exploits of a cultural saboteur

Whisper it.

I might get this typescript delivered on time.

After months and months of grind and walking through molasses-like progress, June was a good month where I got lots of editing done and got into a good rhythm that made me think I will hit that late July hand-in. My deadline is actually August 2nd but we are away from July 25th on a much-needed and anticipated family holiday so I want this gone by July 22, and I think, I think, I can get it there. Barring disaster.

June was a good month of working through edits on chapters, putting in quotes, rewriting for clarity and adding in colour and flavour, context and links back and forth between films and ideas. It felt good. I enjoyed it.

I finished editing the ‘Making Music’ chapter on 7th June, the ‘Black Music’ chapter on 19th June and the chapter on ‘Place’ on 27th June. Following that last chapter I reached out to my number one choice to write a foreword for the book, Gruff Rhys, as it’s the chapter where I cover his work and wanted to send a decent-ish version to him. He got back straight away saying he’d be honoured to do it and I am elated. I love him and his work and think a foreword from him will set the tone for the book beautifully. It was a moment of great uplift during an exhausting time for me.

I’ve tried to write this book as though I’m not the first person to write about music films and the more I read the more I realise that one of the things I’m contributing is shining a spotlight on so many films that are overlooked and not considered. The same titles crop up again and again and I’ve tried to broaden the scope for readers, in what I’m saying and in the films I’ve chosen. Gruff Rhys and Dylan Goch’s films are in that category. Beautiful cinematic works that deserve attention.

On the 30th June I finished the ‘Punk’ chapter. And on that note, I also published my first review in ages, on the lovely new Blu-ray release of the Ramones cult classic Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, for the Big Picture. Read it here.

So hopefully, when I next write a missive like this, it will contain confirmation of typescript submission and I’ll be nervously awaiting a response and making my way slowly through this ‘reading for pleasure’ pile -

In the meantime, don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing in June:

You can follow what I am watching and re-watching for the book via my Letterboxd here

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s viewing sessions:

“Are you ready Paul?”

“When you delve too deep you can sometimes spoil the beauty of things”

Ambient band - sound of the environment

“I don’t think I saw a tree until I was about 9”

Wings?

“I don’t wanna have fun, I wanna be with you”

Digital explicit

TV doc stylings of The Rutles

Thunders?

Can we skip to the end?

1 film watched. Very little writing done (though I did finish editing the big chapter on Milestones & Innovations on May 7th.

I chatted to a couple of great filmmakers for the accompanying podcast and both provided nuggets that may make it in.

But really I just need to get my head down and finish this fucker.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

You can probably tell from the fact that I’m only now writing the April 2022 blog over halfway through May how the book is going, or isn’t.

Work has slowed to a stop, swimming through molasses to the finish in a couple of months time. So much to do with the typescript. No images secured. No foreword invitation sent out (mainly because I’m embarrassed by my work).

It’s time to just get on and finish, but where is the time? It must be made, but my eyes burn and my head pounds and I have no confidence in anything.

You can’t wait to read it right!

Watching has slowed and must pick up again a tad.

My March blog was rushed, and checking my notes I see that I wanted to mention a couple of things that I didn’t. The first is that I finished reading David E. James’s excellent Rock ‘n’ Film which will get a few mentions in my book. Some really interesting stuff in there.

The other is that a lot of my writing and editing has been accompanied by the book of Tim Burgess’ Listening Parties that a friend bought me as a gift (thank you Rachel!). 100 Albums to work through, well 99 because I can’t bring myself to listen to Mark Ronson. A lot I’ve heard before but some are new listens and it makes for a very diverse soundtrack to what I normally gravitate towards. It’s been fun to break from my writing when an album finishes to read the tweets that accompanied the listening party and get a nice context hit.

Not much watched in April, an old Mingus doc, which is great and free on Vimeo at present, the first Stones film Charlie is My Darling, by Peter Whitehead, which is very good, and Kieran Evans’ amazing Vashti Bunyan film from 2008. I also caught Olivier Assayas’s video document of an experimental music fest in France, Noise, which was underwhelming to say the least but is on MUBI.

Can I finish the book by the deadline? I have to. Will it be any good? Answers on a postcard.

And if you think this is bleak and empty, wait til you read May’s entry.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

A quick one this month as I have just tested positive for coronavirus (does this make this a plague journal now?) and want to get resting up. A weird month. Started well then tailed off. Edited my intro and sent it out to readers, both of whom were very positive and in the case of one (my wife) returned excellent notes for the final attack at the end of the edit process.

Watched some stuff, wrote/edited some stuff.

Feeling confident with a late July hand-in deadline (even with COVID and having been confident many times previously). If I hit my April target, with the end of term looming and Easter break imminent, I’ll feel good.

Ok. Let’s leave it there for now shall we?*

Wait, before I go. I did rewatch Barbara Kopple’s brilliant Miss Sharon Jones, which a friend tracked down for me. It’s such a wonderful film. It also reminded me of seeing Jones with the Daptones at the Roundhouse in London courtesy of a dear friend, who gifted me a ticket for my birthday and it was a surprise who I was going to see. He knew I’d dig it. And I did. A wonderful night.

