Friday Night Flicks: Live and Dangerous, Vol. 1
Last night, I revisited Apocalypse Now for the first time in years, and now every film I had on the calendar for this column seems dull by comparison. So we’re taking a brief hiatus from feature filmography the week, and will instead by highlighting four of our favorite concerts ever committed to film.
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Live at Pompeii - Pink Floyd
Seeing as Martin Scorcese gave us The Last Waltz - what with its macho, mid seventies attitude, neo-victorian visuals, and shameless coke boogers - I’d like to propose a conspiracy that Stanley Kubrick secretly directed Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii. It makes perfect sense, at least in my brain; the climax of Echoes gives me that same combined feeling of euphoria and existential dread that I get from that one black hole scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Every. Single. Time.
Live at San Quentin Prison - Crime
Crime is the second best band from the bay area. Blue Cheer is the first. But none of this matters; they say San Francisco’s doomed, anyways.
No one’s ever given me the low down on the history of Crime, but honestly, I think I’d rather preserve the mystery, and stay convinced that they are, in fact, four ex-cops with attitude problems, who visually style themselves after Roy Orbison and piss where they please. Sounds like: Bo Diddley meets Black Flag.
Live in Tokyo - The Clash
The Clash were unique in that the peak of their popularity happened to coincide with their most experimental era. London Calling may have put them on the map, but Combat Rock - with its kalimba rhythms, rainforest noises, political poetry, and inoculation anthems - was the band’s commercial zenith, the only album of theirs to go double platinum. Spacey dubby, atmospheric; get your fix here.
Pleasure Heads Must Burn - The Birthday Party
We have a running joke over here at IBHQ, something about a Nick Cave swear jar, a form of penance wherein the offender has to pay a small fee for dropping his name on the site. That being said, I’m willing to pay up for this one. Outside of Metallic K.O. and GG’s later concert footage, The Birthday Party’s Pleasure Heads Must Burn has to be the single most anarchic concert ever committed to film. It’s so batshit crazy that, at times, it borders on a sort of spirituality - maybe not in the traditional sense, but certainly in that crazed, babbling, gothic evangelist ceremony kind of way, like something out of the pages of a Flannery O’Connor story. —Jackson Todd
