DVDs Bruce Robinson and Susan Penhaligon experience a very British kind of ennui in Private Road
Books
ALL THERE IS TO KNOW Dave Berry with Mike Firth Heron Publications
www.heronpublications.co.uk The first thing you notice here is the overtly ’80s, Smash Hits dated look of the thing. This is especially evident in the chapter
PRIVATE ROAD BFI Flipside
www.bfi.org.uk/flipside
Barney Platts-Mills’ 1971 film Private Road has been lovingly restored by the BFI Flipside bods, and is ripe for re-evaluation.A fairly straightforward
tale of boy meets girl, boy (Peter, future Withnail & I writer Bruce Robinson) and girl (Ann, babyish Susan Penhaligon) fall in love, girl’s well-to-do parents disapprove, love triumphs – well, in most cases it does. Set against a backdrop of Central London student digs with brief excursions to a rural location (the Scottish Highlands), there’s a distinct disregard for fancy film sets and wardrobe – much like Platts-Mills’ previous film, Bronco Bullfrog, only one or two rungs higher up the social ladder. Private Road delves into the carefree and
colourful early ’70s, with Peter (a struggling writer we’re told) landing a lucrative publishing deal and moving into a tidy pad with Ann, only to discover a world where burglars will take “bloody everything” and friends succumb to smack addiction.Watch out for rival hack Alex Marvel (great name) and his stoned digression, “I jump into a puddle of water – everyone should know what it’s all about.” Following a brief courtship and a trip to a secluded cottage to write a novel (and take in a spot of fishing, hunting, and potato digging) disillusionment sets in. The novel is rejected, Ann falls pregnant, and Peter winds up working for an advertising agency.“How about chewing gum for dogs?”, he proposes. One of the bonus documentaries, ’67’s St
Christopher, looks at the lives of children and young adults with learning disabilities in an age long before the 1970 Education (Handicapped Children) Act made education universal. You’ll either be amused or alarmed
130
by the scene where a schoolteacher squeezes four young lads into the boot of a family estate car – definitely pre-risk aversion. An age of innocence? You decide. Louis Comfort-Wiggett
THE VALLEY BFI DVD/Blu-ray
www.bfi.org.uk
Barbet Schroeder’s second feature film, The Valley, has long fascinated dyed-in- the-cheesecloth Floydies, due to the soundtrack music
which constituted 1972’s transitional Pink Floyd album Obscured By
Clouds.Also key to the film’s enigmatic allure was its relative obscurity: there was simply no way to get to see it if, for example, you lived in a culturally depraved Scottish backwater. All hail the BFI, then, for unearthing this illuminating last-days-of-hippy artefact, a film which follows diplomat’s wife Viviane (Bulle Ogier) and a cadre of sensualists on a rudderless, doomed journey of ethnographic slumming and opiate-enhanced self-discovery among the Mapuga tribe in deepest Papua New Guinea. The aforementioned Floyd faithful may be surprised and disappointed by how little of the band’s music is actually deployed in the film, but there is much to recommend nevertheless in this absorbing, slowly-unfolding voyage of no return. Schroeder’s camera eye is unflinching and non-judgemental, so be warned: the pig slaughter is desperately unpleasant. Marco Rossi
THE DOORS ARE OPEN/ THE STONES IN THE PARK Wienerworld
www.wienerworld.com This DVD brings together two Granada TV
documentaries made a little over a year apart, which represent significant landmarks in the history of the mainstream British media’s coverage of
the burgeoning counter culture of the late ’60s.
Unfortunately, both films are presented
here in edited form – 20 plus minutes mysteriously shorn from the original broadcast versions. First The Doors Are Open, which is built around The Doors’ historic appearances at London’s Roundhouse in September 1968. Shot in black and white and edited in the style of a contemporary arts documentary the film intercuts live footage with verite material showing the band arriving at Heathrow, sound-checking and meeting the press along with snippets of interviews. Despite a running time of only 31 minutes this edited version of the film still manages to convey the dynamism of The Doors’ live performances as memorably captured on ‘Spanish Caravan’, ‘Light My Fire’ and ‘The Unknown Soldier’. The Stones In The Park meanwhile documents the band’s infamous free concert at Hyde Park in July ’69, which inadvertently turned into a requiem for Brian Jones after he was found dead in his swimming pool only two days before. With the Stones seriously under-rehearsed and Mick Taylor making his live debut in front of an estimated 250,000 people, this heavily edited version of the film omits Mick Jagger’s eulogy for Jones and is primarily memorable for the ramshackle closing performance of ‘Sympathy For The Devil’, where the Stones are joined on stage by a troupe of African drummers. Grahame Bent
presentation and photograph captions. Although some may find this, and the overly chatty approach of it, a mite off-putting, I assure you that All There Is To Know is, in fact, a very decent read. To borrow a Bo Diddley phrase, you can’t judge a book by looking at the cover. I’ve long thought there’s something extraordinarily cool about much of Dave Berry’s work, and the moody, gonna dress in black image he often portrayed was inventive and credible too.With Dave Berry & The Cruisers, he fronted one of Sheffield’s first R&B groups, sharing bills with the likes of the early Rolling Stones, and issued some great sides for Decca into the bargain, including the amazing ‘Don’t Gimme No Lip Child’. However, opting for the singular Dave Berry credit, he then played the pop star game, chalking up solo chart hits for the label and making many television appearances in Britain and on the continent. Belgium and Holland, especially, held him in great respect for years. Jettisoning his original Cruisers from recording sessions so that lush sounding material could benefit from a more professional touch, proliferated through meticulous studio orchestrations, he nonetheless kept the group on for live work, before they began to tire of the untenable situation. And whether a record was a hit or miss, we are told business was always taken care of, and the Cruisers were always paid and well looked after. We don’t get the nitty gritty of each
recording session or tour, or get to know the level of friendship that developed between him and, for example, Jimmy Page, who played on some of the Cruisers’ earlier, raunchy R&B cuts, but there’s enough here to reveal something of the life and vision of Dave Berry, and it’s jammed with tons of great photos and other ’60s paraphernalia. Lenny Helsing
PROPHETS & SAGES: AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO UNDERGROUND AND PROGRESSIVE ROCK 1967- 1975 Mark Powell Cherry Red
www.cherryred.co.uk It’s always good to see something new on
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140