1970s
Kieron Tyler
Michael Thevis made his money from pornography. In the Seventies, his Atlanta warehouses were stuffed with most of America’s porn. Nationally, Thevis was the main distributor. Looking for something less edgy to fund with his profits, he turned to the music business and bankrolled the GRC label and its sister imprints Aware and Hotlanta. In time, they became three of America's most lauded soul labels. In parallel, Thevis sealed his reputation as a notorious criminal.Over 1973 to 1975, GRC issued just-over 100 singles – the total seems to be 104. Around 12 albums also appeared in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
NME’s Paul Morley reviewed Angelic Upstarts’ debut album, the newly reissued Teenage Warning, in August 1979. He pointed out that they were “seen as the successors to Sham 69.”The assessment made sense. Their encore song was a version of Sham's “Borstal Breakout.” Both bands played a reductive punk which was long on musical attack and lyrical howls, and low on finesse. Around the time of Teenage Warning's 1979 release Sham's front-man Jimmy Pursey was busy with J. P. Productions, a concern where he picked up bands, became their producer and placed them with major labels. He took on Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1974, two albums by German kosmiche musicians working with electronics became the first from the seedbed of what’d been dubbed Krautrock to explicitly embrace – and merge – melody and rhythmic structure. One was Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. The other was Cluster’s Zuckerzeit. Once on the record player, each LP instantly made its presence felt more directly than anything either had released previously.For Kraftwerk, this resulted in an unlikely international hit with a single edit of Autobahn’s title track. For Cluster, there were no singles and, consequently, no chance to fluke any chart action. Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Born in Cape Town in 1948, Gavin Jantjes grew up under apartheid. He openly criticised the regime in his work and, forced into exile, was granted political asylum in Germany in 1973.Nearly 10 years later he moved to England and his Whitechapel retrospective begins with work from those early years of exile. School Days and Nights, 1978 (pictured below right) was painted in response to the Soweto uprising, when black schoolchildren held a rally in protest against the imposition of the Afrikaans language in schools. The police opened fire on the children sparking an uprising that lasted eight Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Moving Away from the Pulsebeat” is the final track – barring the locked-groove return of the two-note guitar refrain from “Boredom” – of Buzzcocks’ March 1978 debut album, Another Music In A Different Kitchen. At five minutes 40 seconds it didn’t cleave to the short, sharp punk template. Also, it was largely instrumental. And it had a drum solo.Buzzcocks had emerged with punk yet weren’t going along with it or, rather, what it had been reflexedly characterised as. Their label, United Artists, had faith in “Moving Away from the Pulsebeat” and pressed it onto a one-sided promotional-only 12- Read more ...
Justine Elias
Live-action movies for the under-12 set are rare. Rarer still are those that capture the anarchic spirit of middle-grade children gone wild. Writer-director Weston Razooli made a splash at the Cannes and Toronto film festivals last year with Riddle of Fire, an adventure tale that draws inspiration from Disney’s earnest, spirited TV fare of the 1970s.Set in the mountains of Wyoming, it follows three young friends as they rage around the great outdoors on dirt bikes, armed with paintball guns and plenty of ammo. They begin with a warehouse heist, in which best pals Alice, Jodie, and Hazel steal Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Jon Savage's The Secret Public How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture 1955-1979 accompanies the titular author/historian/journalist’s book of almost the same name. The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979) and this 41-track double CD each track exactly what their titles say, drilling into what has often paralleled or underlain yet repeatedly influenced a constantly evolving mainstream.Little Richard is seen on the cover of the book and the compilation. Other figures crop up twice on the CD set: British producer and songwriter Joe Meek (with Joe Meek Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Original pressings of Love And Poetry sell for up to £2,800. Copies of the August 1969 debut album by Andwellas Dream can sometimes also be found for £700, a relative bargain in the context of the upper limit of the prices the collector’s market has settled on.There were two follow-up albums – each credited to Andwella. August 1970’s World's End fetches around £40 to £80; People's People, issued in late 1970, attracts prices of £50 to £100. Cult stuff then, with interest centred on that first album. And where there’s such appeal, repressings follow. Love And Poetry was first reissued in 1995 Read more ...
graham.rickson
Glance at The Holdovers’ synopsis and you might suspect that Alexander Payne’s latest effort is a slice of lightweight seasonal schmaltz. Yes, it is set at Christmas, and contains tear-jerking moments, but Payne and screenwriter David Hemingson throw so much more.The period detail has been much commented on, the early 1970s setting recreated with unfussy aplomb. Even the opening credits look vintage, the film’s digital footage processed to look like grainy analogue. Early scenes give little sense of where Payne will take us; what looks like a high-school comedy with a large cast quickly Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Edinburgh’s Rezillos were booked to play Middlesbrough’s Rock Garden on Wednesday 14 September 1977. “I Can’t Stand my Baby,” their debut single, had been issued in July and they were on the road subsequent to its release, positive music press reviews and regular spins from John Peel. Their humour-laced, Day-Glo art-punk was making waves.In Middlesbrough, the bill was filled out by local band Lice? – their name taken from a cautionary poster about pubic lice – and Macclesfield/Salford outfit Warsaw, who’d had a line-up change the previous month when their drummer Steve Brotherdale left. His Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
In director Pat Collins’s lyrical adaptation of John McGahern’s last novel, with cinematography by Richard Kendrick, the landscape is perhaps the most important character – though there’s a fine cast of well known mainly Irish actors.If you’re feeling hemmed in by concrete and city life, it’s a balm to take a deep breath and listen to the birdsong while watching the lake, the trees and the hills change colour through the seasons.Joe and Kate Ruttledge (Barry Ward and Anna Bederke) moved from London two years ago to live in this rural lakeside Irish community (it was filmed in Connemara). It’s Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHLondon Afrobeat Collective Esengo (Canopy)The weather has not been kind to the UK lately, pelting it daily with endless drizzle and gloom. So wrap your ears around this, a mini-album that will infuse any room with blazing sunshine as soon as the needle hits the plastic. Esengo was supposed to be reviewed last month but one listen and, instead of being held back for review, as it should have been, it bullet-shot straight into the record box for DJing (where it more than proved its worth). The band are a loose-limbed outfit, nine-strong and consisting of members from England, Read more ...