I love music biopics, me. And while I enjoy the good ones, I extract virtually an equal amount of pleasure from the bad.
One of my favourite bad ones is Hysteria, a 2001 VH1-produced TV film about Def Leppard. The Lepp have had a “colourful” history, and like many riffmongers from the last thirty years or so you can totally understand why people would want to turn their tale into a movie.
It would probably be a shame if Hysteria remained the only biopic of Def Leppard, but for British music fans it is quite giddy fun. It provides an amusing number of conspicuous location-related mistakes, and while one is willing to suspend one’s disbelief to an extent when entering movieland it’s pretty hard to do so when virtually the first shot is thoroughly goof-laden.
This has been said elsewhere plenty recently, but John Hughes’ untimely recent clog-popping reminded us that, without the killer soundtracks, his movies wouldn’t have been quite so fondly remembered. While Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson are among the first things I think of when I hear The Breakfast Club mentioned, so is “Don’t You Forget About Me”.
Watching the marvellous Adventurelandat the weekend I was struck at how worthy it is of joining the pantheon of Great, Funny, Sweet Teen Movies With Amazing Soundtracks. Is Kristen Stewart going to be thought of as the new Molly Ringwald? She’s certainly angsty enough, if, perhaps, a tad too pretty.
Anyway, the Adventureland soundtrack is helped by the fact that the film is set in the 80s and that the kids like smoking dope to forget their lousy jobs and dysfunctional families. They drive around feeling tortured and listening to Lou Reed, David Bowie, The Replacements and Husker Dü.
Which brings me round to my admission that this post is really just an excuse for me to stick up one of my favourite Replacements songs, “Unsatisfied”, which appears towards the end of the film. This is frontman Paul Westerberg performing the song in 2002, and it’s lent a poignant something when you read the band’s nearly-made-it history.
This trailer is not quite as funny as the cast and subject matter led me to hope for. I don’t suppose Ang Lee’s especially well known for his comedies though, is he…
Taking Woodstock is released in the UK on November 13th
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Tuesday August 25th, 2009 at
8:00 am
Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, like Jarvis Cocker, is one of those pop stars who gives as good value when he’s not performing as when he is. There aren’t many of those about these days, are there? You may recall it was his entertainingly curmudgeonly disposition that got him a regular spot on Russell Brand’s old Radio 2 show, from which Brand resigned last year. Why was that again?
This Sunday Noel and Russell are back together again in a football-based setting on talkSPORT, but one would hope the sporty nature of the show won’t preclude the pair from sharing the odd anecdote/argument/whinge unrelated to the beautiful game. The show’s a one-off, so don’t go expecting Russell Brand to chuck in his burgeoning movie career for two hours a week on little old British radio.
The show airs from 9pm - 11pm on Sunday 19th April on talkSPORT, which is available on 1089/1053AM, DAB Digital Radio, Sky Digital 0108, Freeview 723, Digital Cable and at www.talkSPORT.net
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Thursday April 16th, 2009 at
2:38 pm
The Simpsons are arguably a bit late to the party when it comes to taking the wee-wee out of the cult of Apple and its vice-like grip on the minds of young music fans, but this opening to a recent episode does a pretty good job nonetheless…
Click over to see the clip (warning - it’s on autoplay).
If you’ve been passing your cold winter eves the same way as me, by watching ITV’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, you will no doubt have been transfixified by the insight into the songwriting process provided by new best buds David Van Day (ex-Dollar) and Timmy Mallett (ex-Wacaday).
When they’re not engaged in a seemingly endless battle to be crowned THE MOST ATTENTION-SEEKING PRICK ON TELEVISION, the pair have been pooling their ageing brains as dynamite pop due Croc Idol. So far, they’ve come up with this:
My favourite bits?
“Yo, where do I put it at?”
“Yabba dabba do!”
“This smell gooood, what is this again?”
“You using white pepper? Step yo’ game up!”
“I wanna taste yours. I don’t trust mine.”
Check it out over the page.
Orange unsignedAct continues to crush bands’ dreams for our entertainment every weekend, bless its little heart. I spoke to Alex Zane about the show, Burt Reynolds and his approach to to playing Scouting For Girls records.
Hello Alex Zane. In this day and age, do bands really need reality TV exposure and a record deal to be successful?
Well, TV is just a different medium for bands to exploit. Bands like Arctic Monkeys used MySpace to launch their careers, and with MySpace you can be presented with a band as you lie in bed hungover on a Sunday morning. Orange unsignedAct does that as well at the moment.
What acts are you a fan of on Orange UnsignedAct ? I quite like Glass Shark, we’ve played them on the office stereo recently.
Glass Shark are really nice guys and I thought their song was fantastic. They’re out of the competition now though - they had other stuff bubbling under already for them, and acts on the show have to remain completely unsigned. They chose that option rather than to continue with the TV show.
There’s a great guy called Tommy Riley, from Glasgow. He’s a singer-songwriter with a passion onstage you don’t tend to see much nowadays. He’s only about twenty years old but he swallows all the atmosphere in a room and spits it back out. I love Hip Parade as well, they’re a really good rock n’ roll band. Jolly good. Now, Orange is clearly the best mobile phone network in the galaxy.
I’ve heard that too.
If you were to enjoy an Orange Wednesday, who would it be with and what film would you go to see?
I had an emotional journey this morning. I’d forgotten to take the mince out of the freezer before I left the flat, and it was playing on my mind something terrible on the train the whole way. Thankfully a quick text to my flatmate got that sorted. Highs and bloody lows.
Anyway, that Gil Grissom off CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, he knows all about emotional journeys. You would, wouldn’t you, if you spent your time dicking around with corpses? How did they die? Was it gory? Will a reconstruction of their murder look wicked in High Definition?
In fact Grissom’s emotional journeys are so flipping intense that they are going to be scored by the new single from mildly irked rock boys Linkin Park.
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Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, like Jarvis Cocker, is one of those pop stars who gives as good value when he’s not performing as when he is. There aren’t many of those about these days, are there? You may recall it was his entertainingly curmudgeonly disposition that got him a regular spot on Russell Brand’s old Radio 2 show, from which Brand resigned last year. 
