It Came From Memphis

2010-07-25T09:14:00.004Z

Seems like this job is always a race against time. Coming up on a year now since Jim Dickinson's untimely death and it still hurts to know we didn't get the film about him funded, so much stuff left unfilmed, so many stories untold. Only a couple of months back my friend Sebastian Horsley, the last punk dandy in the world, died too, and I'd spent three years trying to convince people to give me money to make a film about his crazy, sordid, visionary life. Now he's safely dead, there's two films about him already up and running.

Whatever. It isn't worth regretting the things you don't do, when there are so many things you did do that you need to spend time regretting. One thing I won't regret is bailing out in a big hurry to go to Memphis and start filming with Jerry McGill. The harebrained three months myself and Robert Gordon spent chasing him all over the South was at times stressful, other times fun, but most of all irreplacable.

Jerry's finally had his lung cancer surgery - had it a few weeks back. The DAY after the surgery he was on the phone to me and Robert, sounding like he was sitting at the corner of his local bar, the Twilght Zone, holding forth. Sadly, that state of affairs didn't last, and as I write he's back in the hospital - the doctors have discovered his extraordinary dependency on prescription painkillers and are trying to make him go cold turkey - the nurses have blown out his veins with bad shots and now he can only take his antibiotics orally - the oral antibiotics cost $6K - and there's a concern that the cancer may have gone to his lymphatic system. Has Jerry McGill's legendary luck, which saw him evade capture by the FBI for thirteen years, all the while he was touring and playing guitar with Waylon Jennings as a wanted man, sometimes appearing in drag to escape police attention - has this man's extraordinary streak of luck run out?

Fuck no - I just heard a sample of Big Jim Lancaster's forthcoming CD, coming out on his own Playground label, drawn from McGill's various recording escapades over the past six decades. Only two of the tracks - the A and B sides of his Sun 45, Lovestruck, from '59 - have ever been heard, anywhere. The rest includes material with Dickinson (the storming Hoochie Coochie Man, the heartbreaking Desperadoes, the downright terrifying Civil War anthem With Sabers in Our Hands) and stuff recorded this year with the North Mississippi Allstars and the remaining members of Mud Boy and the Neutrons. It is going to live forever, this music, and it's all down to the pack-rat instincts of Jim Lancaster - a man who never throws anything away - that half of this stuff has survived.

So, one way or another, McGill's legendary status will endure. I just hope he's around for the premiere of this dark and crazy movie about his life, and I really, really wish Dickinson could be there too. However, small mercies - and as long as there's never-before-heard music from Zebra Ranch waiting to be released, Jim hasn't left us.

2010-05-24T19:06:00.001Z

OK, now that it's nearly done, I can talk about the new Memphis-related project - a film about the remarkable life and outlandish history of Jerry McGill, aka Curtis Buck, aka Jerry Cole, and he had and has nine other names he's gone under at various times. I've been filming with Robert Gordon for the past three months and we have got some mindblowing material, not for the fainthearted. McGill's star turn in William Eggleston's Stranded in Canton showed him to have been one scary fucker in 1973. My recent experience has showed that not much has changed in the intervening years. The film - working title: Very Extremely Dangerous - should start editing sometime late summer or early autumn, all going well. Also, a career-spanning record release - McGill's first in fifty years (!) - from Florida's Playground Recording should be out around the same time, containing stuff McGill cut in the '70s with Jim Dickinson, Dan Penn, Waylon Jennings and others, as well as more recent material laid down at Sam Phillips Recording Services, with Roland Janes at the mixing desk and Luther & Cody Dickinson, among other Memphis luminaries, playing back-up to the outlaw.

Here's a piece from the Memphis Commercial Appeal about McGill's one-off performance at the Hi-Tone Cafe last week:

http://www.gomemphis.com/news/2010/may/20/go-out-fun-events-this-week/

One of the more mysterious musical legends in Memphis history, Jerry McGill returns to town for a special performance at the Hi-Tone Café. A former garage-band great, a onetime Sun recording artist, a longtime foil for Waylon Jennings, and a notorious hell-raiser during the Bluff City's mid-'70s music scene -- as vividly captured in William Eggleston's film "Stranded in Canton" -- McGill will play a mini-set at the start of a bill that includes local burlesque group The Memphis Belles as well as scuzz-rockers The Dirty Streets and Tanks. McGill's performance is being filmed by director and author Robert Gordon ("It Came From Memphis") as part of a documentary being made with Irish filmmaker Paul Duane.

2010-03-18T17:04:00.003Z

Going back to Memphis on Saturday. This is a bit of a conundrum, as I don't quite know what I'm doing when I get there, apart from filming a quite unusual recording session on Monday. Jerry McGill's last record, Lovestruck, was released in 1959, and he's recording something new Monday night with Jim Dickinson's sons Luther and Cody, in Sam Phillips Recording Services. I'm flying over to film a bit with Jerry before and after the session, just to see what happens. If you don't know who Jerry is you haven't seen Stranded in Canton, in which case just go to YouTube right now and find it - the whole movie's on there. If you have seen it you know he's the original rock'n'roll outlaw. No others I know of fulfil the criteria the way he does. I may write some more about this when I come back, if I come back. There's a lot could happen in the next few days.

A strange side effect of this shoot is that I'll be in Memphis just two days after Alex Chilton stepped off the planet. I wish I had something great to write about him here, but I never met the man. I saw him live, twice - once at the London Astoria with Big Star, putting his heart and soul into playing sides that he had often said he didn't believe in or enjoy playing any more. You'd never have known that to see him play. They were great. Next time was in Dublin, where - in the middle of a horrible break-up with somebody I thought I was deeply in love with - I brought the girl to see him do a solo show in Whelan's, my favourite Dublin venue. That was a frustrating and also mesmerising show, he was aware of the Big Star cultists making up most of his audience and enjoyed toying with them/us, and I just wanted this girl to see the magic in this man and understand why I'd brought her here. I don't think she got it and I can't blame her, it was an evening short on magic, but I'm glad I went. Afterwards we sat in the bar and had an awkward drink, knowing we were going home separately to separate beds. September Gurls played and I sang along, "I loved you, well, never mind - " but couldn't finish the line because it was too close to the bone, really. I don't remember anything more about that evening, but it came back to mind this morning when I heard the news, and remembered standing ten feet away from Alex as he refused, with a smile, to play my request, Let's Get Lost, instead responding "That's exactly what I plan to do." And then he left the stage, and didn't return.

2009-08-19T20:19:00.000Z

A message from Mary Lindsay Dickinson, via Robert Gordon:

"People have been asking me what they could do to help us. I didn't know
what to say until yesterday when I woke up with Jim's voice in my head,
saying as he often did, "I am never insulted by money." This fits into
Cody and Luther's plan for the Zebra Ranch Studio, which is to continue to
record there with the benefit of Jim's sonic genius and musical ambiance.

If people want to participate in keeping Jim Dickinson's dream alive, they
can donate to friendsofjimdickinson@gmail.com through paypal or mail to
Mary Dickinson
P.O. Box 1015
Coldwater, MS 38618

Please help us spread the word that the Zebra Ranch studio is always open
for business, either as a rental or with the addition of Cody as producer,
Luther as guitarist and aesthetic consultant,and Jim smiling down on us
from Heaven."

2009-08-17T12:49:00.002Z

I really, really don't want to write about this. I don't think I'm able to do justice to the man who died on Saturday, James Luther Dickinson, and I don't want to fail. So I'll reprint the best thing I've found about him written online, and let you read it, and I'll come back and write about this another time, when I feel able to take it on. For now, I'll just write some words that I find it hard to type and harder to look at. James Luther Dickinson, 1941-2009. Rest in peace, brother, world boogie is coming.

Newsweek
By Malcolm Jones

"He left a big hole" is such an obit cliché, but it sure doesn't help when the hole is in your heart. Jim Dickinson, who died Aug 15, was not a famous musician, but he was a great one. He truly was one of those mysterious people who could get more out of two notes than most people get out of 20, maybe because he knew that less is more, or more likely because he knew where to put them. When I got the word from a mutual friend that Dickinson, 67, contrary to expectations, would not be coming back from bypass surgery, all I could think was, now the world will be a poorer place. Music never dies, but now and then it takes a hit that there's no recovering from.

Dickinson was in no way famous, unless being famous among one's peers counts. With his wife and family, he lived in two trailers, one of them a recording studio, on a spread in northern Mississippi he called the Zebra Ranch. A Memphis denizen since childhood, he never traveled far. Instead, people came to him. He was the rock and roll doctor (whenever I hear Lowell George's song of the same name—"two degrees in bebop, a PhD. In swing, he's the master of rhythm, he's the rock n roll king"—I think of Dickinson. The song may not be about him, but it sure could have been).

He spent most of his life helping other people get their music on wax, disc, tape—realize their vision, in other words. Not many people know how to do that and those who do rarely do it with the inspiring generosity Dickinson brought to the studio or the recording booth (and the concert stage: bidding his audience goodbye at the end of one album, he said "Take care of yourself, and if you can, take care of someone else"). He was a selfless sideman: he played keyboards on the Stones' "Wild Horses" and Dylan's comeback breakthrough "Time Out of Mind," but those works don't sound a thing alike. He cut albums on musicians as disparate as Big Star, the Replacements, Toots Hibbert, John Hiatt, Ry Cooder, Mudboy and the Neutrons and the Dickinson boys, Luther and Cody, two-thirds of the North Mississippi All-Stars. With Cooder he co-wrote "The Wildwood Boys" and "Down Below the Borderline." Toward the end of his life, he returned to recording himself and produced a handful of idiosyncratic albums that each defy categorization—blues, soul, swing tunes, novelty numbers and plain old rock n roll. The unifying aspect resides less in the grooves than in the mind of the listener: the unmistakable realization that on the other end of the microphone is a real live human being who is holding nothing back. Listening to a track from Dickinson's first solo album, "Dixie Fried" (1972), Dr. John was heard to remark, "That boy is SELLING that song."

A self-deprecating man who never left his sense of humor in his other pants, Dickinson deflected any suggestion that he was a walking encyclopedia of American popular music, or that he was some torch bearer of white Southern soul or that he knew how to reach down to the very roots of American song and then communicate that essence to you in his music or the music he helped others make. He made no claims for his piano playing or his singing—before turning his sandpapery growl loose on a cover of the Dan Penn song "Pain and Strain" on his live album, "A Thousand Footprints in the Sand," he told the audience, "I can't sing it like Dan Penn, but ... use your imagination." But while there are plenty of people with better chops and more golden throats, Dickinson always did the most he could with what he had. And somehow he always reached back and found just the right note, the right inflection, to make you lean forward and listen. When Dickinson sang a lyric, you believed every word. If he'd said he learned what he knew from selling his soul to the devil at some crossroads at midnight, you wouldn't be too quick to call him a liar. In fact, when someone did ask him where he learned what he knew, the middle-class Memphis white boy never got above his raising: "From the yard man, like everybody else."

I met him just once, for a moment, n a New York City club where he was performing with his sons. I got the chance to thank him for all the hours of pleasure he'd given me on his albums and the albums he helped produce. He was very gracious, but as we parted, I thought how strange it is, this world of recorded sound, where a man puts his soul on record, where you feel like you know him as well as you know your best friend, and yet, when you meet, you're strangers again. Until you flip the on switch to listen again.

Jim Dickinson was a great musician who led by example. He never cut a dishonest track in his life. If you never heard him, it's your loss, because he was the real deal. He said he wanted his epitaph to read, "I'm just dead. I'm not gone." I wish.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/popvox/archive/2009/08/16/jim-dickinson -1941-2009-farewell-to-the-original-north-mississippi-all-star.aspx

2009-06-23T14:33:00.002Z

Just had some absolutely remarkable news which, well, wait and see how things develop but somebody who was never expected to return from oblivion is about to get in touch with me and just possibly is going to take part in some filming. If this works out the way I hope it might, it could mean a very sudden revitalisation of this project. About time too. Fingers crossed and watch this space! The South's gonna rise again.

2009-04-26T11:08:00.003Z

Well, well. What a lot of cobwebs and - (runs finger along shelf) - about two years worth of dust. Too much has happened since I last posted here for easy updating, but if I just tell you that I now live in a different country, have a (nearly) two-year-old daughter who loves Elvis, a production company, less than a year old, just learning to walk under its own steam, a TV show doing well on both sides of the Atlantic and a feature film about to be born - well, you'll understand about the lapse in blogging.

Also, not to be coy about it, I've done very little towards making It Came From Memphis a reality. Though there's still the possibility that it might happen - I'm bringing the promo and some excerpts from the Barbican show to the Hot Docs festival in Toronto early in May. Who knows - we might just finish it before the world collapses under the weight of its own craziness. Trillion dollar bailouts? Swine flu? It makes one long for the comparative serenity of late September, 2001.

The reason I'm blogging now, after such a long gap, is that Kellie Strøm, artist and former college buddy of mine, and owner/operator of Airforce Amazons, tagged me with what I believe is called a meme - a request to list seven songs I'm into right now, then pass the meme on to seven other bloggers. I'm going to have to ignore the latter half of the request as I don't have blogosphere relations to tag in turn. But here's a short list of sounds I'm currently loving:

Kites Are Fun - The Free Design.
Having a small child means you need to have some la la la music to hand, as you never know when you're going to need to pick your child up and swoop round the room like a demented version of Brian Wilson undergoing an imaginary audition to be a CBeebies presenter. This wonderful slice of Curt Boettcher-confected West Coast pop-psychedelia is just the ticket.

Idiot Wind - Bob Dylan.
One for singing in the shower, particularly if you take your cue from the wild, woolly Hard Rain version. I tend to elide the more misogynist lines, segueing into a version of It Ain't Me Babe to fill the gaps.

Dark as a Dungeon - Gnonnas Pedro.
Found at the excellent WMFU: Beware of the Blog , this African superstar I'd never previously heard of does a marvellously haunting job of covering the old Charles Aznavour ballad. I do enjoy a bit of mournful whistling.

The Electrician - Scott Walker.
An old favourite, its use under the opening scene from the rather remarkable film Bronson, written by an old Soho compatriot of mine, Brock Norman Brock, and directed by Nicholas Winding Refn, made me remember all over again what a fine piece of music this is.

Porcelain Monkey - Warren Zevon.
Inspired by one of William Eggleston's classic photos from Graceland, an image foregrounding a bit of typical Elvis surrealism - why did he feel the need to share his living-room with a large, doe-eyed ceramic simian?
"From a shotgun shack playing Pentecostal hymns/Through the wrought-iron gates, to the TV Room/He had a little world that was smaller than your hand/It's a rockabilly ride from the glitter to the gloom/Left behind by the latest trends/Eating fried chicken with his regicidal friends/That's how the story ends for a porcelain monkey."

Promised Land - Johnnie Allen.
No matter how many times I hear it, it still puts a smile on my face. Was an accordion ever used in such a fundamentally rockin' context, or made to sound so prismatically lovely? I don't own a single record, tape, CD or mp3 by Chuck Berry, but I tip my hat to the old coprophile for having given us, even at a remove, this wonderful tune.

