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Pentangle – The Lost Broadcasts 1968-1972

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As archive finds go, the material here is a connoisseur's dream. Forty-two live tracks, all but six of which haven't been heard since they went out on John Peels Top Gear, Sounds Of The Seventies and Wally Whyton's Country Meets Folk. At their deceptively ramshackle, raga-inflected best, Messrs Jansch, Renbourn, Cox, Thompson and McShee achieved a musical empathy comparable in its field to the Marley-Tosh-Livingston-era Wailers and Dylan's '66 Band. Among the riches are Terry Cox's tribute to Moondog, the rarely performed "Springtime Promises" and two lyrically different versions of "Light Flight", the theme music to BBC2's Take Three Girls. Talking of which, somebody somewhere must still have all that show's splendid incidental music. Get searching.

As archive finds go, the material here is a connoisseur’s dream. Forty-two live tracks, all but six of which haven’t been heard since they went out on John Peels Top Gear, Sounds Of The Seventies and Wally Whyton’s Country Meets Folk. At their deceptively ramshackle, raga-inflected best, Messrs Jansch, Renbourn, Cox, Thompson and McShee achieved a musical empathy comparable in its field to the Marley-Tosh-Livingston-era Wailers and Dylan’s ’66 Band. Among the riches are Terry Cox’s tribute to Moondog, the rarely performed “Springtime Promises” and two lyrically different versions of “Light Flight”, the theme music to BBC2’s Take Three Girls. Talking of which, somebody somewhere must still have all that show’s splendid incidental music. Get searching.

Bob Dylan – The Classic Interviews Vol 2: The Weberman Tapes

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In January 1971, Bob Dylan rang AJ Weberman, an obsessive fan prone to searching through Dylan's dustbins. They spoke not once but twice, and Weberman taped the conversations, which achieved notoriety when they circulated privately among collectors. Now, for the first time, the world gets the chance to hear them on CD. Never can a major star have had quite such a bizarre and candid encounter with a deranged fan. Unaware that he's being bugged, Dylan bullies, mocks and cajoles his persecutor in an attempt to make him desist. At one point, Dylan tells Weberman he's going to write a song about him called "Pig" and threatens to have badges made up with the word superimposed on Weberman's face. "You go through garbage like a pig. You're a pig mentality," Dylan taunts. It's hilarious, but also somewhat sinister. And it could never happen today.

In January 1971, Bob Dylan rang AJ Weberman, an obsessive fan prone to searching through Dylan’s dustbins. They spoke not once but twice, and Weberman taped the conversations, which achieved notoriety when they circulated privately among collectors. Now, for the first time, the world gets the chance to hear them on CD. Never can a major star have had quite such a bizarre and candid encounter with a deranged fan. Unaware that he’s being bugged, Dylan bullies, mocks and cajoles his persecutor in an attempt to make him desist. At one point, Dylan tells Weberman he’s going to write a song about him called “Pig” and threatens to have badges made up with the word superimposed on Weberman’s face. “You go through garbage like a pig. You’re a pig mentality,” Dylan taunts. It’s hilarious, but also somewhat sinister. And it could never happen today.

Brian Auger – Get Auger-Nized! The Brian Auger Anthology

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Though lauded by the likes of Herbie Hancock and The Beastie Boys, this tight retrospective instead casts the largely unheralded Auger as the missing link between Georgie Fame and Sly Stone. Between 1964 and 1967 in particular, his floor-filling Hammond R&B?with Julie Driscoll on vocals?swung the capital's clubs like a pill-popping retort to Booker T & The MGs, not least on the latter's "Red Beans & Rice" and Staxy soul-stirrer "Save Me". Hitting big with Dylan's still-disorienting psychonaut "This Wheel's On Fire" in 1968, the '70s saw Auger's reinvention as acid-jazz pioneer with his Oblivion Express, white-funk-heavy on "Freedom Jazz Dance" and "Listen Here". A sampler's paradise.

Though lauded by the likes of Herbie Hancock and The Beastie Boys, this tight retrospective instead casts the largely unheralded Auger as the missing link between Georgie Fame and Sly Stone. Between 1964 and 1967 in particular, his floor-filling Hammond R&B?with Julie Driscoll on vocals?swung the capital’s clubs like a pill-popping retort to Booker T & The MGs, not least on the latter’s “Red Beans & Rice” and Staxy soul-stirrer “Save Me”. Hitting big with Dylan’s still-disorienting psychonaut “This Wheel’s On Fire” in 1968, the ’70s saw Auger’s reinvention as acid-jazz pioneer with his Oblivion Express, white-funk-heavy on “Freedom Jazz Dance” and “Listen Here”. A sampler’s paradise.

