Books of Albion by Pete Doherty

1999:

Recent films seen: [Nil by mouth], [O! Lucky man], [The last days of disco], [Velvet Goldmine], [My Fair Lady], [Funny face]
The first is a very absorbing look at a dysfunctional as they come South London family. ..... & frightening and wonderfully acted and filmed. A film that exists with an autonomy and would probably stick 2 fingers up at anyone who claimed to either love or loathe it. It is hard to write about a film that is so convincing. O! Lucky Man is Lindsay Anderson's classic psychodelic romp through 60's english consciousness. Bawdy, batheic and brilliant clothes colours & accents. Clint Mannering black with boot polish, Malcom Madowell perched on a ledge quoting Hamlet - trying to convince a suicidal housewife that life is worth.... the 3 hour showpiece of surreality, Alan Price songs and an England close-up that will never be seen again. The lost days of disco is dire - as is the mind-numbingly stale 'Velvet Goldmine'. A wanky pestide of the 70's glam era - forbidden to use any Bowie songs the creators have a mountain to climb from the start: they shouldn't have kept base-camp. Redeeming features include cameos by Eddie Izzard, Donna from Elastica & the surprisingly diarismatic Placebo, but generally the chance to capture the sleazy aesthetically super-charged splendour of that era (in all its sexual lushness of intoxicated head-fuck freakiness) has still not been grabbed at by deserving hands.

One wonders if the Britpop era will era be looked back on with any affection. I sincerely doubt it. Spending some time with the likes of Johnny 'Mewsewn' & Sheila Chasterton (ex-elastica), many heroes of the day are now washed up on a desert island of ill-lack and obscurity. Everyone agrees that Blur & Supergrass have written their best stuff in their later albums - and the 2 most coveted bands of the 90's era (Radiohead and The Verve) had nothing to do with Britpop. Pulp is a little less clear-cut. They excelled - and probably came to define Britpop - with the 'Common People' performance at Glasto. Not so much with the song (a song with no merit compared to much earlier, and indeed much more recent work), but with their capacity to gather the attention of all who watched the lookly of junped on and fell off the bandwagon.

xxx