DVDs


MANFRED MANN’S EARTH BAND Then And Now Cohesion


After being such an essential part of the UK’s ’60s R&B boom, Manfred Mann rode into the psych years after swapping Paul Jones for Mike D’Abo, going on to enjoy a stretch of Top 10 hits including ‘Just Like A


Woman’, ‘Ha! Ha! Said The Clown’ and ‘The Mighty Quinn’, which hit #1 in 1968. As the hits started easing off, the band split in ’69, Mann and drummer Mike Hugg forming the formidable Manfred Mann’s Chapter Three with the latter now singing and playing piano. With its heavyweight brass section, the group attempted a bold form of jazz-rock fusion, which flared brilliantly on their self-titled debut album, uncorked in November ’69 as third release on the new Vertigo label. Ahead of their time, the group had split by ’71, leaving two groundbreaking albums and little else. So it comes as a fantastic surprise to encounter this most overlooked of groups, captured in full moody glory on Australian TV in ’70 playing ‘One Way Glass’ (making someone who spent his Saturday job money on that album very happy). This obscure footage comes as a fantastic


extra on this DVD presenting two career- bookending shows played by the bearded keyboard maestro’s next group, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band: a whole gig broadcast in ’72 on black-and-white Aussie TV and a 2005 show in front of their German faithful for Rockpalast. Unsurprisingly, it’s the earlier gig that will be most up Shindiggers’ street with lively renditions of ‘Captain Bobby Scout’ and ‘The Mighty Quinn’, before a group interview of the “laidback” variety.The 33 year gap before the second show has added both prog elements, Sting covers and hits they enjoyed like ‘Blinded By The Light’ and ‘Davy’s On The Road Again’, but “Quinn The Eskimo” still caps the night before dipping into ‘Smoke On The Water’, obviously sending the crowd bananas. The proverbial well-rounded package


(missus!). Kris Needs


MELLODRAMA: THE MELLOTRON MOVIE Bazillion Points www.bazillionpoints.com


Hot on the heels (or warm-ish, at least) of Nick Awde’s Mellotron book comes Dianna Dilworth’s film about the convoluted, episodic history of this most beloved yet reviled instrument – the mysterious


shadow cabinet which cloaked the faltering heartbeat of prog-rock. For all of the Mellotron’s definitively British


attributes – its consumptive wheezing, its portly dimensions, its grudging attitude to work – Mellodrama quite rightly originates from an American perspective, given that it was the Californian Harry Chamberlin’s eponymous invention in the ’40s which started the ball


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rolling. Mind you, taking its provenance as a magnetic tape-derived device into account, some rather unlikely characters figure in its ancestry – Adolf Hitler for one. You’ll have to watch the film to find out why: but suffice to say, he wasn’t recording a triple concept album for the Charisma label. From the American end, the enthusiastic


and professorial talking heads include Michael Penn, Rick Nielsen, author/musician Brian Kehew and Jon Brion – the producer who rather surreally introduced the Mellotron to Kanye West. The British end of the spectrum is covered by the variously fond and appalled reminiscences of former Moody Blue Mike Pinder, Tony Banks of Genesis, Ian McDonald of King Crimson and early Mellotron demonstrator Geoff Unwin, to name but several. A vivid picture of the instrument emerges


from all of this. As gloomy and intractable as a teenager with an untidy bedroom, this adorably infuriating Pandora’s Box could reveal the secrets of the universe if you could only persuade the fucking thing to work for longer than four bars at a stretch. By all accounts, it was simultaneously the Enigma machine of rock and the Austin Maxi of rock. As the film proceeds and a new generation discovers the “cool creepiness” of the Mellotron, you may find yourself punching the air. The only thing that lets Dilworth’s movie


down is the almost total absence of supportive music clips from the bands who built the Mellotron’s legend in the first place. No doubt this is a licensing/budgetary issue; but even the briefest blast of ‘Strawberry Fields’ or ‘Watcher Of The Skies’ would have rounded out the story with imperious eloquence. Marco Rossi


PERMISSIVE BFI Flipside www.bfi.org.uk


Featuring a great soundtrack from little known underground folk/prog band Forever More who appear as themselves, there are also small parts for members of cult acid- folk act Comus, who


also contribute musically, as do Titus Groan. The atmospheric shots of Forever More as they trundle up and down the highways of Britain and London in their Ford Transit and perform live on stage are a cinematographic treat and quite evocative of the age. If you were anticipating glimpses of bare


breasts and pubic fuzz then Permissive will be just your bag, but it’s not a light-hearted sex romp through the twilight world of groupies. Rather, director Lindsay Shonteff tends to paint a dark picture of how tawdry groupie culture was. Except for the loose theme of two groupie friends vying for the attentions of a rock band, there’s little plot to speak of and just as little to smile about (except maybe the wooden acting and the anachronistic vernacular of the day, maaan! – “Do you plate?”) And it inevitably ends in tragedy. It’s more than just a sexploitation flick then


