Saturday, March 8, 2025

student selection (1 of ??)

When they do essays or presentations, or when we do a class organized around videoclips they've suggested around a theme or genre, my students often turn me onto things I've never heard /  heard of. 

This is a sporadic blog series representing these oddities and gems.

Occasionally they turn me onto something I do know about but have not heard this particular iteration

So it is with the inaugural offering - a fantastic live version of "Born Under Punches" by Talking Heads (my #3 postpunk band back in the day, after PiL and Slits). It's concert footage but not from either of the live albums / concert movies. 



Suddenly I'm not sure whether I ever saw the Jonathan Demme movie... bit remiss if not, for a postpunk historian. 

The idea of the concert movie has never really appealed to me, though.

Nor - really - the live album. 

Qs for the massive 

1. What are the great concert movies? 

(Don't bother to say The Last Waltz - it is great, in places, yet also hugely aggravating on account of Robbie Robertson's smugness - and the final bit of The Band's music on a soundstage, with no audience, is some kind of cultural crime, or at least all-time Top 10 case of legacy-self-enshitenment) * 

2. What are the live albums worth bothering with? 



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You don't believe me? Gird thy earholes and eyeholes



student selection (1 of ??)

When they do essays or presentations, or when we do a class organized around videoclips they've suggested around a theme or genre, my st...