Church of Anthrax - John Cale and Terry Riley.
How they did it, and why, are questions, the bottom of which we will never reach. But Cale, booze-soaked avant-gardist turned rock idol, and Riley, austere high priest of minimalism, combined to make something that sounds like a blaxploitation soundtrack that somehow has become possessed by the desire to turn its listeners into zombie-stomping, space-jazz-infected musical megalomaniacs. A massive, buzzing, looping-back-on-itself, ever-growing slice of motorik monstrousness, this tune seems to have escaped its creators (both of whom, it is said, dislike it) and - like a Japanese movie monster, Goke - Bodysnatcher from Hell, perhaps - it owes nothing to anybody, as it marauds through the landscape, ploughing its lonely furrow, forgotten by its parents, abandoned by the mothership, yet untiring in its search for a mate, a body to snatch, or a head to rip off with its buzzsaw groove.

OK - thanks, Kellie. I'm gone to research swine flu.

2006-03-31T11:21:00.000Z

This blog is what they call a hostage to fortune. I keep on saying stuff and then, as it's now in the pubic domain or whatever they call it, I have to do it. So here's another hostage. We shot the Mud Boy show last April on High Definition arsekicking multiple camera video and digital sound. Now we plan to have it edited, mixed and ready to screen in Memphis on the tenth anniversary of Lee Baker's death, September 10 2006. That's the plan and now it has to happen. Things are slowly moving forward with the It Came From Memphis film too, albeit on a reduced scale and with a guerrilla mentality, which is probably (let's face it) how it should have been done all along. But it will happen, eventually - we have promised ourselves that. And now it's out there for the world or whoever happens on this to see. Thanks to everybody who has emailed over the months and years with messages of support.

2005-09-05T20:56:00.000Z

It’s been a while. I’ve been busy - earning a living, really, bringing myself back down to the commonplace business of money in the bank, after the extraordinary things that happened back in April when Memphis came to London. Around that time, myself and my co-conspirators decided that the way to get our film made was to trade up - to make two films rather than one, and to sell a package of four films rather than two. Initially, that seemed a brilliant move, and we grinned at each other and drank our cold beers with a sense that we were moving into the centre of things. The broadcaster we’d targeted seemed to be vulnerable to this full scale, guns blazing approach - I envisioned them seeing the possibilities of a weekend, a week, a month of programming devoted to unpicking the myths and chronicling the unsung heroes of Memphis rock’n’roll.

Down the line, having - after many, many positives - finally received the big negative, I look back on the period of optimism as some kind of beautiful hangover. Having done one impossible thing - having brought Mud Boy to London and filmed it - we’d thought nothing else would be much bother. Myself and Robert were fuelled by the memory of the shared grin, the brotherhood of knowing that we’d made this happen and it wasn’t supposed to happen, it was never meant to be this way - Jim Dickinson didn’t fly, Mud Boy didn’t play any more, nobody could make them. But he did, and they did, and it was better than anyone could have expected it to be, and it was filmed in high definition video and recorded on fifty-six channels of digital audio. And that can’t be made to unhappen, so our lack of success in persuading anyone else that this film needs to be made has to be seen in that light. I’ve been around long enough to know that, like it says in the Bible, the stone that was rejected by the builders may become, eventually, the cornerstone. Corner of what, exactly, I can’t say - I’d settle for a corner bar, the kind that nothing ever happens in, but the beer’s cheap and they don’t have sports on the TV, ever.

So. Some months have passed. I’ve ended up back where I grew up, or fifty miles away from where I grew up, making what they call a living, doing some documentaries for television, putting my heart into it but not my soul, they don’t pay me enough for my soul. In fact, what it is is, they pay me to keep my soul out of the picture. So I’m in a corner of the earth where, paradoxically, I know no-one and no-one knows me. The strategies I’ve used to meet people and have fun in the past don’t seem to work here, maybe because a lot of them were based on my being not from ‘around here’, being just exotic enough to get away with being conversational with complete strangers. And also, face it - I left Ireland for a reason. I’m back for a reason. The latter reason doesn’t really involve enjoying myself. I listen to a lot of music, I read, I drink some wine and I go to bed at a reasonable hour - two of the above didn’t figure largely in my life over the past few years, take a wild guess which.

I’m not saying making films has lost its charm, I’m not saying that at all - it’s still the only way I can imagine myself ever making a living, the phrase ‘otherwise unemployable’ drifts through my mind way too often - but I’ve been doing it for long enough that it’s a job. Watching films is part of the job. Talking about them, that too. None of these things that I used to live and breathe for excite me now - I remember the days of watching, over and over, the truncated VHS copy of Mean Streets, taped off the telly and incomplete, that I’d stolen from the meagre video library in college. We imbibed it - along with Stranger than Paradise, and Raging Bull, and Bresson’s L’Argent, and a few others, we stole their inner meanings for ourselves and measured ourselves against them. I can’t seem to feel like that about films, any more.

Music, now - that’s another matter entirely.

Even in the last week, I’ve had probably three transcendent moments brought on by music, though it was in combination, admittedly, with proscribed substances in two cases, and with entirely legal endorphin-related activity in another. No matter - that’s a whole lot more times than I’ve felt transcendent while sat in front of a screen over the past year or so.

What this means is that I can’t depend on films to give meaning to my life anymore. Music has to do it. I’m certain of that. So, in the grip of that conviction, I’ve made a decision or two that will change the way I do things during the next bit of my life on earth.

I’ve never played an instrument properly, written a song, or been in a real band, but I’ve tried to do all three. A close friend of mine for the past twenty years, Liam, has spent a good deal of time trying to persuade me to start making music with him, based on the laudable notion that our shared, and excellent, taste in music, and our combined force of personality, make up for any shortcomings where talent is concerned. In the past I’ve nodded and agreed completely with him and ordered another round and waited for the conversation to take another turn. It’s not that I disagree with him - it just seems like a ludicrous idea. The problem is, I’m deeply attracted to ludicrous ideas. This one, however, didn’t seem to be troubling my mind too much, the reason being - I’ve since discovered - that it wasn’t quite ludicrous enough.

So, out for a walk this afternoon, thinking, as Warren Zevon said, “of my friends and the troubles they had, to stop me from thinking of mine,” I thought about dying, and wondered what I’d do given, say, a year to live. Make a film? You must be fucking joking.

I knew that whatever I’d do would be around the whole area of music in my life. It would have to be, nothing else could cover the ground that I’d need to cover in that year.

Somehow or other, from this hackneyed reverie, the kind of thing that thirty-nine year old men everywhere constantly rehearse in their teenage backbrains, I ended up making the decision that I’d devote the next six months to working on my guitar playing, trying to write a song or two, and then - along with Liam - I’d go back to Memphis and persuade my only living musical hero, the man they call James Luther Dickinson, to record us in his Zebra Ranch studio, and that - no matter what happened, no matter how it turned out - I would have done something real.

Then I knew I had to tell somebody about it quick, so that I wouldn’t back down. I called Liam and the way he answered, I knew we were going on a trip - that’s for sure. He said, ‘That’s the kind of idea I’ve been waiting for. You’ve made my fuckin’ day. We’re goin’ to Memphis.’

Next thing I’ve gotta do is, I’ve gotta try to book some studio time with Jim - and then it’ll be serious, because there’s no-one in the world I’m less eager to let down than him. He has a way of looking at you through his overstrength spectacles that makes you be the best version of yourself that you’re capable of being at that moment, and even if we’re only communicating via the phone, hell - even if we were communicating via Sanskrit carved in bone chips then entrusted to faithful native bearers - I know I’d be seeing that look aimed at me.

And now, putting this on my poor, oxygen-deprived, fed-thru-a-tube, asking-for-the-last-rites and a shot of morphine (and a little cocaine on the side), long-ignored and probably unread blog, I’m letting a few more people in on it so that I’ve got a few more reasons not to back out of it. Because, knowing what I’m like, I’ll soon start figuring out reasons why this can’t and shouldn’t happen. That’s why I’ve managed to get to be thirty-nine without having done much apart from trying to get films made. And not doing anything that might lead me to fall flat on my face in front of the world.

As for that: “I used to care, but - things have changed.” Like Bob Dylan put it.

2005-06-22T00:34:00.000Z

I’m currently residing in a different country, making a whole different kind of documentary, and enjoying the slightly unfamiliar feeling of being at least temporarily financially solvent. The past few months, ICFM has been residing with a Major Broadcaster, waiting for them to make the call on whether or not they’re going to fund it. We’ve pitched it as not just one film but a package of up to four, and that seems to be a positive step. It’s at the final hurdle. If there’s nothing further on this blog you’ll know what the situation is, but if everything goes the way I hope it will, then I’ll be blogging it all the way through to the finish.

2005-06-16T02:01:00.000Z

Yes, it's been a while. Sorry about that. Real world work has somehow gotten in the way, and brought me to a different place geographically and mentally. But the thirteen-wheeled juggernaut that is ICFM rumbles on, and on, inch by inch. Watch this space, and there will be news - soon - and it will be good, at least I hope so.

2005-04-19T00:37:00.000Z

I’m sitting in Dublin Airport, looking out at a slate-grey day, feeling dead tired. I haven’t managed to blog very regularly recently, and there’s been a hell of a lot to blog about. Luther will have had his Mississippi wedding ceremony by now, and another friend, Joss Hutton (late of Bucketful of Brains, currently running the reputedly unsurpassable Sonic Reducer night) is getting hitched in Memphis in a few days. Me, I’m untroubled by thoughts of matrimony. The only burning passion I feel is the need to get this damn film made, along with the three other things I’ve been working on, lo, these long months and years past. All are sailing forward under their own, admittedly unpredictable, momentum, but until I’m standing there behind the camera I won’t believe any of it.

With ICFM in particular, things seem to be getting very interesting. I had a wild idea right when we started this whole thing, an unconventional approach that seemed right for this oddball affair – I won’t go into details for fear of, I don’t know, contempt of court? Prejudicing the witness? Whatever. Anyway, having tried the obvious routes without success, we ended up going straight to the top of this organisation, which is of course where we should have started, and were met with great and immediate enthusiasm, an unfamiliar response where ICFM is concerned, sad to say. Today I’m flying back to London for a meet with somebody important who will be able to make things happen if we convince him that that’s the best thing he could possibly do. By the time I get home and post this, I might have some idea of our chances. I might even add a postscript, if I can be arsed to after an evening spent at the Barbican watching the Sun survivors go through their rockabilly paces. My date for the evening is Michael Dillon, the owner and resident shaman of Gerry’s Club on Dean St. - my favourite Soho drinking refuge. I have a feeling we may just end up having a glass or two of something or other afterwards. Maybe we’ll manage to bring Cowboy Jack Clement back with us. Judging from the clips I’ve seen from Robert Gordon’s new documentary on the man, he’s pretty stimulating company. Johnny Cash certainly thought so.

2005-04-11T23:31:00.000Z

All the Memphians have gone home, and I have a respite – time to sit quietly after a week, more than a week, of crazed running and talking and plotting and a more than adequate amount of laughing and a ferocious amount of drinking.

I haven’t had the time or the energy to blog about last Sunday week, the 3rd, when Mud Boy, the NMAs and Tav, among others, put on the greatest rock and roll performance art show imaginable. In fact, that weekend may well have been the best weekend I’ve ever had that didn’t involve sex or drugs (either would have been welcome, but maybe they would have compromised the essential purity of the experience...)

I spent that whole day at the Barbican, without much to actually do except keep an eye on things and occasionally steer somebody or something in the general direction I thought was required. My very esteemed executive producer had agreed to take a trip back in time to her earlier (much earlier) career as a multi-camera studio director, you know the kind of thing – talking live over headsets to harassed cameramen, saying things like “We’re on Camera Three, Camera Four – give me a tighter shot on the drummer’s left foot – good – coming to Four – on Four.” It’s a tough job and not one I would have liked to take on. I just wanted the chance to bask in the experience – the opportunity to see a band I really and truly never thought I’d get the opportunity to see, and not only that, the opportunity to be part of the show, to see it come together and record it for what – if I felt like a pretentious kinda type for a minute – I might call ‘posterity’. Fuckit, it IS for posterity. Posterity better be very extremely grateful too, when it realises what we’ve done for it.

The show was a kind of theatrical experience, distilling about fifty years of a particular type of Memphis experience into two and a half hours. The acoustic Mudboy set that started the night was full of hair-raisingly beautiful moments. Sid singing the field holler,Boll Weevil, acappella, in a voice that didn’t seem an iota different from when he recorded it thirty years ago...Jim singing Alex Chilton’s beautiful Nighttime, from Big Star 3rd, accompanied by Luther’s guitar, which turned it from melancholic pop into some sort of primal hill country blues lament...Big Star’s Jody Stephens taking over the drumkit as Cody Dickinson did his electric washboard set-piece, Psychedelic Sex Machine... Luther coming onstage wearing his Dad’s old jacket, familiar to me from footage of Mudboy’s ‘70s heyday of anarchy and chaos...Tav Falco stalking to his amp and whip-cracking the guitar lead out in imitation of Lash Larue or some other Wild West badman... the look of happiness on Jason Spaceman’s face as he took the stage for the final singalong of Power to the People...Jim’s outlandish, exhilarating rant during the same song, where he exhorted the audience to think next time some rock singer tells them to say “Yeah!”, because, after all, you have no idea what it is you’re agreeing to – the terms haven’t been clearly defined... Jim’s answer to the calls for more as they trooped offstage: “We don’t know any more songs. Hell, we didn’t even know half of those ones.”

With a bit of luck I won’t have to attempt the impossible, which is what it would be like trying to describe that show. With a bit of luck, we’ll be able to offer it to you on nice, clear, high definition, surround-sound DVD with pretty pictures and lots of extras, but nothing can really capture the feeling that we all seemed to be inside on that evening.

Everything had a touch of beautiful chaos that day. Even the damn Q&A session. Picture it: five chairs, one empty, awaiting Dickinson. No sign, so they start without. Jimmy Crosthwaite, who is a stranger to being lost for words, starts to tell some kind of lengthy and doubtless fascinating story, but the Tearjerkers are soundchecking for their gig in the lobby, and over the blasts of wild guitar and drummer-thump, every single word from his mouth is rendered inaudible. Eventually the soundcheck is halted and then Jim turns up. But Jody Stephens turns up at the same time, so we go from one chair spare to one too few. As soon as that’s sorted, a fairly obnoxious Northern Irish voice is heard from the back of the room: what he wants to know is, “Why are yew all so kew-el?” Robert Gordon thinks he’s being asked why they’re so cruel. Jim, however, knows what the guy’s asking, and fixing him with the blank ovals of the patent Dickinson perscription shades, he replies, “Well, given the alternative, who wouldn’t be?”

2005-04-07T14:13:00.000Z

Robert Gordon will be reading from It Came From Memphis tonight at seven o'clock at Vox'n'Roll, the Boogaloo, Archway Rd (nearest tube station, Highgate). Tim Tooher, a man of taste and distinction (i.e. he reads this blog) will be playing some rekkids. Don't push, don't shove, there's room for one and all. Or maybe there won't be. So get there early and get the rather lovely new edition of the book signed by the author's own perfumed hand.

2005-04-06T11:55:00.000Z

Saturday, the surviving members of Mud Boy — Jim Dickinson, Sid Selvidge, Jimmy Crosthwaite — played together for pretty much the first time in nine years, since Lee Baker’s murder. Sunday, they went onstage at the Barbican alongside Jim’s sons, Luther and Cody, Chris Chew, the 6’7”, 27 stone bass player from North Mississippi, Tav Falco and the unapproachable Panther Burns, and a few special guests. If you weren’t there, then you missed it, and it isn’t going to happen again. If you were there, you know what it was like. I’ll just say that I haven’t been able to listen to any music over the last few days because I don’t want to drown out the echoes in my head.