Meat Puppets – Classic Puppets

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Phoenix, Arizona's Meat Puppets sounded tremendously deviant back in 1983, when they confounded hardcore protocols by making a kind of country record, Meat Puppets ll. The curious thing is that even now, when hybrids of alternative rock and roots music have become commonplace, the best Meat Puppets songs still sound unassimilable. Classic Puppets catalogues the band's first decade, from scrofulous punks to more conventional rockers (their entire '90s output is omitted for contractual reasons, but it may as well have been aesthetic ones). There's a good argument, actually, for bypassing Classic Puppets and investing in Meat Puppets II and 1985's Up On The Sun, since all the best songs figure on them. Here's the flaky magic of the band: songs which add stoned punk nihilism and a meandering sense of melody to country archetypes, with Curt Kirkwood's groggy vocals drifting in and out of tune. Kurt Cobain may have booked the Meat Puppets a place in the rock pantheon by collaborating with them on their MTV Unplugged appearance. Nevertheless, their legacy remains pleasingly?and sometimes infuriatingly?awkward.

Phoenix, Arizona’s Meat Puppets sounded tremendously deviant back in 1983, when they confounded hardcore protocols by making a kind of country record, Meat Puppets ll. The curious thing is that even now, when hybrids of alternative rock and roots music have become commonplace, the best Meat Puppets songs still sound unassimilable. Classic Puppets catalogues the band’s first decade, from scrofulous punks to more conventional rockers (their entire ’90s output is omitted for contractual reasons, but it may as well have been aesthetic ones). There’s a good argument, actually, for bypassing Classic Puppets and investing in Meat Puppets II and 1985’s Up On The Sun, since all the best songs figure on them. Here’s the flaky magic of the band: songs which add stoned punk nihilism and a meandering sense of melody to country archetypes, with Curt Kirkwood’s groggy vocals drifting in and out of tune. Kurt Cobain may have booked the Meat Puppets a place in the rock pantheon by collaborating with them on their MTV Unplugged appearance. Nevertheless, their legacy remains pleasingly?and sometimes infuriatingly?awkward.

Expecting To Cry

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If you like the us masters of late-'60s baroque romance?Burt Bacharach, Brian Wilson, David Gates, Jimmy Webb, Nilsson and Richard Carpenter, even cultier orch-poppers like Michael Brown and Curt Boettcher?then you'll love this long-forgotten debut album of lushly produced angst-muzak by Bergen White. Released in 1970, For Women Only was a commercial disaster, and yet for exquisitely crafted misery it merits contention alongside such huge-selling examples of the form as Aerial Ballet, Bread and A Song For You. It would suit this music's sumptuous sadness, and elevate the artist to the tragic pantheon, if it transpired that White was a victim of his own tortured perfectionism who went mad and disappeared after his one beauteous stab at greatness. Alas, such amateur myth-mongering has no place here. White enjoyed some success in the years leading up to his sole solo foray as a touring and recording singer-musician with Tennessee's own exponents of surfin'n'hotrod pop The Daytonas, while after For Women Only he became one of the most sought-after and prolific guns-for-hire in country's capital city, providing arrangements for everyone from Presley, Duane Eddy and Glen Campbell to Garth Brooks, Faith Hill and Dolly Parton. White is so gorgeously gloomy, though, with his gentle choirboy tenor the actual sound of desolation and heartbreak, it's almost a shame he didn't lose it big-style. Not that these dramatically scored ballads, performed by White and members of renowned Nashville wrecking crew Area Code 615, need any back-story to blow you away. He may have been married and divorced five times to date; nevertheless, For Women Only is no Blood On The Tracks, even if one of the titles, "The Bird Song", concerns the murder of a girlfriend. Rather it is a sort of melancholy muscle-flexing exercise; pure art ache. Throughout, White proves his mastery of studio techniques and song construction learned from his heroes Bacharach and Wilson and encouraged by the advances made by Webb, even Neil Young. Imagine a whole album's worth of "Expecting To Fly"s or "Didn't We"s, all harpsichords, harmonies and haunting chord progressions. Not just For Women Only?in fact, for everyone.

If you like the us masters of late-’60s baroque romance?Burt Bacharach, Brian Wilson, David Gates, Jimmy Webb, Nilsson and Richard Carpenter, even cultier orch-poppers like Michael Brown and Curt Boettcher?then you’ll love this long-forgotten debut album of lushly produced angst-muzak by Bergen White. Released in 1970, For Women Only was a commercial disaster, and yet for exquisitely crafted misery it merits contention alongside such huge-selling examples of the form as Aerial Ballet, Bread and A Song For You.

It would suit this music’s sumptuous sadness, and elevate the artist to the tragic pantheon, if it transpired that White was a victim of his own tortured perfectionism who went mad and disappeared after his one beauteous stab at greatness. Alas, such amateur myth-mongering has no place here. White enjoyed some success in the years leading up to his sole solo foray as a touring and recording singer-musician with Tennessee’s own exponents of surfin’n’hotrod pop The Daytonas, while after For Women Only he became one of the most sought-after and prolific guns-for-hire in country’s capital city, providing arrangements for everyone from Presley, Duane Eddy and Glen Campbell to Garth Brooks, Faith Hill and Dolly Parton.

