Julian Temple and Requiem for Detroit at the Pop up Cinema, Portobello Road.

Piers Thompson writes:


REQUIEM FOR NAPOLI?


To the Pop Up Cinema on Friday night to watch Local Hero Julien
Temple introduce his lyrical masterpiece, Requiem For Detroit. It is
my third trip to our very own digital microplex and once more it is
packed. By now, we have all learnt to wrap up warm.


Julien has no equal as an iconographer. He filmed the Pistols’
Jubilee boat party. He made The Great Rock’n’ Roll Swindle
which moulded the Sex Pistols/McLaren mythology. He made
Absolute Beginners, turning Colin MacInnes’ seminal tale of the first
teenagers into a musical, with David Bowie dancing on the keys of a
giant typewriter.


He has flirted with the arts, making movies about Jean Vigo,
Wordsworth and Coleridge, and opera. But it is as the iconographer
of English Rock that he is destined to be remembered. The Filth
And The Fury (Sex Pistols revisited), The Future Is Unwritten (a
hagiography of Joe Strummer), Glastonbury, The Liberty Of Norton
Folgate (a contemporary music hall with Madness and Stomp) and
Oil City Confidential (an award winning account of Dr Feelgood)
have cemented his reputation as the go to guy if you are aiming for
posterity. He is working on The Kinks even as we speak.


Requiem To Detroit is a hymn to the rise and fall of Detroit that
combines a history of the Motor City through archive and the
parallel success of Motown with a very contemporary exploration
of the potential renaissance of the city by the subcultures that
are colonising the devastated ruins. And they are both ruins and
devastated.

It’s a post-Apocalyptic vision that is anything but bleak. It also acts
as an inspiration for those of us left in MacInnes’ Napoli (that is
Notting Hill to you squares). The vacuum created by our decline as
a creative force allows lots of room for bindweeds like you and I to
prosper.


Requiem? Hallelujah! Amen.

Watch out for RoughlerTV's report from the penultimate night of the Pop Up for the year. Tonight is a special screening of Halloween. He's behind you.

http://www.youtube.com/RoughlerTV

Hell. This is Roughler TV

Portobello Panto.

For Details and tickets click HERE

Notting Hill is finally getting it's mojo back.... At Maison du Chien.

I've spent the last eight years, grumpy as fuck, bitching about the lack of anything in Notting Hill other than the desire to yack around in pubs bars and clubs snivvelling up cocaine. I write poems about it, I alienate more people than you can shake a straw at,  and you know what! I was right.


But now. At last. Notting Hill is finally finding it's mojo.

I went up to Maison du Chien, above the Bumkin in Westbourne Park Road tonight. I went up because Piers Thompson was celebrating Tanya's birthday (it is a bit like that in the Thompson household) by DJ ing in his inimitable style (new verb: to Piers) and making a happening in his wake.What I found was a mini cabaret; just two acts: Earl Okin (a bloke I've seen around for ever but never knew he could do what he did) and Kalki; the best hula hoopist on the planet who even Piers couldn't faze. I went home after this, I'm elderly and need my sleep but apparantly stuff happens into the early hours.


Maison du Chien is Mat Whitley's baby, born of Medium Rare, and I think interesting because it doesn't try to be anything other than good fun. and that is what it is. Good fun! A little bit of Burlesque type nudity always helps.


It is a long climb up to the top floor at Bumkin. It is a climb well worth attempting without assistance.


Maison du Chien is happening until it stops (I'll try to find a link) but until then go.

Failing that go to Medium Rare at the Tabernacle... Feel the mojo rising!

Keith Richards at Proud Chelsea. Oh and the Beatles, Hendrix and Dylan too.

A busy day yesterday.


Lunch at the Tabernacle with the delightful singer/songwriter Rebecca Poole; more about her in later blogs.


Then off to Proud Chelsea: http://www.proud.co.uk in the Kings Road for the opening of an exhibition of photographs by Michael Joseph of a baby faced Keith from the 60's and early 70's.  It is a small show but contains some iconic pictures.

