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I picked this CD up at a gig where Mendicant were supporting The Rumble Strips and I had managed to miss them. They say ‘Mendicant are a religious South London experience that will leave you begging for more…’
On listening, I found myself tending to agree. The nearest comparisons you can make to their sound is that it lies somewhere in the land of Beck near Mogwai. An experimental band of brothers and sisters who mix pop, old folk, rock and blues, aspiring to give an acoustic twist to urban music.
The ‘hick-hop’ of Pass That Whiskey is a steel banjo twanging danceable ditty. Next is the story of Lucio Conuela, with his steel toe high heels and silver rapier in his amber-handled cane. “I have seen and I have tasted all the things in store. I have seen and I have tasted and it left me wanting more,” Barnaby Cole and Simone Clark declare, over a plethora of skirmishing instruments played by cellist Jakob Kaye and a collaborative of varied musicians. The bluesy, brassy Butcher boy is more of the same eclectic unorthodox sound mix.
No three chord wonders these, but classicly trained multi-instrumentalists who have been playing music together for years. They employ guitars, banjos, violins, flute, cello, bass, organ and piano in their musical street fight. Mendicants are folks who rely exclusively on charity to survive. Help support their cause!
Indonesia once was a colony from the Netherlands, leading to mutual influences. When Indonesia finally gained independence many Indonesians came to the Netherlands, which secured the still lasting Indonesian influence on the Dutch culture.
Just as it spiced up our food it also spiced up our music. The ‘invention’ of rock ‘n’ roll lead immediately to the invention of ‘Indo-rock’. The Tielman Brothers one of the most important, if not the most important, bands of the Netherlands,
shaped rock ‘n’roll in the Netherlands, added the necessary sex element through their great and acrobatic shows and left a vast collection of music.”
Well, you learn something new every day. Absolutely spectacular.
As mind-bending what-the-fuck acid-flashback warped terror freakout flicks go, Alexandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 opus The Holy Mountain has to be in the 95th percentile. Where to even begin…. The film’s (at times extremely) loose narrative follows a central christ-like figure and a band of oddballs on a quest for the titular mountain, and the secrets of enlightenment and immortality held by it’s nine shadowy keepers. Along their journey we are treated to an unforgettable visual feast of often grotesque and sacrilegious scenes surrounding those seeking the mountain and their leader (played by Jodorowsky). What unfolds is a vast universe of surrealism, humour, nausea, nightmare, satire, spirituality, blood and delirium. It’s difficult to explain in words the aesthetic level The Holy Mountain resides on, but suffice to say I’ve never seen anything else that even comes close.
Rather than struggling to make sense of what is being presented, and dismissing any aspects of the film which don’t have any obvious immediate or symbolic relevance, you really have to let yourself go with this one. Don’t fight it, feel it (man). Years ago I would have thought of this film as being completely overblown and far too obtuse and difficult for it’s own good, style over substance if you will. These days however, I really relish in the way Jodorowsky forces you to put as much into the film as you can hope to take with you having seen it. If you’re willing to put in the effort, a very rewarding film.
Cleverly I managed to see The Holy Mountain in the afternoon and Jodorowsky’s first film El Topo in the evening. Given the choice again, I would have liked to have seen them the other way round but what can you do, I had a rainy Sunday off and both were almost at the end of their run. The director appears again as El Topo or “the mole”, a wandering man-with-no-name figure in what begins as a beautifully shot but almost straightforward western (at least in comparison to THM). Again, the central figure has a very heavy jesus-vibe, and Christian and Kabbalic imagery is rife throughout. While there are still long sequences that don’t make any immediate ‘sense’ in a traditional way, things generally tend to subsequently come together somewhat with long forgotten elements of the film making a comeback when you least expect them to.
Again, visually this is absolutely incredible stuff, and as with THM, the scale of the production is frequently amazing. The heavy contrast between the first and second ‘acts’ is played to incredible effect, and there are moments when the bold statement on the lobby poster about this being the greatest film ever made begin to see quite reasonable.
