Vinyl Desperation

Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, as the late Andy Williams frequently sang. This is particularly the case if you happen to be a Gregarious Monk as it's that singular occasion where you can indulge both your social/secular and religious selves.  For me, this Christmas has been a splendid one, partly as a result of Mrs Monk buying me a vintage record player (Fidelity HF 45 for those who are interested in such things). And as James Marshall Hendrix once said, music is my true religion.

Now I must confess,  my motivation in asking for such a thing was largely aesthetic - part of my continuing aspiration to live a vintage lifestyle - but owning a record player for the first time in 20 years has been an absolute revelation. 

I've waxed lyrical elsewhere (Nov 2011) about my early record shopping days, but at the risk of repetition, they were magical times. Clutching one of the Left Legged Pineapple's gaudy bags at lunchtime was as much a symbol of my 15 year old identity as the mullet and David Coverdale t-shirt (worn during P.E, often  prompting the question 'Why have you got Princess Diana on your t-shirt?) 

The Left Legged, as it was affectionately known, was also inadvertently the scene of my first drug experience - passively inhaling shop assistant reefers while browsing the metal section - you don't get that at HMV. It certainly made double History pass a little more easily, I can tell you. We'll also leave aside the fact that I later spent 10 years working for an arch-rival that undoubtedly contributed to the LLP's downfall.

Fast forward to the present day, I'm ready to begin record buying again. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm under no illusion that re-purchasing White Lion and Vinnie Vincent Invasion LPs is somehow going to magically transport me back to my youth. Nor do I have any interest in purchasing new LPs, as is the current cool kid fad.  My interest in new music ended largely when I stopped working in record shops (sometime even before then, if I'm being honest). Besides, have you seen the price of new release vinyl?! No, this is to be an exercise in nostalgia. But not nostalgia for my youth rather nostalgia for a golden age of music - music I so far only experienced through cd. 

Equally I was under no illusions about the audio quality of my 40+ year old machine (although it is surpisingly good). This is not going to be a blog for vinyl purist/techy audiophile types - this machine was built for playing old music and so it shall be. So far I've purchased over 50 lps (it was an early Christmas present); mostly easy listening, jazz, and country, mostly from the 1950s and 60s. My only concession to pop-modernity is a few Hall & Oates records and Todd Rundgren's Back to the Bars from 1978. My be-mulleted 80s self would be aghast.

H2O v2

My starting point, and end point in all probability, was Sinatra. This should come as no surprise to anyone that knows me. I've written elsewhere about my love of FAS, or rather his music.

http://armpitofpopularculture.blogspot.co.uk/2011_08_01_archive.html

'Getting' Sinatra was like having my world-view altered; like suddenly realising the world was round (alright, spherical), that Santa Claus was just my dad dressed up and that Bon Jovi were actually never very good. I found it hard to listen to anything else after this Damascene conversion - everything else sounded insubstantial and insignificant in comparison. So, for about a year, around 2000, I literally listened to nothing else. When I say 'I' listened to nothing else I also mean the shop I managed at the time, Andy's Records, Lougborough. Colleagues and customers of a certain vintage will vouch for this. The staff largely tolerated this obsession although they took great pleasure in deliberately putting the discs in the Capitol Years box set, that sat proudly behind our counter, out of chronological sequence.

The greatest body of work in popular music?

This might sound a small matter but the spines of said discs, when put together in the correct sequence, formed a mosaic of Sinatra in his fedora-ed prime. As a result of their meddling most mornings Frank bore more of a resemblance to Niki Lauda, post-accident. I should probably also apologise to the poor sod who eventually bought this box set thinking they were getting a 'new' one, as I must have played each disc a dozen times.

It is my tremendous good fortune that Mrs Monk lives 5 minutes away from two amazing record shops: 'Music and Video Exchange' and 'The Diskery'.

Aah.. The Diskery, just the thought of this place fills me joy. If you've seen the recent Last Shop Standing documentary, or read the book, you will have come across The Diskery. I won't say too much about this King among record shops right now but it's the kind of shop that offers you cups of tea while you browse and makes you your own bespoke cds. Oh, and they have a Sinatra room. That's right, not a Sinatra section, a Sinatra ROOM.

