Looking for a New England by Simon Matthews

Author:Simon Matthews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-27T15:59:49+00:00

9

PUNK: DEATH

As an illustration of how rapidly music and fashion evolved in the ’70s, Jubilee filmed at peak punk in the spring and summer of 1977, but by the time it premiered in early 1978, the main protagonists of the new scene (The Sex Pistols) had disintegrated. Similarly, McLaren’s The Great Rock N’ Roll Swindle only emerged when the parade had passed. Three years after his debut production, Wolfgang Büld returned to the UK and this time took his format of extended live music sequences and hand-held camera interviews around the country with a small crew that included Dick Pope – a cameraman who had worked on World in Action documentaries for Granada TV. The end result, Punk and Its Aftershocks (’80) remains fairly conventional in approach and the film itself got only a small showing and remains relatively unknown.

No longer 100 per cent London centric, in this Büld ventures to Coventry to report on the 2-Tone phenomenon, a soul and dance movement that echoed the success enjoyed in 1967–8 by racially mixed outfits like The Equals and Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band. Music of this type had disappeared by the ’70s when the skinhead culture (which originally welcomed them) narrowed and became overtly racist. Captured for posterity here are Madness, The Selecter and The Specials, with The Boomtown Rats, The Jam, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Secret Affair, The Pretenders, The Police and Gary Numan. The ska acts were filmed in 1979–80, but most of the footage clearly predates this. Premiered in Switzerland, it was renamed British Rock for its limited distribution in the UK.

After Punk and Its Aftershocks Büld returned to Munich, where he completed Women in Rock (’80) for West German TV, with footage of The Slits and Siouxsie and The Bansees, and made Hangin’ Out (released February ’83) with Nena, at that point riding high after the success of her hit 99 Red Balloons (No 1 UK and No 2 US). Co-produced by Stein Films, who had an impressive roster of West German productions, this was ostensibly a parody of a typical German music comedy-romance of 20–30 years earlier. The critics were damning, but at least, unlike Büld’s earlier outings, it was a fairly big hit. Büld had actually wanted Trio (whose 1982 hit Da-Da-Da was even bigger than Nena’s) for the film, but they withdrew to make an album. After Punk and Its Aftershocks, Büld never directed in the UK again.

The final example of DIY cinema to emerge in the punk period, Rough Cut and Ready Dubbed, was part-funded by the BFI and ended up being the only film project to be given money by the Ken Livingstone era GLC. An award-winning music documentary filmed over several years between 1978 and 1981, the footage shows Stiff Little Fingers, A Certain Ratio, The Cockney Rejects, Patrick Fitzgerald, Johnny G, The Purple Hearts, The Selecter, Sham 69, The UK Subs, Garry Bushell, John Peel, Charles Shaar Murray and Tony Wilson.

Watching Wilson is particularly rewarding: a

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