Author: James Duke-Evans

Most concert films are tedious. Sorry (I’m not sorry) but it seems as though every act and their roadie thinks that their fans will somehow feel more emotionally connected to them if they release a show video inter-cut with some black and white handheld footage of “the real them” arriving at the venue, preparing backstage and offering homogenised pearls of wisdom. I’ve been grabbed by very few concert films since Cocksucker Blues, Robert Frank’s cinéma vérité expose of The Rolling Stones ‘72 American tour. However staged parts of it may have been (I doubt even Keith and Ronnie would have bothered chucking that telly off the balcony if the camera wasn’t rolling) it gave an insight into the men behind the myth. Perhaps too much of an insight as when they saw it, the ever image-conscious Stones legally barred it’s public screening. The internet allows one to circumvent that sort of daftness these days but I wish I’d seen CS Blues before pretty much every concert film except Stop Making Sense and Gimme Shelter (notable exceptions as they don’t just feel like early rehearsals for Spinal Tap).