I was lucky enough to be in the rehearsal studios when the guys got together on Saturday afternoon. I was a bit nervous when they all arrived, Luther grinning widely and giving me a hug, Jim looking grumpy and barely acknowledging anyone, his wife Mary Lindsay looking extremely happy to be there. I sat down and watched as the session began to take shape, and grabbed a video camera to document it as they started to play. Before all that, I wanted to introduce my co-producer, who was going to direct the live shoot on Sunday, to Jim, so I approached him a bit tentatively – he’s not a man you approach lightly. He started to talk to us about how he felt about the ten-minute trailer for the It Came From Memphis film, the one myself and Robert shot two years ago. He told us that watching it brought tears to his eyes, not just because it featured his dead friends, Lee Baker, Furry Lewis, Othar Turner, but in the way the film juxtaposed Lee and Furry with Luther and Othar. That ending, which came very late in the day as a flash of inspiration, meant a lot to him, and hearing Jim say this made worthwhile all the endless reams of shit that we’ve gone through ever since to get this film made.

Then the guys started to play. They didn’t really want to rehearse, but somebody had managed to convince them that after nine years they might be a bit rusty. Jim sat at the piano and rippled out the riff from ‘K.C. Jones’. Jimmy Crosthwaite beamed at everyone through his Old Man of the Mountains mane of grey hair, and told stories to anyone who stopped long enough to be engaged in conversation. Cody arrived late, grinning, and got a hug from his Mom. Luther tuned up and I heard the opening notes of ‘Going to Brownsville’. Jim strapped on a guitar and cranked up ‘Money Talks’, and it seemed like that ‘somebody’ might have been right – the rhythm felt a little lumpy, slightly off. I was concentrating on filming them so I just kept my head down. Jim paced back and forth from guitars to keyboards, telling his younger son Cody, on the drums, to keep the rhythm pushing it forward – “we’re old guys, we need to be pushed, keep it moving, don’t let us slide.” The next song, ‘Brownsville’, was better, deeper in the groove, with Sid Selvidge’s voice sounding as good as it did thirty years ago. Then there was a run-through of ‘Power to the People’. Jim breaks off abruptly – ‘I may feel inspired to preach here, so you just keep going underneath that. I don’t feel we need to rehearse that.’ In the event, Jim’s preaching – which had come to him in a dream the previous night – was, as all who saw it will attest, inspired indeed. “I’ll stop torturing this guitar,” he says, and moves back to the piano for ‘Shake Sugaree’, the old Fred Neil song, which for some reason they all refer to as ‘Split Pea Shell’. Things are beginning to sound good now, relaxed and tight at the same time. Sid suggests changing a key, and washboard-playing Jimmy says “Sure, I’ll do it in any key ya want.”

Then something happens that changes the atmosphere in the room. Jim says, “We’re going to run semi-short here, do you wanna do ‘Outlaw’ or ‘Dark End’? They start to go through ‘Dark End of the Street’. Jim does the first verse, hesitantly. Sid can’t remember the second one. They give it a second try and it becomes a powerhouse. Somewhere during the last verse, Jim’s voice wobbles a bit. Stuck behind the viewfinder of my camera I manage to miss what the moment is about, and it’s only afterwards that I realise the memory of Lee Baker is in the room for everyone there who knew him. Sid catches the sadness from Jim, and the end of the song is ragged with emotion.

There’s a sense of relief when they move on to the less emotionally loaded ‘Outlaw’, and finally the whole crew seamlessly set their faces towards Buffy Saint-Marie’s ‘Codeine’. It starts big and gets bigger. I’m roving around, grabbing shots with the little DV camera, mouthing the words along with Sid and Jim, their voices blending – a voodoo mixture of gravel-shot rough and molasses sweet – and the riff circles endlessly, eating it’s own tail and getting stronger the more of itself it consumes. When it finally ends, not so much an ending as an implosion under it’s own insupportable weight, there’s a brief moment of quiet, then Jim says, “Well, that’s it for the electric set...”

Since they’re not going to rehearse their acoustic set, all that’s left to do is to jam something out with the incomparable Mr Tav Falco. Tav arrives, looking impeccably groomed, and there’s a stagger-through on ‘Tina the Go-Go Queen’ (“She’s as slick as Vaseline”) which suggests that none of the participants have heard, let alone played, the song in a decade. This is as it should be: Jim had earlier expressed the opinion to me that the less Tav rehearsed, the better he played. On this showing, he’s going to be Segovia tomorrow night.

We pack up our gear and leave to try and figure out how we’re going to capture this, as it happens, in all of its chaos and beauty. The people I work with, who haven’t ever really thus far understood in their bones what makes this group of musicians special, have an inspired look in their eyes. The fever is spreading.

2005-04-01T12:11:00.000Z

I've just been told that the ten-minute pilot made by Robert Gordon and myself as a trailer for the ICFM documentary is going to be screened on Sunday between musical acts. As it's never been publicly screened before (well, apart from at the Horse Hospital to an audience of about twenty people) this is a sort of premiere, I suppose. I'm feeling very happy about it. If I'm not careful a smug grin might be seen emanating from my general facial area.

2005-04-01T10:08:00.000Z

CAN YOU FEEL IT? That’s the cosmic countdown, baby, that’s the tick tock of time, and it’s runnin’ out. Fair’s got nothing to do with it. Fair’s what you pay when you ride the bus. Fair’s where you go when you wanna see the pigs race. And it’s just like Ma Rainey said - there ain’t never been enough, and it’s too damn late already.
----Jim Dickinson (Improvised rant from a live recording of Money Talks)

So this is it. This weekend is the culmination of everything that’s happened over the last two years. JMM, Mike McCarthy, arrives with his wife and family today. His films get shown today and tomorrow. Jim Dickinson, his wife and his two sons turn up today, rehearse tomorrow, and go onstage at the Barbican on Sunday. Christ knows what’s going to happen between now and then. I have no idea of the setlist. That will come together at the rehearsals, I imagine.

All week, we’ve been organising – or rather, Nick the Doge has been organising and I’ve been looking on in admiration – sound trucks, camera gear, technicians, contracts, access, per diems, and all the other stuff that needs to be done in order to get us in there on Sunday and to give us the coverage we need. We’re going to have a mass of footage at the end of this, whatever happens – three hours of rehearsal, three and a half of live concert times six cameras, that’s nearly twenty-four hours already, as well as whatever we shoot back at the hotel if more music starts to happen there. Then, on Monday, we interview Chuck Prophet if we can see straight or speak.

My heart is going to be beating in Memphis time for the next few days.

2005-03-28T20:23:00.000Z

So, I haven't been posting a lot recently. Apologies. Before I could recover from shooting the no-budget short last weekend I had to deal with a sudden family illness, which meant going back to Ireland for a few days. I'm just back, and getting re-engaged in the whole ICFM thing. Jim and the boys arrive Friday, rehearse Saturday (I'm shooting the rehearsals too - something I'm looking forward to, in a way, even more than the actual show) and play Sunday, returning to TN on Monday. It's going to be a whirlwind weekend. I'm kind of braindead. To pass the time, here's an excellent account, drawing heavily on Robert's book, of how freakshow wrestler Sputnik Monroe singlehandedly did what no musician or politician was able to do - he integrated Memphis through sheer, simple badassery (maybe that should be 'badasserie'? No matter. Let it stand.)

2005-03-20T09:41:00.000Z

A few posts back I referred to having to go into Borders to find a copy of Playboy, so that I could read Robert's piece about Jerry Lee Lewis.... well, you know what? I never needed to put myself through that terrible ordeal, as it turns out the Observer's very fine Monthly Music Magazine have reprinted the piece, and it's available here.

Other ICFM news: looks like we'll be shooting the rehearsals for the Barbican show, which Jim Dickinson reckons should be very interesting indeed. I'm kind of unfeasibly excited about the idea of hanging out quietly in the rehearsal rooms watching some of my favourite players in the world bashing out their set for the next day's show.

Today I go off to a fantastic, Gothic location, on the Camberwell Rd of all places, to finish shooting the short. Our original location finally fell through on Wednesday, leaving us completely screwed for the weekend's shoot, but this place is even better - two Georgian houses knocked into one, furnished with the kind of stuff you normally only see in a Tim Burton movie. Excellent.

2005-03-15T21:10:00.000Z

In tandem with Robert's book being reprinted, it looks like there will be some live events - I was always a fan of Vox'n'Roll when it used to happen in Filthy MacNasty's in Islington, but I haven't been to it since it relocated to the Boogaloo. Looks likely that Robert will be doing a reading and playing some music there. The last time I went was to see Greil Marcus read from his (less than earthshatteringly brilliant) most recent book, the one about Clinton. He was comprehensively upstaged by the support act - Ian MacLagan, ex of the Small Faces, who read from his autobiography 'All the Rage', and whose stories about Dylan and the Stones cracked the crowd up - I particularly liked the one where Dylan didn't talk to him for weeks because he'd misheard MacLagan's passing comment, "Looking very Byronic today, Bob." Though why Dylan thought his keyboard player would accuse him of looking moronic I really don't know. It might have been the drugs.

2005-03-13T12:18:00.000Z

This week, we got to recce the Barbican for our April 3 shoot and now the whole thing is beginning to appear to me as the mad adventure it undoubtedly is... I mean, who mounts a major multi-camera live concert shoot with practically no money, and no broadcaster attached? It's mental. But it is also fun. The possibility has arisen of having two High Definition cameras on stage as well as our three DigiBetas and a DV camera backstage. I may also shoot some of the rehearsal period if the guys don't mind. It's turning into the goddamn Last Waltz or something....and I love it. But I'm the one who's going to have to wade through endless hours of tape when everyone else has moved on to the next gig. Just as well it's tape of people I revere.

Apart from that - waiting for the broadcaster, waiting for the record company, waiting for the Americans. And also shooting the first section of my short subject today. Wish me luck.

2005-03-11T13:39:00.000Z

Robert Gordon's sleevenotes for the Barbican's It Came From Memphis CD are up, and will whet your appetite for what has got to be a compulsory purchase for all fans of fine music and demented trumpet solos that come straight out of nowhere (Sonny Burgess's Red Headed Woman - what the HELL were they on?).

2005-03-08T14:31:00.000Z

I just got an email from someone I’m working with, not on ICFM but on another and very major project. It read, “I like your blog.” This freaked me out very slightly, as I’ve never made any attempt to publicise this site – quite the opposite. None of the people I’m working with know about it, and I’m almost dreading the day they do find out that I’ve been blogging this whole story. So why do I continue?

I’ve been doing this (‘this’ being film/TV) long enough to know that the process is long-drawn-out and frustrating. Blogging it both records the highs and lows of it for the merely curious or for those fools who aspire to film production. It also allows me to feel that all this time is not being wasted – “There it is, there’s a record of our efforts for all to see.” And when the film is made it will be a valuable reminder of the work it took to do it, so that next time some idea for a music documentary strikes me, I’ll think twice before attempting to put it into production. This is the third music doc I’ve attempted to make – the other two, on Gram Parsons (back in 1991 when nobody seemed too interested in the Cosmic Cowboy – these days I’m bored silly hearing about him) and Harry Partch, both foundered on the rocks of indifference. One out of three isn’t really enough to make it a worthwhile occupation. It certainly won’t pay my bar bills.

Speaking of which, I just this second took delivery of an absinthe fountain and two bottles of absinthe from La Feé. They are kindly sponsoring the short I’m doing with Sebastian this weekend. All I had to do was ask. This is why I got into filmmaking, really – that, and the women, of course. But enough - this isn’t that kind of website.

Now that I know that people I know are reading this I'm starting to get anal about my grammar and punctuation. Blogging anonymously would be a far better way to go, but it's a bit late for that...

2005-03-07T14:12:00.000Z

And since writing the post below, I've had a call to say that the location we're shooting in next weekend might not be, well, finished in time.... It promises to be an interesting week.

2005-03-07T14:00:00.000Z

Crunch week for ICFM. We’ve finally managed to get through the doors at one of the major record companies. A DVD distributor they work with passed the project on with a recommendation, so on Wednesday our pilot film and our treatment will be debated by their A&R dept. Pretty much simultaneously, our finance guy will be in the US, pitching on our behalf to a mate of his who is, from what we’re told, at the top of the tree in music television. If either one comes through, we’re made up. If both work out, things get very interesting all of a sudden. And if neither happens – well, we just keep on keepin’ on, like a bird that flew.

By coincidence, I’m also waiting for an important meeting on the other project, the drama, to happen this week – basically, meeting a writer who we hope and pray will be right to adapt this property for TV. Once we have her on board, we can take that one full steam ahead too.

And as if that wasn’t enough, I’m shooting a short – sponsored in part by an absinthe company – next weekend, with no budget whatsoever, and no script either, except for what’s in my head.

2005-03-04T13:35:00.000Z

Making a living out of music documentaries seems to be an uphill struggle – how many of them actually get any kind of serious profile? Last year, there was Standing In the Shadows of Motown, which I have to admit I didn’t see – it got great festival exposure, and a good TV slot, but no cinema release. Then this year there was the excellent Ramones doc, End of the Century, which I think won an award at Sundance, and ran in cinemas in NYC and London, and is getting a high-profile DVD release (hopefully with tons of extras) later in the year. Since I’ve been trying to think through a biz plan for our potential investors, I looked up the co-producer/co-director of the latter film on the net, sent him a long email and was very impressed to get his response almost immediately – a long, informative and, to be honest, quite depressing response. All I’ll say is that the filmmakers don’t seem likely to make a penny out of all their work, due to some extremely ruthless management strategies deployed by people who were in a position to have the film killed if they didn’t get their way. I’ve always felt that when it comes to sheer, coldblooded greed and viciousness, the music business has film beat hands down, and that confirms the belief.

On the other hand, there’s always schmucks like me who just like the music a lot and want to tell people about it... and I’ve had an email from another such, Deryle, who’s making a movie about the great Eddie Hinton. And if you haven’t heard any Eddie Hinton, go out and find some, soonest. He's got a track on each of the two Country Got Soul CDs, they're pretty widely available and they're great. His first solo album has probably one of my favourite titles, ever - it's called Very Extremely Dangerous. I think I gave Donnie Fritts credit for writing Breakfast in Bed a few posts back, but it was co-written with Eddie. Not only could he write, he had the wildest, most soulful voice imaginable, and could have been a huge star – I don’t know why he didn’t make it, it might be that he didn’t look the part, and from what I hear he had some of the usual substance abuse problems, maybe more than the usual, and I think I remember Jim Dickinson telling me that he eventually got too hard to work with (and for Jim to say that, having dealt with Chilton, the Replacements and quite a few other, er, difficult customers, is really something...) – anyway, from what Deryle tells me, his film was sparked off by a suggestion from Robert Cray, who’s a serious Hinton fan. When someone like him talks, you listen. Which is how most of us get into this kind of situation – making movies for no money about people most of the world couldn’t care less about... until you get it into Sundance, win an award and end up on the transcontinental silver screen express, drinking the complimentary cocktails and wondering when you’re actually going to make any, y’know, money, out of all this....

