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Post by pulphack on Dec 7, 2008 21:15:24 GMT
... is the title of a movie made in 1980, about competing sound systems in London. stars Brinsley Forde and Karl Howman, is gritty and as street as you could get (more Scum than Breaking Glass), and has a great soundtrack from Aswad, Misty In Roots, and the great Dennis Bovell.
watching it last night, i saw at the end that NEL did a tie-in p/b. i've never seen this anywhere (and frankly wonder how they'd translate patois to the printed page), and don't knwo who wrote it. which is why i've posted this: justin, franklin - any ideas?
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Post by dem bones on Dec 8, 2008 2:08:23 GMT
Never heard of either the film or the book 'til now but fortunately Reggaepedia have: "The book was written by Mike Russell and is a book adaption of the movie with the same name. It was released by New English Library in 1980 and is 121 pages long. The ISBN is 0 450 04955 8. Resale price in the UK was £1.00." Back cover blurb: The lions know they're the hottest sound system in black Brixton. Now they're going to prove it... There's Dreadhead, older, wiser and tougher than the rest. There's Beefy who'll tear down a wall if he sees an NF slogan on it and Errol who's the first to hear if anything fall off a lorry. Weasel's looking forward to marriage like a man tied up in a snake-pit and Blue's a boy with trouble for his shadow... This is Babylon where life means walking a thing and dangerous line...
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Post by pulphack on Dec 10, 2008 14:10:08 GMT
nice bit of research, there, dem. thanks for that, one to add to the list for abebooks,etc... mind you, i wouldn't recognise the film from the blurb! that makes it sound a bit like the doubledeckers go dub, which it most certainly isn't. worth a watch if you like brit movies from that period.
(i've just wonderd why i shoved the doubledeckers on there - am i remembering wrong, or has my addled brain dredged up that brinsley forde was in that?)
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Dec 10, 2008 14:32:42 GMT
Are we talking doubledeckers as in appalling series about Enid Blyton type kids with a kind of Cliff Richard feel to it?
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Dec 10, 2008 14:42:38 GMT
I'm referring to this: uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9ACaNwtY3UU&feature=relatedSPOILER WARNING don't show his to young children. You may lose any carefully built up credibility. A series requiring the following: 1. token black boy 2. token tomboy girl 3. token bespectacled brainy boy 4. token fat boy (who must be named after pastries or cakes - in this case 'doughnut') 5. token cuddly toy 6. token small girl 7. token cool boy 8. token acting 9, token dancing If you are talking about some other doubledeckers I make an abject apology for bringing the vault into disrepute
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Post by pulphack on Dec 10, 2008 15:44:25 GMT
ulp... no, i regret to say that this is exactly what i meant... it wasn't all oliver postgate and quality back then, was it... although that does sort of prove what we've been saying on the postgate RIP thread, though.
Brinsley had quite a dodgy career pre-Aswad, really - me and mrs ph were watching the Please Sir! movie on C4 last week (slackers!), and he cropped up in that, puling a 'i is an oppressed boy' trick on some dolly bird and getting john alderton into trouble.
Aswad may have gone downhill quality wise in the eighties, but thinking about it, it does makes you forgive 'em for 'don't turn around', really. at least it saved him from a lifetime of cheeky chappie roles...
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Dec 10, 2008 17:08:23 GMT
Ha ha, it was of course utterly brilliant; take a look at that dancing and attempt not to squirm. I cast back to evenings watching the programme and I think I may well have saved a modicum of dignity by being just too old to sing along to the annoyingly addictive theme tune.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Dec 10, 2008 20:26:13 GMT
I recall seeing Aswad at Manchester University and hearing them rehearsing at the crescents in Mossside when I stayed there briefly. Good band
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Post by pulphack on Dec 11, 2008 15:22:07 GMT
They were indeed. I suppose 'Don't Turn Around' isn't a bad pop hit, and sounds ok on oldies radio, but it's nowhere near the intensity they used to have. The old quality/success inverse ratio at work. A pity the earlier stuff couldn't have made their name big style.
And I wasn't being ironic about the Doubledeckers, sad to say. Bloody awful, like those terrible Childrens Film Foundation things. An adults idea of what kids should like, rather than adults with the minds of kids making it. Which is maybe the difference between the likes of JK Rowling and Oliver Postgate, and stuff that never really catches on.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Dec 12, 2008 23:10:45 GMT
Brinsley will always have a place in my heart for his appearances in The Oblong Box and Diamonds Are Forever.
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