Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Seaford Mods Documentary: Invisible Britain

Last night I went to the Arts Picturehouse in Crouch End (once known as Squatter's Bottom) with Gina and some pals.
The directors of the film are being very helpful with advice about crowdfunding.
The film is a dual carriageway of band documentary and commentary on the sorts of issues that the forgotten working class people of Britain have to deal with: lack of food, lack of jobs, the collapse of welfare support and a legal system stacked up against them. the 'forgotten' part is by far the most important thing, and it's these people that Sleaford Mods sing to.
In my musical backwater of just listening to student songs (hundreds, sometimes), I'm behind the times with listening to contemporary music. I did really enjoy their music: I thought of Gil Scott Heron, and then I thought of Daleks. That's a compliment not an insult.
Who else in the world sounds like that?
Afterwards there was a short Q and Q with Zoe Street Howe and one of the directors, Paul Sng, which was informal and all the more informative because of that.
After what happened on Friday there was a particular potency to the film, which showed working class people around Britain- with accents- proving that they are not stupid. At various small venues in areas outside the large conurbations, the punters sang along, staring fixedly at Jason, sharing beers with Andrew. They went to Cafe Indie-pendent in Scunthorpe, where I played with Martin a while ago, and which is a fantastic place, and which is the ideal venue for them to play.
Most of the audience mirrored them in age and gender, but there were one or two women and one hip hop fan who latched on to some subtle lyrical digs at Oasis that told him, he said, that they knew their hip hop.
An enjoyable film; although ours is completely different, I hope we can achieve the coherence that this documentary has. It's all there to learn.

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