White is so gorgeously gloomy, though, with his gentle choirboy tenor the actual sound of desolation and heartbreak, it’s almost a shame he didn’t lose it big-style. Not that these dramatically scored ballads, performed by White and members of renowned Nashville wrecking crew Area Code 615, need any back-story to blow you away. He may have been married and divorced five times to date; nevertheless, For Women Only is no Blood On The Tracks, even if one of the titles, “The Bird Song”, concerns the murder of a girlfriend.

Rather it is a sort of melancholy muscle-flexing exercise; pure art ache. Throughout, White proves his mastery of studio techniques and song construction learned from his heroes Bacharach and Wilson and encouraged by the advances made by Webb, even Neil Young. Imagine a whole album’s worth of “Expecting To Fly”s or “Didn’t We”s, all harpsichords, harmonies and haunting chord progressions.

Not just For Women Only?in fact, for everyone.

Kaleidoscope – Pulsating Dream: The Epic Recordings

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Sometimes?all right, usually?there's no justice in this rock'n'roll world. Kaleidoscope, formed from the ashes of various jug bands by the brilliant David Lindley, were so much more daring, playful and genre-splicing than their more successful SoCal contemporaries-the Dead meet the Magic Band, in essence. Every song on 1967's Side Trips could be by a different band?which was doubtless the problem. Follow the path from Solomon Feldthouse's proto-worldbeat "Egyptian Gardens" through Chris Darrow's more accessibly psych-folk "Keep Your Mind Open" to the Cab Calloway and Dock Boggs covers and you'll be hard put to find a thread of stylistic logic. But it all sounds extraordinarily fresh and thrilling.

Sometimes?all right, usually?there’s no justice in this rock’n’roll world. Kaleidoscope, formed from the ashes of various jug bands by the brilliant David Lindley, were so much more daring, playful and genre-splicing than their more successful SoCal contemporaries-the Dead meet the Magic Band, in essence. Every song on 1967’s Side Trips could be by a different band?which was doubtless the problem. Follow the path from Solomon Feldthouse’s proto-worldbeat “Egyptian Gardens” through Chris Darrow’s more accessibly psych-folk “Keep Your Mind Open” to the Cab Calloway and Dock Boggs covers and you’ll be hard put to find a thread of stylistic logic. But it all sounds extraordinarily fresh and thrilling.

Terry Allen – Juarez

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Terry Allen excites strong emotions in his fans. Andy Kershaw reckons he's the best troubadour in the world. Ex-Blaster and Uncut hero Dave Alvin writes in his sleevenotes that Juarez equals Blood On The Tracks and Randy Newman's Good Old Boys as one of the great songwriter records of the '70s. First released in 1976, every one of its sparsely arranged songs is a universe in itself. Bad-boy ballads, bittersweet love and honky-tonk existentialism all make their contribution to a record that deserves to be recognised as a landmark of modern Americana.

Terry Allen excites strong emotions in his fans. Andy Kershaw reckons he’s the best troubadour in the world. Ex-Blaster and Uncut hero Dave Alvin writes in his sleevenotes that Juarez equals Blood On The Tracks and Randy Newman’s Good Old Boys as one of the great songwriter records of the ’70s.

First released in 1976, every one of its sparsely arranged songs is a universe in itself. Bad-boy ballads, bittersweet love and honky-tonk existentialism all make their contribution to a record that deserves to be recognised as a landmark of modern Americana.

The People Band – People Band (1968)

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This was financed and produced by Charlie Watts, and recorded over one frantic day in October 1968. Several of its participants ended up in Kilburn & The Highroads?indeed, lan Dury himself was present in the control room?while another member, trumpeter Mike Figgis, ended up as a Hollywood film director. This non-idiomatic, anything-goes group produced an astonishing melee of music which could be as volcanically intense as Coltrane's "Ascension (Part 2") and as open-minded as anything in the post-punk lineage from mid-period Alternative TV to Acid Mothers Temple. What every Pink Floyd album after Ummagumma should have sounded like.

This was financed and produced by Charlie Watts, and recorded over one frantic day in October 1968. Several of its participants ended up in Kilburn & The Highroads?indeed, lan Dury himself was present in the control room?while another member, trumpeter Mike Figgis, ended up as a Hollywood film director. This non-idiomatic, anything-goes group produced an astonishing melee of music which could be as volcanically intense as Coltrane’s “Ascension (Part 2”) and as open-minded as anything in the post-punk lineage from mid-period Alternative TV to Acid Mothers Temple. What every Pink Floyd album after Ummagumma should have sounded like.