'The Sinatra Room' at the Diskery. Needs a woman's touch according to Mrs Monk.

I exaggerate slightly as there are a few other artists featured in this private area, but the bottom two shelves are frankly Frank. So, I've filled my boots as you can imagine.

Spoils from my first visit to The Diskery

Perhaps the most enjoyable purchase from these visits has been this baby, a 6LP boxed set covering Sinatra's early years with Tommy Dorsey's big band (1940-42).

These recordings weren't new to me, but I must confess to having previously dismissed them as you might a great writer's juvenilia. How wrong I was. There's something gloriously romantic about this music. Sinatra famously claimed to have learnt his legato, or long breath, technique from studying Dorsey's trombone - but the technique is only useful in as much as it allows him to get inside a lyric and impart it with real feeling, and even at this tender age his phrasing is immaculate. Arguably Sinatra never sounded better than when backed by this most melodic of the big bands. It brings to mind Philip Larkin's words (writing about Sidney Bechet), "on me your voice falls as they say love should, like an enormous YES." Yes indeed.

I couldn't let myself get too carried away with the LP buying as the record player was supposed to be a Christmas present, so to maintain the pretence I thought it best to hold back a few LPs for Christmas day.  Now, I don't do Christmas albums per se, even Phil Spector's, but there is one Frank curio that came to mind.

'A Man Alone' is not one of Frank's best, but it has a certain charm. It was, I think, the only time FAS recorded an entire album by one songwriter, pop poet Rod McKuen. An odd choice but this was 1969 and the 60s were a difficult time for Frank, musically speaking. His voice had deteriorated markedly and he struggled to incorporate newer, baser forms of 'pop' songwriting to his singing style. This was one such example, and for some reason, known only to Frank himself, he decided to narrate a number of the songs in a spoken word style, rather than sing them.

This, and perhaps also Richard Harris' A Tramp Shining from the previous year, unwittingly inspired a vocal stylist and pop career even more unlikely than that of Mr Harris himself....

Perhaps it's Don Costa's 'wintry' orchestral arrangements, perhaps its the memory of playing it one Christmas at Andy's Records that make me associate this record with the festive period. This memory has stayed with me because it was one of those rare record shop moments where the background music seemed to be in complete accordance with mood of the shoppers. For a few seconds they palpably froze in their browsing and peered towards the 'now playing' sign before stampeding simultaneously towards our counter. Unfortunately the only copy we had was the one playing and I therefore hold myself responsible for the ensuing fight that broke out. Between two pensioners.

But the LP I was really looking forward to spinning, and the one I would recommend above all others to the Frank neophyte as a first purchase, was Sinatra At The Sands with Count Basie. As consummate a studio musician as Frank was, he was never more comfortable than in a concert environment - loose, and often juiced. And never more so than here, at the court of his Rat Pack Kingdom, backed by the hardest swinging of the big bands.  

This was to be the soundtrack to my Christmas dinner. And as most of the nation was tucking into its turkey accompanied by the Queen's speech it seemed somehow fitting that the King's speech should accompany mine.

Salut!

Carry On Bond

It is with childlike excitement that I await the new James Bond film, Skyfall. Sad, I know, but the opening gun barrel sequence and accompanying Monty Norman/John Barry riff still sends a tingle down my spine - the Petit Madeleine that never fails to transport me back to my childhood (although a Breville toasted cheese sandwich would be more autobiographically accurate in my case).

For some reason any new Bond film usually precipitates a ‘who was the best Bond?' debate. Pointless, of course, because Connery always seems to win. A case of the original always being the best? Perhaps. I would argue that your favourite Bond is generally the one you grew up with – your original Bond, as it were. Psychologists call it the primacy effect. It’s the same with Dr Who. Both characters are so intrinsically linked with childhood for generations of kids (alright, blokes) it’s impossible to judge objectively and I’m quite happy to accept any opinion, unless you’re unfortunate enough to belong to the Timothy Dalton/Sylvester McCoy generation/persuasion. In which case you’re wrong. Just plain wrong.

