Beware of Mr Baker.

Jay Bulger with Ginger Baker.

For me personally Jay Bulger’s film is a hugely entertaining 92 minute documentary mainly because its subject matter was the drummer of THE best rock band to ever to commit to vinyl and perform on a concert stage. No band has ever emulated Cream or its line up which included lead guitarist Eric Clapton, vocalist and bass guitarist Jack Bruce, the man my son was named after, and its powerhouse drummer Ginger Baker who’s 20 minute drum solo’s were feats of colossal energy and aggression. The band burst on to the rock scene 47 years ago on the 29^th July 1966 at Manchester’s Twisted Wheel and the final time they appeared live was at the Royal Albert Hall on the 26^th November 1968 in the company of this blogger who along with his bride of nearly four months managed to get tickets on the side of the stage. Beware of Mr Baker (2012) is not just about Lewisham born Peter ‘Ginger’ Bakers most prestigious working period when playing with Cream but demonstrates his complete working career, starting from his days as a jazz drummer.

 

Cream 1966 - 1968.

Blind Faith 1969.

Although Bakers first instrument was a trumpet he soon realised that his temperament was better suited to playing the drums. At the age of 16 he joined Bob Willis and His Storyville Jazz Men, quit his day job and spent the next year touring. During this period he played trad-jazz with Acker Bilk and Terry Lightfoot but really wanted to play modern jazz. Encouraged to play with various modern jazz outfits by his mentor Phil Seamen who heard him play at the All-Nighter club at the Flamingo in London’s Soho, a brilliant but troubled drummer I was fortunate to meet at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London when he played with the blind multi instrumentalist Roland Kirk. Bakers career really started to took off when he replaced Charlie Watts in Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated in August 1962. In February 1963 Baker along with a young Jack Bruce on double bass and Hammond organist Graham Bond left Korner to form The Graham Bond Organisation Along with Dick Heckstall-Smith on tenor sax this significant band when on to record The Sound of 65 which ‘may have been the greatest album of the sixties and one of the most exciting and influential of its time’[1] which along with their second and last album There’s a Bond Between Us are now considered ‘essential listening for anyone who is seriously interested in British blues of the late 1950’s or early 1960’s.’[2] Again I was able to witness this line up on stage at the Gaumont Edmonton in 1965.  Baker stayed with Graham Bond for three and a half years until the formation of Cream in 1966.

 

Ginger performing with Hawkwind.

After Cream, Bakers career moved around from one band to another starting with the Steve Winwood’s Blind Faith who released their only album Blind Faith in August 1969.  In 1970 he formed Ginger Bakers Airforce releasing two albums before moving to Nigeria where he lived from 1970 to 1976 setting up a recording studio, studying African drumming and playing with the African musician and singer Fela Kuti.  During this period he recorded 3 albums with Baker Gurvitz Army, which broke up in 1976. During the 1980’s and 90’s he embarked on various solo projects as well as playing with such diverse bands as PIL and Hawkwind also joining Jack Bruce and Gary Moore in BBM who released just one album entitled Around The Next Dream with Ginger on the front cover resplendent in angel wings!

 

Ginger sprouted wings with BBM.

This fabulous documentary really gets behind the man as well as his music. Filmed in South Africa at Bakers gated estate where we see the reason for the title of the film, its here that Baker breed polo ponies before he had to sell up and move back to Britain. The documentary starts with the former heroin addict whacking the director on the nose with his walking stick because Bulger suggested that he would go and interview the 73-year-old drummer’s former associates! Not the easiest person to get on with then? I can remember when Ginger knocked Jack Bruce out on stage because he played across his drum solo! I lost count of the ex-wives, and his relationship with his kids leaves something to be desired. The man has spent fortune after fortune, lived all over the world, has more enemy’s than friends, uses bad language like its going out of fashion, but that not the point. He is and will remain the best rock/jazz drummer of them all, and that’s what counts and that’s what this mesmerising documentary succeeds in demonstrating.  Long may he remain attached to those sticks?

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[1] Chris Welsh - The Melody Maker

[2] Allmusic review. 

The Beyond.

Another film to be re-released under Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures Distribution Company was Lucio Fulci’s ultra violent midnight movie classic The Beyond (1981). Originally released in a cut version in America in 1983 it was not until the mid-nineties that the film was digitally premastered with a subsequent DVD release, uncut and completely uncensored in its entire goristic spender and in that form is still currently available through Grindhouse Releasing.   

New Orleans, Louisiana, 1927. Two rowboats full of hard faced men row quietly up a river joining others who have driven by road to meet outside the Seven Doors Hotel. They enter the building carrying lighted touches and metal chains and proceed to room 36. There they find an artist painting a strange hell like creation. Attacking him with the chains they rip off his skin and nail him to the wall accusing him of participating in the dark arts. Finally they cover this poor soul in quick lime that burns what’s left of his flesh leaving him unrecognisable. This brutal act is instrumental in opening one of the seven gateways to hell[1] that when opened allow the dead to cross over into the world of the living!  Our story now moves on some 50 years to 1981 and we find the Hotel being renovated by Liza Merril (Catriona MacCall) who has inherited this run down establishment. Strange things begin to happen, the bell from empty room number 36 keeps ringing, a painter falls from a scaffold while painting the front of the building and a plumber is contracted to find out why the basement is flooded but there’s no water in the hotel. Liza unwittingly becomes drawn in the mysteries of the old Hotel bound up with ancient Book of Eibon.