*As i write this, Letterboxd is down so I can’t even check my diary for the month to make sure there’s nothing I’ve missed commenting on. Oh well. Double the fun for the April missive in terms of funny notes and quotes.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

A weird month. Following the intense writing of the previous month and my retreat in particular, I have done very little writing in February. Work and family commitments mostly, and trying to get to a position where March to July is just editing and rewriting.

Some reading. I’m working through David E. James’s superb Rock ‘N Film: Cinema’s Dance With Popular Music. It’s helped me realise I don’t need to worry about so many quotes (he barely references anything) and also that like so many of the other books I’ve read and cited, there is the idea that Music Films worth writing about stopped being made in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It’s a great book, and the fact that so many of the films I’m writing about are post 2000 kept me confident about my approach and helped me see how my book will be relevant in addition to existing, excellent work. It also, not as helpfully, introduced me to or reminded me about films I really should see before I submit my typescript. Ha.

Lots of good watching this month. Definitely stayed on top of that. Pressure off too knowing that for the most part I’m watching to add depth and nuance. All my main entries are now written.

Bar one. Thanks to Ian Mantgani I finally found a copy of Barbara Kopple’s brilliant Sharon Jones film Miss Sharon Jones! so I can add that in (word count is going to be an issue in the edit, eek!). Ian also helped me track down the elusive Maysles film What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A which about the same time I learned was retitled The Beatles First U.S. Visit and is actually readily available. Thanks Ian!

This month I rewatched This is Spinal Tap for what must have been the 100th time. I adore that film. One of my favourites and a film that reminds me of my brother. We both adore it and send each other quotes from it endlessly. He has supplied me with many great t shirts inspired by it over the years. Including one for Saucy Jack, David and Derek’s Jack The Ripper musical.

The film also inspired one of my greatest highlights running Filmstock film festival. We decided to call it a day in 2009 and though the 2009 event was due to be our 10th event, we decided to go to 11, rather than make 10 louder. We were approached by Tony Hendra who played the band’s manager in the film, Ian Faith. He offered to introduce our special screening in character. We accepted. He was hilarious. The screening was great, and afterwards he partied with us in our office cum hangout and signed our Marshall amp with the glorious line ‘Fuck the Napkin’. Legendary.

Onwards…

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing (mostly reading) in February:

You can follow what I am watching and re-watching for the book via my Letterboxd here

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s viewing sessions:

“exactly medically accurate”

“the neuf-tet sound”

Scuffed shoes and chceked blouse

Lennon looks amazing in double denim

Zuckers for sure!

David Jacobs!

Clive Swift!

“Who says you need to buy a guitar?”

“He’s like William Carlos Williams only he sings”

Throwing an electric guitar off a high rise

“this is really the Mecca of this music”

Some time in what feels like the distant past I spent a week in North Wales writing, working on the book, as mentioned in the December blog. At the time of writing this I am trying to remember the feeling I had at the end of that week, a feeling I am struggling to rekindle now. I’m sure I will write about that in the February ‘22 blog soon.

In Wales, I lived the life of writer, a mythical and utopian one almost. I woke, made breakfast, wrote for three hours, walked the dog down to the beach, wrote for five hours, walked up the hill through town to my wife’s parents to join my family for dinner, walked back down and watched a film. Repeat.

Even though it was great I missed my family a lot each day, but made the most of the privilege. On the 23/1 I finished the last main chapter I had to write, on milestones and innovations, (in addition to finishing one on concert films on 10/1, Jan was a good writing month). For the remainder of the week I worked on the introduction and the plan for finishing the book.

Over the course of the week I wrote about 30,000 words, taking the running total to 95,000 and marked the completion of the first draft of the book.

It felt exhilarating. I feel grateful as without that dedicated focus over an intense period, I never would have been able to get to this point and to see the final stretch. I am so thankful to Beth for the opportunity.

While away I logged my 200th watch or rewatch for the book. That felt like a nice milestone. It was Jeremy Deller and Nicholas Abrahams’ Our Hobby Is Depeche Mode, as recommended by Ashley Clark in his newsletter. Really great. No idea where I can fit it.

That was a problem throughout the week, where to put films, oh well, nice problem to have.

I read some interesting work that may feed into the final stage of the book. I read Ian Penman’s sublime collection It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track. What a writer. A lot of my listening this month (see below) came from the discography that Penman included in the book alongside the pieces. Love that idea. I also enjoyed Owen Hatherley’s essay/book on Pulp, Uncommon. It felt strange to read whole books for maybe one line for one film, but this is the decision I’ve made and I can’t go back, not now.

January watching was a mixed bag. I’m definitely into the final stages of watching. I’m filling gaps, watching into and around catalogues of bands and filmmakers. Also a nice run of films for where the aesthetics of the music film have been repurposed for fiction. So, any month that includes viewings of Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and The Rutles is a good one.

On my return from the retreat, I was greeted with the issue of Society magazine I mentioned a few blogs back. It included my words in an article on music documentary. It was nice to see the phrase l’expert next to my name, even if it doesn’t mean the same thing in French. Thank you Gregoire.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing in January:

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s viewing sessions: Meanwhile in another part of a movie

“i do get about”

“You got a doc, I got a doc”

“A thoroughly postmodern music”

Viper Room catastrophe

“Depechist” - Like Communist

Elena’s Kiss

“How much does a poetic licence cost?”