                                           Photo: Michael Joseph


A real bonus was the various images of  Dylan, Hendrix, and Beatles also on show in the gallery; well worth a visit if only for the cover shot for 'Rubber Soul' and the naked ladies from 'Electric Ladyland'.


I managed a little schmoozing before dinner at the Stockpot: http://stockpotchelsea.com/ a place I have not visited for years. Glad it is still there though; a rare reminder of the Kings Road of old.

First Wednesdays in Notting Hill

http://www.firstwednesdays.co.uk/

Channel 4's Seven Days; Weak.

I accidentally caught the Channel 4 reality show Seven Days last night, if you must know I had been watching something called Desperate Housewives (I don't own a TV so this was something of a novelty), and wish I hadn't but am glad I did.


Seven Days is typical of the sort of TV that causes me to not own a television; there is nothing remotely resembling reality in the show, it is merely a collection of smug, egoists (or is it egotists) serendipitously bumping into each other in the land of trite happen chance, talking about themselves in a seriously 'bigmeup' kind of way and the only reference point seems to be earlier episodes of the show.


This is television well and truly disappearing up it's own arsehole.


If you want to know about Notting Hill and the incredible cross section of people who inhabit it do not expect to learn anything from Seven Days.


Seven Days can only be seen to be attempting to follow (and failing miserably) in the footsteps of great shows such as Noddy, Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Postman Pat!


Seven Days..... Weak.


I am tempted to believe that aforementioned housewives desperation stemmed from having to watch the damn thing.

What is Roughler TV?

I put that question to Piers Thompson (one of Roughler's movers and shakers) and as luck would have it, he had an answer:


The magazine was Sniffing Glue meets Tatler. The TV incarnation is a Rantblog meeting BBC4. It celebrates life in the shadow of the Westway. We try to rouse the ghosts of the past who made Notting Hill the most subculturally significant neighbourhood in the World, so they can inspire the young in the spirit of Rock n Roll rebellion. The channel started in 2007 during Portobello Film Festival in tandem with Roughler Gallery where you can buy yesterday's memories at today's prices. We have covered subjects as diverse as Unicycle Hockey under the Westway, to the opening of Poundland on Portobello Road; from Lily Allen's return to the Tabernacle to the Class War march on David Cameron's house; music includes Nick Laird-Clowes Greenpeace anthem Mayday, to Ray Roughler Jones' Recession Glee or John Bindon to Gaz Mayall and The Trojans. Interviews have included John Maybury, Peter Richardson, Tony Benn, Ian Bone of Class War, Molly Parkin, Jake Arnott and Rusty Egan.

Here's one they made earlier:

Street critcism

Criticism before the artist has time to wipe the smile off his face.

Banksy Film at the Pop up Cinema W11.(Banksy has aerosoled out) And the Rotting Hill Gang.

Oi Banksy! The place for street art is on the street not in the cinema.


The minute you place Plexiglas over a wall painting is the moment you condemn it to mediocrity. The minute you put it on celuloid (or video) the same.  Street art IS because of it's ephemeral nature not because of it's self importance.


I started to watch a film narrated by someone pretending to be Banksy about an extremely boring bloke with a video camera. The high point for me was a length of green rope about 15 minutes into the video... Sorry Fillum.


PHEW!


Having said that, the pop up Cinema under the Westway is Great and should be celebrated.


Pop up Cinema 10 - Banksy 0


There was a great tribute to Ari Up beforehand though.


Do I get an award for reviewing this before the thing has ended...No.  But I got to meet Gary from the Rotten Hill Gang outside the Muse in Portobello Road who asked me along to a gig up the road which is just up my graffiti bedecked street!

The young satellites.

http://www.atomrooms.com/2010/10/the-young-satellites/

Postcards from Portobello Road. 1

Roughler Guide to Rotten Hill Bar & Grill 2

Just arrived in my inbox courtesy of Piers Thompson and Roughler TV.


A splendid afternoon in the heart of Notting Hill.