Films, TV, DVDs and E-Media

Now, where's my gimp mask...

"I'm sick of skinny white boys in jackets regurgitating the sounds of the 70s and 80s.  Not content with revamping AC-DC and Led Zep, Joy Division and Gang of Four we've gone so far as to mine the back catalogues of Supertramp, 10cc and ELO.  "

I do not wish to suggest that the Loach / Leigh films are ‘bad', merely that there are factors at work that explains why they are often given a pretty easy ride. Basically, critics and audience alike have a skewed idea of reality and a good deal of self-loathing. To understand these factors we must first take a look at Jean Jacques Rousseau.

I, like many others saw the full extent of this tax-payer scorn when my father was (unexpectedly) confronted with Boy George in all his glory.  “What's that? Is it a lad or a girl? You surely don't like that, do you?” No, of course I didn't but I couldn't agree with him, now could I?

This is what makes up the bulk of the film: the British wave of punk bands, the fuss they caused in the UK, the catalyst they were in the US to impressionable young things like Henry Rollins. And this is what makes the film a bit of a disappointment for me.

..things never seem to be quite so simple these days. Pubs have crèches in them, petrol stations try to be mini-supermarkets and so on: everything becomes blurred.

There are moments where you are drawn to compare Dig with that other great rockumentary, This is Spinal Tap. Except that this is no spoof.

A few weeks ago an ex-NME journalist wrote a big piece in a national paper ...she displayed a complete lack of knowledge or interest in music. She had never heard of (for instance) Krautrock. It's a bit like a film journalist holding a hand up after ten years in the job and saying, ‘bugger me, have you watched anything by Kurosawa? Is he good?'

The last of the good, kind, honest and wise people left should come with me now, adorn their brows with garlands of wild roses and prepare themselves by drinking the annointed mead out of the blessed cups, prepare libations to their ancestors, pour sweet, fragrant oils on the ceremonial pyre prepared for them, and leave this Age of Idiocy.

Name a big new rock band that cannot be described as the sum of its parts.

In the end, of course, the record companies will look to technology to help them out.

John Peel, dead? At sixty five from a heart attack, if you really must know…Hell.