As a child of the 70s my Bond was, of course, Roger Moore. I think the first Bond film I saw at the cinema was the ‘Spy Who Loved Me’, still probably my favourite (more evidence for the primacy effect?) I distinctly recall it showing during a summer holiday in either Skegness or Great Yarmouth (if you grew up in Leicestershire you had to have your summer holidays there). To celebrate the opening of the film the cinema had a Lotus Esprit parked outside, possibly with a cut-price East Anglian Bond girl draped over the bonnet if I remember right (although I may be blurring the memory with Whitesnake videos). My dad insisted that it was the Lotus Esprit used in the film which, in my puppy dog giddiness, I accepted without question although said sports car was distinctly canary yellow in hue...

                                                                               

Being a Bond fan in 70s and early 80s was ace. The movies were always the highlight of Christmas/New Year. T.V schedules. New films seemed to come thick and fast (well, every couple of years at least) and each was sufficiently different from the previous, but still retained the core elements of a Bond film (you know the sort of thing: daft pre-titles sequence/ridiculous punnery/gadgets/birds/exotic locations/megalomaniacs in cavernous lairs etc).

I remember 1983 as a particular Annus Mirabalis when we were treated to two rival Bond films – as Sean Connery returned to the role. The battle of the Bonds as it was called. Connery vs Moore, Never Say Never Again vs Octopussy.

Controversially I liked both. Moreover Connery’s new toupee, along with Shatner’s mutating thatch in the various Star Trek movies of the time, fuelled a lifelong interest in toupology. Thanks for that SeanShat.

Connery and 'Bomber' Pat Roach demonstrating the versatility of the Never Say Never Again toup.

'Khaaaaaaan!' Shatner's frustration at Ricardo Montalban getting first dibs in the wig department. 

Yes, 1983 was a special year in popular culture for me, equalled only in excitement by 1986 when, in a similar fashion, the world was presented with two rival versions of Van Halen…

But that, my friends, is another story… And this blog was supposed to be about Rog…

Given the current vogue is for Daniel Craig’s super-tough, Bourne inspired Bond I feel it’s time for a reappraisal of the lighter, er merrier, Moore era.  The criticism usually aimed at the Moore era is that the films were too silly, too camp, that there were too many puns, that Roger wasn’t a very credible secret agent. CREDIBLE? What do any of the Bond films have to do with credibility? As Rog himself often said how can anyone take Bond seriously as a secret agent when every barman in every bar across the world seems to know him, and knows what he drinks…

Bond films have always been cultural signifiers of sorts, products of their historical/cultural context, and were never more so than in the Moore era.

Yes the Moore films were sillier, more camp, full of more innuendo etc But you only need to look what else was going on in British culture at the time. The other popular film series at the time was the ‘Carry On’ Films and they provide a useful comparison. The early Carry On films of the late 50s and 60s, although comedic, had an element of social commentary and feel very much a part of the post-war pre-Beatles Britain. By the 70s The Carry On Films had become built around the lustful, lascivious Sid James persona, and his attempts to bed Barbara Windsor’s busty blonde. The plots and the ‘parody’ were very much secondary to the sexual politics. Also ridiculously popular were the ‘Confesssions’ series featuring Robin Askwith in a variety of erotic scrapes with bored suburban housewives. TV reflected this zeitgeist too; witness the inexplicable popularity of sex-coms: Terry and June, Bless This House, Love They Neighbour, George and Mildred, Are you being served? etc.   

Moore’s Bond films need to be seen in the context of this sexualisation of British culture. Hell, even the innuendo laden name, Roger Moore, sounds like a Sid James character.

The first scene in which we are introduced to Moore’s Bond in ‘Live And Let Die’ (1973) sets the tone for his era. I think it is the only time we see Bond at home, which admittedly might seem like a sound way of introducing a new man, but the scene plays out very much like Confessions of a Secret Agent or Carry On Bond.

