REVIEW: The Magic Band at The Thekla Bristol, 4th December 2011

Despite a fairly steep ticket price, a reasonable crowd has come out to the Thekla to see the MagicBand on a Sunday night; one assumes nobody here cares much who is going to make The X Factor final. For some reason it’s almost an entirely male audience but you can sort out what that means regarding the psychological differences between the sexes yourself. After all, this isn’t an AC/DC gig. Like their audience, the Magic Band are old enough to know that it’s a school night and hit the stage at half eight before delivering  just over two hours of what the Magic Band, and only the Magic Band, do. If you’re wondering what exactly that is then you need to know this is the once more reformed backing band of Don Van Vliet, or as you probably better know him, Captain Beefheart. The Magic Band initially reformed sans the then retired Captain back in 2002 and have toured on and off since, disintegrating and reforming along the way. Don Van Vliet’s health problems meant that we were never likely to see him fronting the band ever again but his death last year has made sure that this is the closest you will come to seeing the band in its sixties and seventies glory. And there really is no-one like the Magic Band. Beefheart’s sound was hard to describe; strange avant-garde blues with little in the way references for the casual listener. But when you get it, it’s a thing of beauty; like nothing else you’ve ever heard. Tonight the band are Feelers Rebo and Eric Klerks on guitars, Rockette Morton on bass, and John “Drumbo” French on vocals, harmonica and drums. Sadly Drumbo never actually tells us the name of whoever it was on drums while he is doing the fronting but we’ll have to forgive him. You see, without the Captain, it is easy to imagine that the whole thing wouldn’t work; the presence of that mighty bellowing voice and his earthy charisma were an essential focus to the otherwise inapproachable sound. But Drumbo has been a revelation since the Magic Band’s reformation and tonight is no exception. He hollers and fills the stage like the Captain used to, while the band tear through what is the nearest to a greatest hits package as they’ll ever get. LowYo Yo Stuff, Alice in Blunderland, Floppy Boot Stomp, Moonlight on Vermont all build to the climax of the jitter-inducing Electricity and big guitar sound of Big-Eyed Beansfrom Venus; all your favourites (assuming this is your kind of thing) are here. The sound is aggressive and mercurial and if Drumbo comes across like a demented preacher then he is preaching to the converted anyway. There is no true encore despite the audience reaction; just Drumbo “performing” one of the Captain’s poems in his inevitable style. They could have continued but we’re sent home at a reasonable hour to rise early to face a world that is all the richer for having the Magic Band in it. Long may they continue.

REVIEW: Minima performing with "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror" (1922) at St Mary Redcliffe Church Bristol 3rd December 2011

St Mary Redcliffe Church on a cold December night. The pews are uncomfortable and, so the chief priest warns us, medieval churches weren’t big on toilet facilities. Nevertheless, this is the chosen venue for The Magic Lantern FilmClub’s latest outing and the gothic surroundings are more than appropriate. The Magic Lantern have been organising classic film screenings in unusual locations around Bristol for some years now and doing sterling work raising money for AWAMU, a charity helping children affected by HIV in Uganda. But tonight is a bit different. Tonight’s film is everybody’s favourite piece of silent and scary German expressionism: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922). But although many here tonight will have seen Nosferatu before, the fact that the music will be provided by a live band makes this a new experience for most. Bristol and London based Minima are a four-piece (guitar/bass/cello/drums) that have been performing live soundtracks to silent and avant-garde films since 2006 and the oft-screened Nosferatu has become something of a signature piece.

Dressed suitably in black, Minima are seated behind and below the suspended screen, their heads obscured, as the sell-out audience politely stakes claim on the best pews. Slowly, over the course of ten minutes or so, an almost subliminal murmur of sound rises from the band until an audience member shouts, “hey, they’re making spooky noises” and we all realise that the show has begun. Then the lights dim and as Nosferatu’s shaky opening credits roll, the haunting cello theme draws us into its nightmarish world.

