Tag Archive: The Who


BEST OF BRITISH CULT MOVIES: 40 – 31

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November 2, 2011

Continuing my list of the Fifty Greatest British Cult Movies, here is my selection from  40 -31:

40. SCUM Alan Clarke (1979)

Alan Clarke was known for his direct, no frills approach to film. He cut his teeth on TV, notably with Play For Today. This exposé of the brutality in the borstal system was originally made for that slot but was considered too violent for home consumption. Scum is another hard man role for Ray Winstone. Not for wimps.

39.  THE COMPANY OF WOLVES  Neil Jordan (1984)

“The worst wolves are hairy on the inside”. Angel Carter’s short story is a feminist retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. The visually striking movie is not an entirely successful adaptation but manages to keep the ideas alive. Continue reading →

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THE WHO LIVE AT SWANSEA

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May 4, 2011

In answer to today’s Plinky prompt, the best live musical performance I’ve ever attended was on 12th June 1976 when The Who performed at the unglamorous venue of Swansea Football Stadium in Wales.

Highlights were Baba O’Riley, and the primal scream of Roger Daltrey for the finale of Won’t Get Fooled Again.

I went with three friends and by some fluke we somehow managed to get a place right near the front to see the full glory.

A stunning show from start to finish – as usual, they didn’t play an encore but none was necessary.

I drove back to the Midlands after and nearly fell asleep at the wheel. Stopped for a coffee and greasy cooked breakfast at a motorway service station to stay awake. Got home at about 5am – a long day’s journey into night but well worth it.

Link to eye witness report of this concert

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BACKTRACKING #8 : PATTI SMITH

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March 22, 2011

Bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl.

Patti Smith – Gloria b/w My Generation (Arista, 1976)

This is a kind of brief postscript to yesterday’s review of  Just Kids.

In this book, Patti Smith wrote how she “wanted to infuse the written word with the immediacy and frontal attack of rock and roll”.

While her own poetic songs follow this path, she also proves the fulfilment of this objective with the pair of blazing covers on this single.

Van Morrison‘s Gloria (written while part of Them) is also the opening track on her sublime debut album Horses and is prefaced by her own ‘In excelsia deo’ poem with the memorable opening line “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine”.

This could be taken as a defiant stand against religion, although personally I think she was hitting on the Church as an institution rather than rejecting the notion of faith. To her mind, Jesus should be big enough to take the hit anyway; as she says in Just Kids: “Christ was a man worthy to rebel against, for he was rebellion itself”.

Rebellion is certainly the mood of her demolition job of the Who’s song which uses the Mod classic as a framework for a frenzied blast of pure punk energy. She barely even bothers to sing the words as if to say ‘fuck it you know how it goes anyway’. It was recorded live in Cleveland on January 26th, 1976. The track did not appear on the original vinyl release of Horses but subsequently was added to the CD version. At one point, I’d swear she sings “I hope I die before I get ill’ which, if so, would scupper Townsend’s live fast-die young message. “We created it – let’s take it over!” – she declares enigmatically at the end.

She should have run for President!

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THE BEST MOVIE SOUNDTRACKS OF ALL TIME

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September 7, 2010

What makes a great soundtrack?

The marriage of action with visuals?

The creation of a unique atmosphere?

The use of familiar music in an unexpected way?

The introduction to a genre or artist you’ve never heard before?

Any of these would work for me – you will very rarely find all in one movie but any one can make the difference between a good movie and an out-and-out classic.
Here is a list (with a few clips) of sixteen of my favourites in A-Z order.

Note : not one of them is by the ubiquitous Hans Zimmer!

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REWATCHING QUADROPHENIA

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September 9, 2008

tumblr_olh6zqibfs1vl5jyeo1_500Phil Daniels stunning performance as Jimmy is so on the nose it’s hard to think of him in any other role. His career since has never reached such heights unless you think of a part in the soap opera Eastenders is any where near comparable.

I remember loving the movie when it first came out in 1979 and thought that it might have dated badly. Certainly, the riot police look as though they are equipped to sort out a scuffle in Camberwick Green rather than a set to between pumped up gangs of Mods and Rockers in the centre of Brighton. It’s noticeable too that scooter and motorbike riders are helmet-less but aside from these differences, the film still stands up pretty well. This is because it gives such a truthful representation of the confusions at the heart of youth culture. There’s also the hammy laugh out loud performance by Sting as the Ace Face.

Pete Townsend wrote three rock operas for The Who – a genre , like the dreaded concept album, that seems very much a 70s/80s Prog-Rock phenomenon. Tommy is over praised and I liked it even less after Ken Russell’s ridiculously OTT movie treatment. Lifehouse died a natural death although the best songs were salvaged for the excellent Who’s Next album. Quadrophenia is the one that, for me, really works. Great songs, unfussy production – the band captured at the peak of their powers.

Townsend has said that it is essentially the three minute single ‘My Generation’ expanded into a double album. What the record and the film do so well is map out the psychological minefield that Jimmy treads as he seeks desperately to belong to a gang/ group yet also wants to be an individual on his own terms. These twin needs become unresolvable and he becomes rejected by his parents for not being ‘normal’ and isolated from his peers because he taking everything so seriously. For them being a Mod is a bit of a laugh, for Jimmy it is his life.

It’s a tragic tale which Daniels humanizes and makes believable.

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