Also through the genius of the Interweb, I’ve been in touch with Chuck Prophet’s manager, and the former Green on Red guy, ace songwriter and Dickinson cohort is playing London next month, so we get a good window to interview him. It’s a real shame that Jim and Chuck are missing each other by only ten days – the live CD Jim recorded with Chuck, 1000 Footsteps in the Sand, is really something. I’m looking forward to meeting the guy, he’s really one of the not-very-many rockers who have flown the flag for our kind of music, relentlessly, in the face of incomprehension and disbelief, over many years. I hear he’s doing well and selling lots of records these days, and I’m very happy to hear that. Sticking to your guns is a rare virtue in the music biz, it seems, and it’s even rarer to be actually rewarded for it.

2005-03-02T12:19:00.000Z

Excellent news today - Secker and Warburg will be bringing It Came From Memphis back into print in the UK, for the first time in nearly a decade, to co-incide with the Barbican shows. Unfortunately, it won't be an updated version, as the whole thing was done pretty fast. Either way, I'm chuffed that it's happening.

Also, I've just found the Mojo page on the Barbican shows, and it's way better, more up-to-date and just plain prettier than the Barbican's equivalent.

As for us - we're working like dogs to get the Ardent night covered. I've just read a running order for the night, and it's going to be a blast - a real revue-style shitkicking hootin' and hollerin' night. Everybody who's got any intention of ever being anybody has got to be there.

On the downside, I'm becoming aware that the Barbican isn't exactly the most perfect venue in terms of filming the shows, for mundane physical reasons. We'll be hard put to capture the energy that's going to be coming off the stage that night. But that's what we have to do.

2005-02-28T15:21:00.000Z

Only just over a month to go. Now hard questions turn up like, from our small pot of development funding, what do we actually spend the money on? We seemingly need a ‘business plan’ to show to potential investors – something outlining projected profits, revenue streams, marketing ideas and so on. And for some reason we’re being told that this type of thing could cost us in the region of two grand. That would be fine in some situations, but that two grand could equally be spent on shooting another night at the Barbican – we’re prioritising the Ardent night because that’s where most of the cast of characters from ICFM will end up playing, and because it’s going to be a once-in-a-lifetime event. But, hell, so are the Stax and Hi nights...

Anyway, it’s an ongoing discussion and one that I find makes me queasy – the idea of giving money to an accountant that could be spent on going out and shooting, that goes against my grain.

Speaking of shooting, as if there wasn’t enough going on, I’ve found myself making a no-budget short weekend after next. I mentioned way back that I’m working with Sebastian Horsley on making a film based on his excessive and disturbing life story. The first part of the plan is to see how well we can work together, and to that end I’m organising a very small shoot, sort of a semi-documentary but featuring some actors. It’s largely improvised, which is a way of working I’ve never tried before, but I have a feeling it will suit the material. It’s a tightrope walking exercise, filmmaking without a script – but over the last few years I’ve found myself completely bored by most fictional enterprises, except those that manage to make me laugh. It’s like the dead hand of the script editor hovers over practically everything, neatening things and making everything echo or foreshadow everything else.

A good example is Million Dollar Baby, which I saw last night and which is excellent film-making, but God damn – every single shoe that’s lifted in Act One gets dropped with monotonous, almost hypnotic regularity in Act Three. Life isn’t like that. This film survives because Eastwood is a masterful director and has attained an iconic stature unlike that of any other living actor, and – what’s more – he’s aware of it and knows what to do with it. But the template is tired – which is why documentaries and reality TV, with a few apparent rough edges left intact, are what’s making the grade now. That and semi-improvised drama, like Pawel Pawlikowski’s two stunning features, The Last Resort and My Summer of Love. I don’t pretend to know exactly what I’m doing with this short film but I intend to find out along the way. I might just find out that I would be better off working to a script, but even that would be useful to know.

2005-02-26T12:13:00.000Z

Okay, so my post about Bobby G was written in a state of some dudgeon, not high dudgeon exactly but there was dudgeon in the area. I felt (and feel) let down on Jim's behalf that they aren't going to be on the bill, as it would help sell tickets for what is, let's face it, a pretty offbeat show. I've had an email from a mate of the band and a man with a great love of the music, pointing out that "Primal Scream were the first band ever to give Jim a gold disc for his services - something which astounded me. The second (and last) was Spiritualized." This was news to me, though I've seen the disc on Jim's wall - you'd imagine Dylan, or Aretha, or the Stones, or one of those living legend types, would have had the good manners to offer the man a shiny circular wall decoration somewhere along the way, but no. So, for that, respect to the Primals and all who sail in them.

We're currently putting together our crew and our gear for our planned Barbican shoot, which is likely to be a guerilla-style operation. A great friend of mine, Nick the Doge, is helping out with this - his peculiar twin careers, as a builder and a director, have prepared him perfectly to deal with the scams and jiggery-pokery that go along with this industry, and he knows how to get stuff for free. Also, as an ex-boxer, if he's pissed off with someone, it tends to get their attention. And he has never, to my knowledge, worn a baseball cap. His mate Jim, former BBC cameraman turned highly successful soundtrack composer, has offered to crew for us, going back to his roots on Top of the Pops. And my co-producer, a former studio director, will take on running the box, using the Barbican's automated camera system, making sure we don't miss a trick. The difficult thing for me, as director, is that the cameramen on the floor won't have headsets - it's going to be a matter of going with the moment, allowing the guys to shoot from the hip. Of course, I'll have been there for rehearsals and I'll have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen and where, so we won't be flying blind - or not entirely, anyway.

2005-02-20T01:15:00.000Z

Donnie Fritts. I know very little about this individual. He’s in two of my favourite films, both of which feature lead performances by one of the oddest-looking leading men to survive Hollywood, the crumpled and toothy Warren Oates. One is Monte Hellman’s highly individualistic ‘Cockfighter’; the other, Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia’, which I saw tonight at the NFT, in a badly damaged print, scratched and full of jumps, but still powerful enough that my friend Steve – who’s new to the film – could say as we left, “One of the best films ever made.” And there’s Donnie Fritts as a second banana to Kris Kristofferson’s Hell’s Angel – he turns up, gurns a bit, plays a (terrible) blues, apparently written by Peckinpah, ‘Bad Blood Baby’, gets hit in the head with a frying pan by Oates, then shot to death. I’d pretty much forgotten he was even in the film – that particular scene, one of Peckinpah’s trademark “Watch this woman collude in her own rape” type of things, is disturbingly beautiful, an eerily unfinished, semi-improvised bit of nightmare straight from the director’s own macho-infested psyche, and Fritts would probably admit that his own part in it isn’t exactly memorable, or even impressive. If you didn’t know that he was the guy who wrote ‘Breakfast in Bed’ – one of the downright dirtiest-without-being-in-any-obvious-way-vulgar songs you’re ever likely to hear, a lesbian anthem in its incarnation on ‘Dusty in Memphis’, and a special favourite of mine – you’d most likely not notice him at all. I was in Robert Gordon’s car, driving along some godforsaken motorway, when I heard Fritts’ own version of this – a duet with Lucinda Williams – and I’ve been wanting a copy for myself ever since. It’s on the ICFM compilation, and you’ll have no excuse for not knowing it in a month or so when that gets released. It’s not anything like as good as Dusty’s version, but what is?

I remember, there was a point to all this... oh yeah. Donnie Fritts plays London on Wednesday, the same night as the big launch party for the Barbican’s ICFM festival. Guess who’s going to be in Dublin that day? Yeah – me. It's what they call Sod's Law. So if you're reading this and you're in London, go and see Mr Fritts on my behalf. If not, just go to the shop and buy a copy of ‘Dusty in Memphis’ and treat yourself to something beautiful. There’s never going to be a second chance to hear it the first time so make sure you do it properly...maybe with someone you like a lot.

2005-02-18T18:50:00.000Z

Regular readers, or those who've skimmed my earlier posts, may recall that I bumped into Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream a few months back, in the bar of the RFH after an excellent Lee Hazelwood show, and that when I told him about the plans to have Jim Dickinson play the Barbican, he immediately volunteered his services, and those of Primal Scream, to back the man up if necessary. Now I have my mixed feelings, as many do, about the musical abilities of the Primals, but in terms of getting bums on seats and making sure there'd be an audience for Jim's first ever solo appearance outside the US, it was definitely going to be a stormer. Anyhow, as I was sitting in a Soho restaurant last week waiting to go into a meeting about my other project, I got a call from the Barbican asking if I could help get through to Bobby G, as the Primals' manager seemed to be having no luck getting an answer out of them. I tried the mobile number he'd given me, nearly a year ago when I interviewed him for ICFM, and amazingly enough it worked - but a very freaked out BG told me he was rehearsing. I said, no big deal, try you again tomorrow.

All I can say is, no matter how much rock managers get paid, they deserve more - after a fifteen minute conversation the next day with the G-man, I sympathise with all organisers of the rock-damaged. He was very nice and friendly and all, but the endless repititions of the same statements, and the inability to pin himself down to anything, would try the patience of a saint. At the end of it all, I began to realise it wasn't going to happen - Bobby has no real idea what he and the band would do onstage with musicians of Jim's ilk - and anyway he'd rather relax and watch the show, and I can't fault him for that. It's just a shame that he can't make a promise and stick to it, but that's rock and fuckin' roll, isn't it?

So far, though, it seems that Jason Pierce is on the bill, but it can't be officially announced for a few weeks yet.

2005-02-16T11:44:00.000Z

A brief update on the activities of my intrepid producer: this woman, who has been in broadcasting at a very high level about as long as I've been legally able to drink (a long time, that) went off after our brief celebratory drink yesterday and - on a hunch - decided to track down our finance guy, who's been a bit difficult to get hold of over the past week, in his favourite poncy private Soho watering hole, and ask him what's going on. She called me on her way home at about eleven o'clock, having managed to get an update on who he's managed to get the ICFM treatment to (some high-level record company types) and having managed to get some more very useful bits and pieces of info to help us on our quest. I for one was impressed with her - this is the kinnd of person you want working alongside you when you're trying to get a film made....

Oh, and a belated thanks to the great Brian at BigRockCandyMountain (you know who he is, you most likely found me through his link!) for sending me not one but two excellent and beautifully packaged CDs last week - I'm moving house this weekend and as soon as the dust has settled I'll be returning the compliment, but with not two but THREE discs - take that!

2005-02-15T23:59:00.000Z

Good news today, as my co-producer's last documentary, a feature-length examination of 'The Third Man', has been invited to try out for the documentary section of Cannes. It deserves to get a lot of attention - I've seen plenty of films about film, and this is one of the most consistently intriguing. It helps that its subject matter is one of the greatest popular films of the twentieth century. It also helps that, as the producers - Canal Plus - own the rights to the original, we get to see enormous chunks of 'The Third Man', not only excerpted but re-projected onto the snowy streets of Vienna, slowed down, repeated and generally squeezed until every drop of mythic resonance has been extracted and placed on the screen. It's a beautiful piece of work and it's good to have such distinguished company on this long, strange trip.

I've been offered a job of work directing another documentary, an interesting but straightforward piece of telly, and it's a badly needed lifeline at a time when a year and a half of unpaid development work has left me financially high and dry. (Now there's a bit of a badly mixed metaphor). Life being what it is, of course the job would take me out of the country for a lot of April... which is going to be the month when we have to work our arses off shooting as many interviews for ICFM as we possibly can, while our interview subjects are in north London rather than deep in the Mississippi delta. I'll make it work, of course - the producer of the telly job knows I have to prioritise ICFM so with a bit of luck there won't be any major conflicts and I'll manage to earn some money and get the job done. Both jobs.

No radical news on the festival front - still awaiting confirmation on the lineup for the Sun night, Stax is almost sold out already, and I imagine when/if the Primals and Jason Spaceman get confirmed as guests for the Ardent night, it'll light a fire under those sales too. I still don't know who the representatives of the new Memphis sound are going to be, but I've just recently heard a couple of tracks by a guy called Harlan T Bobo here - he's apparently a member of American Death Ray Music, who I missed last time they played here because I was in Dublin, and based on these tracks I really missed out on something. I get the impression that those guys, along with The Reigning Sound (who also play on the Bobo stuff) will be back pretty soon, though.

2005-02-08T13:22:00.001Z

Well, I'm back from the Cinemart at Rotterdam's very fine Film Festival, where I managed to get by without any accreditation or in fact any official permission to be there. It's a very filmmaker-friendly festival, and I was helped out by loads of festival staff despite the fact that I was probably the only filmmaker there who hadn't shelled out the €150 that it costs to get accredited. I did the whole thing on a shoestring, sleeping in a friend's spare room in Den Haag (about forty minutes from R'dam) and surviving off little cocktail nibbles as much as possible. It was all worth it, as I got to meet the two distributors I wanted to talk to about ICFM. One in particular seems to me to be a very good fit with the project, as they've recently acquired two somewhat similar projects. I had to stalk the guy for two days to get the meeting but when I did it seemed to go very well indeed. I'm now waiting for a follow-up email, and meanwhile we are pursuing some other options, involving very big fish indeed at three target record companies. There's now Plans A, B and C, and possibly even a Plan Z. Whatever happens, we need to be shooting in April, as the Barbican's Ardent show is something that will never be repeated. It's exciting to see it advertised on their website, a bill featuring all of the players from Robert's book, and remember that less than a year ago it was just a crazy notion cooked up by myself and Luther Dickinson as we drank a pint together in an East End boozer...

A friend has emailed me this link to a story in the Memphis Flyer about a sort of Mud Boy reunion with the great Kenny Brown filling in for the much-missed Lee Baker. I don't know whether Kenny's going to be over for the Barbican shows, but having heard his Fat Possum stuff I certainly hope they invite him.

One rumour that needs scotching is the one put about by Uncut magazine's current piece on Big Star - they definitely won't be playing, unfortunately, as they're not available. Chilton still is a possibility though, it seems.

JMM has been in touch to point out that the link I've posted to his site leads to an outdated page, so I've updated it and if you go there now you can see his recent video for Jim Dickinson's ace track, Down In Mississippi, which as far as I know isn't released anywhere else - go watch it for me and tell me what it's like, I ain't got broadband, just the old hand-cranked dialup that Grandma left me in her will. Goldurnit.

2005-01-28T18:03:00.000Z

This is one of those times when the whole blogging thing gets complicated. There's stuff happening that I probably would be way better off not placing in the public domain, even in this fairly obscure way. Nothing dramatic or soap-operatic - just a couple of delays and knock-backs that could potentially derail us if we allow them to... which, it goes without saying, we won't. But our National Broadcaster is proving uncooperative, and that was not really what I expected (though my vastly more experienced Co-Producer warned me about this....) and our Finance Guy is snarled up with end of tax year stuff and won't be able to take things further with his investors for a week at least.

A week is a hell of a long time given that the big Ardent show, the one featuring pretty much everybody who's in ICFM, is on in very slightly over two months. So we have begun to go back to basics and figure out how to do this as cheaply as possible, maybe with deferrals, anything so as not to miss this opportunity.

It's a slightly terrifying feeling, but a good one in a way as now at least we're not depending on external support so much - we know we can do this, ourselves, and have it in the can, and get our movie made no matter what. It's going to be tough, but it's going to happen.

A small good thing: today I took delivery of an advance copy of the ICFM - Barbican CD. I'm listening to Carla Thomas sing 'B-A-B-Y' right now. It's a great collection - 'Cadillac Man' by the Jesters, been looking for that for years... a Mud Boy track I've never heard... and a thing called 'Rock and Roll Sermon' by Elder Beck, a hellfire sermon about the evils of that devil's music, all soundtracked by some of the most snake-hipped music you've ever heard. All thriller, no filler, like the man says.