Saville on the Jumbotron

Phil’s shorts

“I really like going fast”

I emailed my editor for an extension on December 2nd. I received a reply granting the extension on December 6th. It was a huge relief.

This month, the last of 2021, was spent thinking about how to finish this thing, as well as a little bit of stress-reduced writing. I have less teaching in the upcoming term, so room for more headspace dedicated to the book, and my wife has bought me a week’s writing retreat late January so I can be off-grid and work on it completely for 7 days. She’s the best. It’s in the same village where her parents live in North Wales so I will be able to see my gang each day for dinner. I have my days structured already.

I really want to be ready in terms of word count for that week. So, January will mean drafting one and a half chapters. My marking is done, my teaching is all but prepped and I haven’t scheduled any writing at evenings or weekends (as yet) so I hope to maintain the energy I’ve rebuilt over the festive period. We shall see. No more excuses and no more chances. This is it.

In December, I read a bit more on Postmodernism, and wrote a list of outlets and sources to check when I start redrafting. I watched two films, one in preparation for a Cinematologists episode where Dario was interviewing Frank Pavich who made a fantastic New York Hard Core doc in the nineties titled N.Y.H.C. It’s really good and is on YouTube. It’s one of the only Hard Core docs I’ve seen to really get into the violence of the scene and how that is connected to the alienation of the audience. It reminded me of the brilliant Afropunk, also on YouTube, a film I write about in the book.

I also watched the brilliant I’ve Been Trying to Tell You, a poetic portrait of modern Britain and its youth by Alasdair McClellan, made to accompany the wonderful album of the same name by Saint Etienne, a band whose cinematic work in connection with their music is peerless. The film ended up in my top 10 of the year write up for Directors Notes. It’s sumptuous.

The watching and writing ramps up again January 2022. I feel good, I feel embiggened, I’m ready, and finally for the first time in ages, excited again.

Oh, and for those reading these, it looks like Brexit has screwed me, as my copy of my interview in Society has yet to arrive. C’est La Vie.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing in December:

My annual film write up for Directors Notes (10 films)

My annual film write up for The Big Picture (3 films)

End of year review Cinematologists episode (5 films)

My favourite book this year was Nick Pinkerton’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Fireflies Press).

My overall film list -

My favourite music -

My favourite podcasting -

The worm has turned. A phrase I will always associate with The Two Ronnies. I am probably misusing it but it matters little to me. November was a much better month for the book. I wrote some, writing 3000 words in one sitting on the 6/11 (a major feat considering how little I’d written in the months previous) and finished the draft chapter on myth and performance on the 7/11. It felt good to be back writing.

Even the fact that I had 2 chapters still draft and not the aforethought 1 couldn’t shift my mood.

This is mainly down to finding a way to contextualise the films and the reading of the book in a way that makes sense to me and also provides a validation for seeing music films as worthy of study when divorced from the subject at hand (the musician/band/music). I’ve long been looking for a theoretical belief system upon which to hang my music film loving coat so I had something that was deeper than '“I like these movies, they’re cool”. Having had ideas on Post-modernism floating in my mind from reading Mark Fisher’s K-Punk, I finally found what I was looking for in Linda Hutcheon’s definition of post-modernism from her book The Politics of Postmodernism. It’s a very specific definition and (by default) contentious definition but then I believe that music films are a very specific and (by default) contentious form. It’s been liberating to now have a thread that will run through the book that will allow readers a chance to see the films in a unified context even if they don’t (and part of me hopes they don’t) agree with my definition. I hope it is a book that presents the music film as a form that encompasses so many different examples and yet at the heart of all of them lies the ‘complicity and critique’ that Hutcheon claims sits at the heart of the postmodern.

Don’t worry though. It’s not a theory book.

Elsewhere this month I had a lovely conversation with Paul Sng, co-director of Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché, for the book and the associated podcast, I caught two earlier works by filmmakers whose later films I love and are featured in the book, and watched a music doc sent to me by the filmmaker that isn’t even finished yet. Whatever happens with this book, it’s been a journey that has already thrown up beautiful moments I will always be grateful for.

The article I contributed to a couple of months back by Liz Aubrey in The Independent, which drew a couple of the contacts mentioned just now to me, led to an interview for France’s Society magazine about the same thing. That was fun and I’m excited for the print only magazine to land on my doorstep.

Don’t screw me Brexit.

I finished the month with some good writing thanks to attending a writing group hosted by an academic colleague at Southampton Solent University. The 4hr session had sprints and reflections and worked really well for me. I got a good chunk of my intro, working through the Hutcheon stuff I mentioned above, and two entries in my concert films chapter down. I hope I can go again, I found it of great benefit.

Viewing wise, I caught a couple more excellent Les Blank films from my criterion set including his wonderful short portrait of Lightnin’ Hopkins, the new film about Dinosaur Jr., Freakscene and, finally, Edgar Wright’s fantastic Sparks documentary The Sparks Brothers.

