‘A Curious Life’ The Story Of The Levellers DVD
It feels like a very creative year for the household Folk-Punk-Rock band. First we bore witness to some great collaborations on some classic tracks, like Billy Bragg’s vocal for ‘Hope Street’, Frank Turner guesting on ‘Julie’ and with Bellowhead for a rousing ‘Just The One’ all springing to mind. all these acted as a sweat prelude to the full to the brim, ‘Greatest Hits’ release and huge tour with another favourite The Selecter. Which brings us closer to the subject of this review, A Curious Life; Levellers’ the very recent film screening & acoustic tour ‘A Curious Life’ is a film about the Levellers and their unique career. Now to receive it’s DVD release.
As well as the Greatest Hits release and huge tour this year for Levellers, a film about their rise to fame in the 1990’s ‘A Curious Life’ had its premiere in June 2014. Told through the unique perspective of Jeremy Cunningham, the band’s bass player and artist, and directed by former Chumbawamba frontman Dunstan Bruce, the film focuses on the Levellers phenomenal success between 1988 and 1998 before they disappeared for a time in a train wreck of drink, drugs and creative drought. However, despite reaching their lowest ebb, the band never split up and after a few years in the wilderness they re-invented themselves as a self-managing collective with their own studio, label and Beautiful Days festival and in the process became unexpected survivors of the UK’s famously fickle music industry. Their very phoenix-like rise once again is enough for a gaggle of our writers to sing the bands praise, for a few of us we’re smiling cheshire cat sized smile, for both their return and their creative collective, but the music anthemic, heart-felt songs-a-plenty with a social consciousness that never seems to stop appealing to the likes of us,along with and everyone else that has not entertained the right wing falsehood rhetoric.
Told through the unique perspective of Jeremy Cunningham, the band’s bass player and artist, and directed by former Chumbawamba frontman Dunstan Bruce. The opening footage takes you to Jeremy’s gaff of 20 years, feeding seagulls with cat food, plush squid mini-collection, PHD’s and the like, before the subject matter turns to all things Levellers cue first mostly live a montage of Levellers classics, playing to tens of thousands of bouncing fan. Next the documentary takes you to Jeremy’s parents and a fantastic Levellers poste and flyer collections and multiple framed gold discs.
Next we visit the dungeon aka box to box-file Levellers archive as Jerry empty’s a seemingly random collect of photo shoots, that graced many musical newspapers and magazines even in the late 1980-early 1990 (google it, they cost considerably less even back then), finding their Glastonbury 1992 Pyramid stage footage was a task well rewarded, not HD but still looks fine, as Jeremy comments with a smile “the Levellers were not’ HD in 1992”. Which was worth seeing as everyone seems to remember their 1994 appearance still on great from, but the arsehole music hacks tried to put the hatchet in, only Melody Maker was an exception. One thing i can trace back that this one of the reasons why I stopped buying NME, these days you’d be done for incitement basically saying fuck them and their convoy – a thinly veiled attack on travellers and other fans, no matter where they were from, in short just like me or you, just demonised by media and the feckless 1922 committee back then it seems NME apparently were the fund-raisers for ukip or something, left half a generation thinking they had shipped in Daily Mail interns.
Despite bad press the ‘Zeitgeist’ album that followed, went in at No.1 spot that spawned loads of success and intense touring still to packed halls, festivals and arenas, least they deserved, of the time there is some great live footage. But that’s not the main focus, overall this is a personal and insightful look into the world of the Levellers and Jeremy Cunningham. Highly entertaining it is as well. But despite the astute questioning by Dunstan, it left some unanswered questions, who’s going to fix that door or lock to Jeremy’s ‘art department’? and arguably of more import, could somebody send the bass player, artist and song-writer, a new ringtone. Jesting aside, the struggles Jeremy and the band faced mostly of self induced semi-destructive self medication. both through the positive and negative consequences, explain the breaks, even better that the lows, last section of ‘A Curious Life’ seems all about looking forward.
Warm and watchable, ‘A Curious Life’ is, in Dunstan’s own words reads, “A potted journey through 25 years of subsidised dysfunctionalism; an uplifting tale of battling demons that reminds us that behind every band there is a story of struggle for expression, acceptance and survival.”
With last year’s ‘Chaos Theory’ album still in mind, the future feels real for the band. They’d slag me off if i described them as a British institution, but for loads of fans, they’re more familiar than Coronation Street and a damn more entertaining, even if it is subsidised ‘dysfunctionalism’ – you could make the same case for Opera. 8.8/10
Steve Janes
www.levellers.co.uk | www.facebook.com/levellersofficial