It must be said that Minima’s interpretation of Nosferatu is not for the purists. Their sound is reminiscent of a less apocalyptic Godspeed You! Black Emperor and so tonight’s performance bears no similarity to the original 1922 score. But that, it would seem, is the point. With the original music unavailable until recent years, many composers have attempted to come up with definitive new interpretations resulting in Nosferatu becoming a living thing; a sort of dark Fantasia, if you will. Inevitably, these new themes have tended to become dated and, when one considers that Nosferatu’s almost unique quality is its ability to put the willies up an audience today as well as it did ninety years ago, dated accompaniment will not do. Minima’s modern yet organic sound embraces the passage of time since the film’s original release yet is completely contemporary, resulting in a fresh experience that still manages feel appropriate to a piece of cinema’s gothic past. Injections of musical humour may also not be to everyone’s taste but the overall effect is that of moodiness with all the added edge of a modern live band. Over an hour and a half Minima move around a few central motifs through haunting space punctuated by surprisingly upbeat rhythms. As Count Orlok is destroyed by the rays of a new dawn, the music drops back to the solo cello theme we started with. After this restrained and eloquent finale we finally see Minima’s faces as they come to take their bows. Unsurprisingly, despite the enthusiastic audience response, there are no encores, but then it seems there is simply nothing to add.

For more information on The Magic Lantern Film Club, go to magiclanternfilmclub.com.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Remake

John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is not just a book I love. In 1979, at arguably their peak in terms of television drama, the BBC turned Tinker into what is indisputably my favourite television programme of all time. I still watch in its entirety on a pretty much annual basis and never tire of its themes of betrayal and decline; seemingly improving with age as it becomes a period piece that embodies Britain's changed understanding of itself and its position in the world following years of post-war decline. So it comes as no surprise that I’m just a bit excited by the imminent release of the big screen version. The problem is that I just know in my cynical old bones that I’m going to be a bit disappointed. It’s really just a matter of how disappointed I’m going to be. Yes, of course I know I should give it a chance. I can assure that I will. I shall drag my wife (who has never read or seen it) to the cinema overflowing with irritating and somewhat out of character positive vibes. I shall be a veritable cheerleader for George Smiley and the chaps of The Circus. I am overwhelmed by a desire to give this movie a chance. It’s either this sense of fair-mindedness or my masochistic streak that has had me searching the net for months, searching for the inevitable ‘teaser’.

After all, the net buzz for Tinker has been good. The Internet press have been falling over themselves to say how great this film is going to be because...well, just why are they so enthused?  As far as I can tell, the reasons why they believe it will be great are that it is British, based on a book they haven’t read that was turned into a TV series they haven’t seen (with Obi-Wan Kenobi in it), and it stars Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. Everyone loves Gary and Colin, don’t they? Perhaps they do. Furthermore, that ‘British’ tag is important. No-one wanted to see Tom Cruise or, heaven forbid, Johnny Depp with his British accent (he only has one) or this quintessentially British spy story transposed to America with the obligatory car chases, guns and girls. Well not many of us, I would have thought (and hoped).

And now the teaser is upon us.

 Now teasers are a funny thing. They are based on the law that if you squeeze a film of any length into  sixty seconds (thereby showing the best 0.5% , or something like that), then any film will look good. So the best we can tell from a teaser is that, if it still looks like the film will be poor, then we can expect a turkey the size of Godzilla when it is finally released. But Tinker’s teaser has given cause to those who knew it would be great to positively gush over its general demeanour of both moodiness and seriousness. Everyone loves moodiness and seriousness, right? This will be the Greatest Movie of All Time and will attract an avalanche of Oscars. Moody and serious movies win Oscars and we all know what a guarantee of quality an Oscar is. (We do? – Ed)

Unfortunately, it pains me to say that Tinker’s biggest fan (me) actually rather hates the teaser. Sorry, but I do. It’s quite hard to say why but there is something thoroughly untinkerish about it. For a start, there is a definite hint of sexiness. Ricky Tarr is seen interacting with (what I assume to be) Irina in what can only be described as a moment of steaminess. Tinker is not a sexy story. It’s not often that I don’t welcome a bit of steaminess but here it just isn’t right. Then there’s that room the big five are meeting in; its plush carpeted walls giving a sense of womb-like security that will, no doubt, give the presence of Gerald (the mole) a sense of violating threat. But remember the scruffy looking meeting room with painted radiators and seventies civil service charm from the TV series? Apart from the sense of authenticity it gave Tinker, the trappings of decay perfectly captured the idea of British decline as another layer of betrayal. As Connie Sachs so eloquently put it: “Poor loves. Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves.” Britain no longer provided them with the cause they were created for. This was all part of the explanation for Gerald’s betrayal itself and this further loss of innocence was beautifully captured by the use of a choir boy singing “Nunc Dimittis” over the closing credits. I don’t mind admitting that the emotional effect of this music makes me feel a little overcome after my annual Tinker viewing. Now, I realise that the music in this teaser is not the music that will be used; in fact it is the music from The Wolfman (2010). However, if it’s indicative of what we’ll get in the final release, then they’re clearly going for “tense” rather than “reflective” and I’d rather my Tinker was the latter. 