Let’s hope I can keep this momentum up.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing in October:

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s (limited) viewing sessions:

Solo Topless Cellist

Dinah Xylophone

Watching someone listening on headphones with their eyes closed

“When the alarm stops what are we gonna talk about?”

“So you’re not Alastair Crowley the satanist?”

“Sepp Blatter”

Matt Dillon Music Video

Backstage Jarmusch

Featurin’

Pipe Guy!

My Dad loves them now

“Acute suffering”

“Why has that bloke got a Hitler moustache?”

“If you don’t like it, we don’t care”

Unlucky 13. Less said about the book in the month of October 2021 the better.

I wrote a piece for the Quietus, my now annual preview of the wonderful Doc ‘N Roll Film Festival (currently running in cinemas around the country and online) so I watched some movies and two in particular reignited my passion for the book. The St. Vincent film The Nowhere Inn and the Damien Dempsey film Love Yourself Today. Despite not being fans, especially, of the music of either, the films are both brilliant and so very different. At opposite poles of artifice and authenticity they are both full of imagination and soul and left me exhilarated and invigorated. I also loved Beth B’s film about Lydia Lunch, Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over.

You can read the piece here.

Elsewhere in my watching I adored Todd Haynes’ paean to experimental art (pop) The Velvet Underground while simultaneously sighing at the prospect of another great and fascinating movie to write about.

I also picked up the recent BFI release of Arts Council documentaries Great Noises That Fill The Air with its array of shorts and short features on the likes of Linton Kwesi Johnson, John Cooper Clarke, Asian Dub Foundation and more. I am working my way through them and the LKJ film, Dread Beat and Blood, is astonishing. I can’t wait to write about that. He says, sighing.

Reading wise it was a quiet month though I did get through the edited collection Celluloid Jukebox (ed. Jonathan Romney and Adrian Wootton). It has some good pieces. Romney’s piece on the performativity of the backstage space in music docs comes up a lot in various places and for good reason, it’s a really astute analysis of how inauthentic the supposedly authentic space of music docs can be.

And that as they say, is that. For now.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing in October:

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s (limited) viewing sessions:

Tenenbaums-esque

Touching the out of touch

Drummer pixelated out

“This thing called a sing song, I think it’s sacred”

Rehearsing in pyjamas

Sci-Fi X COVID

Skull

Tim Hecker in there somewhere

“A scream from the bowels, a caterwaul”

“I write my poetry with rhythm and beat”

White skinheads buying reggae

A la Julien Temple

I’ve been dreading writing this post. A year into writing and I’ve hit a brick wall. I haven’t written anything for this is in ages. I can’t find the time and the horrible part is I now resent having to write this book. A lot of that stems from the fact that I just don’t think it’s any good. It’s not about anything except some films I think are interesting. The writing is bang average at best. I think that’s because I just don’t have the time to think about it and work on it. I’m so behind and now I dread it. I don’t know when I will go back to it and I'm going to have to ask for an extension, at the least.

I know it’s common for books to contain this period, as does most writing, but it still sucks. I still feel like a fraud to even think I could write a book, let alone one that people will want to read or enjoy in any way. That sounds self-pitying and for sure that’s part of it. However, it’s also a lot of other things. Mainly the realisation that my life choices preclude the privilege of time to write a book. I’m fine with that spiritually. I just feel bad because I’ve committed to it, I’ve spent years pitching for it, i’ve spent a year and change telling people I’m doing it and now I don’t want to and worse, I truly don’t think I can. Why is this different to my normal negative musings? Well, because I’ve stopped watching the films for the most part. That was my last regular connection, my CB radio, to the project. And that’s gone too now.

I think part of it is also that I’m at the end of my watching, for the most part. I’m catching up with final films for the introduction and other films by filmmakers or about bands where I’m talking in depth about their work in a single or couple of films. It’s not like it was when I was watching a series of films per month around a theme. But these are all just excuses. I know. And bad ones at that.

And yet, in the middle of the month in the middle of the mire, an article came out that featured me saying things about music docs that didn’t sound terrible. Humble and huge thanks to Liz Aubrey for consulting me on her piece for The Independent - https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/music-documentaries-2021-nirvana-b1921214.html - as it shone some light on dark month for this project. It also brought me into contact with a couple of filmmakers who want to talk to me for the book and the podcast project.

Another highlight was a cinema trip to see the Oasis: Knebworth 1996 film, which I absolutely adored. For nostalgic reasons having been there on the Saturday - something that made some young ‘uns in attendance at the screening very jealous when we were chatting afterwards - but also because it’s a really good film about fandom and captures the moment, an incredible moment really, in joyous and contextually interesting ways. I still think I’ll talk about Lord Don’t Slow Me Down as the Oasis film I’ll cover in detail for the book but this will be in there somewhere I’m sure. He says, having earlier said he wasn’t going to write the fucker anymore.

I did finish reading The Music Documentary: From Acid Rock to Electropop, which was a fascinating and vital read, so again, progress was made, I guess?

It was nice to rewatch Julien Temple’s Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten. I love the film and it also has a special place in my heart as it was the first film released in cinemas that carried my name on it, nestled in the thanks. It still gives me a thrill. I was curating the Joe Strummer Film Festival in 2005 when Julien reached out to ask my help as I had secured 35mm prints of films Joe was in that he wanted to scan for this film. A couple of years back I screened the film on 35mm here in Cornwall and Julien came down to intro the film and do a Q&A. We put it out as a Cinematologists episode, way back on ep72.