2005-01-23T21:50:00.000Z

Oh yeah, nearly forgot. Robert Gordon has a very fine piece on Jerry Lee Lewis in the current issue of Playboy. I know because I went into Borders and read it there. With a copy of Sight and Sound covering the front cover in case anyone saw me. I tell you this as an illustration of the old adage, 'You can lead a horse to water but an Irishman cannot openly peruse porn in public, never in a month of Sundays'.

2005-01-23T21:36:00.000Z

A week till I go to Rotterdam to present myself as a producer at the Cinemart there. I went in my previous incarnation as a director several years ago - hell, it may in fact have been close to a decade ago - with a very original horror movie script that I was trying to get made. It was so original that it disappeared completely, in fact, and never got anywhere near production... but we had some very entertaining meetings, including one with Peter Aalbeck Jensen (von Trier's producer) who announced cheerfully that he was moving into horror and porn. If he ever did, they failed to notify me. Anyway, it's a very friendly and easygoing fest, full of interesting producers and distributors. I'm on the lookout for a sales agent or distributor that will love the Memphis project enough to come on board and also commit to production funding... So, armed only with a stack of business cards that don't have my name on (I'm already practicing saying 'I've run out of my cards, here's my partners and I'll write my PERSONAL email address on the back so you can get me directly'), a pile of copies of the ICFM DVD, and a huge pile of treatments outlining the project in a breathlessly hyperbolic manner, I should at least manage to look the part of a young man on the way to the top of the heap. Sammy Glick with an Irish accent. Somebody who it would be very useful to have a piece of. In short, I will be lying like a big bearskin rug. I mean, that's what producers do, isn't it?

2005-01-18T11:29:00.000Z

I've been staying superstitiously clear of blogging about this, but I have to acknowledge it somehow - so here goes. After about six months of trying, my Co-Producer got in to meet with the responsible person in the National Broadcaster. I didn't attend the meeting as she knows the guy of old and we thought it might simplify things. Anyhow, this guy loves Robert's book, loves the music and is very keen on our ideas. Of course, then he says they are short of slots and their budgets are largely committed (grit teeth, resist temptation to say "They wouldn't have been committed six months ago when you first said you'd give us a meeting you -" ...see, this is why I didn't go). But they're very interested in coming on board and should be able to give us an answer by the end of this week.

I'm trying very hard to avoid thinking about it too much. Luckily my other project, the TV drama series, has a bit going on this week (the launch of the book on which it's based). That might just distract me. Also lots of work to do preparing presentations to these investor types. Not exactly rock and roll but hell, it keeps me off the streets.

There's a benefit for RL Burnside happening in Memphis, and I'm thinking maybe we could do something here too. It pains me to think of all the posthumous tributes these guys get, and how little is done while they're still with us, with hospital bills and all that unsexy shit to deal with...

2005-01-12T10:20:00.000Z

Yesterday was an important day in the ICFM story. My co-producer and I had another meeting with our finance guru to discuss business plans and the like. The guru, who – did I mention this before? – is a former professional bass player and worships Booker T and the MGs, was very positive and very psyched. He instructed us on the necessaries that will help to convince his investors that our ‘product’ is sound; firstly, a business plan showing a range of possible returns, high, medium and low, over a one-to-five year time period, in all the various territories that are available. Thankfully, my co-producer volunteers for this role.
Secondly, we need a completely rewritten treatment, emphasising the longevity of this material (easy enough; as these guys have never really been ‘in style’, they’re not going to go ‘out’), and – a tricky one, this – encompassing the ‘morgue factor’. Indelicately put, this is about communicating to the investors in a subtle way that the musicians we’re filming are not in the first flush of youth, and many will inevitably shuffle off at some point in the next decade. Every time one of them does so, the value of our material increases.
Now, none of this stuff means anything to me personally, as the co-director and one of the artistic driving forces behind the film. But as for getting the damn thing made, it’s hugely important, and as a producer I am learning a hell of a lot.
We have a deadline of the end of next week to get this together. Our finance guru moves pretty fast, which is going to be crucial, because it turns out that a lynchpin of our whole plan, the Jim Dickinson gig at the Barbican, will be taking place in the first week in April.
The latest, unconfirmed as yet, plan is to do an Ardent night featuring Jim, the remaining members of Mud Boy, the North Mississippi Allstars, Primal Scream in a guest role, and probably Tav Falco accompanied by Jason Pierce. I stress that this is all TBC, but Jim’s presence is looking more and more likely, and he’s the one who ties the whole night together.
Ticket sales for the Muscle Shoals, Hi and Stax nights are good, and that’s without ANY advertising. Ths Sun night is looking more problematic; the names mentioned above are available, but don’t in themselves constitute a full-on Sun evening. A living legend has been approached but isn’t entirely dependable – if he doesn’t make it, the mooted options were to combine the Sun evening with something else, an American night (Bobby Womack et al) or a blues line-up. Neither sounds right.
So, when out of the blue I say, “Well, the Cramps recorded at Sun”, the Barbican guy’s eyes light up, he writes it down and I think – fuckin’ hell! The Cramps, on stage with Billy Lee and Sonny, at the fuckin’ Barbican! What monster is this that I have created? But what a night it would be...

2005-01-07T14:15:00.000Z

Post-Christmas catch-up time. Lots of stuff has been going on, and nothing at all at the same time. I left for Ireland on Christmas Eve, flew out at a stupidly early time – I arrived at Heathrow at five AM, before the check-in desks were even open – straight from a party where I’d met some old acquaintances (the last time I saw them was at their wedding, nearly a year ago) and sat down to talk. Turns out their current project is a West End musical on the life of Otis Redding! So of course there was plenty for us to talk about. I hope to talk to them about it again soon, and maybe help put them in touch with some people who could be of assistance. So much stuff relating to Memphis is going on at the moment, it’s bizarre.

Just before Christmas I met with this very interesting financial geezer, a former professional musician who now specialises in putting investors together with interesting media projects. The next step was to introduce him to my co-producer, a woman of massive experience and legendary repuation, and see how we can go about making this work. The only trouble was, I managed to misremember my travel plans, and booked the meeting for the fifth thinking I was returning on the third... when, of course, it transpired that at lunchtime on the fifth, when I shoulda been sitting in Soho House tucking into some lunch, I’d be in mid-air over Heathrow Airport. No panic – I merely asked Co-producer if she’d mind going ahead without me, and that was all fine.

So, touchdown happens and I turn my phone on to find messages from Co-producer saying, “No sign of (finance guy) – please call me” and “Please call me ASAP”. Mild panic sets in. I disembark and try to call her, no reply. I’m standing at the baggage carousel, calling her, calling Finance Guy, no reply from either. Then I realise that I’m the only one standing here and all the bags are off the plane, and mine hasn’t appeared. Fuck it. I go and report it missing and start to practically run to the Heathrow Express, and remembering that my house keys are in the lost bag. Just as I’m about to board, really getting worried now (did I mention that the plane was also late?) I get a call from Co-producer saying that she and Finance Guy have met and all’s fine. Great. I sit in a little puddle of cold sweat all the way into central London.

Anyway, the upshot of that meeting is that we have to have more meetings, draw up a business plan to show investors, and work our arses off – and still it’s going to be tough, especially if we want to shoot in April, which we certainly do. He’s massively enthusiastic, though, which really helps, and he has access to some real money, which is a prerequisite.

Then off to meeting no. 2 which is also running ridiculously late. This is a meet with what in theatrical circles is referred to as an ‘angel’, I believe – someone who wants to invest their own money. Our angel is a longtime Memphis music fanatic and isn’t doing it for glory or reward, but because he wants to see the film get made. The timing couldn’t be more perfect, as his (relatively small) investment will allow us to pay for a proper business plan, and pay for travel to a couple of crucial meetings – some, possibly, in New York. For the time being, I’m going to limit my travel plans to the Rotterdam Film Festival’s Cinemart – I’ve been before, it’s an amazingly useful way to meet the kinds of people we need to meet, full of distributors, producers and film funders of various kinds. I’ve got another project I want to pitch there anyway, a slate of four low-budget horror movies, and it makes sense to go there with a range of stuff. It’s going to be a bit intimidating, as I’ve never gone to something like this solo – as a director, I’ve always had a producer to take up the slack, talk the money talk while I do the art, but if I’m going to be a producer I better start acting like one.

Enough boring biz talk. More confirmed names for the Barbican: Billy Lee (‘Flying Saucers Rock’n’Roll’!) Riley! Sonny Burgess! And the amazing Cowboy Jack Clement, who is the subject of Robert Gordon’s most recent film, one I’m dying to see, premiering at the Nashville Film Festival if any of y’all are in the area. That should be a night....

2004-12-20T15:14:00.000Z

I don't want to/can't go into details, but there have been some interesting developments with ICFM and potential finance. It better happen fast, really, if we want to (as planned) shoot the Barbican concerts for release as a live concert film, alongside the original ICFM documentary. It's an idea that seems to get people very excited, for good reason - these are going to be very memorable evenings, if half of what's planned comes off!

2004-12-20T14:47:00.000Z

Been meaning to post this link for ages, and seeing 'Canton' again last week reminded me to do it - one of my favourite scenes in the movie has Jim Dickinson singing 'Wild Bill Jones', a fine, dark outlaw song that sounds as if it could have been written at any time in the last five hundred years. Jim's accompanied by Jerry McGill, armed robber and raconteur, on the song. It's a spine-tingling moment, especially at the end when McGill says "That's a beautiful song..." - he flashes a dark look into the camera - "...and true, too." And he would know because he is the living image of the nameless narrator of the song, who kills Wild Bill Jones in cold blood, after Bill, who's been "passing the time" with one of the narrator's women, tells him "You know my age - it's twenty-one, that's too old to be controlled." The narrator says, almost sadly, but with a sense that this is the rightful order of things, "I pulled the trigger on my gun and I released Wild Bill's soul."

The song was written, sometime in the sixties, by an obscure Southern singer/songwriter called Bob Frank. To quote from his homepage, "Bob's dad always told him, "Whatever you do, son, do it better than anybody else." So when Bob decided to do obscurity, he didn't fool around. He became so obscure, he couldn't find his own shoes. That's why the only pictures you ever see of him, he's always barefoot. "

I found the website a couple of years back and emailed Bob to ask about buying his at that time most recent CD, 'Keep On Burning', which was produced by Jim and features many luminaries of the Memphis scene, as well as Bob's own version of a song Jim had tried and failed to release in a version by the above-mentioned outlaw Jerry McGill, a song about the Civil War called 'With Sabres In Our Hands'. Within a few days, and without any money changing hands, Bob had sent me the CD, trusting me to send him the cash by return. I hope he doesn't do that all the time, it might just partly explain his unjustified and wholly undeserved lack of recognition. It's a great CD, in any case, so if you find your way to his site via this blog, listen to some of the great free audio samples on there and then buy the damn thing, buy everything he's got to sell. He's another sort of outlaw, but thankfully one who's less likely than Jerry McGill to let off gunfire in studio or threaten to pistol-whip you.

2004-12-16T17:24:00.000Z

The Barbican's page detailing the story so far with the ICFM concerts is up! So far, just Muscle Shoals, Hi and Stax confirmed, and sadly Isaac Hayes won't be taking part in the latter - but there are some very exciting people definitely down to play, including Tony Joe White and Spooner Oldham (Dan Penn isn't 100% definite but fingers crossed), Ann Peebles and Booker T and the MGs. Still awaiting confirmation on Al Green, but the really great news is that barring unforeseen events, Jim Dickinson will be coming over to play his first ever London dates. The details are sketchy as yet but I'm hugely relieved and very bloody excited.... I wonder whether the mooted show with Jim and the Primals will happen. Bobby Gillespie certainly seemed to be into it last time I saw him, but you know what rock'n'roll types are like. Whatever happens, getting to see Jim play on a London stage will be the thrill of a lifetime for me, and all the more because I've played a small part in making it happen. Watch this space, as they used to always say for some unknown reason.

2004-12-13T23:44:00.000Z

So, tonight I went along to see Stranded in Canton a second time. I really didn't expect to find a throng of people fighting to get in, again, but despite the cold, there they were, lined up to see a non-narrative, shot on home video documentary from thirty years ago. In fact it was worse than the last time as we had to fight to get two seats together - what gives people the right to say "These seats are kept for our friends" anyway? As my viewing companion Catherine said, 'Let them talk to my granny.'
The film now has crucial elements of voiceover at certain points, introducing people like Vernon. Randall Lyon and Marcia Hare, and most importantly Jerry McGill and Campbell Kensinger. Knowing the violent lives and desperate ends of these two makes their contribution to the film more understandable, particularly in the scene that introduces McGill, playing along with Jim Dickinson on that darkest of outlaw ballads, Wild Bill Jones. Now, the audience knows that he's a bank robber, so his look to camera at the end, as he acknowledges the truth of the song, and also acknowledges that he knows he looks cooler than fuck singing it, has new meaning.
I laughed a lot this time around too. It's a funny, funny film, and the more you know the characters, the funnier it gets. It will have a long life on DVD or whatever format, as people endlessly watch and re-watch it, learning lines of dialogue and getting just as high as those doomed translucent people on the screen.
As we left, Catherine said it was just like the old days in Dublin. I know exactly what she means. In fact, that's what dragged me into all this in the first place, the feeling that Memphis and Dublin have twin energies. I couldn't have interposed myself there, started trying to make this film, if I hadn't felt that from the beginning. Small places full of large personalities, all the time convinced they're at the centre of the world while the actual fabric of the place they live in is being taken away from them and sold for scrap. But always, under it all, there's something there that keeps on pulsing out that energy, and keeps these cities from being just land and concrete and roadworks. That's the real subject of It Came From Memphis, and it doesn't just concern Memphis. It concerns everywhere that has ever had some special sense of itself. Cities on fire with rock'n'roll.

2004-12-13T11:50:00.000Z

Nice piece about JMM shooting a Hives video in Memphis, I hope they are paying him plenty. He's the only independent filmmaker I know who supports himself and his family by working as a tour guide - of course, not just any tour, he does the Sun Studio tour, but we're talking about a writer/director of real talent here, far better than many who get taken up by the whole Sundance thing. There's also a mention of the video he's done for Jim Dickinson - now that's something I am looking forward to!

2004-12-12T15:35:00.000Z

Again, apologies for the long hiatus between entries. It has been a while since there has been anything positive to blog about, and the negatives haven’t even been negative enough to be interesting – just delays of various sorts, unreturned calls from broadcasters who should know better, that sort of thing.

There seems to be a turnaround on the way, though. This week saw two very positive meetings which may well make all the difference. One was with a potential investor who has been a fan of the music for many years, having seen the Incomparible Panther Burns back in 1979 when Alex Chilton was still having to teach the drummer how to play, often right in the middle of the show. One of our problems all along has been that we have no development budget, meaning that if, for instance, it became necessary to fly to NY to have a meeting with a record company, we would be in trouble (and inevitably in debt). This looks like it may now be less of a problem. Our potential investor caught the screening of our ICFM pilot that I hosted back in, Christ, it must have been a year ago maybe... and liked it enough to contact me through this blog, to offer some financial support. But as I had never gotten into the habit of checking this email address, I never got his kind offer. That was remedied when I bumped into him again at the Eggleston opening a few weeks back, and all going well, we will be able to make it official in the New Year.

