Sadly Georgie Fame's not in the line up this evening, but it includes Andy Fairweather Low, Terry Taylor and Geraint Wilkins. It is very disconcerting that, when Bill walks on stage I think it's my old Auntie Doris, little stick legs and big hair. It’s a great mix of Cajun, blues, rhythm and blues, and numbers written by Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. There are a couple of ballads and a few belted soul songs. The stage is full, with the four guitarists, drummer, keyboard player, two saxophonists, plus two black singers separately giving us Soul Man and I Put a Spell On You. It’s a lively set, and a good-natured atmosphere on stage, with Bill Wyman quietly smiling as he plays his bass. Andy Fairweather Low’s voice blends well with the other singers, and is ideally suited to the Cajun numbers. Geraint Wilkins from Wales sings rich, deep and low, serious blues. I didn’t stump up £5 for a programme so I can’t get all the names but the black singer, the soul diva, is Felicity. Hers is a big voice, full and rounded, great for her and Andy’s rendition of Harlem Shuffle. Good fun.
Accatone! (1961) is the first film by director Piers Paulo Pasolini and re-relased as part of a box set of his work. Accatone! features a pitiless, self-serving, manipulative young pimp living in the slums and rubble of Rome, whose lassitude is infectious. Images of his death recur throughout the film and he seems barely living. The exclamation mark in the title may be there to try and wake him up. Pasolini shot the film on the streets, using the people he found there rather than professional actors. The effect is a slow moving realism which casts the viewer as reluctant voyeur; it is impossible to gain any distance from the unrelenting sadism of hollow machismo. Seeing this film fifty years after it was made, the misogyny in this film is deeply disturbing; women are either Madonna, virgin or whore. Accatone says prostitution is ‘a mother’s situation’ which provides the mixed message that it’s selfless and necessary for survival, yet he and his friends view whores as trash; to...
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