David Essex

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Think you know David Essex, have him pinned down as a '70s Robbie Williams, all self-deprecating cheeky chappie grin? Well, think again. On the evidence of the six albums he made for Edsel from 1973-77, Essex's music really was fucking weird. Take, for instance, his 1973 breakthrough smash "Rock On". Rarely has such a nostalgic record sounded so futuristic and yet somehow lost ("Which is the way that's clear?"). And credit is overdue to Essex's visionary producer Jeff Wayne who, with his dub spaces and raised-eyebrow strings, is the missing link between Norman Whitfield and Lee Perry. Rock On, the album, similarly journeyed to some very strange places. Laden throughout with backwards drums, absurd vocal phasing and guitar barrages, a song like "We All Insane" could pass as an outtake from Eno's Here Come The Warm Jets. And Massive Attack fans may be startled to discover the origin of their "I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me" refrain on the extraordinary "Streetfight". The self-titled 1974 follow-up was even more bizarre. True, there was the cheerful satire of "Gonna Make You A Star", but there was also "Stardust", far more suicidal than Ziggy... with its drowning gongs, and the mind-bending proto-industrial "Windows" which almost outdoes Nine Inch Nails in its brutality, culminating in a cacophony of police sirens and a child's voice screaming "Mummy!" All The Fun Of The Fair (1975) has Essex grinning maniacally on the cover, as if he's about to slit your throat, and the moment where the all-out freeform pile-up which climaxes the title track ("Let's take a rrrrrrIDE!") segues into the jolly granny-favourite "Hold Me Close" remains one of the most startling in pop. But Out On The Street (1976) is his masterpiece; 47 minutes of nervous breakdown set to music-almost the Sister Lovers of glam-from the slow death of the 10-minute title track ("PIMPS and PONCES!") through to the excoriating seven-minute death disco of "City Lights" (with a bass line which, shall we say, anticipates "Guns Of Brixton"), Essex sounds hoarse and near-psychotic throughout. This is the album Robbie Williams is yet to make. After that, Essex tried his hand at self-production with 1977's back-to-basics Gold And Ivory. Although musically far more conservative, the element of doubt is still present in songs like "Good Morning (Darling)"?perhaps the most affecting song Essex ever wrote-and the remarkable "Britannia", in its own way as punk as anything else in 1977 ("Complacency shat in your eye"). Think you know David Essex? Listen to this astonishing body of work-he belongs in the company of Peter Hammill and Kevin Coyne.

Think you know David Essex, have him pinned down as a ’70s Robbie Williams, all self-deprecating cheeky chappie grin? Well, think again. On the evidence of the six albums he made for Edsel from 1973-77, Essex’s music really was fucking weird.

Take, for instance, his 1973 breakthrough smash “Rock On”. Rarely has such a nostalgic record sounded so futuristic and yet somehow lost (“Which is the way that’s clear?”). And credit is overdue to Essex’s visionary producer Jeff Wayne who, with his dub spaces and raised-eyebrow strings, is the missing link between Norman Whitfield and Lee Perry.

Rock On, the album, similarly journeyed to some very strange places. Laden throughout with backwards drums, absurd vocal phasing and guitar barrages, a song like “We All Insane” could pass as an outtake from Eno’s Here Come The Warm Jets. And Massive Attack fans may be startled to discover the origin of their “I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me” refrain on the extraordinary “Streetfight”.

The self-titled 1974 follow-up was even more bizarre. True, there was the cheerful satire of “Gonna Make You A Star”, but there was also “Stardust”, far more suicidal than Ziggy… with its drowning gongs, and the mind-bending proto-industrial “Windows” which almost outdoes Nine Inch Nails in its brutality, culminating in a cacophony of police sirens and a child’s voice screaming “Mummy!”

All The Fun Of The Fair (1975) has Essex grinning maniacally on the cover, as if he’s about to slit your throat, and the moment where the all-out freeform pile-up which climaxes the title track (“Let’s take a rrrrrrIDE!”) segues into the jolly granny-favourite “Hold Me Close” remains one of the most startling in pop.

But Out On The Street (1976) is his masterpiece; 47 minutes of nervous breakdown set to music-almost the Sister Lovers of glam-from the slow death of the 10-minute title track (“PIMPS and PONCES!”) through to the excoriating seven-minute death disco of “City Lights” (with a bass line which, shall we say, anticipates “Guns Of Brixton”), Essex sounds hoarse and near-psychotic throughout. This is the album Robbie Williams is yet to make.

After that, Essex tried his hand at self-production with 1977’s back-to-basics Gold And Ivory. Although musically far more conservative, the element of doubt is still present in songs like “Good Morning (Darling)”?perhaps the most affecting song Essex ever wrote-and the remarkable “Britannia”, in its own way as punk as anything else in 1977 (“Complacency shat in your eye”).

Think you know David Essex? Listen to this astonishing body of work-he belongs in the company of Peter Hammill and Kevin Coyne.