The Holy Mountain and El Topo have both just been given a full DVD release for the first time courtesy of those excellent folks at Tartan.
I’m in the middle of one of those situations where I’ve just discovered something, erm, wonderful/bizarre/ridiculous/thrilling/absurd about one of my favourite bands, and in sharing this wonderful/bizarre/ridiculous/thrilling/absurd thing with you people, I risk becoming the laughing stock of the world because of course everyone else has known about this thing for, oh, at least the past 325 thousand years and I’m dreadfully out of touch for only having just found out about it.
Here it is:
Between 1994 and 1996, Prolapse‘s Linda Steelyard and Mick Derrick starred in 79 episodes of Chez Lester, the greatest soap opera of the modern era, which was broadcast on Leicester cable TV station Cable 7. For those of you that don’t have access to cable TV, or Leicester in the mid 90s, the good news is that all 79 episodes are now available to watch on YouTube. Hooray!
Chez Lester Introduction
Chez Lester Episode 1
The other 78 Chez Lester episodes
Chez Lester on MySpace
Observant Diskant readers may also recognise Jonathan and Matt Kerry of The Freed Unit, who created and shot the whole series. Good on ’em.
After leaving the cinema, still with that punched-in-the-stomach feeling that Meadows’ films tend to invoke, we flagged down a cab to take us home.
“Man, what a fare,” the driver said in an exasperated voice as soon as we moved off, clearly hoping that we’d ask what was up. Stupidly, we did so, triggering a lengthy story about the “black gentleman” who had gotten into the cab before us, and had given directions in some kind of incomprehensible “jive talk”. This segued into an extended diatribe on the english-language capabilities of what felt like every nation under the sun.
I so, so hoped that, story exhausted. he would eventually fall-back on the standard “what were you up to tonight?” conversation-starter, whereupon we could straight-facedly reply “we went to see a film about racists,” but sadly he never did.
Not that it’s that simple. This Is England‘s skinheads aren’t two dimentional thugs, nor cyphers in the service of some leaden moral point, but skillfully-drawn to the extent that you’ll find yourself empathising, if not sympathising, with even ringleader and de-facto baddie Combo (Stephen Graham). It’s really newcomer Tomas Thurgoose’s show, whose turn as Shaun, a schoolboy living in a crappy run-down suburb, recently deprived of a father during the Falkland’s war, who falls in with a bunch of harmless local skins. The initial third of the film moves from kitchen-sink “grim-up-north” drama to gentle comedy as he finds a sense of belonging and a surrogate family with his new gang, who want nothing much more out of life than to have a bit of a laugh and listen to ska records. It isn’t until their former mate Combo gets out of jail with a head freshly filled with far-right sympathies that events take the expected dark turn. Both Meadows and Thurgoose make the transition seamlessly, with the latter proving himself to be a young actor with an exceptional range.
This Is England is by turns witty, sad, violent and profane, and certainly not for the faint-hearted. It’s also the best film I’ve seen so far this year.
IMDB page for This Is England
Shane Meadows’ Wikipedia entry
I love His Dark Materials and having just seen the ‘behind the scenes’ trailer for The Golden Compass it looks like the film version might not be as terrible as feared (though I await Lyra’s accent before maing a firm decision). At this stage it looks better than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (which I thought was fine, if not brilliant). However, the first book has a clear story, isn’t very contentious and is full of armoured bears which should help. I predict that the second film will be okay and the third film will be terrible and a cop out but hopefully so terrible that it stops the Narnia people even considering making The Last Battle into a film.
Anyway, see for yourself.
The Golden Compass – official website. You can make your own daemon! Mine is a spider.
However…
George Bush, dancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnnM4C7q_zA&mode=related&search=
Boris Yeltsin (RIP) smashed, dancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5FIoocja4k
Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush, dancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYZre8kEsuw