Inexplicably M and Moneypenny come round to visit Bond at home on a matter of national importance. That’s right at home. But of course our hero isn’t expecting a house call from ‘mum and dad’, he’s too busy ‘keeping the British end up’ with a buxom brunette. So he hides the girl in the wardrobe, before receiving M and Moneypenny, eventually ushering the girl out of the back door with a pinch of her arse and a wink to the camera. I might have imagined the last bit, but you get the idea.  All that’s missing is the Vicar coming over for tea in the middle of it and a chase around the kitchen table etc

Not only did Moore’s Bond movies reflect the concerns of British popular culture at the time but stylistically they reflected prevailing trends in cinema. Again there is a parallel with the Carry On series: they moved from a more realistic grounding in British institutions (NHS, the army, schools) to parodying cinematic trends (Carry On Screaming, Carry On Cowboy, Carry On Emmanuelle etc) This is also sometimes used as a criticism of the Moore era. but one of the reasons for the success of the Bond franchise (and the Dr Who series) is that the central character is essentially an enigma, a cipher, an almost blank persona adaptable to any context and circumstances. And again this was never more (ahem) the case than during the Moore era. In fact Moore’s bond almost functions like the Woody Allen character Zelig (from the 1983 movie of the same name), who, out of a desire to fit in, takes on the character of those around him, whatever the context. A human chameleon.

Blaxploitation Movies - Live and Let Die (1973)

Kung Fu Movies - The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

Sci-Fi Movies after Star Wars, Close Encounters.. etc - Moonraker (1979)  

As well as reflecting the prevailing cultural trends there’s a sense in which incarnations of Bond are cyclical. A tougher more realistic era tends to be counterbalanced by a more comedic, camp Bond. Witness the cyclical progression - the tough/puff see-saw effect, if you will. 
(I choose to ignore the Lazenby Bond as one movie does not constitute an era and in a sense we can view the Lazenby Bond essentially as an extension of the Connery Bond)

Connery - Tough

Moore - Puff

Dalton - Tough

Brosnan - Puff

Craig - Tough

As well received as the Daniel Craig Bonds have been it’s possible that in years to come they’ll be viewed in a similar way to the ‘serious’ Dalton Bonds (which were after all, critically acclaimed at the time, if not commercially successful). And of course, this historical pattern also suggests that Craig will eventually be superseded by a lighter, more comedic incarnation....  

Walliams, less Sid James than Frankie Howerd?

Bad backs and long memories

The guilty pleasures of rainy day movie matinees, Hitchcock and a peculiar British film noir.

Thanks to a slipped disc I find myself horizontal on a sofa with nothing to do but watch movies and count the minutes to the next dose of codeine. Not so bad then.

The first time this happened, some years ago, I attempted to simultaneously assuage the pain and lift my spirits by reaching (carefully) for the funniest dvds I could find. A Will Hay box set as it happens. 

The incomparable Will Hay, Moore Marriot and Graham Moffat in Ask A Policeman (1938)

           
                                 
Others who suffer from back complaints should take note for future reference - films that make you laugh out loud and painkillers that cause constipation aren’t necessarily good when you’re trying to avoid straining back muscles.

This time I’m recumbent on my girlfriend’s sofa and without a dvd collection to call on (discounting her Final Destination Thrillogy), so I find myself at the mercy of the tv schedules.  For me there’s something gloriously nostalgic about watching old movies on tv. Like a lot of people my love of old movies stems from sick days and rainy school holidays when there wasn’t much else to do. Credit also to whoever had the bright idea to include Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, The Three Stooges, and Buster Crabbe serials as part children’s tv schedules. Of course daytime telly is a different beast altogether these days. So thank god for Film 4.

                                                     ODed on codeine and daytime t.v                                        

Scanning the Guardian guide my eyes immediately seized upon a short Hitchcock season.  I couldn’t believe my luck. Hitchcock was formative in my love of film - discovering Hitchcock was discovering cinema in a sense. Sure, I’d already fallen in love with movies but it was only with Hitchcock that I became aware of the craft of filmmaking, and the idea of a director. It was only after discovering Hitchcock that I started taking films seriously.

