THE ROLLING STONES: AGAINST THE WALL at the SCREAM GALLERY

When the reissued Exile On Main Street made number one on the album charts the other week it restored a little faith in the dwindling music buying public. I’m guessing the average Stones fan has a few quid in their pocket and they’ll need a few bob if thinking of purchasing any of the photographs on display at the Scream Gallery. Using the old adage that if you have to ask how much something is you can’t afford it then I’m assuming they’re out of my price range.

That aside, purely from an exhibition point of view, they are well worth a look as they - according to the geezer in the gallery who may have been stretching the truth - consist entirely of previously unseen pictures taken between 1964 and 1971 and there are some real crackers. Robert Rosen caught them in ‘64 all taking a piss in the scuzzy lavs at Victoria train station and David Montgomery snapped them scoffing fish and chips down the Kings Road and in various states of undress for Sticky Fingers promotion. But the best picture is the image above (taken on my phone) by Bob Bonis showing Brian and Keith larking by the pool in 1965. The sign above Brian’s head reads “You’re Welcome To Swim”.

The Rolling Stones: Against The Wall is at Scream, 34a Bruton Street, London W1 until 3 July 2010, admission free.

ORNETTE COLEMAN and THE MASTER MUSICIANS OF JAJOUKA FEATURING BACHIR ATTAR at the MELTDOWN FESTIVAL

“From the mountains of Morocco, please welcome, the Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Bachir Attar” goes the introduction to the rarefied splendour of the Royal Festival Hall. “Bet they don’t live there now” says some geezer behind me. He’s probably right of course but it misses the point.

William Burroughs described the Master Musicians as “the primordial sounds of a 4,000 year old rock ‘n’ roll band” and Brian Jones navigated his way to their secluded rural village hidden in the Jibala hills, 50 miles south of Tangier, to record them for Brian Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka. Brion Gysin - creator of cut-ups and inventor of the Dream Machine - introduced their music to both Burroughs and Jones and used the musicians as house band for his restaurant “The 1001 Nights” in the 1950s to enable him to listen to them every night. As hip patronage goes, that’s some trio.

Tonight the musicians are trimmed down to an eight piece unit; four ghaita pipes and four drums of varying sizes. Whether they actually needed the house PA is questionable and they certainly tested the expertise of the sound engineer. Those pipes squealed and wailed at such a volume I thought my ear drum was about to rattle clean out of my head. Hundreds of hands cupped ears in unison. Was as funny to watch as it was painful to listen to.

Fortunately that soon settled down and they got in their groove. Its clear why they sounded so incredible to those first Western discoverers – they still do, although we’re more savvy to “world music” now so there’s less a wow factor. The musicians, historically, have been supported by the farming toil of their fellow villagers and in addition to playing religious festivals their music is said to cure mental illness. The loony locals are tied up and the music banishes the madness. Although this can take “one month, or if someone is more sick he can stay two months, or three” according to Bachir Attar. Attar is the son of El Hadj Abdesalam Attar (see photo, with the different spelling of JouJouka ), who led the Musicians in the Brian Jones period, and who perhaps controversially has now trademarked the name “The Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Bachir Attar”. It’s extremely hypnotic, trippy stuff (even without the aid of humungous quantities of hashish); repetitive but with subtle multi rhythms. Like ancient shoegazing.

They can play for up to ten hours, which would surely send folk mad not cure them, but tonight it’s a disappointingly short half an hour before they shuffle off to make way for headliner and Meltdown curator Ornette Coleman.

What is it about old jazz dudes? Coleman hunches on, barely inching one foot in front of the other, clambers on to his stool and wheezes something unintelligible into the microphone. Yet stick his white sax in his mouth, or a trumpet, or give him a violin, and it’s akin to pumping him with oxygen and shooting him with speed.

The concert was billed as “Reflections of The Shape of Jazz to Come” so I was expecting a good proportion of the set to be from that groundbreaking album of fifty years ago but Coleman, forever his own man, had different ideas. It was all enjoyable enough in a far out hipster jazz kinda way but as nifty as Coleman is you can’t expect him to be on the top of his game aged nearly 80. It did encourage me to delve deeper into his back catalogue though, so, job done. Patti Smith wandered on unannounced and rapped some crazy free form beat poetry on one number, and the Jajoukas came out for a lengthy jam on another.