Ex Marks The Spot

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There's undoubtedly an of-a-time and you-had-to-be-there quality to these records, but if they do speak to you, there's little else that ticks the same emotional boxes. What you're hearing is the appealing non-combining of two considerable talents. Richard's guitar-playing is achingly expressive, a whole galaxy more eloquent than his lugubrious voice, and always reined in just so. Linda's voice is attractive but in a specific way, like a column of jade, beautiful?no question?but hard to find the perfect spot for. Using these ingredients, they made records full of tension and promise, which never sold. At the start, the optimism of a new relationship and a fresh musical entity is tangible on I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight (1974) a rich, easy-flowing record. Richard's in charge, with a chance to move into territory he couldn't, for whatever reasons, properly explore in Fairport Convention with Sandy Denny. The prowling, suspenseful "The Calvary Cross" drips with possibility (there's a terrific extended live version added to this new edition). Richard modestly delivers a major song, "The End Of The Rainbow", and Linda shines on the plaintive "Has He Got A Friend For Me?" and the eerie "The Great Valerio". The overtly folky songs seem gimmicky by comparison?the corny "We Sing Hallelujah" is one to skip. Hokey Pokey (1975) attempts the same mixture but the highs are spread more thinly. "I'll Regret It All In The Morning", though, is a classic perils-of-drink song. Throughout these albums, the playing?by members of the Fairport clan, Gryphon and The Boys Of The Lough?is precariously casual, or a testament to restraint, if you prefer, especially on Pour Down Like Silver, when the couple's sudden absorption in the Sufi religion stalks the background?nothing explicit, just a sense of souls being searched. Sometimes dismissed as a dour record, Silver is actually deliciously sad. I'd love to hear a mix without John Kirkpatrick's accordion, which can be depressingly cheerful. But the long, brooding centrepieces, "Night Comes In" and "Dimming Of The Day", rank among Thompson's finest examples of passion-with-a-lid-on, and Linda's singing on the latter?a truly beautiful song?should part your nape hair.

There’s undoubtedly an of-a-time and you-had-to-be-there quality to these records, but if they do speak to you, there’s little else that ticks the same emotional boxes. What you’re hearing is the appealing non-combining of two considerable talents. Richard’s guitar-playing is achingly expressive, a whole galaxy more eloquent than his lugubrious voice, and always reined in just so. Linda’s voice is attractive but in a specific way, like a column of jade, beautiful?no question?but hard to find the perfect spot for. Using these ingredients, they made records full of tension and promise, which never sold.

At the start, the optimism of a new relationship and a fresh musical entity is tangible on I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight (1974) a rich, easy-flowing record. Richard’s in charge, with a chance to move into territory he couldn’t, for whatever reasons, properly explore in Fairport Convention with Sandy Denny. The prowling, suspenseful “The Calvary Cross” drips with possibility (there’s a terrific extended live version added to this new edition). Richard modestly delivers a major song, “The End Of The Rainbow”, and Linda shines on the plaintive “Has He Got A Friend For Me?” and the eerie “The Great Valerio”. The overtly folky songs seem gimmicky by comparison?the corny “We Sing Hallelujah” is one to skip. Hokey Pokey (1975) attempts the same mixture but the highs are spread more thinly. “I’ll Regret It All In The Morning”, though, is a classic perils-of-drink song.

Throughout these albums, the playing?by members of the Fairport clan, Gryphon and The Boys Of The Lough?is precariously casual, or a testament to restraint, if you prefer, especially on Pour Down Like Silver, when the couple’s sudden absorption in the Sufi religion stalks the background?nothing explicit, just a sense of souls being searched. Sometimes dismissed as a dour record, Silver is actually deliciously sad. I’d love to hear a mix without John Kirkpatrick’s accordion, which can be depressingly cheerful. But the long, brooding centrepieces, “Night Comes In” and “Dimming Of The Day”, rank among Thompson’s finest examples of passion-with-a-lid-on, and Linda’s singing on the latter?a truly beautiful song?should part your nape hair.

Bobby Charles – Last Train To Memphis

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The first white man signed to Chess, Charles' voice remains a singular treasure: the stone-baked smoulder of fresh bread with the sleepy essence of summer blossom. Fifteen previously unissued cuts from 1975 to 2001 (including "Everyday", earmarked for 1977's 'lost' album), this is seriously easy fare, given colour and tone by the stellar guest list of Neil Young, Fats Domino, Willie Nelson, Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, and spotlit by Maria Muldaur's bleary gospel duet "Homesick Blues". Includes 19-track bonus disc of Charles' own favourites.