Quick mention too for first watches of the exquisite Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly-Glenn Copeland Story (dir. Dixon, 2019) and Summer of Soul (dir. Questlove, 2021). I loved the latter, as have so many people, but I also have a lot of questions and criticisms that don’t detract but I think should be aired as so much of the praise for it is uncritical, which is a shame. Still great though.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing in August:

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s (limited) viewing sessions:

“Who’s that little old man?”

Sponsored by Maxwell House

Balkan conflict?

“Tony, it’s been wonderful”

Bono. Obvs.

“Everybody’s got their weaknesses”

Murmurations

“I just made music in the minutes next”

Jug band

Sigourney Weaver at the Hollywood Bowl

“Have I joined The Troggs?”

“You take from life, give back to life”

I worry that the tendency of these posts is to dwell on badly everything is going with the book, when one of the goals of writing the book was to enjoy the process. Therefore, I’ll skim over the fact that I did very little writing or even watching for the book in August and focus on the good stuff that happened. Because thankfully, there is also some good stuff.

The break was necessary. Little Miles arrived on July 26th and I was on annual leave and I figured that in order to meet my new plan for the book and survive the academic term ahead I should take a proper break. That’s what I did. We visited family in Wales, we had family visit here in Cornwall. I watched a lot of other types of movies and TV, and I read.

There’s an adage that reading is writing, particularly in academic (or like I’m going for, quasi-academic) writing. This has definitely felt true. In July, as I mentioned in my last blog, I read Thomas F. Cohen’s Playing to the Camera, a book about musical performance on film looking at a few key case studies. In August I read Benjamin J. Harbert’s (maybe I should adopt a similar moniker for my book, how’s Neil J. Fox?) American Music Documentary: Five Case Studies of Ciné-Ethnomusicology. It is a great book and, like Playing to the Camera, very different to mine. It not only includes great material to be in dialogue with, but also provides a good example of other writing I can point to if readers feel my approach is too broad. Reading it has helped me work out slowly what I am actually doing. Reading is great [for] writing sometimes. Same can be said of the edited collection I am working through now, The Music Documentary: From Acid Rock to Electro-pop.

Something else that really helped me further crystallise what the hell I’m doing was being asked to contribute to a piece on music documentaries for the I Paper, formerly The Independent. I’m excited to read the piece and working through the questions, regardless of whether any of them end up in print (or on screen I should say), helped me get some ideas down that frame what I am writing about in the book. The piece is looking at the recent slew of music docs and asking if there’s any reason ‘why now?’. Normally I am not one to lean into concrete moments or events to define things - and I didn’t really do that in my answers - but I do believe that there are a number of reasons why there’s been such a rise recently and it was nice to think about those reasons and put them on the page and then hopefully out into the world. Thank you to fellow Quietus writer Liz Aubrey for asking me to contribute something.

Looking back on my viewing for August I see only watched three films for the book, and one of those was a short. So let’s not dwell there. Though I did rewatch Dont Look Back, which reminded me of this post I wrote on it, and A Hard Day’s Night, for the 60s British Cinema project. My viewing should slow from next month. I’m into the last chapter to watch films for (and that’s the introduction), there are a few stragglers I’ve not been able to watch or rewatch yet (including Woodstock) and there are films I just can’t find anywhere, including shitty versions on YouTube. I’d love to rewatch and write about Miss Sharon Jones! but it’s not available to stream, the DVD is prohibitively expensive and I cannot get a response from the filmmakers or distributors. I know I am gonna hate it if things like that don’t make it in to the book. I love that film, but I really want to rewatch it before writing about it. If anyone has a lead in that area, please reach out.

Onwards.

Don’t forget, you can track what I’m watching (and maybe try and work out which films I’m referring to above and in the note fragments below) via my Letterboxd list, here.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing in August:

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s (limited) viewing sessions:

No ‘ in Dont

“Who wants to get whipped?”

Tiny Paul

It’s been a wonderful few months with ‘Wilderness’ out there in the wild and hearing from people about their response to the film has been really humbling. The support for it has been amazing and thankfully it’s still ongoing. Here are some reviews that came in after my last round-up post:

DMovies - certified “greasy movie”

Close-up Film

Buzz

And here are some recent podcast appearances:

The Edinburgh Film Podcast, with Kat Zabecka

The Britflicks Podcast, with Stuart Wright

Thank you Kat and Stuart for having us on your brilliant shows.

A rollercoaster of a month emotionally with ‘the book’. So many moments of insecurity and anxiety washed away by a series of related and tangential moments and experiences. I went on annual leave finally, to await the arrival of our new baby and to spend a few weeks as a family with little to no responsibility or expectation beyond that. It was freeing to put on my out of office at work and simultaneously put a quasi-OOO on the book for the foreseeable. It might have been foolish given how far behind where I wanted to be I am currently, but it was liberating.

