It's So Far Out, It's Straight Down
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Data: 27 January 1967 |
This was a short film produced by
Granada Television, based in the English midlands, about the then-nascent
underground scene in London. It's quite hard to track down in its entirety -
although clips regularly turn up on nostalgia shows and music documentaries
- but it's well worth seeking out, mainly for its rare glimpse into the
British underground well before it descended into a vast and pointless
love-in. Broadcast in March 1967, the film thus predates the Summer of Love by several months, so we're treated to the sight of earnest young men in suits and glasses cutting a rug to a live set from Pink Floyd at the legendary UFO club - which turns out to closely resemble the cramped basement it then was. Plenty of countercultural legends contribute, including Paul McCartney (as a talking head in the studio), Allen Ginsberg, John 'Hoppy' Hopkins and Burroughs biographer Barry 'Miles' Miles, but the real interest for most viewers has to be the VERY early concert footage of Pink Floyd, along with a rough version of the band's "Matilda Mother" (then known as "Percy The Ratcatcher") on the soundtrack. This is among their earliest recordings, never mind their first appearance in a documentary, as the film's broadcast more-or-less coincided with the release of their first single. It also does a nice job of giving the lie to the Blow Up/Austin Powers image of 'Swinging London' that has since become the accepted version of the era. |
Dodano: 10.9.2016
