Haunted by visions of Britain’s past

THE MAGIC BOX by Rob Young (Faber & Faber, 2021)

Rob Young was brilliant at uncovering Britain’s visionary music in ‘Electric Eden’, a definitive study of folk music in the UK that took the reader/listener far away from the mainstream.  He is less successful in attempting to apply similar insights into the nation’s visual memory bank.

A more academic approach to television history would have reflected upon  innovative works of writers and directors such as Allan Clarke, Alan Bennett, Dennis Potter, David Leland, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh. Rob Young charts a less linear and more idiosyncratic course . The original works of Nigel Kneale are rightly feted but that doesn’t mean these more  established names should have been excluded. 

Surprisingly, there is also no mention of many of the many cult TV series I remember from the 1960s and 1970s  like The Prisoner  , The Champions , Adam Adamant Lives!, Doomwatch ,  Gangsters and  Jason King . Nor does Young mention any of the long running soap operas and largely ignores comedy shows.

I understand that any study of the period must be subjective but it seems to me that Young’s viewpoint on British culture implies that ghost stories and folk horror were the dominant genres. The political background is for the most part peripheral as the emphasis is on his own memories and the idiosyncrasies of the British character.

TV output from the 1950s to the present provides such a rich source of material that it’s a pity Young chose also to spread his net even wider to include cult movies. In my view, he should have stuck to the small screen.  A cinematic history of Britain belongs to a separate study.   

At his best, Young shows that the weirdness that influenced the alternative music scene was matched by eccentric TV programming of the era . This transported unsuspecting viewers into strange and, often,  scary territories.  Many of the shows referred to were one-offs that have only recently resurfaced in all their ghostly glory on You Tube and other online sites.

This book is valuable for shedding light on these obscure dramas and documentaries but too many of these half-forgotten titles are merely listed and described rather than contextualised. The best section is entitled Divided Kingdom because he covers race, class and gender. These issues are essential to any deeper understanding of British multi-faceted cultural history.    

My best reads of 2018

Since 2014, I have set and maintained a relatively modest reading target on ‘Goodreads‘ of 50 titles a year. I find this website invaluable at the end of year when it comes to reviewing the books I’ve read.

Being gifted, and being thoroughly absorbed by, Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘The Buried Giant’ led me to a reappraisal of the Nobel Prize Winner. Up until then, I’d read only ‘Remains Of The Day’ and hadn’t been particularly drawn to his other novels. The slow, deliberate pace and absence of colloquial language put me off but now this actually drew me in. Perhaps it’s an age thing. Ishiguro skillfully takes the reader deep into the mind and, above all, the memories of his characters. The only novel of his I haven’t read is ‘The Unconsoled’. Aside from the uncharacteristically messy ‘When We Were Orphans’, I rated all of his works very highly.

Getting fixated on this male author sabotaged my resolve to read more female writers this year. By the end of the year only 20 of the 50 were by women. Of these, my two favorite novels, one old and one new, were Sarah Waters’ quietly subversive ‘Fingersmith’ and Gail Honeyman’s funny/sad study of loneliness : ‘Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine’.

Rob Young’s flawed Can opener

ALL GATES OPEN. THE STORY OF CAN by Rob Young (Faber & Faber, 2018)

This is a long overdue, but slightly disappointing, study of the career and legacy of a remarkable and unique Krautrock band.

Author Rob Young’s approach is workmanlike although perhaps a little too much in awe of his subject matter. That said, he is well qualified for the task of writing the band’s biography since as he has written articles and conducted interviews over the years, mostly for The Wire magazine.

Gaining access to the inner sanctum of Can’s rehearsal /recording spaces gave him some insights into how their sound was created but despite his thorough research and analysis, the band remain wonderfully enigmatic.

BELBURY TALES : LOOK, LISTEN AND LEARN

Belbury is a fictional space but it’s easy to imagine it as a real English village or parish that is still stuck somewhere in the mid-1970s.

It is one of locations that make up the world of Ghost Box imagined by Julian House aka The Focus Group and Jim Jupp aka Belbury Poly .

In this months Wire Magazine , House and Jupp are interviewed by Rob Young in the Invisible Jukebox slot.  A very fine piece it is too and a timely one as it coincides with the release of the splendid  Belbury Tales – one of the best Ghost Box creations to date.

The album has a more expansive sound than other records on the label helped by  real live musicians: drummer Jim Musgrave and bassist and guitarist Christopher Budd . The atmosphere, as ever, is that of a more parochial  pre-digital age. Julian House says in the Wire interview:  “I still don’t think what we do is nostalgic. It’s more like a kind of weird regression” .

This is music to the ears of someone of my generation (born 1958) but if you can’t imagine a world before technology ruled the earth, the spoof comedy of Look Around You gives a good idea of what TV and ‘the computer world’ was like back then:

BEST OF BRITISH CULT MOVIES: 10 – 1

Concluding my list of the fifty greatest British Cult Movies with my top ten of the most groundbreaking, mind expanding or just plain weird films. If I have left out, or down graded, your personal favourite feel free to comment or, better still, make your own list.

10. TRAINSPOTTING Danny Boyle (1996)

Irvine Welch’s superb novel was in sure hands for the transition to the big screen There’s a first rate cast which Boyle directs with real energy and dark humour to show the ups and downs of heroin addiction. Great music too, including Iggy’s Lust For Life and Underworld’s Born Slippy. The screenplay by John Hodge begins with one of the great ‘fuck the system’ monologues:
“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself.  Choose your future. Choose life”.

9. JUBILEE Derek Jarman (1977)
Made before the first wave of British punk had played itself out this movie is, like the music that inspired it, crude and anarchic. Don’t even begin to look for any plot as this is impressionistic, instinctive cinema that sets its own rules. Adam Ant appears before he became a dandy highwayman and Jordan as punk ‘anti-historian’ Amyl Nitrite.