DVDs


THE CORRIDOR PEOPLE Network


www.networkdvd.co.uk


Ultra cool black and white, low budget, fantasy/crime drama conducted in a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere with a huge dash of style. This four-part Granada TV series from 1966 has recently been exhumed for the first time ever for


your delectation. Starring John Sharp and Elizabeth Shepherd


(the original Emma Peel), this owes a major debt to The Avengers though has obviously been made on about a tenth of their budget. The sets are cheap as chips but it’s quickly forgotten as soon you become immersed in the strange world where characters frequently break the fourth wall. The plot involves CID man Kronk sending his


Thomson and Thompson-esque agents, Inspector Blood and Sergeant Hound, to nix the latest nefarious plan of Persian seductress Syrie Van Epp. When they fail (which they invariably do) he dispatches a hard-boiled private eye, or, in extreme circumstances, his secretary to complete the job with a revolver concealed in her handbag. The plots become increasingly surreal as the


series continues, starting with the battle for a chemical weapon hidden in a perfume before focusing on a scientist specialising in reanimation, communist double agents and a shoplifting European queen. The Corridor People is a consistently imaginative series with a wonderful off beat ambience. Though never hitting the heights of The Avengers, it’s certainly an enjoyable romp with some excellent performances. Truly, series such as this are a gateway to a lost time. Austin Matthews


GOLD: BEFORE WOODSTOCK. BEYOND REALITY Wild Eye/MVD Visual www.wildeyereleasing.com


“It’s a western, it’s a comedy, it’s a nudie, it’s a drama, it’s a musical, it’s a revolution, it’s a manifesto, it’s a movement, it’s a happening, it’s a freakout!” So proclaims the voiceover on the trailer for this long lost


document from the post Summer Of Love counterculture at its fuzziest and most incoherent. Long the subject of much interest, thanks in no


small part to the fact that the film’s soundtrack featured previously unreleased material by The MC5, Gold has remained locked in the vaults until now. Shot in 1968 (although not theatrically released until ’72), starring Del Close and Garry Goodrow and co-produced by Ronan O’Rahilly, founder of Radio Caroline and then manager of The MC5, Gold is the underground cinematic relative of the counterculture it attempts to cash in on, and it comes awash with half-baked revolutionary rhetoric, images of hippies going wild in the country, acres of naked flesh and the suitably psychedelic use of solarised and tinted film stock. The soundtrack features material by David


McWilliams, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Beastly Times and Barry St John with the aforementioned previously unreleased MC5 tracks – ‘Gold’, ‘Train Music’ and ‘Inside Out’ – recorded in London in February ’72 when the band was in the process of terminal


disintegration. This monument to high times gone by has finally made it to DVD accompanied by a raft of bonus features including commentaries and an interview with director/”organiser” Bob Levis. Grahame Bent


MAN: TAPES OF THE UNEXPECTED Voiceprint


www.voiceprint.co.uk


The unexpected in this case being a from the archives selection of long unseen German TV footage from the late ’60s and early ’70s. The first two black and white clips on this modestly dimensioned 25 minute DVD come from a


November 1969 appearance on Beat Club believed to be the earliest surviving live footage of Man, where the band’s original line-up are seen performing the one-off curio ‘2.30 Definitely’ (essentially an instrumental jam accompanying the show’s opening titles), plus ‘Brother Arnold’sRed And White Striped Tent’. Next we jump forward to April ’71 and the


colour footage captures the classic Man line-up of Mickey Jones, Martin Ace, Deke Leonard, Terry Williams and Clive John letting their well developed jamming instincts loose on ‘Daughter Of The Fireplace’ and ‘Would The Christians Wait For Five Minutes, The Lions Are Having A Draw’, before the closing clip takes us forward to November ’71 for a performance of ‘Angel Easy’. Grahame Bent


WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE: A FILM ABOUT THE DOORS Eagle Rock Entertainment DVD www.eaglerockent.com


Johnny Depp talking about Jim Morrison and The Doors for 90 minutes over bits of Doors footage with no interviews with band members or other key parties to break up his script feels like a mighty sketchy premise for a


rock movie, right? Well, the film works... mostly.The visually


arresting clips and images – some of The Doors on stage, some in the studio, some them just hanging out – tell a fascinating story in themselves – mostly having to do with the rise and fall of Morrison. The big flaw is the social and cultural backdrop


that’s presented.We get talk about JFK’s assassination, civil rights and Charles Manson. Couldn’t there have been some insight into the world that bore The Doors phenomenon that you can’t get from reading any Time-Life book on the ’60s? I kept wanting to hear about their relationship with Love and other LA (and national… and international) bands of the time. I wanted deeper probing into what it was like for the other members to work with (and around) Morrison. I felt more inside The Doors’ world when reading the sections on them in Jac Holzman’s book about his experiences running Elektra (Follow The Music) than I did from this entire full-length film. Despite all those gripes, I still enjoyed it and


would recommend the movie. The bonus material includes eye-opening interviews with Morrison’s


father and sister. Brian Greene


Books


CHICAGO FOLK, IMAGES OF THE SIXTIES MUSIC SCENE: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF RAEBURN FLERLAGE RONALD D COHEN & BOB RIESMAN ECW Press www.ecwpress.com


