Best of 2023

Sandra Hüller, Jonathan Glazer, Christian Friedel – The Zone of Interest at Cannes 2023

Film:

The Zone of Interest

Runner-ups: Perfect Days, Poor Things

Last year: Elvis

Foreign-Language Film:

The Zone of Interest

Runner-up: Perfect Days, Past Lives

Last year: Hit the Road

Documentary:

20 Days in Mariupol

Runners-up: Beyond Utopia, Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis

Last year: Nothing Compares

Male Lead:

Andrew Scott – All of Us Strangers

Runner-up: Bradley Cooper – Maestro

Last year: Austin Butler – Elvis

Female Lead:

Emma Stone – Poor Things

Last year: Ana de Armas – Blonde

Male Support:

Paul Mescal – All of Us Strangers

Robert De Niro – Killings of the Flower Moon

Last year: Brendan Gleason – The Banshees of Inisherin

Female Support:

Sandra Hüller – The Zone of Interest

Rosamund Pike – Saltdean

Last year: Mariana Trevino – A Man Called Otto

Director:

Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest

Runner-up: Justine Triet – Anatomy of a Fall

Last year: Baz Luhrmann – Elvis

Scriptwriter:

Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest

Runner-up: Ava DuVernay – Origin

Last year: Martin McDonagh – The Banshees of Inisherin

Editing:

Paul Watts – The Zone of Interest

Runner-up: Anatomy of a Fall

Last year: Jonathan Redmond & Matt Villa – Elvis

Cinematography:

Robbie Ryan – Poor Things

Last year: Jamie Ramsay – Living

Sound:

Johnnie Burn – The Zone of Interest

Film Music:

Mica Levi – The Zone of Interest 

Last year: Elvis

Single/Song:

Now & Then – The Beatles

Last year: Grace – Kae Tempest

Album:

tbc

Last year: Black Acid Soul – Lady Blackbird

Gig:

Simon Emmerson Celebration – Roundhouse (incl. Afro Celt Sound System)

Bruce Springsteen – Royal Dublin Showground

The Waterboys – Roundhouse

Last year: Lady Blackbird – Barbican

Play:

Medea – Soho Place

Last year:

Jerusalem (Apollo, Shaftesbury Ave)

Art Exhibition:

John Craxton – Pallant House, Chichester

Last year: Post-War Modern: new art in Britain 1945-65 (Barbican)

Book:

The New Life – Tom Crewe

Last year: Good Pop Bad Pop – Jarvis Cocker

TV:

Slow Horses S3 (Apple)

Last year: SAS Rogue Heroes (BBC)

Podcast:

The Rest is Politics

Last Year: Soul Music (BBC)

Sport:

England Women at World Cup in Australia/NZ

Last Year: England at World Cup in Qatar

Dance:

tbc

Last Year: –

Event:

tbc

[professional] Gilbert & George’s reaction to our feature documentary about them ‘The Pilgrimage of Gilbert & George’

Walking the red carpet at Tribeca Film Festival, New York with Alex Lawther and the team behind ‘For People in Trouble’

[personal] my birthday party in Saltdean

Dearly departed:

Jess Search :: Sinead O’Connor, Shane MacGowan :: Alan Arkin, Robbie Robertson :: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Burt Bacharach, Jane Birkin, David McCallum, Topol, Tina Turner, Tony Bennett

Best of 2022 and links to earlier Bests Of 

Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott – ‘All of Us Strangers’

Creative Catalysts

The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London

It’s often uplifting to cross paths with people who act as creative catalysts, to observe how they oil the wheels of creative enterprise and inspire those around them.

A celebration of Simon Emmerson 15.12.23

This year (like most others) has seen some significant losses in the music world: Robbie Robertson, Sinead O’Connor, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Burt Bacharach, David Crosby, Jeff Beck, and the last while has taken a particularly heavy toll with Shane MacGowan going to the Great Gig in the Sky, as well as Denny Laine and Benjamin Zephaniah. Back in March we lost Simon Emmerson (aka Simon Booth) – his life, music and creativity were celebrated last night at The Roundhouse with a gathering of various bands and collectives he helped bring about and grow. There was a lot of love in the room.