First up on Monday was the 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much, a film I’d somehow contrived never to have seen. Now I must confess to having a soft spot for Hitch’s early British talkies: The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes and the original 1934 Man Who Knew Too Much particularly. Hitchcock himself was clearly dissatisfied with the original TMWKTM as he took the rather unprecedented decision to re-make his own movie.  
.

1934

1956

                

I'm struggling to think of an example of another filmmaker doing this: Michael Mann remaking L.A Takedown as Heat , the same director re-imagining his Miami Vice t.v series as a movie two decades later, George Miller’s threatened Mad Max reboot? Don’t get me started on Gus Van Sant’s shot for shot Psycho remake – the only film I’ve ever walked out of due to the cinema erroneously advertising the original, Anthony Perkins poster and all… Shame on you Loughborough Curzon.

On the subject of his remaking The Man Who Knew Too Much Hitchcock famously said the original was the work of a talented amateur the remake that of a professional. Well… I still prefer the original. The original is a taut 75 min thriller, very much in the vein of Hitchcock’s other spy-chase movies (39 Steps, North By Northwest, Foreign Correspondent etc). The remake feels like a spoilt, flabby older brother. A case of a man knowing too much, or more accurately, having too much studio money at his disposal. The remake clocks in at 2 hours and spends an inexplicable 45mins establishing the main characters on holiday in Morocco, in a picture postcard fashion, seemingly because it can. Similarly inexplicably we have the saccharine Doris Day (was Grace Kelly unavailable?) performing Que Sera Sera no less than twice – presumably it was in her contract? There are some nice touches such as the assassination attempt at the Albert Hall concert with Bernard Herrmann as the conductor, but they are few and far between. No, give me gifted amateurism and Peter Lorre’s studied villainy anyday…   

                                                     The original MWKTM in its entirety

Rear Window was next up on Tuesday. Now there’s a film with a stunning exposition. With a languid tracking shot, and no dialogue whatsoever, the camera establishes the apartment block setting, panning across the various apartments and then finally in through James Stewart’s window. From here it roves like an eye, a curious onlooker, across his apartment, lingering on his broken leg, his camera and various photos of him at work. Through this single movement we have learned where we are, who the principle character is, all about his work, and even how it caused his accident. Pure cinema.

As brilliant as it is, I don’t want to dwell on Rear Window here.  In truth, a repeat viewing seemed a little too close to home given my incapacitated incarceration and my own Grace Kelly’s overactive imagination and rear window ethics.

The film that excited me the most during my sofa-bound cinematic marathon wasn’t a Hitchcock but a peculiarly English take on Film Noir called The Long Memory (1952). 

                                          

British Cinema wasn’t known for its Film Noir. Of course there are great British films that contain noir elements: The Third Man, Brighton Rock, Odd Man Out, etc. and memorably Jules Dassin made the brilliant Night and the City (1950) here, fleeing the McCarthy witch hunts.

                        Jules Dassin's Night and The City (1950) starring Richard Widmark and Googie Withers


The Long Memory's director Robert Hamer was best known for the brilliantly black Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets but he also helmed two other Britnoirs for the Ealing studios Pink String and Sealing Wax and It Always Rains on Sunday.

 Robert Hamer's It Always Rains On Sunday (1947) also starring Britain's leading femme fatale, Googie Withers

In some ways The Long Memory is less reminiscent of American Film Noir than the French Poetic realist films of the 30s that inspired Film Noir. John Mills' stubbly, neckerchief wearing, resolutely working-class hero bears more than a passing resemblance to a number of Jean Gabin characters. 

Jean Mills

Johnny Gabbin

                   

Dassin's London noir depicts the dark underbelly of the Metropolis whereas Hamer largely eschews obvious city locations for the North Kent marshes or bleak industrial docklands (below).

Again, in terms of setting the film recalls the French 'poetic realist' take on noir, particularly Marcel Carne's  Quai Des     Brumes (1938) starring Jean Gabin (below).

