Things I watched, listened to and read this week #7
An album review
There’s a certain alchemy to making a guitar jam swing right. As famously said by Italian football manger, Gennaro Gattuso, "sometimes it's good, sometimes it's shit" At The Guitar Social, 99% of the time it is, of course, good. But knowing how to get the mix right every single time has been my own personal holy grail, one that I have been chasing ever since I started. It’s a witch’s broth that, on your behalf, I’m in a constant state of reverse engineering.
Of the many ingredients that go into that cauldron, I can confidently name three. One is being up for it. Energy up. All songs are doable and we as a group have a fair shot of doing the song some justice. Another is being ready to throw your neck on the line with some vocals, regardless of how ridiculous the prospect at times might seem. The third, and the most crucial, is the right choice of song. I get the first two ingredients from my youth, I think. Pub jams. The many bands I fell in and out of. And I have got the third, on multiple occasions, from The Black Keys. In many ways they are the ultimate jam band and I am grateful to them.
Peaches! is an album of covers. It’s their fourteenth album. Recorded shortly after the death of singer Dan Auerbach’s father and an arena tour that was pulled after poor ticket sales, we might assume the band were up against the wall a little. Playing music with friends is a potent way to forget. Peaches! sounds just like that. It’s world-class pub rock. Well, maybe not a pub. A bar, in a very cool part of America, and if you walked into that bar, and The Black Keys were unknown and you happened upon them playing these songs in this style, you would likely talk about that chance bar you wandered into for the rest of your life. It just doesn’t make for an incredibly interesting album. It does, however, make for a solid listen with moments that shine. I just probably wouldn’t buy the vinyl on this occasion.
The Black Keys are playing in the UK in August. You can stream the album now
A book review
It’s a long old journey from London in the Blitz to everything that Tony Pike became. This book charts that course. For those unfamiliar with Pike, he ran the famous Pikes hotel in Ibiza, as featured in the Wham's Club Tropicana’s video. You can see Tony Pike himself in that video. He's the guy that welcomes the guests in and then shakes the cocktails. If you want to know what Tony and George Michael got up to on the night before filming began, you’ll have to read the book and, in fact, if you want to know about much of what goes on in this raucous tale, you’ll need to read it, because much of it is a little explicit for me to re-tell. It is, quite often, literally unbelievable. I can’t work out if Tony Pike is absolutely full of it, a kind of Jay from the in-betweeners figure or if, somehow, all of this is true. Both realities are a concerning outcome.
Tony Pike, if we are to believe him, got into bed with almost every woman he met. And even those he just saw from a distance, like the newsreader he took a shine to while watching the news one night. He then visited her office the next day and later that night, guess what they were up to. Or like when he was working as a model (for a cigarette brand), the female model who was sent to feature with him, and her chaperone at the same time, who was sent to make sure that Pike didn’t sleep with the model, both ended up in his bed. At the same time.
Pike was born in the war, abused as a child, bullied as a young man. He found himself in the Navy for two years. Boats would feature for the rest of his life (always full of ‘beautiful women with no clothes on’). He landed in Australia and got lucky with a business venture. This brought him fame and a passport to the world, so, seemingly never fully dressed, he used it. Eventually, he lands in Ibiza and runs a hotel that, via a music video in the 80s, becomes the go-to place for the rich, famous and scandalous.
It is a breeze of a read but not without its problems, and the biggest one is the subject himself. His relationship with women was exploitative on occasion. Several seem just too young, and others slept with him to get a job during his years as a model, and then there are those who were possibly traded as commodities to impress new clients.
Despite this, because of the rich source of tales, his years sailing the world, his rise through the ranks of global business, the time he sunk a boat and was found drifting days later in the Bermuda Triangle, the stories about hotel regulars like Grace Jones and Freddie Mercury all make for a jaw-dropping book that, with a look of caution on my face, I am sliding across the table to you now, should you wish to open it.
I was gifted this book by my eldest sister, a regular at Pikes hotel it seems. I think she bought it at the hotel. This is an independent publication, and the paperback comes in at £25. You can buy yours here. Or I'll lend you mine, feel free to ask.
A film review
A boat that sunk 30 years ago returns to the shores of an impoverished Cornish fishing village. The sinking of the boat and the deaths and injuries may have something to do with the town’s present-day struggle. The former owner of the boat sets it back out to sea, with a skipper and two young fishermen, the homeless Laim played by Callum Turner, and the down on his luck but happily in Love Nick, played by George McKay. When they return from their first fishing trip, they find themselves in 1993. This is Back to the Future or something like it, but with Captain Birds Eye in the place of Dr Emmet Brown and an old fishing boat in place of the DeLorean.
The film looks as if it was shot on Super 8 and all dialogue has been overdubbed. The grainy footage is an asset to the experience. The audio treatment is a slight thing to notice but both add up adding to a feeling from the first frame that something isn't quite right here.
The Rose of Nevada isn’t a horror film, but it is at times horrific. And it’s clearly not science fiction, but time travel is at the heart of its story. What it is, is a captivating film about time and loss and the loss of time. I loved it and if you love cinema, you’re going to love this too.
I watched this at a cinema. Try get this on a big screen if you can. The Phoenix is screening it now. But you can find it in other cinemas.