The Imagined Village

The Imagined Village

First up, his folk iteration spearheaded by the exuberant Eliza Carthy with her father, elder statesman of English folk, Martin Carthy. Simon’s  connection with folk music (and nature) began as a child attending Forest School Camps in the holidays. He helped launch The Imagined Village modern folk collective in 2004, working with a broad range of folk/world musicians to create a contemporary, cross-cultural take on folk music. Their debut album was released on Peter Gabriel’s RealWorld label and included a track by recently departed Benjamin Zephaniah with Eliza Carthy. Another track was recorded by her with Billy Bragg (and Simon on guitar). Billy Bragg came on at this commemorative performance to play that track with Martin and Eliza and The Young Copper Family (a family of traditional, unaccompanied English folk song singers from Rottingdean (the next village down the Sussex coast from the ArkAngel Productions office)). Hard Times of Old England (Retold), as Martin pointed out, shows how the England of the 1820s was not unlike that of this decade, just substitute Rwanda for Australia in this tale of transportation. Billy, needless to say, added a new verse about the failure of Brexit and Johnson’s role in it.

Billy Bragg (vocals) & Martin Carthy (guitar & vocals)

The Imagined Village built up a driving tribal vibe punctuated by a rich mix of sounds from the technical modernity of a theremin to the ancient heritage of a sitar. In the recent feature documentary about Marc Bolan, AngelHeaded Hipster, Bolan made a very resonant observation – what a wonder it is that a piece of wood with strings – his guitar or this sitar – can move you to cry. Or lift you and make your heart beat faster as this dynamic folk outfit more than achieved on the night.

“There are people like Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page, if you like, whoever you relate to out of those sorts of people, that through the use of a guitar, which is a piece of wood with string on it, really, when you relate to it like that, made by man, that certain things can stir your emotions up out of a piece of carpentry. Or blowing a piece of steel pipe and making you cry, what happens, you know, within that pipe? It’s the spirit that comes. It’s when people deny spiritual factors, its very sad, because it’s everywhere around us.”

Marc Bolan

Afro Celt Sound System

Afro Celt Sound System

The next band/collective took up that baton and ran with it. Combining traditional Irish and Celtic instruments (low whistle, uilleann pipes, bodran, etc.) with an eclectic mix from Africa and beyond (including the 21-string kora from Mali and the driving beats of a traditional Punjabi drum) Afro Celt Sound System took the energy to the next level with a masterful performance fuelled by the special mission of the night.

Simon Emmerson’s guitar had to be substituted  by a very able replacement but his spirit still infused the band. He formed it in 1995 in the wake of working with Peter Gabriel at RealWorld on the OVO soundtrack for the turn-of-the-millennium show at the Millennium Dome in 2000. One of their highpoints was the track they recorded that year with Sinead O’Connor, Release, with which they opened their exemplary set. It was followed by their Malian singer (all in white in the photograph above) singing unaccompanied a song traditionally sung in his native land when somebody significant passes on.

Working Week with Juliet Roberts

Working Week

The final Simon Emmerson-infused act of a highly memorable evening was Working Week, playing together for the first time in over three decades. The son of the original Brazilian percussion player had to stand in for his dear departed father. Their set was introduced by DJ/Producer Gilles Peterson who knew Simon and his wife Karen well, lived in their basement at one time and ended up buying their house when they moved on. His Acid Jazz Records and Talkin’ Loud recordings were greatly influenced by Simon, who added a jazz sensibility to his soul roots. Resurrected Working Week opened with Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues.

Juliet Roberts added vocals to their brass-driven big(ish) band sound but what was interesting and evident from the physicality of the event was that the centre stage was rarely filled. Simon clearly was an instigator and nurturer of collective musical endeavours with no natural central figure. You could still feel his presence holding them together and firing them up.

