Watchification » pop

Arena – The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Phil Spector

Steve Bowbrick — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:09:29 +0000

We’d be unhappy if pop culture didn’t regularly throw up Shakespearian figures like Phil Spector, flawed and brilliant (and in Spector’s case downright dangerous). Imagine if they were all like Cliff. This really lovely Arena takes the form of an extended interview conducted by director Vikram Jayanti (the BBC’s press release says that Jayanti’s “hallmark is empathic explorations of genius” and I don’t doubt it) with some additional forensic analysis of the songs themselves. Tracks from the producer’s long career are played in full as the action proceeds and mini-critical essays by journalist Mick Brown pop up on screen as we watch.

Here’s an interesting interview with Jayanti.

The Wigan Casino – This England

jemstone — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 09:40:05 +0000

Tony Palmer’s 1977 wonderful celebration of the Northern Soul club; the Wigan Casino (part of the “This England” series of docs) for Granada TV is an incredibly bleak half hour. Obviously there’s some priceless archive from inside the club (it showed up most recently in Dance Britannia), impressive shapes being thrown all over the shop and a healthy showing of moustaches and blokes riffling through 7 inch singles in flares. So far, so obvious. Palmer, however, has intercut this with endless grey shots of the industrial north and kids hanging round bus stops. Dave Withers (the fan interviewed) is essentially giving a twenty minute lecture on social capital. Although you also get to hear the likes of Judy Street’s; What, much of the music on show is some heartbreaking/dreary (fill in as required) old english folk. Watch out for someone selling Socialist Worker – “only ten pence”.

(rarely for YouTube, this is the full 27 minute documentary in one part).

Caledonia Dreamin’

jemstone — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 09:51:36 +0000

The impressive production line of music docs from BBC4 (Stiff records, Jacques Brel, and of course Pop Britannia being recent high spots) continues with a canter through 30 years of scottish pop. Given that C86 was year zero for me and I spent many a year trying to grow the perfect fringe then the pre-publicity suggesting that it focused around the legacy of Postcard records had me very nervous indeed. Thankfully it turned out ok.

An hour where Simple Minds get 1 line, Wet, Wet, Wet and Travis are barely mentioned wheras Josef K , Teenage FanClub and Billy MacKenzie get a full 5 minutes each is about right. The only downsides are that narrator; Edith Bowman has a few clumsy lines and there’s a dodgy middle effectively devoted to blue eyed “soul”, Pat Kane and the growth of Scottish Nationalism.

My two favourite moments are Clare Grogan (looking amazing) going dewy eyed about her memories as a schoolgirl at hanging out in a record shop just to stare at Orange Juice’ Steven Daly selling badges (who went on to write Alt.Culture) and footage of 19 year old Postcard supremo himself; Alan Horne sitting on a sofa in a Glasgow tenement next to a naked mannequin and a gorgeous Edwyn Collins looking well rather fey.

But where was Alan McGee ?

Top of the range talking heads (morley, cosgrove) and either up to date or archive footage of the participants themselves (Collins, Kapranos, Rankin, Proclaimers, Murdoch) makes for a very fine hour indeed.