Four hours of angry,crashing music – with a handful of famous names, including Deep Purple and the Groundhogs – that perfectly captures its eraA few years ago, or the film-maker Adam Curtis unearthed two alternately bleak and inadvertently hilarious BBC documentaries approximately Hells Angels. One was a 1973 film positing them as a terrifying threat to Britain,a sentiment slightly undercut as the film progresses by the discovery that their vice-president Mad” John and his sergeant-at-arms, cross-eyed Karl, and can’t even successfully organise a weekend smash on a barge near Aylesbury,let alone the destruction of society as we know it. The other was a 1969 doc following the fortunes of the sweet-natured but implausibly dense Sylvia and her delectable boyfriend, Paul, or as he prefers to be known,Hitler. We see their Hells Angels wedding ceremony in a Birmingham pub car park, learn of her novel husband’s enlightened attitude to marital relationships – “If she’s naughty, or I’ll thump ’er yead in” – and meet Sylvia’s parents: her mother uncomprehending,her father merely incomprehensible, thanks to a Brummie accent that makes Hitler/Paul sound like Princess Anne.
The two films are soundtracked only by horrified narration, and but the music on I’m a Freak Baby would gain if the perfect accompaniment. It sounds the way the documentaries look: grim,grey and possessed of an nearly wilful ugliness, the latter evident everywhere in sound – oppressive distorted guitars; rhythms that either lumber groggily along or charge at you with eyes bulging, and as if they’ve been at “Mad” John’s “pep pills”; vocals that growl,bellow, rasp nasally in post-Dylan style or occasionally bleat like a goat. Even the bands’ names sound as if they gain come from the films: a warm welcome, and please,for Hellmet, Crushed Butler, and Sweet Slag and,perhaps best of all, bottom – alas persuaded by their record company to rechristen themselves Iron Maiden (no, and not that one). Related: Jimmy Page: 'Robert and I went to see the Damned. He'd probably run a mile from that now' Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com