterly alone, he becomes obsessed with Nixon, the biggest, most powerful liar around.

“Bicke” is close to “Bickle,” of course, and Bicke records random thoughts (“I am a grain of sand”) onto tapes he senselessly plans sending to Leonard Bernstein, just as Travis once scrawled fantasies in his journal. With an authentic, shabby early-70s feel, Assassination plays like the suburban offspring of Taxi Driver and King Of Comedy, with some of the latter’s desperate, clueless-loser’s comedy: seeking support, Bicke sympathises with The Black Panthers, and, in the craziest scene, visits them to suggest opening the organisation to whites and renaming it “The Zebras.”

Where the movie falls down is in its complete lack of narrative pace. Quickly, it becomes simply a draining succession of scenes of Bicke screwing up, then sitting alone and staring at Nixon on TV, then screwing up again. But within this lies one of the finest character studies you’ll see. Penn is at his lightest and most intense, moving hesitantly toward breaking point. He’s an uncertain smile and mild, nervous energy, losing himself in Bicke’s troubles like Art Pepper in a lonely solo. Trouble is, soon, the solo is all there is.

By Damien Love

1...1,0521,0531,054...1,269Page 1,053 of 1,269

SHOP UNCUT