You never know when the right connection can come along. On Friday, I went along, hoping for the best but expecting the worst, to meet a financier about whom I knew nothing except that he’d been shown one of my short films and was apparently enthusiastic about it. I didn’t have a clue what he looked like, but managed to find him in the throng of suits filling the Circle Bar in Soho House. He turned out to be very urbane, charming and did in fact seem to be every bit as excited about my work as I’d been told he was. We talked a little about a potential feature, based on the short – “It’d be a Spinal Tap for the 21st Century,” he said. Hmm. We’ll see... – and then I told him about ICFM. Of course, it turns out this guy worked in the music business as a performer for twenty years, and the lineup of names that I reel off makes him get very excited indeed. This is what makes it worthwhile, really. When you tell someone what you’re trying to do, and they get it, and want to help. And this guy really did seem to get it, particularly when I told him about the kind of performers that are planned for the Barbican gigs in April.

Watch this space, we should be meeting to discuss it in more depth late next week. Could ICFM be about to reach critical mass? Or is it another false dawn? Fuck, I don’t know. For the time being, I am once again cautiously optimistic about shooting in the Spring.

A slightly re-edited version of Canton screens tomorrow evening in the Prince Charles. I’m looking forward to seeing it again, hoping that some additional voice-over from Bill will make the whole thing more audience-friendly.

Oh yeah – I saw the proposed tracklist for the Barbican’s ICFM CD a few days back, and it’s going to be a stormer, with Carla Thomas and Isaac Hayes and the Reverend Al rubbing shoulders with Mud Boy and the Neutrons, Tav Falco and the Memphis Jug Band. With luck, one of my favourite great lost cover versions, Donnie Fritts singing his own ‘Breakfast in Bed’, Dusty’s version of which became a sort of anthem for the lesbian nation I believe, accompanied by the great, dark and sexy growl of Lucinda Williams. I last heard that, driving with Robert Gordon to get Mexican food – the best in Memphis, I was told – from some anonymous stripmall in the ‘burbs. I was a little bit dubious, but he was right – it was the best huevos rancheros I’ve ever eaten.

2004-11-22T23:59:00.000Z

This didn't start out as a good day, at all, at all. Possibly something to do with the time of year always bringing to mind some spectacularly nasty stuff that happened around this time a few years back. Or possibly something to do with my questionable decision to dine on a bag of Kettle Chips and two cans of Stella rather than eating something nutritious before sleeping last night. Either way, the odds seemed to be against fun. i very nearly didn't go to the Eggleston private view at the Victoria Miro Gallery, I mean my years as an art student exposed me to enough exhibition openings and enough cheap free wine to forever remove any vestige of glamour from that kind of thing. But I had to be over the East End to have a production meeting for a friend's no-budget short that I've agreed to AD next weekend - so there was as good a place as any to meet.

The first surprise was that I was met with the unmistakable sounds of Furry Lewis' guitar from a darkened room on the right hand side of the entrance as I walked in. In fact there was a looped screening of footage from 'Canton' going on in there all evening, and continuing through the run of the exhibition. Leaving that behind, I saw the familiar face of Winston Eggleston, whom I had last seen when we were both gulled into assisting with a nudie photo shoot on behalf of JMM, right out on the deserted streets of downtown Memphis in the sunny Sunday afternoon light. He informed me that his dad and he had arrived in time for the screening last night but Bill had felt too tired (or too bored by the prospect of seeing it for the zillionth time) to bother going.

I spotted Bill in the back room, wearing a suit, bow tie and the kind of glasses that Lionel Barrymore might have worn. He looked like a slightly less fearsome version of William Burroughs.

The rest of the evening was a bit blurry but I met Jason Spaceman again, and introduced him to both Bill and Winston, with the result that 'Canton' now looks like it will get a screening in the Newcastle fest. Jason also has tentative good news about a new record deal for Tav Falco which he told me about while juggling the demands of his two very small children, in a manner markedly unlike the hardbitten rock'n'roller the legends would suggest he is.

On the way out I introduced myself to Sean O'Hagan, who's off to Memphis on Friday to do an in-depth piece that will run next year just preceding the Barbican festival. He tells me that he originally saw bits of 'Stranded in Canton' years ago when Harmony Korine screened them for him, and that kind of makes sense given Korine's Tennessee upbringing. He could be a descendent of Eggleston's southern-Gothic-throw-enough-blood-at-the-walls-and-see-what-sticks, woodwork squeaks and out come the freaks, swamp-Warhol sensibility.

There seems to be something in the air about this material right now. The room filled up with greasy Hoxtonites and glassy-eyed art buyers. A man who turned out to have been one of the happy few who were present when I screened 'It Came From Memphis' at the Horse Hospital, however long ago that was, and who turned out to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things to do with that music and those people, told me that he'd been offered a print of 'Greenwood, Mississippi' (otherwise known as the iconic cover of 'Big Star 3rd') for £10K back in 1995. A few weeks ago it sold for a quarter of a million. As I left I spotted Grayson Perry and said to my evening's Viewing Companion, "Look - there's Grayson Perry." "Oh! Which one is he?" she asked. "The transvestite one," I replied wittily. But when you have Turner Prizewinners and most of the East End's buzzword crew turning up for a show that features old Furry, Jim Dickinson and Randall Lyon, then I know the day of Memphis is almost upon us.

2004-11-22T16:36:00.000Z

So - Stranded in Canton.
I've excerpted some of the email I sent to Robert Gordon in response to the film:

"I've had three or so hours to swill those images around in my mind, and many of them become sharper with memory - the proud look in that girl's eye when Campbell Kensinger calls her "straight - a straight chick"; the shock on the faces of the bar patrons watching Lady What's-her-name's routine, sung over (and completely ignoring) the jukebox; Jim Dickinson, drunker and more fucked up (these days I believe they call it 'crunk') than any human being has a right to be, wearing a lounge suit and a huge grin; Molasses and Booth; Randall's beer bottle technique; the few tantalising glimpses of Wild Bill himself, whether physically present, through his voice or the way others speak to him; Jerry McGill, moving from party entertainment to homicidal sociopath in one smooth and almost unnoticeable transition. It was, for me, a fascinating eighty or whatever minutes, and a film I will want to see again, many times. Thank you for the invite.

There was, as I'm sure you've heard, a full house - a scrum of people trying to get tickets - it was the hottest show in town. And they were a great audience, they went with it, up to a point. But at somewhere around the halfway mark I became aware of restiveness, people shifting uneasily, the occasional bit of intrusive chatter, and some walkouts (though none, surprisingly, during or after the geek-off).

There was a decent but sort of stunned ovation after the McGill blackout ending. But then the credit sequence was met with a palpable relief from the crowd - not because the end was near, but because there was a guiding voice telling us who was who, and what became of them, and when, and there was another, far surer ovation then...What you've given us is the 100% proof, uncompromised vision of Eggleston's Sony portapak. I am able to watch it and bring to it the context that your book provides. It seems to me that if the film is ever going to find a popular audience outside of those who are already converts, some cinematic/narrative equivalent of that context is going to be necessary...I know that the 100% proof Eggleston version of the film is what you set out to achieve.

However, it's tantalising how the final section of the film becomes much more legible, using multiple screens, voiceover and titles to give the viewer more to hold on to, and how the audience responded to this sudden change in delivery. They were hanging on every word."

The second screening of Canton is in early December, and I have a feeling I'll be going again, and may write more about it at that point.

2004-11-22T02:10:00.000Z

It's late, way too late to post another post. But today I finally got to see Stranded in Canton - the unmixed, unfinished rough cut anyway - and images from it will be whirling through my mind as I try to get some much needed sleep tonight. Sounds, too - Johnny Woods singing through his harp, about how "you gonna look jes' like a monkey when you get old." Jim Dickinson duetting on 'Wild Bill Jones' with the bankrobbing, wildcatting streak of murderous impulse that is Jerry McGill. Furry Lewis, hammering his elbow on the neck of his guitar to make a noise that drives the crowd just crazy. I will take time to catalogue some of these stray thoughts and put them right on down here for you all, soon, but now is just not going to be that time - now I need to figure out exactly how I feel about seeing something that up till now was a sort of a legend. Pinning these things to reality always robs them of something, but in this case I don't feel even slightly diminished by the experience. It's screening again in December, and if you haven't seen it, see it, and if you haven't read the book, (It Came From Memphis is the name of the book in case you can't remember as far back as the top of your screen) then read it first. Then go and order all the CDs. Then sit back and wait for next April. The South's gonna rise again!

2004-11-08T21:47:00.000Z

Just a quick mention for the current issue of the reliably mediocre Uncut magazine: they've got, not one, but two cover mounted CDs with the current issue. If you get the 'Best of 2004's Reissues' one, you'll find the epochal 'Bangkok' by Alex Chilton (can't believe I didn't play that when DJing the other week. Dammit.) and an Eddie Hinton track that I haven't yet heard - but any Eddie Hinton beats pretty much anything else when it comes to blue-eyed soul.
An aside: while in Dublin I found a second-hand copy of Stanley Booth's book, 'Rythm (sic) Oil: A Journey Through the Music of the American South'. Flipping it open to his first-hand account of sitting in the studio and watching Otis Redding and Steve Cropper making up 'Dock of the Bay' as they went along, I showed it to my friend and writing partner Stephen Walsh. He read a paragraph or two, and when he got to the line where Otis muses, "I got him sittin' there, but I don't know why he's sittin'", his eyes glazed over slightly and he marched in a slightly zomboid manner to the cashdesk to fork out his four euros. From what he told me later having read more of the book, it may be the best four euros he's spent recently. And as far as I can recall, that's the exact same second-hand bookshop where I bought 'It Came From Memphis' lo, these many years gone by. Maybe it's on a ley line or something.

2004-11-07T16:28:00.000Z

Inspired by the above, here's the playlist on the Memphis CD I recently burned for my new co-producer:
Skin - Dan Penn (Nobody's Fool)
Going to brownsville - Furry Lewis (It Came From Memphis)
Boll Weevil - Sid Selvidge (It Came From Memphis)
In the Army of the Lord- Rev. Robert Wilkins ("...Remember Me")
Jumper on the Line - RL Burnside (Deep Blues)
She Wolf - Jessie Mae Hemphill (It Came From Memphis)
Oh How She Dances - Jim Dickinson (Dixie Fried)
Sad Song - Eddie Hinton (Hard Luck Guy)
Let Your Light Shine On Me - Mud Boy and the Neutrons (It Came From Memphis Vol. 2)
The Letter- The Boxtops
September Gurls- Big Star
Telstar - Compulsive Gamblers (Gamblin' Days Are Over)
You'll Do It All the Time - Jim Dickinson & the New Beale St Sheiks (It Came From Memphis Vol. 2)
Smokestack Lightning - Moloch (It Came From Memphis Vol. 2 )
Money Talks - MudBoy and the Neutrons (They Walk Among Us)
Shake 'Em on Down - North Missisippi Allstars (Shake Hands With Shorty)
She's My Witch - Tav Falco & Panther Burns (The World We Knew)
Story of my Life - Lesa Aldridge (It Came From Memphis)
Ballad of Billy and Oscar - Jim Dickinson (Free Beer Tomorrow)

2004-11-07T16:08:00.000Z

Just back from Dublin, and while I was away I learned that the Barbican will as I'd expected be releasing a tie-in CD, called It Came From Memphis, to coincide with the festival. If you've seen either of their excellent Beyond Nashville CDs, both of which were beautifully compiled from the best of country music both old-school and No Depression-era, you'll have some idea what to expect. Just another thing to look forward to.

2004-10-30T17:12:00.000Z

No blogging at the moment as there's no news, nothing to tell. Just lots of waiting. I'm making use of the time to pursue other areas of my career which would be better unblogged for the time being. Also did a little DJing, and I'm proud that I managed to slip Jim Dickinson's 'Dixie Fried', Charlie Feathers' 'Jungle Fever' and Robbie Fulks' outrageous 'White Man's Bourbon' into the set without anybody noticing that things had gone a little redneck (the other DJs were strictly on the soul/funk tip I should add). Hope to have news soon - off to Dublin for most of next week.

2004-10-22T17:43:00.000Z

Lovely afternoon spent drinking coffee and eating cake with Sebastian Horsley, who is becoming something of a legend around these parts for his, er, unusual activities – undergoing crucifixion, frequenting prostitutes, and now writing what he calls his ‘unauthorised autobiography’. We’re talking about the possibility of doing a documentary on his life, or maybe a feature film. The problem is, I can’t imagine anybody who could possibly play Sebastian better than he does himself – well, Klaus Kinski maybe, but he’s pretty definitively dead. Tried to screen one of my earlier films for Sebastian but the videotape doesn’t work anymore – possibly due to water damage from the year and a half I spent living on boats. I bet Stanley Kubrick never had these problems. In the end we watched scenes from My Best Fiend, Herzog’s film about Kinski, as we sipped our coffee and nibbled our tart au citron, and Sebastian told me how his book starts with him surviving his mother’s attempt to abort him and ends with his crucifixion. Then I walked him back to the tube and as we passed a posh-ish block of flats he said “I went to an orgy there, organised by these right-wing types...” I enjoy learning these morsels of information about my neighbourhood.

2004-10-22T10:19:00.000Z

Excellent news! The thing that started this whole project off was my determination to see William Eggleston's film 'Stranded in Canton' - it was while searching for it that I found myself in contact with Robert. Now Robert has spent a good deal of the last two years working on finishing it and it will have a London screening in November. Beautiful poster, too, which I will endeavour to get Bill to sign as he will be in attendance at the show.

2004-10-21T15:59:00.000Z

Some thoughts on Charlie Feathers.

I like ‘Kill Bill’ well enough, the second part less so, but better than either is the knowledge that – via the OST CD – millions of unsuspecting normals now have a couple of Charlie Feathers songs in their record collections. Those songs may well sit there unlistened to for years, but someday, some teenager looking for a new kind of kick will slip the dusty old disc into the grime-encrusted and practically unusable CD player, and that high yodelling noise that a friend of mine once characterised as ‘Charlie Feathers’ sex noise’ will come keening out of the speakers. And some rough beast, its hour come round, will slouch towards Bubbadom to be reborn.
There is very little in all of music like the sound that Mr Feathers made, and with good reason – I don’t think there are many actual people like him around. I was introduced to his music, as to so many other things, by the covers performed by the Cramps. Lux Interior’s wild hiccupping vocal on ‘I Can’t Hardly Stand It’ isn’t actually too much of an exaggeration of the original’s weirdness, and in fact by overstating it he slightly muffles the effect. The repertoire of yodels, croaks, baby-talk, whines and downright unnameable, Lovecraftian weirdness that seemed to effortlessly shake from Charlie Feathers’ voicebox has never been explained, let alone equalled.
Don’t believe me? Go and listen. My special favourite starting place for you would be ‘Honky Tonk Man’, which I first heard in Robert Gordon’s company. It’s the 1988 Feathers CD where he tried with tremendous confidence to place himself squarely in the mainstream of popular culture. Scorning ‘cult status’ as the pointless shill it is, he took some of the best-loved songs from country, rock’n’roll and parlour singing, and decided to show that Charlie Feathers could be as big as, say, Anne Murray. Of course, he succeeded in something quite different – he annexed the 20th century and its music as part of his own back yard.
F’rinstance – listen to his version of the old chestnut, beloved of Irish politicians and wedding singers, ‘He’ll Have to Go’ – you know the one, Gentleman Jim Reeves crooning “Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone”.
This is two minutes and fifty-three minutes of sheer sonic menace. Starting with a crushing but somehow insouciant bass and guitar riff lifted bodily from the Rolling Stones ‘Miss You’, we hear Charlie enter lightly with an ‘Awwwww-right...’ he does the first verse with little indication of what’s to follow. The key thing is this, though – where the original was set up as Jim’s sweet nothings to a woman alone with another suitor, Charlie’s vacillates between this and another reading of the situation where the woman is in a crowd of orgiastic couples and – at Charlie’s bidding – she is to “tell everybody they gotta-gotta go”. And he’s not asking – he’s telling. If ‘King of New York’-era Christopher Walken could ever be embodied in an elderly redneck’s form, this could be the song that he would give voice to. If he could sing like a murderer who enjoys doing ickle baby-voices. Elsewhere he turns ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ into something Lux Interior described as “so full of menacing weirdness, it sounds like a song you never heard before”. The way Charlie pronounces Tchaikovsky alone is enough to put the wind up me.
And don’t even start me on ‘Jungle Fever’; a song so wrong it’s gotta be right.
Robert told me at one point that after years of going to edgy clubs in out-of-the-way places all over the South’s backwoods, the only time he’d felt genuinely at risk was in redneck bars he went to with Charlie and Bubba Feathers. Given that the elder Feathers was worshipped like a deity in those selfsame bars, that will give you an idea of his constituency, the soil he came from. Actually, all you need to do is listen to his voice and you’ll know that.

