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Stewart Lee and Michael Cumming's King Rocker - tonight

Started by Mobbd, February 06, 2021, 05:30:05 PM

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scarecrow

Quote from: Wet Blanket on February 08, 2021, 09:50:09 AM
On this point, i was stunned to find that rounding off his script-reading panel of Bridget Christie, Paul Putner and Kevin Eldon there was Seann Walsh who I'd long written off as not even the poor man's Russell Kane. Wouldn't have thought he was anywhere near Lee's orbit
In Bridget Christie's book, she describes Andrew Doyle as her best friend. Who knows what their social circle is like.

markburgle

Quote from: scarecrow on February 08, 2021, 02:15:39 AM
I really liked how it was largely devoid of critics and fans praising them

God yeah, that doc Lemmy just felt like it was 70% background members of crap modern bands telling you that Lemmy was good. So fucking dull

non capisco

Quote from: markburgle on February 08, 2021, 02:12:45 PM
God yeah, that doc Lemmy just felt like it was 70% background members of crap modern bands telling you that Lemmy was good. So fucking dull

From the trailer that looks a lot like what Edgar Wright's Sparks one is gonna be like. I'm hoping it's misrepresentative as I was really looking forward to that.

Chriddof


Jockice

Well I enjoyed it. I was a big Nightingales fan in the early 80s but haven't followed them since they reformed. But then I don't really follow much music nowadays.

I'm not even going to mention the time in his solo days when I did a phone interview with him, wrote a big piece on him for the paper I worked for (while fighting off the bosses who basically just wanted puff pieces on whoever was in the charts) personally gave the article to him after they'd played locally. And the first thing he said was: "You misquoted me." Which I fucking didn't. I even checked my notes on my next day back at work. No thanks for getting him some publicity or describing him as a genius or suchlike.

We had a brief backstage conversation during which I realised that this supposed misquoting was because he claimed that he'd said one word before another in a sentence, in a way that changed the context not one jot. It wasn't like I'd had him saying he admired the Nazis or something.And that was that. He then gave me the cold shoulder, not even offering me any of the joint that was being passed around.

Since that day I've always thought that however much I liked his music he was a bit of a tit. Still, nobody's made a documentary about me, so I suppose he's won. And I did enjoy it.

Quote from: scarecrow on February 08, 2021, 02:05:31 PM
In Bridget Christie's book, she describes Andrew Doyle as her best friend. Who knows what their social circle is like.

They were in a double act in the mid-2000s.

RenegadeScrew

Quote from: sweeper on February 07, 2021, 06:32:35 PM
100% agree. But what about someone like Kendrick Lamar, or Michaela Coel, off the top of my head? Both experimental, both uncompromising, neither polished, yet lauded and awarded to the hilt. In music, I struggle to think of anything as exciting as what Kendrick has done in the last ten years.

This is a belter.



sweeper

To Pimp a Butterfly, Untitled Unmastered, aspects of both Good Kid and DAMN, the general uncompromised rawness of his whole approach ...

Presumably you don't listen to him?

RenegadeScrew

I listened to Pimp a Butterfly back when it was getting hyped.  I can't remember finding anything particularly experimental.

Uncompromised rawness isn't a new experimental thing.  Almost all good hip hop I can think of has it.

Pauline Walnuts

Actually getting around to watching this, the first thing I simply have to share is that their Roadie looks like a female Johnathon Meades.

I really like the couple of Prefects songs I've heard, I was unaware of the Nightingales till I looked up that Pram's Drummer, and I've been meaning to check them out. So fat I'm not especially caring for anything so far.

sweeper

Quote from: RenegadeScrew on February 10, 2021, 09:32:20 AM
I listened to Pimp a Butterfly back when it was getting hyped.  I can't remember finding anything particularly experimental.

Uncompromised rawness isn't a new experimental thing.  Almost all good hip hop I can think of has it.

Didn't say it was - my point was that lots of mainstream culture bears the traits that alternative culture is held up as exemplifying. Hip hop has always been a mainstream form.

Butterfly is widely held to be experimental, it's not some wild theory I'm proposing. Apologies is your cursory listen 6 years ago didn't yield the thrills you'd hoped for.

RenegadeScrew

Quote from: sweeper on February 10, 2021, 11:15:05 AM
Didn't say it was - my point was that lots of mainstream culture bears the traits that alternative culture is held up as exemplifying. Hip hop has always been a mainstream form.

Butterfly is widely held to be experimental, it's not some wild theory I'm proposing. Apologies is your cursory listen 6 years ago didn't yield the thrills you'd hoped for.

I suppose we have differing definitions of mainstream culture too.

