1970s
Kieron Tyler
An action film with an intensity that sets it apart, Assault on Precinct 13 still shocks. Although expected, its first killing is a “they wouldn’t do that, would they?” moment. No wonder the 2005 remake failed to overshadow the original. John Carpenter’s hard-boiled second feature, a follow-up to Dark Star, was filmed on a budget of $100,000 in less than three weeks in late 1975 and released the following year. He wrote, shot and edited it as well as composing and playing its brilliant soundtrack music (the early Human League took a lot from it). With a cast of unknowns, the noir-toned Los Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sixty-eight tracks into the intriguing Action Time Vision, orthodoxy suddenly gives way to individualism. The two-and-bit discs so far have mostly showcased what passes for notions of punk rock: block-chord guitars, guttersnipe vocals, Ramones-speed rhythms and Clash-style terrace-chant choruses. Suddenly, The Fall’s lurching “Psycho Mafia” suggests the early punk era was not about trying to be same as every other band. Individualism was possible.Recorded in 1977, but issued in 1978, “Psycho Mafia” was from The Fall’s first record, an EP on the Step Forward label. Other bands on the imprint Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
New Year’s Eve has its rituals and, in the Russian-speaking world, watching the 1976 film The Irony of Fate is core to ringing out the old and ringing in the new. A television staple, it has the seasonal status of It’s a Wonderful Life, The Little Shop on the Corner and White Christmas. First seen in Russian homes as a three-hour, two-part small-screen production on the first day of 1976, it was subsequently edited and shown in cinemas.The Irony of Fate (the full title is The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!: Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром!) is a farcical and straightforward-seeming Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
French Pictures in London was a bolt from the blue. Issued in June, four decades after being recorded, it was a previously unknown, unreleased album better than most mid-Seventies rock offerings. It was also better than about 99 percent of albums retrospectively hailed as classics. However, it had escaped attention and its maker was barely heard of.It wasn’t meant to be this way. In 1975, A&M Records paid for the sessions and the album’s master tape was passed to pop star and Bensick’s fellow Ohio native Eric Carmen, who was meant to get it to music industry bigwig Clive Davis, the then Read more ...
graham.rickson
Not quite three wishes; this film’s Czech title is Tři oříšky pro Popelku, which translates as three nuts. We’ll get to that later. Three Wishes for Cinderella, a Czechoslovak-East German co-production from 1973, is a treat, and still an annual Christmas fixture on Eastern European TV screens.Director Václav Vorlíček’s source material wasn’t the familiar Cinderella retelling by Charles Perrault, but a darker version written by the 19th century Czech folklorist Božena Němcová. There’s no father, only one nasty step-sister and a refreshing lack of flashy magic. In place of a fairy Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Pictured above is Sweden’s Ralph Lundsten. He might look like a guru or mystic but is actually a multi-disciplinary artist most well-known on his home turf for his pioneering electronic music. His first album, 1966’s Elektronmusikstudion Dokumentation 1 (made with Leo Nilson), was issued by national Swedish radio’s own label and recorded at the station’s electronic music studio. Lundsten (born 1936) began making music for soundtracks in the 1950s and has issued at least 38 albums.Lundsten’s “Bön 5 – “Förlåt oss våra skulder” (Prayer 5 – Forgive us our Debts) from the 1972 album Fadervår (Our Read more ...
Ismene Brown
This House arrives in the West End with magic timing - a comedy about the farcical horrors of being a government with a wafer-thin majority, frantically wheeling out dying, suicidal and breastfeeding MPs to vote, horsetrading with "odds and sods" to keep their nails on power. James Graham’s play about the 1970s Labour travails, produced by the National Theatre/Chichester Festival, opened in 2012 to a mixed reception, but its reappearance on Charing Cross Road acquired some serendipitous overnight oomph as Tory fellow-traveller Zac Goldsmith lost his seat to the Lib Dems yesterday, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1970, The Who opened their Live at Leeds album with “Young Man Blues”, a hefty version of a song its composer Mose Allison recorded as “Blues” in 1957. Back then, it was the only vocal track on Back Country Suite, an otherwise instrumental blues-jazz album, the Mississippi-born pianist's debut long player. Allison had moved to New York in 1956 and a string of releases followed. The Who weren’t the only British band cocking an ear: in March 1965 The Yardbirds first recorded Allison's “I’m Not Talking”, plucked by them from 1964’s The Word From Mose.Mose Allison’s music was integral to the Read more ...
graham.rickson
What to do if you’re a despotic leader with an underperforming film industry? Hiring better directors and actors wasn’t an option for Kim Jong-il in the late 1970s, so he took drastic action: luring South Korea’s biggest female star Choi Eun-hee to Hong Kong on false pretences and having her abducted. Her ex-husband, the South’s leading filmmaker Shin Sang-ok, did the honourable thing and went in search of her, only to suffer the same fate. What happened next is the subject of Rob Cannan and Ross Adam’s engrossing documentary.Shin was a financially inept directorial maverick, whose production Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Man & Myth, released in September 2013, was Roy Harper’s best album in two decades. The live shows which came on its back were stunning. Amongst this activity – instead of building on the momentum – he was arrested and charged with historic sexual abuse. Police had contacted him about allegations in February 2013. Following an innocent verdict, all other charges were dropped in November 2015.Of the ordeal, Harper said “I have now been acquitted on all the charges that were brought. This case should never have gone as far as this, or taken so long to resolve. I lost my livelihood and I Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The wilder shores of contemporary visual art are now ephemeral or time-based: performance, installation, general carry-on and hubbub. But once upon a time – say, the 1960s – it was the nature of objects, pared down to essentials, and often made from real materials sourced from the streets, builders’ yards and shops, that startled: the idea made manifest without old-fashioned notions of the hand-made, craft or manual skill.The making could even be outsourced, and one critic called minimalism “ABC art”, reduced almost literally to building-block art: form or colour representing nothing but Read more ...
Ralph Moore
theartsdesk meets Christine McVie on a sunny Friday afternoon in September; the Warner Brothers boardroom (with generous hospitality spread) is suitably palatial. We’re the first media interview of the day, so she’s bright and attentive. McVie was always the member of Fleetwood Mac who you’d want to adopt: the most approachably human member of a band constantly at war with itself. Readily admitting that she’s the “peacekeeper” in the band, the singer/songwriter behind such Mac classics as “Everywhere” and “You Make Loving Fun” is as sweet and serene as you’d hope she would be.She’s here to Read more ...