Tag: drums

Pink Floyd at Pompeii

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 23 April 2025
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Director – Adrian Maben – 1972 – UK – Cert. PG – 93m

*****

Around the time of Meddle, Pink Floyd perform in the amphitheatre at Pompeii and in a Paris sound studio; later, at EMI Abbey Road, they work on their next album The Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII is out in UK cinemas on Thursday, April 24th

This review is of the Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii – The Director’s Cut version that came out on DVD in 2003. There have been various versions over the years; indeed, that DVD release also contains the 62-minute cut which excises all the Abbey Road material. The newly released version (as yet unseen by this writer) boasts a 4K restoration and a new sound mix by Steven Wilson. Even without these new enhancements, the film is pretty impressive some fifty odd years on.

It starts and ends with a version of Echoes (which originally took up the second side of Meddle and is here conveniently broken up into a part one and a part two). This is followed by Careful With That Axe Eugene and another lengthy opus A Saucerful of Secrets. Three more numbers are recorded in Studio Europa-Sonor in Paris: the shorter, punchier (to give it its long title used in the film, which also constitutes the song’s entire vocal lyrics) One of These Days I’m Going To Cut You into Little Pieces, a blues called Mademoiselle Nobs similar to Meddle’s Seamus without lyrics but with a dog (the eponymous Nobs) howling along, and Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun.… Read the rest

Tags A Saucerful Of Secrets, Adrian Maben, amphitheatre, bass player, blues, brain damage, canteen, Careful With That Axe Eugene, circular structure, David Gilmour, Director’s Cut, dog, dog howling, dog singing, drums, DSOTM, Echoes, guitar, London, lyrics, Mademoiselle Nobs, Meddle, music, Nick Mason, One of These Days, Paris, performance, piano, Pink Floyd, Pink Floyd at Pompeii, Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII, Pink Floyd at Pompeii MLMCXXII, Pompeii, prog, prog rock, progressive, progressive rock, psychedelic, recording, recording studio, Richard Wright, rock, rock music, Roger Waters, Seamus, Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun, sound studio; EMI Abbey Road, Studio Europa-Sonor, talking heads, The Dark Side Of The Moon, UK, Us and Them

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Harder Than The Rock
The Cimarons Story

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 4 October 2024
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The Cimarons Story
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Director – Mark Warmington – 2024 – UK – Cert. 12a – 100m

****

The story of Cimarons, the first British reggae band, who were formed in 1967 – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, October 3rd

As teenagers, they came from sun-soaked Jamaica to the UK to be confronted with a climate that was “rain, dull and gray.” In the 1960s, one of the areas that Jamaican immigrants came to in London was Harlesden, in Brent, and it was at Harlesden Methodist Church Youth Club in 1967 where Losely Guichy (guitar), Franklin Dunn (bass), Maurice Ellis (drums), and Carl Levi (organ) first met up and started playing music together, a site today commemorated with a blue plaque. They went through s number of singers over the years, notably Winston Reedy between 1974 and 1983.

By 1968 they were gigging as Cimarons. A performance at Paddington’s Q Club saw an A&R rep from Trojan Records in attendance, which led to a recording contract, their first album appearing in 1974, recorded in part as the Jamaican studio of the legendary Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. Before that, they worked mainly as session musicians, appearing uncredited on numerous singles by black British reggae artists. The film isn’t particularly clear on the matter, but it’s mentioned that they lacked management and got hardly any royalties out of all this.… Read the rest

Tags 1960s, 1970s, A&R, band, bass, Beatles, Black, blue plaque, Bob Marley, Bobby ‘Dego’ Davis, breakthrough, Brent, British, Carl Levi, Cimarons, cleaning job, COVID, Dennis Bovell, drums, France, Franklin Dunn, funeral, gig, guitar, Harlesden, Harlesden Methodist Church, immigrants, Ireland, Island Records, Jamaica, Japan, John Lennon, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Linda McCartney, London, Losely Guichy, lung cancer, management, Mark Warmington, Matumbi, Maurice Ellis, music, music festivals, Netherlands, oppression by the British, organ, Paddington, pandemic, Paul Bogle, Paul McCartney, performance, Punk Rock, Q Club, recording engineer, recording studio, reggae, royalties, session musicians, Sham 69, singer, slave trade, Spain, state oppression, Steel Pulse, Thailand, The Clash, together, Tony Platt, tour, Trojan Records, UK, Winston Reedy, Youth Club

Features Live Action Movies Music

Sound Of Metal

Director – Darius Marder – 2019 – US – Cert. 15 – 120m

****1/2

A drummer must come to terms with a sudden loss of hearing which threatens everything he has worked to achieve – already out on Amazon Prime, in cinemas from Monday, May 17th

This is a triptych about the onset of hearing loss in the context of rock and roll, a redemptive rehabilitation to the world of deafness in an isolated rural community run by and for deaf people and an attempt after recovering one’s hearing to some extent via surgical implants to come to terms with the fact that life following hearing loss can never be quite the same again. The two hour film splits roughly into three very different sections along these three lines.

Ruben (Riz Ahmed) and Lou (Olivia Cooke) are touring the States in their RV as a two person metal band, she on guitar and vocals, he on drums. Performances on stage are loud and energetic to enthusiastic crowds. In complete contrast to those moments of adrenaline rush, Ruben’s days are comparatively quiet. His morning routine consists of getting up early while Lou is asleep, doing some push-ups, putting on the coffee, dusting the mixing console while listening to 1930s jazz, making two smoothies.… Read the rest