 

The wonderful Cinzia Monreale 

No less than three eye gauging scenes!! 

Lucio Fulci director of classic giallo, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) and Zombie horror, Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), pull’s out all the stops with The Beyond.   Make up artist Giannetto de Rossi certainly deserved a bonus matched only by the vivid colours of cinematographer Sergio Salvati both of whom, along with Fulci’s direction and augmented by the Gothic backdrop of New Orleans, make this one of the most beautiful cinematic splatter fests ever to be committed to celluloid. No less than three eye-gouging scenes compete with an horrendous scene where dozens of tarantula’s literately eat a mans face (had to hide behind my note book for this one) and the Alsatian dog who when infected by the Zombies attacks its blind owner (Cinzia Monreale) and rips out her throat and bits off her ear all executed in brilliant bloody detail!  But don’t worry there are plenty of other ‘bad deaths’ to keep even the most ardent fan of horror movies happy, in fact an outstanding template for this type of genre. It’s a film that relegates World War Z (2013) to the level of CBBeebies.

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[1] Beware all seven ‘Gateways to Hell’ are hidden in seven different places!

World War Z

They (zombies) scare me more than any other fictional creature out there because they break all the rules. Werewolves and vampires and mummies and giant sharks, you have to go look for them. My attitude is if you go looking for them, no sympathy. But zombies come to you. Zombies don't act like a predator; they act like a virus, and that is the core of my terror. A predator is intelligent by nature, and knows not to overhunt its feeding ground. A virus will just continue to spread, infect and consume, no matter what happens. It's the mindlessness behind it.[1]

So says Max Brooks who wrote the novel that this film is supposed to be based on. But the author has claimed, and I can see his point, that following a gaggle of rewrites World War Z (2013) has nothing in common with his book, World War Z An Oral History Of The Zombie War, which is a follow up to his 2003 novel The Zombie Survival Guide. 

 

George Square was never this busy at Christmas!

Marc Foster, responsible for the 2008 James Bond movie Quantum of Solace and the inappropriately named Machine Gun Preacher  (2011) the life story of former outlaw biker turned Christian, Sam Childers, is in the directorial driving seat for a movie about a world wide zombie pandemic. The main character is ex UN investigator Gerry Lane played by Brad Pitt who when the ‘disease’ breaks out is brought back from retirement, forced to leave his family on a floating Pentagon and assigned to what seems like an impossible task to identify how the deadly virus can be stopped.

 

Zombie team work.

Given over to three nights at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre in Dumfries as a replacement for the Robert Redford vehicle The Company You Keep which had been held up, World War Z turned out to be quite a treat. Yes ok nonsense, but smart nonsense all the same which manages to maintain a good level of excitement throughout the full length of movie. And yes I know that the critics, in general, did not think a great deal of the movie but I thought it was very well made, had some good workman like performances from the main cast and boasted some great action sequences especially the ‘George Square’ episode in the first 35 minutes and I must say that the zombies in this film were some of the quickest I have ever seen managing to spread the infection round the world in no time at all! Seriously it’s worth a look if you want to sample modern horror without the gory bits.      

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[1] Interview with Max Brooks.

Springsteen & I.

Springsteen reaches out to the fans.

Popular music is one of life’s most cherished forms of entertainment; soundtracks to each of our own personnel lives, something that can make you remember good times and bad. For one night only on Monday 22^nd July 2013 the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre joined another 1,999 cinemas worldwide to show the premiere of the documentary Springsteen & I (2013) that celebrates a career that has spanned four decades since New Jersey born singer songwriter Bruce Springsteen signed a record deal with Columbia Records in 1972 and released his debut album Greetings from Asbury Park in early 1973.

 

The great man at work.

Produced by Ridley Scott and put together by director and music video maker Baillie Walsh the documentary consisted of short video clips, photographs, old footage and audio narration sent in by the fans, helping to build a picture of what Springsteen really means to them and the affects he had on their lives. It also featured footage of live performances of some of Springsteen’s most popular songs.  Following the films credits those of us that attended this theatrical release were treated to six exclusive performances from 2012’s Hard Rock Calling concert in London’s Hyde Park followed by some great moments between the artist and some of his devotees seen in the film.

 

'Elvis" and the Boss.

The real stars of the documentary were the fans, some made you laugh, some made you cry, others made you cringe at times but what a great bunch of people they turned out to be. Of course we must not forget the great man him self who is not only a top class entertainer, singing and performing some great rock music but come’s across as a really nice guy who’s personally always shines through and who seems to genuinely care about his audiences and his fan’s. Even this blogger shelled out for a copy of Essential Bruce Springsteen to play on the MP3!!!