In terms of narrative and character The Long Memory is a curious tale even by noir standards. Good old Johnny Mills plays against type as our (anti) hero: snarling, unshaven, fresh out of prison and bent on revenge after being framed for a dual murder he didn’t commit. The conspirators include a femme fatale (Mill’s ex who, during his incarceration has somehow managed to wed the investigating police officer), a retarded ex-boxer (playing away from wife Thora Hird) and one of the murder victims (who it transpires is not dead but is living out a new identity as a scrap merchant with his gay lover/chauffeur). 

Anyone who thinks British cinema of the 50s was dull hasn’t seen this movie. Or has a short memory.

F For Fake, or Fate, or Futility or F**k Off?

'F for Fake', Orson Welles' final theatrical film, was originally touted under a number of names, one of which was '?'.  In a way, this working title seems more appropriate, as it's a film that defies description and one that poses many more questions than answers.

On a simple level it can be viewed as a documentary about Elmyr de Hory, a forger who claims to have had over 60 names and been responsible for works of art attributed to Picasso, Matisse and Modigiliani among others. He boldly claims that one museum has 22 post-impressionist fakes that it still believes to be genuine.   More accurately 'F for Fake' might be described as a 'film essay' on the issue of forgery and fakery. Can a forgery be a work of art? Are forgers  artists,  Welles  seems  to  be  asking?  (It's  a  debate  that  Abbas Kiarostami's otherwise beguiling  'Certified Copy'  pursues to the point of infuriation).  

As well as interviews with Elmyr and footage of the 'artist' at work, much of our knowledge (and I'm tempted to put even that word in inverted commas, because nothing in this film is at it seems) of Elymr comes through his biographer, Cliff Irving. And this is where it starts to get really complicated... Irving is also featured in the film and is himself a notorious con artist - imprisoned for faking an autobiography of  Howard Hughes, which he claimed the recluse dictated to him. Yes, the same Howard Hughes Welles himself satirised in 'Citizen Kane'...  Still with me? At this point you may be forgiven for wondering whether these two characters aren't Welles' own fictitious inventions in this Russian doll of a movie. 

'For F Fake' is also a deeply personal film  with strong autobiographical elements (Welles' mistress Oja Kodar features prominently). Welles draws parallels with his own fakery, particularly his infamous 1939 take on H.G Wells' 'War of The Worlds', a mock news broadcast that sent hundreds of Americans fleeing from their homes in panic. Of course, Welles wasn't sent to prison for his hoax. He was sent to Hollywood. 

And cinema is nothing if the not the art of illusion, and Hollywood the biggest magic store in town. Perhaps to accentuate the point Welles adopts the role a conjurer throughout the film, amusing a child with a magic trick in the pre-title sequence, making a key disappear. Playfully winking to the camera he explicitly says the key isn't symbolic of anything. But is he simply playing games with us again? Is this short sequence  perhaps the 'key' to the movie? Are we, the audience, the child he is toying with?  When he proclaims "I'm a charlatan, I used to be a magician" he's clearly poking fun at himself but is he making a wider point to his critics? It's no coincidence that 'F for Fake' was made in the aftermath of Pauline Kael's essay 'Raising Kane', a savage attack on Welles that questioned his authorship of 'Citizen Kane', the film that made his reputation, a reputation that Welles spent the following 40 years trying, and failing, to live up to. David Thomson, from whom the title of this 'essay' is lifted, sees 'F For Fake' as both an admission of fakery and a riposte, it is 'the hand behind the back, the droll retort and alibi, that yes, my dear, but you only guessed the half of it'. The films is certainly an attack on the idea of the 'expert'; the art critics who can't tell a forgery from a masterpiece, and, of course, the film critic. Welles also seems to be asking whether the issue of 'authorship' even matters when it comes to art, citing the example of the Chartres cathedral. Its artistic value isn't diminished because of our uncertainty over who created it.

Characteristically, but confusingly, Welles denounced his admissions of fakery after the film came out.  "I said I was a charlatan but I didn't mean it. I was faking even then. Everything was a lie."   

So, smoke and mirrors to the end. Vérités ou mensonges? I'm not sure that it matters. Don't come looking for answers. This isn't that kind of movie.

'F for Fake' will be re-released in UK cinemas from 24th August.


David Thomson 'Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles' Abacus 1996.