It can be widely (or wildly) held to be experimental by Paul Morley et al, I was just asking what was experimental about it?  After all, he was performing something (hip hop) that you claim has always been mainstream culture.

gilbertharding

I hadn't knowingly heard anything by The Nightingales, and the only thing in the film I recognised was Rockin' with Rita. I can't honestly say that watching the film gave me any impulse to find out more, either.

However, I enjoyed the film. It was a brilliant story, told well.

sweeper

There is no definition, there is either mainstream or marginal. You don't get to pick and choose what you think is or isn't, it's about what sells.

What's experimental about a an 80 minute hip hop concept album incorporating p-funk and free jazz and poetry?

Now I've seen that written down, you're right - it's essentially what Ed Sheehan would do.

Captain Z

I turned it off after 2 minutes because there was no Phil Minton.

gilbertharding


RenegadeScrew

Quote from: sweeper on February 10, 2021, 12:39:15 PM
There is no definition, there is either mainstream or marginal. You don't get to pick and choose what you think is or isn't, it's about what sells.

What's experimental about a an 80 minute hip hop concept album incorporating p-funk and free jazz and poetry?

Now I've seen that written down, you're right - it's essentially what Ed Sheehan would do.

There is a definition of mainstream, you've just given one ffs.  If it's about what sells then hip hop wasn't always mainstream.  The message didn't sell millions of copies.  By the other definition (conventional/normal) it also wasn't mainstream.

Hip hop incorporating concepts, p-funk, and poetry into an album that fills up a whole CD....whatever next. 

I suppose if a rapper isn't Ed Sheeran he's the new Shabazz Palaces.

Quote from: RenegadeScrew on February 10, 2021, 02:54:54 PM
There is a definition of mainstream, you've just given one ffs.  If it's about what sells then hip hop wasn't always mainstream.  The message didn't sell millions of copies.  By the other definition (conventional/normal) it also wasn't mainstream.

Hip hop incorporating concepts, p-funk, and poetry into an album that fills up a whole CD....whatever next. 

I suppose if a rapper isn't Ed Sheeran he's the new Shabazz Palaces.

I guess the main issue is that there are degrees of experimentation, from people trying things that have never been done before, just to see where it goes, to people experimenting within a genre to people experimenting with their fame and place within pop/music culture and beyond.

To Pimp A Butterfly definitely has moments that sit somewhere between those lines, from having drastically different voices on different tracks (slow drawls, manic spoken word on 'For Free?', broken and on the verge of tears on 'u', his well known 'alien' voice) to going from a number one album with some RnB choruses and a Drake feature to following it up by fully committing to building a world full of sounds that many hip hop fans found too experimental and exploring things which on the surface sound old hat (jazz and p-funk references, how unique!) but constructed in a way which was fairly experimental for the time and place.

It's like the old thing of you can't complain about being ill because someone else has lost a leg, and they can't complain because someone has lost an arm too and has it worse etc. etc., experimental is a sliding scale and if it's met with "yes but..." and examples of the many people doing weirder things then you can keep going down that road forever and ignores the context.

sweeper

Quote from: RenegadeScrew on February 10, 2021, 02:54:54 PM
There is a definition of mainstream, you've just given one ffs.  If it's about what sells then hip hop wasn't always mainstream.  The message didn't sell millions of copies.  By the other definition (conventional/normal) it also wasn't mainstream.

Hip hop incorporating concepts, p-funk, and poetry into an album that fills up a whole CD....whatever next. 

I suppose if a rapper isn't Ed Sheeran he's the new Shabazz Palaces.

I was pointing out that art, e.g. some hip hop, can be experimental and mainstream at the same time, to refute an earlier point that mainstream entertainment cannot be experimental or edgy or raw as this is the sole preserve of the marginal. Hip hop - on the whole - is a commercially minded venture, and is mainstream, pretty much from the get go. I'm sure you could spend all day pointing out records that didn't sell a lot, but it's kind of beside the point.

So you don't accept that one specific popular Kendrick Lamar album is experimental (despite the fact that it demonstrably is, and is widely accepted as such), but I'm sure it wouldn't take long to find another example.

Low by David Bowie? Look, there's one.