Oh well, I must stop thinking anyone thinks of me when they make a movie. Tinker is a good yarn and it’s never been made for a worldwide cinema audience so it was only a matter of time until we got a mainstream film. Mind you, it was a good yarn’s lack of exposure that I suspect gave somebody the wheeze of remaking The Wickerman (1973) and look what a success that was. I shall do my best to enjoy this film and, for all I’ve said, I’m still looking forward to it. I just get the feeling that it won’t be my Tinker anymore.

The Dark Satanic Speed Camera

So, according to the BBC, it looks like fixed speed cameras across Avon and Somerset will stop working from the end of March. I, for one, don’t consider this to be a Good Thing. However, I am aware that there are many who regard speed cameras to be the work of the Devil himself, so when I posted this news story on my Facebook page, it came as no surprise to see my In Box fill with rants from my (it must be said) middle-aged male friends who are delighted to see the back of them.

Now, I know I’m a bit simple-minded when it comes to breaking the speed limit. I bow to the laws of physics and tend to agree that the faster you are going when hitting that errant pedestrian who stupidly stepped out in front of your (skilfully driven) car then the more likely you are to kill them. I’m also a bit radical in my view that driving under the (arbitrarily chosen) speed limit is a demonstration of your ability to control your vehicle and that, if you are unable to do so, you shouldn’t be driving it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming to be a better driver just because I hold these controversial beliefs. I haven’t yet been caught by a camera but I’m well aware that I might be. I can’t guarantee that I would never drift over the limit, but I do endeavour not to do so.

However, the rhetoric of the anti-camera brigade never ceases to amaze me. The comments on my post varied from the, frankly, moronic to the tortuous logic twisting variety (supported by the most dubious of statistics) that manage to apparently prove that speed cameras are actually the most dangerous thing out there. We had the ‘speed cameras are a weapon against the soft middle classes’ response; that one also seemed to claim that the ‘scum with no insurance’ are somehow exempt from speed cameras. Didn’t quite follow that particular argument, to be honest. We had the ‘saying that speed kills is like saying that guns kill when we really know its bullets’ diatribe. We had the ones about how the misuse of motorway lanes is the real problem ‘out there’. And, of course, we had the ones written by people who had been on advanced driving courses who had driven ‘perfectly safely’ along country roads at 120mph while sat next to a police officer. That proves its safe, that does.

Why is it every moron I have ever met has done some kind of advanced driving course? What motivates people to do these courses? Is it the thrill of sitting next to a police officer (while safely doing 120mph on a country road) that gets them going? I always remember a particularly charmless colleague of mine who always had an appropriate mate ‘he knew down the pub’ that he could invoke whenever an argument was leaving him behind. You know the sort: ‘My mate is in the army/police/merchant navy/air traffic control (delete where applicable) and he reckons (insert bizarre piece of logic to back up your argument)’. I’m pretty sure he’d done some kind of super advanced driving course that involved driving in excess of the speed of sound (perfectly safely) while sitting next to a police officer on a country road. I’m also pretty sure he didn’t like speed cameras.

Well I do like speed cameras. You can go on about safe driving all you like but at the end of the day, the faster you go, the more likely you are to kill someone and if you can’t keep to the speed limit (no matter how inappropriate you feel it is) then you shouldn’t be driving. If you are one those arch speed camera conspirisists who thinks that lazy local government workers are just using them to take your money to spend on a big caviar fuelled Christmas party, then you could really spite them all; try sticking to speed limit.

The Strange World of Kirsty Young

The other night I watched Kirsty Young’s ‘The British at Work’ (10^th March, BBC2) with the usual mixture of anticipation and dread that any new documentary series on the BBC can generate. For all the entertaining enlightenment I might get out of a BBC doc’, there is always the danger of Alice Roberts spending at least  half a program making sure I know what it’s about (just in case I’m a bit thick or too distracted by the ‘Hello’ article I’m trying to read at the same time).  The first part of Kirsty’s series was okay, I suppose, but I couldn’t help feeling irritated beyond belief by Kirsty’s somewhat sheltered view of the typical British working experience.  This first part was entitled ‘We Can Make It’ and dealt with the travails of the working Brit in the post-war period 1945-1964. As interesting as this might have been, she set the scene by poking one of my bugbears in the eye with a big stick.

‘Nowadays, most of us’, we were informed, ‘do a job we like’.

Oh, do we?

‘In fact, most of us would say our job defines us’.