Jajouka translates as “something good coming to you”, and it did. Never thought for one moment I'd ever get to see them. Next time - on their turf.

KENNETH ANGER SHOOTS THE MOON

Underground filmmaker extraordinaire, Kenneth Anger, was at the BFI a couple of weeks ago for the showing of his 1950 film Rabbit’s Moon and to plug a new DVD collection Kenneth Anger: Magick Lantern Cycle.

As you’d expect Mr Anger is no shrinking violet. He enters stage right, arms wide apart displaying a red, white and blue college sweater with A.N.G.E.R. emblazoned diagonally across it and a face that looks like a Richard Nixon mask that’s been left too close to the radiator. Is gently mocking an 82 year old Satan botherer wise? If I wake up tomorrow with goat’s hooves for hands, please call the authorities. Be difficult to use my mobile.

Rabbit’s Moon was like a silent movie with a doo-wop soundtrack. The story was something to do with some clown bloke yearning for the moon which was some metaphor for love or something. It was only seventeen minutes long but I kept nodding off.

Joining Anger on stage to “discuss his influences and legacy” were Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard who spouted the first load of tosh that sprung to mind. Gary Lachman knew his onions but was scarcely given a chance before Anger threw the questions open to the audience. As usual you mostly got inane crap from wordy arseholes that get off on the sound of their own voice spewing pseudo-intellectual claptrap to an audience with no place to go.

One bright spark did however ask whether Anger had studied hypnosis, which he confirmed and said he also used repetitive techniques in Rabbit’s Moon to induce a dream-like state in the viewer. So that’s why I feel asleep. The man’s a genius. Can I have my hands back now?

Someone else did cut through with a question about Bobby Beausoleil and whether they were still in touch. Beausoleil was due to star in Lucifer Rising but they fell out when Bobby used Anger’s money on a block of marijuana “as big as this table”, stole most of the film and, legend has it, buried it in the desert. Then falling in with Charles Manson began the series of “Manson Murders” by stabbing to death Gary Hinman and daubing “Political Piggy” on the wall in Hinman’s blood. Not that such an act seemed to perturb Anger too much as he still got Beausoleil to write and record the score to Lucifer Rising from inside Tracey Prison. So, still in touch? “A little”, says Kenneth, “he sends me ten page letters but he’s lucky to get a postcard back. He’s got a lot of time on his hands”.

As for the Magick Lantern Cycle DVD set, it’s a thorough representative package containing ten of his best known films from 1947-1981 (plus an extra one about Anger’s idol Aleister Crowley from 2002). There’s also a 71 minute documentary, new Anger commentaries, and an insightful and attractive 34 page booklet written by Lachman. If you’re looking for neat, 90 minute, straight narrative films then look elsewhere. What you get are short, dialogue-free, image laden collages and experimental filmmaking. Some of which (Fireworks, Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandos) are brazenly homoerotic (sailors, leather capped bikers, youths in tight jeans polishing their chrome) and others (Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Invocation of My Demon Brother and Lucifer Rising starring Marianne Faithfull, who looks beautiful apart from one scene where she looks like a puffy eyed Brian Jones, are heavy on the occult symbolism. Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (from 1954) is an especially freakish headfuck; coming on like the world’s first psychedelic pop video. All are set so perfectly to music (be it doo-wop, girl groups, classical music, Mick Jagger fingering a Moog, wigged out psych) that you wonder whether the music was set to the images or the images set to the music. Special mention to Jonathan Halper’s soundtrack to Puce Moment; you will not believe it was recorded in 1949 – it sounds like backstreet psychedelic folk from fifteen-twenty years later.

I can't say I'm mad about it all but it's definitely worth seeing and certainly interesting.

Kenneth Anger: Magick Lantern Cycle 2 disc DVD Set is released by BFI, priced £22.99