In his time Ray Flerlage found himself working in a variety of capacities within the music business of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s as a journalist, radio presenter, promotion man, lecturer, activist,


record store clerk and as a sales rep for Folkways records in Chicago and the Mid-West. However, Ray Flerlage is also remembered for his photographic work as the foremost visual chronicler of the Chicago blues scene with his photos having appeared in numerous blues publications and adorned record sleeves for a variety of labels including Chess, Testament, Delmark, Prestige, Bluesville and Folkways. Decades later many of these photos were collected together in a previous ECW title – Chicago Blues –and now by way of a complementary volume Chicago Folk brings to light another significant strand within Frerlage's photographic output – namely his work documenting the city's once vibrant folk scene. In terms of format Chicago Folk includes an


introductory essay detailing Flerlage's career and is accompanied by more than 200 chronologically arranged black and white live and candid backstage shots covering the period from December 1959 to January ’70, most of which are now being published for the first time. Shot in a variety of Chicago venues including


The University Of Chicago Folk Festivals, The Old Town School Of Folk Music, Orchestra Hall, The Gate Of Horn, Fickle Pickle and Mother Blues, the wide range of artists immortalised in Frerlage's photos reads like an A-Z of the blues, country, folk and other roots artists who appeared in the Windy City at that time: Odetta, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Big Joe Williams, Revered Gary Davis, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Staple Singers, Miriam Makeba, Josh White, Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys, Sunnyland Slim, Fred McDowell, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Dobson, Mike Bloomfield, Sleepy John Estes, Son House, Billy Boy Arnold, Carolyn Hester,The Stanley Brothers, Mississippi John Hurt, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Booker White, Ravi Shankar and Luther Allison. Besides impressively documenting a previously


unseen side of Flerlage's photographic output, Chicago Folk opens a fascinating window on the city's heritage as a once important stronghold of folk and other roots music. Grahame Bent


LIFESTYLE ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ’60S Edited by Rian Hughes Fiell


www.fiell.com


The lifestyle magazines of the ’60s were a far cry from the celebrity erectile dysfunction nip ’n’ tuck divorce and diet tips confessionals that clog up newsagents’ shelves these days, as this luscious full colour


500+ page tome testifies. Whether it be the Mills &


Boon-style romantic short stories and domestic aspirations that filled the pages of Woman’s Own, Woman’s Journal,Woman’s Mirror and, er, Woman (getting the picture yet?) during the first half of the decade or the more risqué post-pill advice columns and fashion spreads that pepper the likes of Boyfriend, Valentine, Petticoat and Go Girl from around 1967, these evocative works of art paint a picture of the changing times as vividly as the pop music, newsreels and movies of the era do. Heroically compiled from hundreds of vintage publications and beautifully reproduced on thick, glossy paper (with nary a naff typeface or stylistic cliché in sight), the viewer is transported headlong into the absent storylines themselves. You’re left wondering why the cute girl in the modish two- piece and head scarf looks so pensive as the devilishly handsome chap in the chunky knitted sweater watches her from the corner of his eye in their jazz-age dining room. You begin formulating the missing words yourself. Once the more traditionally “painted” works


give way to a more cartoonish brand of psychedelic eye candy from around ’66 onwards, we’re in a Carnabetian wonderland of stick-thin couples clad in Union Jack mini-dresses and candy-stripe hipster bell bottoms. It’s this last third of the book that will offer the most thrills for fans of ’60s pop-art visuals – a veritable phantasmagoria of swirls, flowers and hip speech bubbles provided by the likes of Alan Aldridge, Antonio Lopez, Hilda Offen and Peter Bentley (the latter’s work a dead ringer for the high psychedelia of Yellow Submarine). Some artists are chronicled in a short series of biographies but most are sadly destined to remain forgotten pioneers of this hitherto under-appreciated form. If you’re the kind of person who collects ’60s paperbacks, tea towels, alarm clocks and, of course, clothes, you need this now. Andy Morten


This is the kind of lifestyle we like to see illustrated here at Shindig!


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