At this point, I have become so cross that I had to rewind five minutes later as I realised I’d stopped listening and was simply venting cartoon steam from ears. Kirsty’s point was that in the twenty-first century we are all lucky enough to choose what we do, while our parents and grandparents simply did whatever they could to keep a roof over their heads. Kirsty felt the need to point out that even her grandparents (we got rather a lot of Kirsty’s grandparents over the course of the program) had awful jobs. Her grandfather worked in a shipyard (presumably while wearing a flat cap and clutching a pint of ‘Heavy’) while her grandmother put the walnuts on our whips (the cheeky little minx).

Of course, nowadays we all have fulfilling jobs in the media.

Except we don’t. Speaking as someone with twenty-two and a half soul destroying years in the civil service behind them, I can absolutely guarantee that many of us do not like our jobs and would be horrified that anyone thought these jobs defined us.  But enough about me. Does Kirsty not even manage to get down her local Waitrose? (I’m taking a shot that Kirsty may not be an Asda girl). I’m pretty certain that even in the mighty ‘Trose, the average shelf-stacker does not consider that their stacking duties ‘define’ them in any way. Kirsty fails to realise that many people are trapped in jobs by their financial commitments. This wasn’t just an immediate post-war phenomena; it’s as true now as it ever was, perhaps more so. Many of us have never found out what we’re good at. As clichéd as it might sound, some people may just never have got the ‘breaks’. Who, exactly, does Kirsty think clean the toilets?

If it sounds like I’m a bit too worked up about this, just remember that Kirsty might just be representative of the media types who make these programs. I hope not, but you can see all too easily that this might be the case. An awful image forms of Kirsty and her media chums sitting in a trendy London bar talking about their next project for a public they know nothing about; a public that seems to be invisible to them in a world where bins empty themselves and the wheels just turn by the collective wishful thinking of their social set.

Or am I being a bit dumb here? Was Kirsty talking to me, personally? Well, not just me. That would be odd to say the least; but me as a representative of that oh-so-important group of people: The documentary viewers. Perhaps Kirsty assumes we’re not like everyone else. The shelf stackers are all watching the X Factor and the civil servants are all retreating to some alcoholic refuge to hide from their own souls. I find this view even more disturbing. Kirsty has decided that her program is not for everyone; just nice people with the wherewithal to achieve their career goals and get nice job in the media. You can watch if you’re not one of us but don’t expect to enjoy it; we didn’t really make if for you.

Oh well, on that dark note, I look forward to the rest of the series if only to discover at what point Kirsty thinks we all got nice jobs and found self-fulfilment. I wonder what that episode will be called.

False Identity Crisis

So I’m told that it is a Good Thing for budding writers to have a blog. Goes against the grain a bit as Grumpy Old Men like myself tend to wonder why on earth anyone would want to read a blog; but one thing I have learned as I have got older is that one should keep an open mind (even if one’s gut remains defiantly closed).

So here we go.

First thing that crosses my mind is that I’m really not sure whether I’m supposed to use my real name or not. Up to me, of course, but what is the ‘done thing’ among the blogging community? Now I’m supposed to be good at research so I dedicate a full ten minutes (maybe even eleven) to an examination of online opinion.  Well, Penelope Trunk (who is, apparently, a ‘brazen careerist’) tells me I should use my own name.  However, somebody by the name of Amanda Chapel seems to have made herself terribly unpopular on Penelope’s page by daring to suggest that such advice is akin to ‘go play on the highway’. No agreement there, then.  MetaFilter also seem to favour revealing the real you but as I have no idea what a ‘community weblog’ is (and probably don’t want to know), I’m not sure I’ll take much notice of them either.

So let’s think about it. People’s big fear seems to be about their employers finding out. But as I am currently many things but not actually working for anyone else, why do I care? What am I going to put in a blog? Well, I could tell you about my local’s new management’s attempts at organising a pub-quiz last night. The fail was, as they say, epic.  Ah, now I see a problem already. I am ‘known’ in my local. Actually, I appear to be surprisingly well known throughout my neighbourhood; it’s amazing just how much of a z-list celebrity you can become in your local micro-world when you’re a Pub-Rocker. So do I want the new management (or anybody who knows them) seeing me mercilessly laying the boot in on their lack of pub-quiz wherewithal? I suspect I do not. In fact, the more I think about this, the more of a no-brainer it becomes.

Anonymity for me then. I might change this in the future (on the assumption that I can work the settings to do so) but for the moment, I shall remain JK, The Blogger from 20,000 Fathoms.