It caused me to rethink my approach, or at least know I need to (I haven’t done it yet because I’m stepping back a tad). In the downtime away from writing I have been tinkering and moving forward at a snail’s pace. One thing I did was to map out all the films I still need to see or see again, or at least have told myself I need to see or see again. It’s up near the 300. Obviously I can’t watch that many and write and read and edit and submit my first draft in February 2022. So I stopped worrying that I had to. I have been prioritising viewing and making peace with the fact that I can’t see everything. It’s weird how pervasive that sense is when writing about cinema and how hard it is to escape. The feeling that I am writing about something I love and want to share with people is subsumed beneath the fear of being ‘tested’ on my knowledge and the facts of it all (even though I’m not presenting fact) and what ‘gaps’ might tell people about me. This is sometimes stronger than the feeling that I am just a terrible writer writing a book no one has any interest in ever reading. I wonder if that’s my age, or the social media age, the fact that it’s taken me so long to get to this point or some wretched combination of all three.

The writing of the list certainly helped put the next few months into focus and my sketch of a new plan, once I am back in earnest at the desk, looks ok. I’m excited to work through the final films and get the book into even better shape. Other events in July certainly helped. One was finishing a draft of the fifth chapter on my list, on films about making music. It was a slog time wise, because of so many interruptions, but I got there on the final day of ‘work’ before annual leave. So it felt momentous and a good way to sign off for a bit.

There was also the arrival of some films from the U.S. I took advantage of the Barnes and Noble 50% off Criterion Collection sale and the fact that I have a dear, dear friend in New York (thank you JC!) to post stuff to me that would mean avoiding import tax, to get my hands on some classic films. I mainly wanted them for the extras but also because I love them. I picked up A Hard Day’s Night, Gimme Shelter (a July rewatch), Transes and one I’ve never seen, Murray Lerner’s Festival. I also picked up maybe my favourite ever music doc, Les Blank’s A Poem Is A Naked Person, and a box set of Blank’s work which includes a ton of music, music-centric, or music related works that I can’t wait to get stuck into. Blank is fast becoming one of my favourite filmmakers.

July’s watchlist was heavy hitters galore as I was watching and rewatching for my Milestones chapter so films and filmmakers included The Last Waltz and other Scorsese works (is Rolling Thunder Revue his best music film maybe?), Jonathan Demme, Julien Temple and films about the Beatles, Stones and Bob Dylan. Big. One such film was Demme’s beautiful concert film Heart of Gold, focusing on Neil Young not long after surgery for a brain aneurysm. It’s a warm and soulful film and one I saw on DVD, in New York, on a lazy afternoon before heading home, while staying with my friend John Carlin (the JC who sent posted me some DVDs this month). I was tired, I was all New York-ed out, and John put it on and we loved it. It meant a lot, maybe more, than it would normally had because a couple of years earlier I had written a play called How It Plays Out, that John travelled to Luton to perform in as the lead, and in the play he performed a Neil Young song, Only Love Can Break Your Heart. John Carlin is a brilliant songwriter in his own right. Check out his work here and buy Songs From The Black House, it’s one of the best records ever made, Fact. I love him.

I also read the first book that will feature in my book since I started writing back last year (nearly 12 months ago!), Thomas F. Cohen’s Playing to the Camera: Musicians and Musical Performance in Documentary Cinema. It was invigorating. Not only is it a great book, but it reminded me why I am working on mine. I want to be in dialogue with these other works that exist, reach out to and pull from them and survey the land of ideas that is music documentary and the writing on it. I loved Cohen’s style and confidence too. It gave me strength to be more confident about my own writing. It was also nice to see so much time dedicated to Shirley Clarke’s Ornette: Made in America, a truly magnificent doc I loved writing about.

So over the next few months I shall be reading more and more for the book. I am excited. That trip to the BFI library (where I learned of Cohen’s book), really galvanised me, in ways I’m becoming more aware of as I think more and write less.

Don’t forget, you can track what I’m watching (and maybe try and work out which films I’m referring to above and in the note fragments below) via my Letterboxd list, here.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing in July:

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s viewing sessions:

Demme knows

“I just wanna play well and share the stage with my friends”

“He had a lot of ukeleles in the trunk”

Imagine booing one of the greatest live shows ever by one of, if not the, greatest rock n roll backing bands of all time.

Joan Baez’s Dylan impression is bang on.

“I don’t even wanna get in tune”

People lying around everywhere.

Need a shower after watching this.

Babies, planes and Nick Cave

Bob Marley tats and flags

Coke in the nose

Clapton - boring

Bob looks amazing!

“you booed!”

Keroauc’s grave

“I don’t want this shit to work. I hate it”

Bawdy

Ludicrous outfit Mick

My positive feelings about the book in June were saved by a late month visit to the BFI Library. While that trip threw up the usual anxieties that come from research, namely the opening of more doors on things to watch and read, it also soothed and made it feel like progress was being made even if, yet again, I fell behind my writing target.

The time for worry has gone though. We are expecting a new addition to our clan in a matter of weeks now and I can only do so much in a day and that will become even less when little fella pops out (my wife hopes he literally does that as she is now vividly recalling her labour with our daughter Tessa nearly 5 years ago). My days soon will have new demands and the book will have to take an even further backseat to new life, new role etc. But that’s the price of trying to write, unpaid, on top of full time job and family life. So as you can tell, I’m feeling pretty sanguine about the prospect of asking for an extension.