Oz Oz Alice

With The Nightingales you've really got to see them live: Fliss and Robert in particular are fantastic to watch, every song bleeds into one with no pause between or usually any acknowledgement of the audience. There's no cringey matey banter, they're just a machine and it's a numbing hypnotic experience seeing them when they're on form. The group I'm in have supported them a couple of times and it's always fun, inkeeping with Jockice's post upthread I'll relate my first experience of Robert Lloyd:

A couple of years ago we were playing the same all-dayer at the New Continental in Preston, it was a sunny day and the group were sat at a table with a geriatric punk associate of ours we have christened Mad "Mad" Tony. We were bickering about The Fall and a large man holding a bottle of whiskey plonked himself down on the bench next to our bassist, proceeded to tell him he was very handsome and then ask "What're a bunch of young lads doing playing this thing? Are you perverts or something?". A somewhat nervous middle-aged man approached him and told him he was a big Nightingales fan and asked if he could buy him a drink to which Lloyd considered the question for what felt like forever and then asked for a pint of Guinness. Him and their then bassist, a tall German guy who used to be in Faust, sat and chatted with us for a while.  Lloyd continued to swig from the bottle of whiskey the promoter had bought him but would occasionally pick up the Guinness and glance at it quizzically. At some point in the conversation, he handed it to me saying "You can have this because I'm bored with it now".

Apparently Tony had something of a history of being disruptive at Gales gigs and Robert Lloyd would later mid-song, as the band played some kind of motorik, break off to begin yelling at him "Are you going to piss on the dancefloor Tony? I think you should do it. Piss on the dancefloor". Afterwards sat with the promoter outside he told us how Tony had been ejected from the Conti for drunkenly urinating on Robert Lloyd from the audience: apparently Robert just thought this was funny which probably wouldn't be my reaction to being pissed on in the majority of settings.

He was very personable to me, on another of our meetings on overhearing me talking about being nervous about performing that night he came bounding over again and said "I still get nervous even after all this time it just means you care about what you're doing" which I thought was sweet. It was good that side of him came across in King Rocker as well as the boozy curmudgeonly contrarian aspect.

[nb] This bickering led later in the day to Tony approaching Martin Bramah and telling him "I had Hex Enduction Hour on the other day, you're great aren't you!"
"Thanks but I don't play on that one."
"Which ones did you play on?"
"Live At The Witch Trials, and Extricate"
"Oh I'm not very keen on those ones. Levitate is good though."
This was my cue to apologise and retrieve Tony.
[/nb]



RenegadeScrew

Quote from: sweeper on February 10, 2021, 04:16:07 PM
I was pointing out that art, e.g. some hip hop, can be experimental and mainstream at the same time, to refute an earlier point that mainstream entertainment cannot be experimental or edgy or raw as this is the sole preserve of the marginal. Hip hop - on the whole - is a commercially minded venture, and is mainstream, pretty much from the get go. I'm sure you could spend all day pointing out records that didn't sell a lot, but it's kind of beside the point.

Well it isn't beside the point if you define mainstream as something that sells.  All music is a commercially minded venture if it is sold at all.  A Tribe Called Quest would've been better off making grunge, never mind (get it?) something even worse.  Anyway, if you want to think it's always been massively conventional or sold, fair enough. 

It's obvious that mainstream culture can be experimental but rarely extremely so and it usually affects sales.  Bowie's best selling single is 'Lets Dance' and the Beatles is 'She Loves You'.  Radiohead's is creep, Pink Floyd's is Another Brick.  Etc.

Stop mithering
I'm not joining conventional rock band
The conventional is experimental, the conventional is now
Experimental

sweeper

It's been 28 years since Creep, and Radiohead still fill huge venues despite fully committing to their avant-garde vision about two decades ago. And they seldom play Creep live.

That's a good example of something experimental being mainstream.

TrenterPercenter

Anyone know how I could watch the documentary?  I don't have sky is there somewhere else you can pay to see it?

Quote from: TrenterPercenter on February 10, 2021, 10:48:26 PM
Anyone know how I could watch the documentary?  I don't have sky is there somewhere else you can pay to see it?

Now TV. An entertainment pass for a month is peanuts, or you can probably get a free trial.

madhair60

Does anyone just have it to illegally download for free? I also would like to buy it.

Ferris


Petey Pate

Thought this was pretty funny and entertaining, but would agree that it didn't really make the case for why Robert Lloyd was such an important musical figure. He certainly comes across as an enjoyable guy to be around though.

Also even on NowTV, it didn't come up in the search box for me. I could only find it by going to the Sky Arts section and scrolling down.

Egyptian Feast

The search function on the Now TV app is ridiculous. It took me ages to find King Rocker last night, ended up having to google it separately on my phone, change my password and add the doc to my watchlist. I had the same trouble finding that Ivor Cutler doc recently.

Thought it was excellent. Lloyd and Lee were a great double act, loved watching the two crack each other up. I'm not sure if I've been converted by the music, but I'm up for investigating further. What would be the best album to start with for a n00b?