2004-10-18T20:44:00.000Z

Good news from Memphis – Robert tells me that the Barbican are very keen to get his book back into print in time to coincide with the festival in April. It’s been shamefully OOP for a few years now here (not in the USA though). It’s great to think that due to a chance encounter, one of my favourite books will be becoming available again. It’s pretty amazing to be working on a day-to-day basis with Robert, although as we have been at this for nearly two years now with little obvious sign of success until very recently, it’s kind of academic really... There really seems to be a groundswell now though, I just bought Testifyin’, the new CD by the Country Got Soul revue – recorded due to the success of the Country Got Soul compilation CDs – a bunch of great and unrecognised singers, players and songwriters, two of whom at least, Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, play a great part in the Memphis story due to their work with Alex Chilton and Jim Dickinson. The others include Tony Joe White, Donnie Fritts (he wrote ‘Breakfast in Bed’ among other great tunes) and Bonnie Bramlett (from Delaney and Bonnie). They’ll be touring here to support the CD in the new year and will most likely play a part in the Barbican shows, it seems, and probably be touring as well – judging from the CD that will be an unmissable show...

2004-10-14T01:25:00.000Z

"Your pedal extremities are colossal."
Louis Jordan, from 'Your Feet's Too Big'

Last night I dreamt that I was directing a scene. Nothing unusual there - when I am in the thick of work I have been known to dream all night long of setting up shots in some endless talky scene around a table, where every time you think that the last angle has been covered, some faceless third A.D. comes to you and whispers in your ear, "What about..." and you realise that it isn't yet wrap time... Anyway, last night I was insomniac and when I finally drifted off it was to find myself directing a Laurel and Hardy movie. I shot the scene, said a courteous goodnight and didn't even pause to wonder why my mother was driving Stan and Ollie to their train. Of course as soon as they'd left I realised that the one essential bit of story that would hold the whole thing together wasn't in the can, and tried to call my mother to get her to turn around - but couldn't remember her mobile number, just her landline number, which rang engaged. I understood that it was engaged because I was calling from home.

2004-10-12T13:05:00.000Z

Email from J Michael McCarthy, who has been filming a video for Jim Dickinson - quite possibly his (Jim's) first ever:
"The Dickinson shoot went extremely well this weekend! We have about three hours of tape to whittle down to a six minute video. It rained all weekend - but it didn't stop us. The premier may turn into quite an extravaganza! Olga with Jimbo Mathus opening for Jim Dickinson, Jimmy Croswait and Jimbo doing a puppet show, and more." I don't know if I can afford to miss that... I wonder if we can figure out a way to get me over there to cover the event. Meeting tomorrow with our hotshot new Executive Producer, I may bring it up as a topic for further discussion. It would be a great way of covering the links between Old Memphis (Jim and Jimmy Crosthwaite) and new (JMM).

2004-10-11T01:51:00.000Z

Odd day, starting with my first complete listen-through in ages to Jim Dickinson’s Dixie Fried – a record I revere in the abstract but rarely play anymore. I’ve fallen prey to the iTunes thing. I load tracks into my laptop then let it play on random, forever. THat way I never have to be bored by the conventional running orders. Now that I’m living away from my usual modes, in somebody else’s flat, where I can’t seem to pipe my computer into their amp (there must be a way! There’s got to be a way! Like the Sweet said), I have had to fall back on old methods, hence the actual physical playing of CDs as opposed to MP3s. Dixie Fried still sounds great, even through a weedy soundsystem like the one I’m stuck with here, so I followed up with a blast of the first Big Star album and then I was ready to face the day. Ended up having a very different evening to what I’d expected, as I ended up going for coffee with an estranged ex, who seems to have forgiven me for my appalling behaviour and forgiven herself for her ferocious reaction to it. We went to the ICA to see art, a madly playful installation piece by some German called Bock, which pleased me as it incorporated Douglas Hickox’s Theatre of Blood and FW Murnau’s Nosferatu in it. It also included music by the Cure, though, so I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it.
We surprised ourselves by actually enjoying each other’s company enough to go for a drink afterwards, and it was then that I remembered that Johnny Dowd was on at the Spitz. I suggested going and she agreed immediately – we always tended to like the same music, and in fact our initial involvement pivoted on a shared love of Warren Zevon. We headed over to the old East End, passing Christ Church Spitalfields en route, which was portentous as she is currently reading Peter Ackroyd’s ‘Hawksmoor’ which centres on that very location. Arriving into the venue, the first person we see is Mr Dowd himself who, I am pleased to say, remembers me from our last brief meeting. The support band have had a meltdown and he’s about to go on. We find drinks and a place to hang and the show begins.
I never know what to expect from this man but it never fails to set the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. Tonight he announces that the theme is ‘It is better to marry than to burn.’ I’m trying to remember whether it was St Paul who said that as he piles into a weird rewrite of Blue Moon, a song concerning a priest who lies in bed alone at night, thinking “behind every wedding march there’s a funeral bell.” That set the tone. Separated by achingly sad home movie footage of the Dowd parent’s marrying, and the family’s Christmasses, we get a song-cycle about how a couple meets, weds, reproduces, fucks their kids up royally before splitting up, and starting the whole cycle again. Now my ex has a history with an abusive husband, who she ran away from finally with her two kids, so this was all too close to the bone. She left after four songs. I understood but had to stick it out to the finish. After a song about Christmas with your family, entitled Death Comes Knocking (the chorus twists the knife; just as you are thinking how glad you are not to be a member of the Dowd family, he sings “You think I’m talking ‘bout him, but I’m talking to you...”), he ended with a psychotically slow-burning Johnny B Goode, which he managed to turn into autobiography – the story of the last remaining Dowd, son of Jack who was the son of Jinx, tough hard Irishmen who escaped the Famine and beat the knowledge of the harshness of life into their respective sons. “Man hands on misery to man/It deepens like a coastal shelf.”
The audience of Hoxton hipsters with ironic tattoos and gimme caps seemed bemused by the intensity and the lack of redneck kitsch. This isn’t Jim White, God help us all. It was a completely theatrical show (there were even credits at the end, telling us which family member shot what bit of home movie) and had more in common with the selflacerating family histories of Patrick McCabe or Harry Crews than it did with rock’n’roll. I hope he goes back to playing rock’n’roll soon, but I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Even though it took me more than an hour and a half to make my way back to the west side of London and home.

2004-10-08T11:29:00.000Z

Did a radio interview yesterday where I spoke about the whole Memphis thing, and the upcoming Barbican fest, but the guy was more keen to discuss my drama project as it is sort of newsworthy at the moment. I'm getting excited by the possibility that we might be shooting this thing early next year... There seems to be a possibility of that at the moment anyway. I will attempt not to count too many chickens just yet. We have a new executive producer, a guy I met socially during some pretty interesting times this summer - we had a good time, let's just say - and at the time I had no idea that he worked in film. I knew he liked his music and was very knowledgable about it, so I screened the ten minute pilot film that myself and Robert made, and he loved it. Then a few weeks later he approached me in a very low-key way and said that he thought he might be able to attract some private investors. We've just about agreed on a contract now, and he's about to start work - being American he has an infectiously can-do attitude, which is a refreshing breath of fresh air. I like the way this is turning into a team, two Irish people and two Americans, one black and one Jewish, all working together to make this project into reality... better stop now, I sound like a member of the Chamber of Commerce talking about the new creche facilities.

2004-10-07T19:03:00.000Z

Interesting things are starting to happen in the world of ICFM again, but I would rather not jinx anything by announcing prematurely. Instead I will plug two upcoming gigs: the first, in the Spitz in London's seamy East End on Sunday the 10th inst., is by the great Johnny Dowd, whose praises I have sung at length in this blog already. If you haven't seen him live, take my word for it - GO. He is Mister Entertainment.
The other is by a band about whom I know less than nothing. They have been recommended to me very highly by J Michael McCarthy himself and that's good enough for me. They are Viva l'American Death Ray Music and they play the wonderful Dirty Water Club at the Boston Arms, which has played host to the Dirtbombs, Tav Falco and (once upon a time when they used to play in pubs) the White Stripes. This gig is on Nov 5th but you can check if they are coming to a music provider near you by going to http://www.kissnrun.com/ (sorry, in too much of a hurry to do this as a html link, just cut'n'paste it fer Chrissake).

That's all for now!

2004-10-07T02:53:00.000Z

It’s all been very Memphicentric on here of late so how about a snapshot of the reality – life as a low-budget filmmaker? Well, one of the most important issues for low-budget filmmakers is discovering which supermarkets give the best mark-downs on food that is approaching its sell-by date. Over the past year I have become very familiar with the various procedures in Sainsbury’s (I can’t afford the food even after it’s marked down), Waitrose (pretty good but you have to get there before all the elderly posh people grab every last piece of organic sirloin steak), Somerfields (fine if you like eating reformed pork) and Tesco’s (I can’t figure out when they mark their food down, it must be a nocturnal activity for their insomniac staff).
Having just moved to the posh part of town, by no choice of my own – an ex-GF is letting me stay in her flat while she’s off in Brazil shooting a feature – I expected the worst. Instead, I found that Marks and Spencer’s is an untapped goldmine of fine food at half price. Twice I’ve been there and twice I’ve discovered tasty treats with little red stickers on them that tell me ‘I’m Affordable!’ And as the only people that can afford to live around here aren’t desperately in need of cut-price protein, they turn their noses up at these bargains. I haven’t had to fight a single OAP since I arrived here.
One observation though: liver is continually marked down wherever I go, huge piles of unsold, unwanted calves’ liver swimming in its own blood... so why do they buy so much of the disgusting stuff, if nobody likes it?
Oh yeah, my agent called, I am being put forward for a TV show. Whoop de do. I told him that the last time I worked for this company as director I ended up not on speaking terms with the executive producer. I even took my name off the show (which – of course – ended up being the highest profile thing I’ve done to this day). It would be a miracle on a par with the loaves and the fishes if I end up getting this job. But it would mean I could afford to buy a bit of grub without having to wait for it to go out of date. In fact, as far as I remember from my last experience as a TV director, they actually feed you on the job...

2004-10-05T18:19:00.000Z

Time for a bit of a catch-up.

The documentary has gone a bit on the back burner for most of the last few months while I worked on a drama project. Also, to be honest, it was dispiriting how little progress we seemed to be making. There were one or two little events that bucked the trend, however. One of these happened in early June, when I went along to see the North Mississippi Allstars play with Othar Turner’s Rising Star Fife and Drum Band in a converted Hawksmoor church near Old St in London. The show, to be honest, wasn’t all that – the venue was designed with classical music in mind, and the NMAs were nowhere near loud enough (the acoustics had Cody fooled, he thought he was drumming thunderously when in fact the head on my beer barely wobbled to the beat). It was really affecting to see the late great Othar’s granddaughter take over from him on the fife and vocals, though, and the last few numbers where both bands were on stage together had a taste of the real wild outrageous rhythm that the Memphis sound should be delivering...

Anyway. After the show, I’m outside having a beer with Luther and Cody when this guy – the show’s promoter – comes out all excited and starts talking to Luther about a Memphis music festival he wants to do next year, and asking Luther if he’ll come up with a few suggestions, ideas et al. Luther being the kind of guy who likes his life to be as simple as possible, looks for a polite way out of doing this, and his eyes light on me – and that’s how I end up talking to Bryn from the Barbican about his plans to put Memphis on the London stage. I tell him about the film, about Robert’s book, and so on. He’s enthusiastic and we agree to meet during the week to discuss it. Then Luther and I go for a drink and get really excited about it: “Do you think Jim would travel?” “Oh, yeah, man, definitely, and if Jim came, Sid would come, and if Jim and Sid were coming, there’s no way Jimmy would stay home...” “So we could have most of Mud Boy on stage here in London?” “Wow...”

At this stage it’s all a pipe dream though. I recall the Barbican’s annual Beyond Nashville shows and the scale that they take on (typically spanning several different sized venues suiting different types of artist) and the possibilities are tantalising...

Next step happens later in the summer. I’m totally broke. Lee Hazelwood is playing in the Royal Festival Hall and I know I should go, that I’ll regret it if I don’t. I can’t really afford it but I stop by to check ticket availability. Yeah, tickets still available. Before I know what I’m doing I’ve got two tickets and I’m on the phone to my ex-GF, who I had arranged to go to the movies with later, exactly who Lee is. She sounds dubious about the whole thing. Well, the show was tremendous, huge and by all accounts the best show Lee has done in years. I’m wandering around in a daze after and see Bobby Gillespie, who I’d interviewed last year for the documentary. I stop to say hi, he remembers me, we catch up. I tell him about the planned Memphest and overstep the mark a little by saying that Jim is definitely playing. Bobby’s eyes light up.

“If Jim is playing, mah band would love to play back-up.”

Primal Scream playing behind Jim Dickinson. That could be the greatest rock show in years. Ever. Bobby suddenly looks a bit panicked at the idea.

“Well, we could do three or four songs – I mean, that’s all they’ll want to learn, mah band is lazy...”

I head home on a high and email Bryn the next day. If there was ever any doubt about Jim’s place on the bill, it’s gone. Plans take shape in my head for a Dickinson Revue – solo Jim, Jim with Mud Boy, Jim with the Primals... what a night that would be.

Jumping ahead to events of this week: the impeccably turned out Tav Falco has a screening of his early, shot on video, film/art piece ‘Les Jeunes Filles Eclairs’ at the Cine Lumiere. I go along to meet him afterwards and find him sat at a table in the cafe with Jason Pierce/Spaceman of Spiritualised, discussing the possibility that Jason might produce the next Panther Burns release. By the time I leave, the idea of a Panther Burns/Spiritualised show at the Barbican event is in the air. Jason himself has some amazing plans for his own festival in Newcastle next year, featuring Tav certainly, but possibly also Jim, along with lesser-known bands like the Stooges, the Cramps, Kraftwerk, and good old reliable Brian Wilson. Oh, and Lee Hazelwood. I play Jason back a short snatch of Some Velvet Morning that I’d recorded onto my mobile phone during the RFH concert that summer.

“Is that legal?” he asks.