The sanguine feelings are helped by another month where I was on top of the watching. I’m not drifting behind there and I’m coming to the end of the really intense watching and rewatching. Another month and a bit. Then it’s a few odds and sods and some bits for my ‘further watching’ chapter, that I am writing in lieu of a traditional conclusion.

Also, finished my second notebook for this project, which feels great. It really feels like I have the basis of the book in these pages and am still hopeful that i can find time over the summer and through my new professoriate role to work on getting the words from these pages to a screen.

Also early in June, I chatted with a good friend about a podcast project that will come out of this book and period of focus on music docs. More on that down the line but it felt great to have a buddy on board for capturing some of the interviews I’ve done and want to do and hear around music documentary.

So, about that library visit. It was fantastic to be back in the BFI Library for the first time since my doctorate. In amongst the knowledge and history of this form I love, working on a book that will be published by the BFI. Felt like an honour and a responsibility but more than that, and maybe more importantly, it was fun. It was to read about specific films and the music doc in general. I enjoyed it. I’m glad I went. I can’t to get back, because yes, believe it or not, there is more to read.

The month started with a rewatch of Caroline Catz’s sublime Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes ahead of talking to her for an episode of The Cinematologists. To coincide with that I watched the equally wonderful but very different Sisters With Transistors. After that it was a real mix of the last of the concert and tour films and the watching of films that I was going to include in an ‘innovations’ chapter. However, upon watching, I think I’m going to condense the milestones and innovations chapter into one big one. It makes more sense. There weren’t that many films in the ‘innovation’ watching that don’t or haven’t pop up elsewhere, so upon reflection I think it would look a bit odd. It was nice this month to rewatch the film that was the first academic book chapter I ever published, the Beastie Boys’ perfect concert film Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That! alongside beautiful examples of films that push the music film form such as The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 and Mistaken For Strangers.

Onward.

Don’t forget, you can track what I’m watching (and maybe try and work out which films I’m referring to above and in the note fragments below) via my Letterboxd list, here.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing in June:

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s viewing sessions:

“Who designs the myths?”

Thurston with his fingers in his ears

Man United fan upgraded at MSG

Double shoulder standing

“I didn’t tell James that”

Nils Lofgren in the E Street Band and Crazy Horse. Bonkers.

Late work - Edward Said

Ali’s affirmations at the announcer’s pronouncements

Is that H.S.T. on the party plane?

Description of Dad and NY bars recall’s Jarmusch’s Paterson.

Paint it Black cover

“Prison was a possibility”

Weight bench recording studio

“Harlem is the complete metaphor for the Black experience in America”

Donald Glover was at this show too!

“Don’t dance too much”

Like a reality show

Hörnblowér does a Kanye

As teaching commitments eased off this month I saw the open road of more headspace and writing time open up in front of me and some of the weight expressed in last month’s blog lifted. I didn’t quite get everything I wanted written this month but I got a substantial amount done. And it felt good.

A really big month of watching in May. Covered a lot of ground watching concert and tour films and while in many ways it was the easiest chapter month to watch films for - concert films in particular generally have a style that maintains throughout reducing note taking - it was emotionally hard. I really missed live music this month. Watching films about Oasis, LCD Soundsystem, All Tomorrow’s Parties and The White Stripes in particular took me back to some of my favourite live experiences and made me want to experience that sweat, that noise, that proximity again, in the most dramatic tones for many years. The 2007 Oasis film Lord Don’t Slow Me Down features footage from my favourite ever gig, seeing Oasis at the now demolished for Crossrail London Astoria with my brother and best friend. It’s also surreal seeing footage of their Hollywood Bowl show that year that I was also at. My bonkers life. Living in Cornwall my ability to access regular live music is diminished - for reasons of travel, by artists here and by me there - and I have certainly missed it. However this past year it has been the thing that I have missed the most. I think it’s writing the book and my immersion in live music. Even in documentaries there is such an emphasis often on live archive material. So, post ‘this’, seeing more live music even if t means travelling a fair distance, is something I intend to try and bring back into my life in a real way.

Watching Mike Mills’ film about AIR - Air: Eating, Sleeping, Waiting and Playing took me back to lying by a pool in Ibiza in the summer of ‘98 and my only ever ‘lads holiday’, with Moon Safari on constant repeat. The month was not only the easiest watching and note-taking month but it was also the most fun. The emphasis for the most part is on celebration and ectastic communion between artist and audience in the original space and artist, filmmaker and audience in the cinema space. It’s hard to not have a good time watching Elvis, Prince, Beyoncé and others at the peak of their powers. Of my new watches, the Chemical Brothers’ film directed by Adam Smith, documenting their 2011 Fuji Rock appearance Don’t Think, was the most revelatory and joyous. An absolutely exquisite concert film.

I was also grateful this month to my friend Kieran Evans who let me rewatch his brilliant account of the Manic Street Preachers’ Holy Bible shows - Be Pure. Be Vigilant. Behave - which isn’t currently available. Thanks Kieran.