The first white man signed to Chess, Charles’ voice remains a singular treasure: the stone-baked smoulder of fresh bread with the sleepy essence of summer blossom. Fifteen previously unissued cuts from 1975 to 2001 (including “Everyday”, earmarked for 1977’s ‘lost’ album), this is seriously easy fare, given colour and tone by the stellar guest list of Neil Young, Fats Domino, Willie Nelson, Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, and spotlit by Maria Muldaur’s bleary gospel duet “Homesick Blues”. Includes 19-track bonus disc of Charles’ own favourites.

Various Artists – John Lennon’s Jukebox

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This collection of Lennon faves, from Chuck Berry and Smokey Robinson to Dylan and The Lovin' Spoonful, aims to demonstrate how "his originality was born out of imitation". For anyone around during the Beatles' rise, most of this music is very familiar?"In The Midnight Hour", "Be Bop A Lula" and so on. But less common tracks by Timmy Shaw, Derek Martin, Paul Revere and Barrett Strong hold the interest. And any passing kids just discovering the Fabs should hear this, if only to underline the influence of black music on key white artists?something the next generation largely ignored, hence the bloody '80s!

This collection of Lennon faves, from Chuck Berry and Smokey Robinson to Dylan and The Lovin’ Spoonful, aims to demonstrate how “his originality was born out of imitation”. For anyone around during the Beatles’ rise, most of this music is very familiar?”In The Midnight Hour”, “Be Bop A Lula” and so on. But less common tracks by Timmy Shaw, Derek Martin, Paul Revere and Barrett Strong hold the interest. And any passing kids just discovering the Fabs should hear this, if only to underline the influence of black music on key white artists?something the next generation largely ignored, hence the bloody ’80s!

Jonathan Richman And The Modern Lovers

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Props to Jonathan. In 1976, while the rest of the rockin' world was trying to cop a Lou Reed lick, the creator of "Roadrunner" (one of the greatest dumb-ass two-chorders of all time) had already abandoned all that in favour of playing entry-level ditties to retarded kids and old people?among the most radical things any artist's ever done to upset the gatekeepers of cool. What was with the acoustic rockabilly kids stuff?"Hey There Little Insect", "Ice Cream Man" and "Wheels On The Bus" sung in an adenoidal gulp? Had he banged his head? His life-long refutation of the rock stance has been lonely but not fruitless. It'd be a sad heart that didn't respond to something on these records with delight.

Props to Jonathan. In 1976, while the rest of the rockin’ world was trying to cop a Lou Reed lick, the creator of “Roadrunner” (one of the greatest dumb-ass two-chorders of all time) had already abandoned all that in favour of playing entry-level ditties to retarded kids and old people?among the most radical things any artist’s ever done to upset the gatekeepers of cool. What was with the acoustic rockabilly kids stuff?”Hey There Little Insect”, “Ice Cream Man” and “Wheels On The Bus” sung in an adenoidal gulp? Had he banged his head? His life-long refutation of the rock stance has been lonely but not fruitless. It’d be a sad heart that didn’t respond to something on these records with delight.

Sins Of The Father

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DIRECTED BY Andrew Jarecki Opens April 9, Cert 15, 107 mins Are we striding into the golden dawn of documentary film-making? Movie-goers have flocked to see Bowling For Columbine and Spellbound. Charlize Theron's remarkable portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster finds its documentary...

DIRECTED BY Andrew Jarecki

Opens April 9, Cert 15, 107 mins

Are we striding into the golden dawn of documentary film-making? Movie-goers have flocked to see Bowling For Columbine and Spellbound. Charlize Theron’s remarkable portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster finds its documentary echo in Nick Broomfield’s account of the real-life Wuornos’ last days in Aileen: The Life And Death Of A Serial Killer. As veteran documentarist DA Pennebaker told me recently: “Ideas are the most powerful weapons around. The documentary film is a fantastic way to express an idea, because it doesn’t necessarily come from a large corporate entity, it comes from a single person’s view. It can take hold so fast and can’t be controlled the way movies can be controlled, by how much money you spend on advertising and what theatres you put them in.”

Surfing the crest of the docu-wave comes Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing The Friedmans, an astounding glimpse into the black hole where the American Dream used to live. Jarecki, having grown tired of being a dot-com millionaire, thought his first feature film was going to be a documentary about clowns who entertain children at birthday parties. Over a period of months he got to know David Friedman, New York’s most successful exponent of cap-and-bells tomfoolery. As well as finding him to be trembling with pent-up rage behind his professionally hilarious fa

Song For A Raggy Boy

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OPENS APRIL 2, CERT 15, 97 MINS Castletown, Ireland, 1939:fleeing the Spanish civil war, William Franklin (Aidan Quinn) is appointed the first lay teacher of St Jude's, a school for 'wayward' boys. Franklin's flashbacks of a Spanish Royalist death squad soon merge with the fascistic system of punishment and abuse run by school prefect Brother John (lain Glen). Scripted by Patrick Galvin from his novel of the same name, itself based on a true story, this is a daunting portrayal of child cruelty within the Irish Catholic church. Director Aisling Walsh depicts St Jude's as an obvious but shrewdly drawn metaphor for the gathering international fight against fascism. Franklin's teaching methods?based on trust?bring him into direct conflict with Glen, as does his past in Spain. Quinn convinces as a good man wrestling demons and Glen's impressive as a petty tyrant fuelled by hate. Not as devastating a condemnation of authoritarian Catholicism as Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters, but still a thoughtful rendering of a harrowing tale.