2004-10-04T21:37:00.000Z

It's been an extraordinarily long time since there has been anything to post, and suddenly there are some very very interesting developments afoot. Looks like there will be a very major festival of Memphis music in London next year, with some really fantastic artists involved, and many of the less well known bands who will feature in the documentary wil be well represented - with some special guests from the druggy/indie/raw and rockin' end of the British music scene. Can't say anything more for now, anyway there's hardly likely to be anybody paying attention at this point. But I will return!

2004-03-16T20:39:00.000Z

If there's anybody left out there, reading this, after the 5-6 week hiatus, then c'mon in, pull up a seat and make yourselves at home. 'Fraid I have nothing terribly interesting to tell you. The planned April shoot for ICFM fell through when our putative US funding fell through. This doesn't mean that the film won't happen, just that we have to go back to the drawing board and find some funding on the European side first. Given how low the dollar is at the moment, we could shoot it for very little. Which is kind of infuriating. Anyway, tomorrow I have a long meeting lined up with my UK co-producer so hopefully we will brainstorm up something interesting.
It was sad to read that Estelle Axton has died, but very entertaining to point out to my friends that this unpreposessing little housewifely figure was the founder of Stax and that without her, Isaac Hayes and his hot buttered soul wouldn't be quite the figure of world reknown that he's become.

2004-02-12T01:14:00.000Z

Things have been a bit hairy for the past few days, and there has been a very real concern that we may not manage to shoot in April, and it's only been through massive self-control that I've managed to avoid venting about it here (I felt it would be rather unfair to my co-conspirators to do so) but tonight things seem - completely out of the blue - to be back on track. Right now I will say nothing more.
But checking my email I find notice of a gig coming up at the Legendary Dirty Water Club by the Scientists, a great old Aussie band from the same time period that gave us not only the Birthday Party, but also the Moodists, the Triffids and the Go-Betweens.
Which reminded me that somewhere I have an amazing track by ex-Scientist Kim Salmon and his band, the Surrealists, on a free CD from Bucketfull of Brains, and (you knew there was a Memphis link, di'n'tcha?) produced by James Luther Dickinson.
I sought it out, stuck it on and was moved by the spirit of rock and roll to Google it, which is how I found the following quotes from Mr Salmon.

"I sort of paid a studio engineer some money and said, 'put away your ego'. Tell us how to record and then leave us alone. So he came along and basically set it all up. He told us what to hire and set it up like a studio. Because our idea was just to get an ADAT and some mics, beyond that we didn't really know what to do."
But why the kitchen, surely there's more comfortable rooms to spend a week in?
"Well, it's where some of the songs originated, but really that's the room that had the best acoustics. There's a lot of reflections in there. It has a stone fireplace, lino on the floor. All the pots and pans laying around, and there's a bathroom out the back, so my amp was put out facing that."
Put to tape over the space of a week in Kim's Melbourne kitchen, then flown over for a two day mix-down in Memphis by local living legend and rock extremist Jim Dickinson (Alex Chilton, Rolling Stones, The Cramps, Aretha Franklin, need I go on?)
Working indiscriminately with both rock royalty and local reprobates, Jim Dickinson is an enigma.
"Yeah, the record that he produced for Alex Chilton, Like Flies On Sherbet, really informed my musical direction for a good decade. He was very wise, sage-like you could say. Full of sayings that were almost like cliches, that kind of catalogue his vast wealth of experience. He's a bit of an anarchist, as well as a............well he's also a traditionalist. He's kind of a lot of contradictions like that. And it's those contradictions that are intrinsic to rock'n'roll."
Another thing that's intrinsic to Rock'n'roll is Memphis - its birthplace and Jim's hometown.
"Memphis was an intriguing place. Far smaller than I thought with a bloody great pyramid about the size of Cheops in the middle of it that people don't seem to know about. Somebody actually pointed out to me that Memphis is an Egyptian word. But apart from that, there's not a lot going on in it. But if there was, it would be far more dangerous than it already is. It's a bit, you know, black culture/white trash. There's the poor blacks and the very wealthy whites. Looking around, you can sort of see where rock'n'roll came from, there's this clash of cultures where nothing quite fits together, but they do. And that's rock'n'roll. It's not one of the most pleasant places, but it's certainly one of the more inspiring."

Apart from the above - possibly the best description of the downright weirdness of Memphis that I've come across - Mr Salmon also gave me my total favourite Dickinson quote of all time. He said that Jim told him that "misery sticks to the tape."
As a motto, that is good enough for me to live by.

2004-02-09T15:20:00.000Z

Well the Grammys have recognised Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash and Warren Zevon (as a folk artist - hunh?!?) but of course they are all just that little bit too dead to notice or care. Just as well really, none of the above-named are Grammy-type people. My co-director/co-producer/co-conspirator Robert Gordon had a nomination for his documentary on Muddy Waters, but given that everybody in the world is a bit blues-weary right now, it's no real surprise that the prize went to a film about the great Sam Cooke instead.
In ICFM world things are slightly less than great. Nothing in this business happens fast, but if we are indeed to shoot in April, we are going to need to kick serious ass. Or whatever.
Saw Gus van Sant's Elephant yesterday, and it has William Eggleston influences hanging out of it. It also uses stylistic devices pioneered by the great TV director Alan Clarke. It doesn't really add much of anything, except a pretty cast. Still a cut above the usual high school nonsense though.

2004-02-01T16:56:00.000Z

It would be useful, now - a year after the event - to have my emails to refer to. Robert Gordon and I must have exchanged about two hundred of them, in which we would have discussed everything from Charlie Feathers to barbequed chicken wings. They got deleted when I tried to transfer them over to my new Powerbook - I won't go into the gory and rather dull details.
The principal topic,in any case, was why the hell some crazy Irish guy wanted to come to Memphis to film his book. I still don't have any totally convincing and sane reason to give for that. I have kinda/sorta reasons, e.g. 'because Memphis, in the book at least, reminded me a lot of Dublin - two backwater cities with nothing much going for them, but they both have the strongest imaginable sense of being at the centre of world-changing events,' is how one of them goes.
But really, I just loved the book and loved the music made by the people in the book, and wanted to insert myself into that world if at all possible, to go into it and live there and be part of these events.
There's also the fact that, in a sense, the whole thing was sort of an accident. I shot my mouth off to JMM, he took me at my word and the next thing you know people believe that I am actually capable of doing this thing. So when that happens, all you can do is go with it.
I spent a lot of time working on putting the book's essential strengths into a short treatment. Tomorrow, maybe, I'll dig it out and put it on the site somewhere. It was hard work, as there seemed to be no overall narrative thrust to the story - its charm is based on the characters and the sense of place that Robert creates, and the essential power of being part of this band of outsiders.
So I used Jim Dickinson as our main man, put him at the centre of it all, and depended on his persona as the legendary backwoodsman of Memphis music, the keeper of the flame of rock'n'roll, to drive our story on.
The next problem was - how the f*%k were we going to get this financed?!?

2004-01-30T16:29:00.000Z

Okay, back to the interminable story of How I Ended Up Making This Movie.
It kind of neatly connects to the last post, in fact. And it involves late-night drunken websurfing too, demonstrating that indulging in these kinds of activities isn't necessarily such a terrible waste of time...
I had decided that I really, really wanted to see Eggleston's 'Stranded in Canton', so I googled it. No useful information there. While knocking around on the IMDB Cult Movie Board I saw a post that mentioned a Memphis-based filmmaker called JMM (John Michael McCarthy) and had a link to his website, so I checked it out. Go look, then come back and finish reading this.
Back? Okay, it's a pretty rockin' site, and I thought that this chap might well be somebody I could ask about Canton. So I emailed him and he responded, we started up quite a correspondence. Turned out we have a lot in common, both of us being the same age, adopted, and fantastically good-looking, as well as being independent filmmakers with chips on our white trash shoulders. Somewhere during the correspondence I must have mentioned that ICFM would make a great movie. Next thing I know, Mike has stopped Robert Gordon (whom he was slightly acquainted with) and told him that there's this nutty Irish filmmaker who's interested in filming his book. He gets me Robert's email address. It all snowballs from there... more later.

2004-01-30T01:37:00.000Z

I was on my way back from the launderette today when I got a call from Tav Falco. He was all happy because I had told him about Guy Maddin, way back when Tav was in London a couple of months back - I mean, it seemed weird that two guys in their forties who both live in the twenties should be so ignorant of each other... so anyway, after the Sunday afternoon I spent interviewing Tav for the Memphis film I tried to get him to come to see Maddin's new movie, 'The Saddest Music in the World'. but he wanted to hang out with record company people and see if he could hustle them instead.
Anyway Tav today rang to say that he'd eventually met Guy at the Paris premiere of 'Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary', which of course he loved. Why wouldn't he? It's filled with gorgeous swooning women and darkly suggestive visual tropes, a stew of the sort of semi-comatose irony that all the best art casualties love. Plus it's funny as fuck. And now they are best buddies, bonded by a shared love of Theda Bara and of razored, thin, almost despicably thin, moustaches. So now Guy Maddin has agreed to direct Tav's next promo video, except of course Tav hasn't got a record label. So if anybody out there knows how to get the greatest rock'n'roll outlaw of the 21st century signed up to a fifteen CD deal and given all the darkest groupiecentric desires of his heart, then let us all know the secret.

2004-01-29T11:49:00.000Z

Yesterday was a hell of a day for Memphicentric activity in the central London area. As I sat in the French House on Dean St waiting to go and see Mr Johnny Dowd, I opened the G2 section of the Guardian to find a two-page colour spread on William Eggleston and the movies. Since a large part of It Came From Memphis is devoted to Eggleston's adventures in video, which culminated in the sprawling verite work called Stranded in Canton, I thought there might be some reference in there - but the writer insists that "the closest (Eggleston) has come to cinema has been the odd cryptic reference to a video project." Yeah, really cryptic - try this:
"Stranded in Canton is a document of the spirit of Memphis, or more precisely, of Midtown Memphis, 1970s. Using natural light (and later infrared tubes), Eggleston shot unobtrusively in bars, backhouses, fields, cars - day and night. 'The electricity generated...was amazing,' says Mary Lindsay Dickinson. 'The maestro at work with what may have been the world's first infrared handicam! People would do absolutely anything to be in the movie.' Those few who might have been constrained by the camera assumed it was too dark, or that there was no tape in the camera, or that Eggleston was just looped and playing around. 'My idea was to shoot whatever was out there,' Eggleston says. "The second I saw the first reel I was very happy. I knew that it was perfect. I was looking forward to more of it and we just kept doing it. (It) works because of the way the whole takes came off, unedited... It was as if we were looking at something that had been shot fifty times and this was the best take. And these were always the only takes. It was just that good.'" (pp. 226-227, It Came From Memphis, Robert Gordon)
For anybody who, like me, wants very badly to see a 1970's Memphis document featuring geek grudge matches, midnight Mississippi juke joint one-chord trance boogie sessions in full effect, and how people acted in front of a video camera when nobody yet knew what one was - I have good news for all you good people. Stranded in Canton is finally due for some sort of release in 2004.
And hopefully the Guardian might just get their information from a more reliable source next time.

2004-01-29T00:21:00.000Z

I know we've just started but I feel like digressing slightly. There's a chap called Johnny Dowd and his first recording was called 'The Wrong Side of Memphis'. I bought one of his records way back in the late 20th, when there was a thing called 'alternative country' that was getting people all excited, lots of bands named after drinks who liked Gram Parsons a lot. But this Dowd fellow was different. I put his record on and it made my bones hurt. It sounded more like Mark E Smith than Mike Nesmith. His version of Hank William's 'Pictures From Life's Other Side' was excruciating, fingernails down a blackboard, angular untuneful and downright nasty. So I put Mr Dowd and all of his works to one side but could never quite get his noise out of my brain.
Years later I was sitting in Jim Dickinson's Zebra Ranch studio out in the wilds of the Mississippi hill country, and Jim, whom I have revered for quite a long stretch, says that he had to break off recording his record 'Free Beer Tomorrow' (a record that took something like ten years to get down on tape) when he heard Dowd's first release. The absolute rawness that he heard inspired him to go off and put something completely different down, an as yet unreleased work called 'Topless Bowling'. He was unable to continue until he'd made his riposte to Dowd, got Dowd's unholy cacophony out of his system.
So when I got back to London and there was a Johnny Dowd gig advertised at the Borderline (around the corner from my then residence) I felt there was no point in avoiding it. I attended.
What I saw was one of the greatest rock'n'roll shows I've ever experienced. The fact that the frontman is in his fifties, and has only been performing for about six years, had nothing to do with it. He exuded pure showmanship.
Well, tonight I saw Mr Dowd a second time, in the pokey and wonderful 12-Bar Club on Denmark St. Backed by his drummer/keyboardist Brian Wilson (AKA Willie B) he did my brains in all over again. It was pure performance art, from the moment Willie B took the stage and removed his left shoe, all the better to play the keyboard with his left foot.
Silence. Mr Dowd started, very slowly, rolling a cigarette. He asked the crowd if they'd heard of "a musician and film-maker by the name of Dolemite?" My quiet "Uh-huh" of assent was the only sound, and heads turned to stare at me. Mr Dowd went on to tell a spectacularly unamusing joke from the repertoire of Rudy Ray Moore, or Dolemite. The fact that this didn't dent his charisma is quite astonishing. He stopped talking and continued to tune up, very slowly.
Then he and his accompanist lashed into 'Pictures From Life's Other Side'. This slab of offensive, carnivalesque non-music - in waltz time - was like a bucket of cold water over the already freezing crowd. Mr Dowd's voice is like that of a heartsick mongrel in an empty cowshed, rising as the wind slams doors on his stubby little tail. He inhabits the stage with an innate showmanship and knows exactly the effect he is creating on the audience. Once they have been shocked into submission by his disregard for their comfort zone, he takes them on an exhilarating rock'n'roll journey. Sounding at times like early Black Sabbath, at others like 'Trout Mask Replica', he is a beatnik Charlie Feathers. He hits a dark subterranean groove just when you least expect to be grooved.
In short, he does exactly what I most seek and least often find in the world. He provides a constant sense that - no matter how familiar you are with what he's doing - you can never predict what's going to happen next. A feedback-loving Andy Griffith presiding over a whirlpool of cosmic chaos, Mr Johnny Dowd is nothing like anything you or any of your supposedly 'hip', 'well-informed' peer group has ever seen. Really.

2004-01-28T17:24:00.000Z

Some years ago - I can't actually remember how many, though it is certainly more than five - I picked up a book called It Came From Memphis, in Tower Records, Dublin. At the time I was intrigued by the Memphis power-pop band Big Star, so I flipped to the index and read those bits. Very quickly I understood that what I had in my hands wasn't the usual kind of rock book written by one of the usual addled bozos who populate that subsector of that particularly compromised industry... This was something very different.
But of course I had no money, being a broke-ass dependent film-maker. So I put it back on the shelf.
Some unquantifiable amount of time later, I came across a hardback copy of The Memphis Book (as I had begun to think of it) in The Secret Book and Record Shop, only a couple of doors from Tower but a universe away in terms of attitude and pricing policy. This time I was able to afford it. Years later, examining my copy, the author - Robert Gordon - was able to tell me that this was a US first edition of the book. How it got to Dublin I don't know. But then, how did that signed Harry Partch album on green vinyl end up in the canalside junk shop where I found it in 1987? Things find people.
This blog is about the journey between then and now, and how the vague dream that I'd fostered of filming this book, meeting the people that populate it, and contributing something of my own to this strange and beautiful world, became reality.