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Thursday 22 June 2017

Going out #7 with Urban Voodoo Machine, Baby Driver and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men tell No Tales

Urban Voodoo Machine - Bannermans – 18/06/17 (Edinburgh)

I could quote Gary Glitter here, but he’s dead to us rockers now.
Instead I will paraphrase the dirty pervy bastard and say that as it has been a very long time since I was at an Urban Voodoo Machine gig that it was cool to return, very cool to return, and I missed them, yeah, while I was away……doing other things.

For the uninitiated they provide the soundtrack to every story of a kid running away and joining the circus.

But not the romantic rose tinted perspective of that tale.
Rather it is the bluesy dark reality of hard times, death, romance, drink, drugs, and a plethora of debauchery.
Paul Ronney Angel is a force of nature when it comes to front-men.
A gutter impresario he evokes a timeless portrayal of gypsy swagger and wrong side of the tracks danger.
The band are the people that your parents warned you about, they are the bogeymen and woman who lurk under the bed, the monsters in the closet, and once they have seduced you with their music they will have a grip on you that will never be slackened.
They are the phantasmagorical purveyors of a rock and roll fantasy world.

How does that sound?

And given a minute or two to process it are you now kicking yourself that you weren’t there at Bannermans in Edinburgh?

You should be.
Two sets, two whole sets and no support acts, just one hundred percent undiluted Urban Voodoo Machine.

Those who were there now have had the distinct pleasure of waking up on the morning after the night before and thinking ‘hell yeah’ that was a gig and a half.
Sunday nights really shouldn’t be set aside for this sort of madness as Monday mornings can be unforgiving, but if any band is going to be worth nursing a hangover through a shift at work, or a school run, then it is the Urban Voodoo Machine.
Gumbo blues fuckers. Fill the bowl and splash some bourbon in the glass and keep it coming. 

Photographs to follow when edited.





Baby Driver

Screen unscreen from the Odeon cinema chain offers you the chance to see a movie for five pounds, but there is a catch.
You don’t know what it will be, but whatever it is will not have had its general release.
Taking this into consideration, and applying some guess work, I thought it may be Baby Driver, a movie we recommended a few weeks ago.
So with my five pounds in hand I went along and it bloody well was Baby Driver.
Result.
And it gives me great pleasure to say that it lived up to expectations.

Is it a heist movie or a musical though?
Well in so many ways it is both as the soundtrack is integral to everything that happens.
Scenes are choreographed to the music whether that is Ansel Elgort aka Baby walking down the street, or his being at the wheel during an octane burning car chase.
Even the speech of Kevin Spacey has the cadence to it of beat poetry.
There is no escaping the music and that for all intents and purposes makes it a musical sans actual performances.
And of course it is also a heist movie too.
The premise that anything has to be one thing or another is completely turned on its head, and I love that.
It harkens back to the punk no rules ethos.

There was a point while watching it that I started to consider that this was not a movie with a soundtrack attached, but a soundtrack with a movie bolted onto it, and it works.
Apparently twenty two years ago Edgar Wright was listening to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and thought that the track Bellbottoms would make the perfect car chase song, and then here we have him in the present taking that flash of inspiration and delivering a film based on that moment.
It’s an utterly genius move in my opinion.
There is also a few points where I thought there was some tips of the hat to some eighties classics. Namely Risky Business and Ferris Buellers Day off, but it is possible that I was reading too much into it, but then again once you have watched it then you can decide for yourself if I am right or wrong.
A part of me does think that Baby Driver could end up as a cult classic rather than a big box office hit, but that’s as it may be.



Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

For a few minutes the opening scenes wrong footed me as I started to think this release was not as bad as others had claimed, but then Johnny Depp arrived and like a five tonne anchor attached to a rubber dingy he dragged it to the depths of the ocean where the carcasses of sharks that have been jumped rest.

He should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for taking the Disney cash and running with it.

To give it some context it is worse than Mortdecai.

If you trimmed all the fat and shit jokes from Carry on Columbus and fashioned it into a script then it would give Dead Men tell no tales a run for its money.
It’s not all Depps fault because of course it is a big production, so the director, those who edited it, and the people who ultimately said that it was done and ready to go should also be carrying a degree of shame with them too.
Unfortunately as the box office receipts pile up it is difficult to imagine anyone giving much of a toss.

As the credits rolled it was difficult not to feel sorry for some of the cast whose performances were absolutely fine.
The news that they would be appearing in such a successful franchise must have been a joyous moment for them, and now what have they got?
An albatross of a movie staining their cv, that’s what.

I suspect that what Depp received as a script was just a direction to mince stagger over there, then come back, mince stagger over here, slur a line, drink some rum, and repeat.

The only thing that is more depressing than sitting through this movie is the news that they are going to do more of them.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Scraping the barnacles off the bottom of the barrel, coming to a Cineplex soon-ish.

PS - Paul McCartney’s appearance is on the same level as his showing up on the Buddy Holly tribute album ‘Rave On’.
Pointless and embarrassing.
     

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