– it’s unrelentingly bleak from the first scene virtually to the moment the final credits begin to roll, and there’s little sign of the optimism usually associated with the era – a new decade had dawned. The political, social and cultural anguish that came to typify the ’70s was only


just around the corner and the optimism of the ’60s had begun to fade somewhat, stubbornly lingering on like some smouldering roach reluctant to burn itself out. Bonus feature Bread directed by Stanley Long


proves to be something of a light-hearted respite from the bleakness of Permissive. Concerned with the efforts of a group of hippies to hold their own rock festival via a means of fund-raising


THE WIGAN CASINO Voiceprint www.voiceprint.co.uk


We’ve been living for the weekend ever since youth culture began and nowhere was the feeling more passionate, devotional and stoutly working class, than the northern soul scene in


the late ’70s. Tony Palmer’s short 1977 documentary portrays all these qualities. From the original mods to acid house, the common thread that links all youth culture movements is the enduring quest for escapism and the urge for belonging. The Wigan Casino (made for a regional TV


station) was only a bit part of the director’s distinguished career; whose work numbers over 100 films including the acclaimed ’68 documentary on the ’60s music scene, All My Loving. It stands frozen in time though as one of the few surviving film documents of an enduring musical phenomenon forever entrenched in mystery and secrecy.At the time,


exploits, which includes attempting to make their own porn movie, it’s really more of a sexploitation flick in the Carry On vein than a serious comment on the times. The fact that it includes Long’s own film footage from a real festival and features British blues rockers Jucy Luicy and Crazy Mabel will again ensure it is of interest to fans of the early ’70s rock counterculture. Rich Deakin


the northern soul fraternity viewed the director (a man coming up north from London to infiltrate their scene) with deep suspicion, worried mainly about misrepresentation or the kind of overexposure that would kill the magic. For those without rose-tinted glasses the


near formation dancing looks like a line dancing convention at first sight, save for the more athletic dancers who could spin, kick and flip in a blink of an eye. When these guys are in full flow, it’s quite simply a joy to behold. Such a shame there is a lack of bonus material or outtakes as the dancing and the music are probably what most people want to watch. Palmer twinned the theme of all night


dancing against a backdrop of economic hard times and industrial decay. Unemployment was rife and the once thriving industries were on their knees. The Wigan Casino was all some kids had, it was their life. It is quite evident how working class the scene was. They came from all over the country to Wigan, kids with mundane jobs (if they were lucky) and a passion for dancing all night to rare soul music. Although criminally short, this historic film


is both funny and inspiring but at the same time, quite dark and depressing. Paul Ritchie


“A JOYFUL CELEBRATION” The Wigan Casino director Tony Palmer talks to Paul Ritchie


Shindig!: How did the idea for the film come about? Tony Palmer: When I was first asked to do the film by Granada, like the rest of the world, I thought it was a gambling den! So I turned up at around 7PM and there was nothing happening at all. It was only then that I realised it was an allnighter! The first time I was there, it took place


pretty much completely in the pitch dark so I couldn’t see too much but what I could see was absolutely astonishing. The thing you couldn’t miss was the amazing dancing. I was immediately fascinated by it. So the next thing I had to do was go back and be auditioned by the group of people who organised the allnighters. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was that they wanted as it was clear the idea for the film came from them.


SD: Were the club goers welcoming of you and your crew? TP: They kept saying, “We really don’t want any publicity,” so I thought, “Why am I here” and they knew if I brought a film camera then I would have to put up some lights which would just destroy the atmosphere. I didn’t quite walk out but I thought, this is


bonkers. It then became clear what they were really worried about was the reputation it had outside the immediate circle, which was [that it was] a kind of druggies’ paradise. They wanted something that made it absolutely clear that it wasn’t so – it was a joyful celebration of the soul music they loved.


SD: It must have been unlike anything you’d ever seen before. TP: In the mid to late ’60s in London, I would often go to The Roundhouse. It had a similar event that happened on a Saturday. All these pretty girls would arrive with carrier bags and they would disappear into the ladies loo where they would change and they’d re-emerge looking wild! Then at the end, they would change and go back home to their mums and dads.


SD: The images of Wigan are shockingly bleak. Were you trying to emphasise that juxtaposition? TP: I realised there was a direct parallel between the industrial deprivation that they were enduring to what had happened to their parents and grandparents. The complete destruction of any industrial base to the city. When we were there, all the mills had closed. It was pretty grim and that’s what their parents and their grandparents had endured between the wars. That’s why I wanted to include the older


generation in the film. It seemed to me that there was hope. The present generation, in spite of all the difficulties, they had got off their arses and done something. Whereas the older generation either hadn’t had the opportunity or the nous to make something which was their own. They were resigned to the fact. I hope the film is vaguely optimistic when


you think about what they created – the real sense of hope was amazing.


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