Working Week grew out of the band Weekend, which Simon founded with Alison Statton after the break-up of her previous outfit, Young Marble Giants. Weekend made only one (excellent) studio album, La Variété, in 1982 on Rough Trade. They brought some jazz into the fertile territory of the UK Post-Punk scene, which was a  promising delight. He went under the pseudonym of Simon Booth on that record for some reason. The record sleeve was charming, offering a colourful contrast to Pornography (The Cure) and Combat Rock (The Clash), all in the shadow of Joy Division’s Closer (1980).

Variety is the essence of Simon Emmerson’s illustrious career in music. From jazz to world to modern folk, from initiating bands to producing (the likes of Baaba Maal and Manu Dibango), from DJing to playing various instruments made of wood and string (guitar, bouzouki and cittern), he had the rare ability to inspire and catalyse the creatives around him in a way which enabled them collectively, with no ego in centre stage. That’s pretty much the opposite of what a rock band is but very much the essence of the anonymous songs of folk, the circularity of Irish music and the turn-taking of jazz.

The Pilgrimage of Gilbert & George

My latest commission (which came about from a chat with Tim Lovejoy [host of Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch and The Lovejoy Hour podcast] – big hat tip in his direction) is emerging into the light of day…

Live Hard

Christmas starts here as we move into December. Last night ‘Die Hard’ (1988) played at the fabulous art deco Rex Cinema (1938) in Berkhamsted (Hertfordshire, England). 

The best line is the incongruous…

“Hi Honey”

said by a bloodied, battered John McClane (Bruce Willis) as he sees his hostage wife towards the climax of the film. Comic, ironic understatement at its best.

And yes, it is a Christmas film.

Shane MacGowan Forever

This evening Nick Cave took part in a conversation with journalist Seán O’Hagan in the magnificent (and appropriate, given Cave’s Christian leanings) setting of 18th century St Martin in the Fields church on Trafalgar Square, London. Both are friends of Shane MacGowan who went to the Great Gig in the sky in the early hours of this morning. Cave commented on both his brilliance and empathy as a songwriter, and his kindness as a human being. Despite having a caustic edge in some circumstances, he walked around with a roll of cash which he handed out liberally to those in need.

I crossed paths with him a couple of times – once when he was sitting at the bar in the Boogaloo pub in Highgate and before that in Islington, near Filthy MacNasty’s in Amwell Street. I only saw him perform once, with The Pogues at Brixton Academy.

Shane’s songs I believe will live for decades and indeed centuries in the way that the best Irish songs do. An example of one that has all the feeling of having been around for ages and going on to persist forever is The Snake with Eyes of Garnet which he recorded with The Popes:

Last night as I lay dreaming
My way across the sea
James Mangan brought me comfort
With laudnum and poitin
He flew me back to Dublin
In 1819
To a public execution
Being held on Stephen’s Green
The young man on the platform
Held his head up and he did sing
Then he whispered hard into my ear
As he handed me this ring

“If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!

This snake cannot be captured
This snake cannot be tied
This snake cannot be tortured, or
Hung or crucified

It came down through the ages
It belongs to you and me
So pass it on and pass it on
‘Till all mankind is free

If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me”

He swung, his face went purple
A roar came from the crowd
But Mangan laughed and pushed me
And we got back on the cloud
He dropped me off in London
Back in this dying land
But my eyes were filled with wonder
At the ring still in my hand

If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!

And if you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!

Timeless and deeply Irish – with a strong London-Irish vibe, that very special identity. Shane ironically was born in Kent and spent years roving North London. I once spotted a photograph of him working on Brent Cross shopping centre when it was still just a building site – the photo was hanging in a pub in the monkish Glencolmcille, Donegal. Here’s a 2009 episode from this blog’s occasional Songlines series about Shane and the London-Irish identity [1.5 mins listen], Thank Christ for the BBC. 

Nick Cave considers Shane the songwriter of his generation. It is an extraordinary feat to write songs that feel they have always been here.

The fact that he took inspiration from the Sex Pistols (picking young Shane out for the first time in a photograph of the Pistols’ crowd was a thrill) just adds to the magic: a punk instinct to destroy fused with a Celtic instinct to preserve and pass down…

with Kirsty MacColl in 1994

in audience at a Clash gig (bottom right in V-neck)

in 1991 at Pukkelpop Festival