Tag Archive: Tony Wilson


BEST OF BRITISH CULT MOVIES: 30 – 21

Filed under: Books, Movies, Music — 1 Comment
November 3, 2011

Continuing my list of the fifty Greatest British Cult Movies, here is my selection from 30 -21:

30. THE BELLES OF ST TRINIAN’S Frank Launder (1954)

The first and best of the five movies in the series based on the cartoons of Ronald Searle. There are great comic turns by Alistair Sim (in two roles as headmistress and her scheming brother), Joyce Grenfell (as the games teacher) and George Cole (as Flash Harry). This, plus numerous assorted nubiles in gymslips – what’s not to like?

 29. GOLDFINGER Terence Young (1964)

You can’t have a list like this without a Bond movie and it has to be one with Sean Connery as 007. Goldfinger is my favourite because it has the best villains Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) and Oddjob (Harold Sakata) , great Bond girls Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) and Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) as well as having the usual  ridiculous action scenes. Continue reading →

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BACKTRACKING # 30 : THE SEX PISTOLS – ANARCHY ON EMI

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August 6, 2011

Part of an irregular series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl. (Search ‘Backtracking’ to collect the set!)

THE SEX PISTOLS – Anarchy In The UK b/w I Wanna Be Me (EMI, 1976)

“It happens. you feel alien. You are other. Nothing in your culture, in your experience gets near what you feel. You want to be elsewhere. If you can’t be elsewhere, you want to see everything brought down. These thoughts explode in your head. You can’t sleep, you grind your teeth. You get migraines. You shake.
Then you walk into a room. You see or hear four people making a noise, playing the limits of electricity and the room’s ambient space: like a switch tripping, your life is changed forever. Out of nowhere, the terrain is cleared and the possibilities stretch before you.
This will happen only once, with that certainty”.

These lines are part of the sleeve notes by Jon Savage to Lipstick Traces, a compilation CD designed to be played alongside the book of the same name by Greil Marcus.

The four people in the room making the racket almost certain refers to The Sex Pistols. No other band, not even The Clash, had that effect

Without the single Anarchy In The UK, Marcus’ secret history of the 20th century would not have been written.

Without this record, and Johnny Rotten in particular, countless bands would have remained unformed and postwar popular culture might have continued on a downward spiral.

I might still be listening to albums like Tales From Topographic Oceans or Brain Salad Surgery.

It is hard to imagine, and as the years pass, it gets harder and harder to convince other people what an impact this record had.

Marcus notes Rotten’s demonic laugh and insolent way he not so much sang as hurled the lines into the world and writes of “a voice that denied all social facts, and in that denial affirmed that everything was possible”. Continue reading →

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Control and Ian Curtis

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April 27, 2008

Sam Riley as Ian Curtis

The brief, ill fated life of Ian Curtis is a tale of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll but a far cry from the hedonistic excess we associate with this lifestyle option.

The sex is either of a joyless marital or guilty extra-marital variety.

The drugs are on prescription to contain Curtis’ epilepsy with a shopping list of debilitating side effects.

The ‘rock’n’roll’ is bleak and doom laden. Continue reading →

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Tony Wilson r.i.p.

Filed under: Music — 1 Comment
August 11, 2007

Tony Wilson

Tony Wilson (20th February 1950 – 10th August 2007)

Gutted to hear of Tony Wilson’s death.

He was an opinionated loudmouth, a bullshitter and a show off but he was also a risk taking maverick who got the Sex Pistols on British TV for the first time on ‘So It Goes’, founded (and bailed out) Factory Records and The Hacienda Club to launch the Madchester scene & without him we may never have had Joy Division & New Order.

With his untimely death at 57 leaves a major legacy but a massive gap. Driven by passion rather than cash there are too few willing to put their money where their mouth is like he was.

Thanks for keeping it real, Tony!

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