OPENS APRIL 2, CERT 15, 97 MINS

Castletown, Ireland, 1939:fleeing the Spanish civil war, William Franklin (Aidan Quinn) is appointed the first lay teacher of St Jude’s, a school for ‘wayward’ boys. Franklin’s flashbacks of a Spanish Royalist death squad soon merge with the fascistic system of punishment and abuse run by school prefect Brother John (lain Glen). Scripted by Patrick Galvin from his novel of the same name, itself based on a true story, this is a daunting portrayal of child cruelty within the Irish Catholic church. Director Aisling Walsh depicts St Jude’s as an obvious but shrewdly drawn metaphor for the gathering international fight against fascism. Franklin’s teaching methods?based on trust?bring him into direct conflict with Glen, as does his past in Spain. Quinn convinces as a good man wrestling demons and Glen’s impressive as a petty tyrant fuelled by hate. Not as devastating a condemnation of authoritarian Catholicism as Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters, but still a thoughtful rendering of a harrowing tale.

Gothika

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OPENS APRIL 2, CERT 15,99 MINS Halle Berry plays a prison psychologist whose most interesting patient (Pen...

OPENS APRIL 2, CERT 15,99 MINS

Halle Berry plays a prison psychologist whose most interesting patient (Pen

Blind Flight

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OPENS APRIL 9, CERT 15, 97 MINS Based on memoirs written by the two subjects themselves, Blind Flight unfolds what happened during the four-and-a-half years that Northern Ireland-reared schoolteacher Brian Keenan (Ian Hart) and English reporter John McCarthy (Linus Roache) were held as prisoners by a Lebanese terrorist cell. That means not a whole helluva lot happens at all, apart from the two men, initially wary of each other, becoming the closest of friends, enduring psychological and physical torture by their captors before being released. But don't expect The Shawshank Redemption meets Midnight Express, because Blind Flight is a much quieter, sober-sided affair. Ultimately, its message is one of forgiveness and a tribute to the endurance of the human spirit?all the usual humanist guff you'd find on a Sunday night on BBC1. But both leads give fine performances here?Hart and Roache have played opposite each other before and have great on-screen chemistry. Good supporting turns also help make this a consistently watchable if never more than middling experience.

OPENS APRIL 9, CERT 15, 97 MINS

Based on memoirs written by the two subjects themselves, Blind Flight unfolds what happened during the four-and-a-half years that Northern Ireland-reared schoolteacher Brian Keenan (Ian Hart) and English reporter John McCarthy (Linus Roache) were held as prisoners by a Lebanese terrorist cell. That means not a whole helluva lot happens at all, apart from the two men, initially wary of each other, becoming the closest of friends, enduring psychological and physical torture by their captors before being released. But don’t expect The Shawshank Redemption meets Midnight Express, because Blind Flight is a much quieter, sober-sided affair. Ultimately, its message is one of forgiveness and a tribute to the endurance of the human spirit?all the usual humanist guff you’d find on a Sunday night on BBC1. But both leads give fine performances here?Hart and Roache have played opposite each other before and have great on-screen chemistry. Good supporting turns also help make this a consistently watchable if never more than middling experience.

Stir It Up

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DIRECTED BY Hector Babenco STARRING Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos, Milton Gon...

