1960s
Kieron Tyler
The sticker on the front cover says “The heaviest proto-metal compilation ever released.” And considering the label behind Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy is Rise Above, founded by former Napalm Death and Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, this is not idle hubris.Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy collects 10 tracks which were not originally released (a bonus seven-inch with early copies of the LP takes it to 12 tracks). The first band heard are Birmingham’s Heavyboots. They are followed by Band Of Mental Breakdown (also known as B.O.M.B.), Macbeth Periscope, Agatha’s Moment, Jessica’s Theme, Greenfly, Read more ...
Gary Naylor
In Italy, they did it differently. Their pulp fiction tales of suburban transgression appeared between yellow covers on new stands and spawned the influential Giallo movies of the Sixties and Seventies, gory exercises in an offbeat, highly stylised film language – cult movies indeed.The USA took its transgressive tales of domestic non-bliss and drew upon the language of Hollywood film noir to make short television plays, often lacing the arsenic in the tea with a soupçon of black comedy. They branded it with the master of suspense, the man who could delve into psychologies that other Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The thrill of hearing “Crawdaddy Simone” never wears off. As the September 1965 B-side of the third single by North London R&B band The Syndicats, it attracted next-to no attention when it came out. The top side of the flop 45 was “On the Horizon,” a version of a Ben E. King B-side. After this, The Syndicats’ time seemed to have passed.Then, in 1982, a compilation album titled The Demention Of Sound turned up in shops. “Crawdaddy Simone” was on it, alongside tracks from singles by relatively well-known UK Sixties mod/R&B bands The Bo Street Runners (members of whom went on to Read more ...
graham.rickson
One of The Barnabáš Kos Case’s incidental pleasures lies in its relatively accurate depiction of orchestral life. Much of the action in Peter Solan’s 1964 Slovak black comedy (originally title: Prípad Barnabáš Kos) takes place in a rehearsal studio, one filled with real, non-miming musicians. Actor Milivoj Uzelac, playing one of the conductors, was also a composer and actually looks convincing on the podium.If I’m allowed to be pedantic, the most glaring false note is the role played by the titular antihero; you’d never find a percussionist who only plays the triangle, let alone one who Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What happens after the spotlight is directed towards another target? In the case of Liverpool and the Merseybeat boom – which, in terms of chart success, peaked in 1963 – the question is addressed by Liverpool Sunset: The City After Merseybeat 1964–1969. The city’s musicians carried on, despite record labels looking elsewhere for the next big thing, and despite the Liverpool tag no longer ensuring an automatic interest.The final (identifiably) Merseybeat bands to debut on the charts were The Escorts, with “The One to Cry” in July 1964, The Undertakers, with “Just a Little Bit" in April 1964, Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
When Twiggy burst on to the scene in 1966, she was a beacon of hope for all flat-chested, short-haired, skinny girls. Of course we couldn’t look as fabulous as she did, with her enormous eyes and high forehead and long legs, but we could try.Before Twiggy, models were posh. They went to the Lucie Clayton Charm Academy in Bond Street and learned how to curtsey, pivot round an umbrella and get out of a car gracefully. In director Sadie Frost’s lively, likeable film, featuring many celeb talking heads including Paul McCartney and Dustin Hoffman, an alumnus, namely Joanna Lumley, looks back. “A Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1964, the Norwegian division of Philips Records began issuing singles labelled “Bergen Beat.” The picture sleeves of 45s by Davy Dean and the Swinging Ballades, Sverre Faaberg and the Young Ones, The Jokers, Rune Larsen and Teen Beats, The Quartermasters, Helge Nilsen and the Stringers and Tornado bore a bold stamp recognising each band’s origin in the country’s second city.As a marketing tool, “Bergen Beat” made sense. A Norwegian counterpart to Merseybeat might catch on (irrespective of some of the bands dubbed thus being in the mould of Cliff Richard & The Shadows or Swedish instro Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
On 26 September 1966, The Twilights set-off from Australia to Britain. The journey, on the liner the Castel Felice, took six weeks. A day after boarding they learned their sixth single, “Needle in a Haystack,” was an Australian number one. There was nothing they could do to promote the hit, so after disembarking at Southampton they looked for work.The trip was the prize at Melbourne’s Battle of the Sounds competition. They won and, as well as the travel, the accolade included a recording session with EMI in London. As The Twilights records came out in Australia on EMI’s Columbia label, this Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Being unknowable has been almost as much of a preoccupation for the erstwhile Robert Zimmerman as writing songs. Previously on film he has played the role of Alias in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, having first presented himself to the world under the alias of “Bob Dylan”.He was played by six different actors in Todd Haynes’s aptly named I’m Not There, and appeared as Jack Fate in the equally apposite Masked and Anonymous. He’s like TS Eliot’s Macavity, the Mystery Cat – “it’s useless to investigate – Macavity’s not there!”However, Dylan has been closely involved with James Read more ...
graham.rickson
Czech theatre theorist Ivo Osolsobě’s tick-list for what constitutes an "authentic" musical is quoted in this release’s booklet. Namely that the songs should advance the narrative and express characters’ feelings, that singing, dancing and acting are integral elements, and that the story is rooted in real life.Director Ladislav Rychman and co-screenwriter Vratislav Blažek get all three elements right in The Hop-Pickers (Starci na chmelu), a Czech musical which was a huge critical and commercial success on its release in 1964. Blažek first conceived the project as a theatrical production Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The descending refrain opening the song isn’t unusual but attention is instantly attracted as it’s played on a harpsichord. Equally instantly, an elegiac atmosphere is set. The voice, coming in just-short of the 10-second mark, is similarly yearning in tone. The song’s opening lyrics convey dislocation: “You and I travel to the beat of a different drum.”“Different Drum,” the September 1967 single by an outfit dubbed Stone Poneys Featuring Linda Ronstadt, was immediate, had a country edge and was written by Mike Nesmith – then best known as a member of The Monkees. The band had already issued Read more ...
Nick Hasted
RaMell Ross’s feature debut follows his poetic documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018) in again observing black Southern teenage boys, this time in Sixties juvenile prison the Nickel Academy, where beatings and unmarked graves await the unluckiest. It faithfully adapts Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Nickel Boys (2019), whose writing’s loving warmth made its horrors bearable, his hope for his characters outlasting their fates.Elwood (Ethan Cole Sharp) is a serious-minded schoolboy in Tallahassee, Florida, driven by Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights protests and Read more ...