Also thank you Dario for securing an interview for our podcast The Cinematologists with director Caroline Catz about her wonderful film Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes. Good timing as June’s watching plan is for my chapter on formal innovations, where I will be writing about Catz’s truly unique film.

Onwards.

Don’t forget, you can track what I’m watching (and maybe try and work out which films I’m referring to above and in the note fragments below) via my Letterboxd list, here.

Don’t forget you can listen in to my book themed playlist here.

Here’s what I was listening to while writing in May:

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s viewing sessions:

“tonight, the bass was like a beautiful carpet”

Raw caribou

Meg’s hair in face

Zak Starkey’s birthday

“it starts to get tense about this time”

The Bey-chella folder

Sax playing monk

Creep. Dickhead.

Random parasol

“time falls wanking to the floor” (Fry & Laurie)

Danny and Rasputin

Lens flare ahoy

“this is a sad object dude”

“ssshh you fucking cunts”

Shite weather

Like Chris Tucker in The Fifth Element

“this has been The Holy Bible and you’ve been fucking mega”

It won’t be a surprise to anyone, and may even be opening me up to scorn and ire, to say that writing a book is hard. It’s true though. Writing a book on top of a full time job, and a family life, and other creative outlets like a podcast and releasing a feature film, is really fucking hard. No shit Sherlock.

It’s the job though that makes it so difficult. The long hours and the combative and bureaucratic atmosphere in so much of my day, punctuated by occasional forays into the creative and the intellectual, result in a lack of the mental capacity to sit down and write. That’s if time can be found. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how anyone does it.

I chose it though. This task and this opportunity. Even if it’s a hundred miles away from the utopian ideal of writing a book I still think it’s a meaningful thing to do. Even in those moments where I think that no-one in their right mind will read it, that it’s a terrible piece of work, and when I think it is only meaningful to me. Even when I don’t think I’ll ever finish it, or that if I do it can’t possibly be any good.

Similarly to ‘Wilderness’, my feature film that was recently released, I just want to be proud of it and know that in the context of how it came to be, I did my best. Even though I know it will live or die by what it is, that it won’t be read with that context in the foreground.

This all makes it sound awful. The point of laying this out is to try and highlight, hopefully, a difference between thinking negatively and moaning about it, and revealing the anxieties that came from trying to write a book on top of a full-time job that doesn’t ask me to utilise the same critical and analytical faculties, and the sharp irony of the fact that my job is teaching film in a University and the book is about film. There should be a connectivity there. There isn’t. For reasons that belong elsewhere.

Maybe this is just a long way to get to say that I am now two and a half chapters behind where I wanted to be. My hope and positivity is still rooted in the fact that I am keeping on top of watching/re-watching and making notes and as teaching slows the highway of writing possibility opens up in front of me for a brief period, before a new arrival in our family unit hopefully makes his appearance.

So I keep watching, and thinking, and note-taking, and hoping for a few hours where I can sit and the notes become paragraphs. I don’t even care right now if they suck. I just want them captured.

April’s watching was for my chapter on Myth and Performativity, looking at ideas of how the music documentary honours, subverts and plays around with loose notions of authenticity and truth commonly associated with the documentary form. I watched films where the musicians tried to augment their myth, where the film form does that for them and where a form of truth, or reality is undeniable due to the biographical circumstances of the artist. It was a month where nostalgia, re-watching so many films seen so many years ago, was met with stark emotional realities, watching and re-watching films where life gets in the way so as to obscure or threaten to obscure the music. Or maybe it’s better to say the music is given a new context, through the life moments. Don’t forget, you can track what I’m watching (and maybe try and work out which films I’m referring to above and in the note fragments below) via my Letterboxd list, here.

One film that really did take me back this month was the Bros film After The Screaming Stops (dir. Soutar and Pearlman, 2018). I used to love Bros. Like, grolsch bottle tops on my shoes love. It was so disarming to see posters that used to be on my wall in the rooms of fans as they mounted their comeback. Took me back to my first music fandom. Short-lived but all consuming. My first ever girlfriend (also short-lived but all consuming) bought me the Bros calendar for Christmas at the height of Push-mania.

Speaking of posters on my wall, I wish I’d kept my In Bed With Madonna (dir. Keshishian, 1991) poster.

I did get some writing done in April. It wasn’t a complete bust. Only one and a half chapters to write in what is left of May in order to stay on track for ‘Writing Plan Version-18,656’. Here’s what I was listening to while writing in April:

Finally, a bit of fun. Here are my favourite notes from this month’s viewing sessions:

“A despicable gimmick”

Cut to bagpiper

Larry stoic

Hard not to love this because of what it meant to me growing up

Giant, opulent space

Edge on a ledge

“I wish he hadn’t been buried in the back garden”

“I’m a London boy. Big Ben!”

Luke’s band Ts look previously unworn every day

Ephemera becomes ephemeral

“You’ll get character, bad things will happen to you”

Chris Isaak and dog

Spike of agitation

“File it under lost things”

“It happened to us, but it happened to him”

Kanye wouldn’t

Same posture same chair different shirts

Polo in Cali

Masterpiece.

Lionel Richie.

“The song is heroic because the song confronts death”.

Kurt yawning