DIRECTED BY Hector Babenco

STARRING Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos, Milton Gon

The Passion Of The Christ

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DiRECTED BY Mel Gibson STARRING James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci Opened March 26, Cert 18, 126 mins If you enjoyed the finale of Braveheart, where Mel Gibson was hanged, drawn and quartered in lascivious close-up, then this is the movie for you. This time it's worse and lasts for two hours, as we're dragged through Christ's final hours of torture and crucifixion. Gibson apparently wanted to "just tell the truth" about the death of Christ, but Mel's the last guy you'd go to for authenticity (Braveheart? The Patriot? Hello?). Unquestionably, Gibson has forced a rethink about traditional anodyne images of the crucifixion and supplants them with eye-watering cruelty, but ultimately his movie is no more 'realistic' than Finding Nemo. While the scourging of Jesus is presented as a blood-spraying, flesh-spattering atrocity exhibition lingered over in appalling detail, elsewhere Gibson doesn't mind inventing walk-on cameos for Satan or hallucinogenic visions for Judas. "Reality", it seems, is merely a tactical terror-weapon. The visceral force of the blood-letting will knock you off balance, but if you can manage to engage your critical faculties you'll find that behind it lies film-making of pedestrian banality. Flashbacks of Christ's life are delivered in facile slow-motion, lit like a Lexus commercial and drenched in treacly orchestral music. The movie's most heartstring-tugging moment is when Mary runs to comfort her son as he drags his cross towards Calvary, remembering how she used to cosset him as a child, but the episode is pure sentimental invention. The focus of the film is so narrow and offers so little insight into Christ's life and teachings that the characters can't be more than cartoons of Love, Betrayal, Pity or whatever (with the exception of Pontius Pilate, portrayed as a dithering Lib-Dem). Jews are up in arms about the Fagin-like Pharisees, though nobody seems to have noticed the way King Herod's court is a bestiary of eye-rolling cretins while the criminal Barabbas is caricatured as a dribbling, one-eyed Hulk. Meanwhile, Romans might feel aggrieved at being represented as subhuman sadists. Unbelievably, some clerics are recommending this as instructive family viewing, which suggests that we atheists were right all along.

DiRECTED BY Mel Gibson

STARRING James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci

Opened March 26, Cert 18, 126 mins

If you enjoyed the finale of Braveheart, where Mel Gibson was hanged, drawn and quartered in lascivious close-up, then this is the movie for you. This time it’s worse and lasts for two hours, as we’re dragged through Christ’s final hours of torture and crucifixion.

Gibson apparently wanted to “just tell the truth” about the death of Christ, but Mel’s the last guy you’d go to for authenticity (Braveheart? The Patriot? Hello?). Unquestionably, Gibson has forced a rethink about traditional anodyne images of the crucifixion and supplants them with eye-watering cruelty, but ultimately his movie is no more ‘realistic’ than Finding Nemo.

While the scourging of Jesus is presented as a blood-spraying, flesh-spattering atrocity exhibition lingered over in appalling detail, elsewhere Gibson doesn’t mind inventing walk-on cameos for Satan or hallucinogenic visions for Judas. “Reality”, it seems, is merely a tactical terror-weapon.

The visceral force of the blood-letting will knock you off balance, but if you can manage to engage your critical faculties you’ll find that behind it lies film-making of pedestrian banality. Flashbacks of Christ’s life are delivered in facile slow-motion, lit like a Lexus commercial and drenched in treacly orchestral music. The movie’s most heartstring-tugging moment is when Mary runs to comfort her son as he drags his cross towards Calvary, remembering how she used to cosset him as a child, but the episode is pure sentimental invention.

The focus of the film is so narrow and offers so little insight into Christ’s life and teachings that the characters can’t be more than cartoons of Love, Betrayal, Pity or whatever (with the exception of Pontius Pilate, portrayed as a dithering Lib-Dem). Jews are up in arms about the Fagin-like Pharisees, though nobody seems to have noticed the way King Herod’s court is a bestiary of eye-rolling cretins while the criminal Barabbas is caricatured as a dribbling, one-eyed Hulk. Meanwhile, Romans might feel aggrieved at being represented as subhuman sadists.

Unbelievably, some clerics are recommending this as instructive family viewing, which suggests that we atheists were right all along.

The Agronomist

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OPENS APRIL 16, CERT PG, 87 MINS With chaos again engulfing Haiti, The Agronomist takes on genuine topicality. On a break from his high-profile Hollywood work, director Jonathan Demme paints a moving and defiantly partisan portrait of Haitian activist Jean Dominique, an outspoken critic of his nation's rulers past and present. Director and star were friends for years, and this documentary was underway well before Dominique was assassinated four years ago. The dry title belies the charisma of the subject. Dominique campaigned passionately for Haiti's rural poor, using his radio station to attack the corruption of successive leaders, including the recently ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Forces close to Aristide, Demme implies, were implicated in the murder. Dominique's widow now defies death threats to continue her late husband's work. Although mired in Haiti's murderously complex political history, at heart this is a human drama, the tale of a courageous rebel who loved his wife and country enough to die for both.

OPENS APRIL 16, CERT PG, 87 MINS

With chaos again engulfing Haiti, The Agronomist takes on genuine topicality. On a break from his high-profile Hollywood work, director Jonathan Demme paints a moving and defiantly partisan portrait of Haitian activist Jean Dominique, an outspoken critic of his nation’s rulers past and present. Director and star were friends for years, and this documentary was underway well before Dominique was assassinated four years ago.

The dry title belies the charisma of the subject. Dominique campaigned passionately for Haiti’s rural poor, using his radio station to attack the corruption of successive leaders, including the recently ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Forces close to Aristide, Demme implies, were implicated in the murder. Dominique’s widow now defies death threats to continue her late husband’s work. Although mired in Haiti’s murderously complex political history, at heart this is a human drama, the tale of a courageous rebel who loved his wife and country enough to die for both.

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