director
Derek Burbidge
producer
Michael White
camera crew
David Anderson
Kate Humphreys
Patrick McCann
John Metcalfe
Mike Metcalfe
Dick Pope
John Simmons
editor
Jim Elderton
bands
The Police - Wall of Voodoo
- Toyah Willcox - John Cooper Clarke - Orchestral Manoeuvres
in the Dark - Chelsea - Oingo Boingo - Echo and the Bunnymen
- Jools Holland - XTC - Klaus Nomi - Athletico Spizz 80 - The
Go-Gos - Dead Kennedys - Steel Pulse - Gary Numan - Joan Jett
and the Blackhearts - Surf Punks - Members - Au Pairs - The Cramps
- Invisible Sex - Pere Ubu - Devo - The Alleycats - John Ottway
- Gang of Four - 999 - Fleshtones - X - Skafish - Splodgenessabounds
- UB40
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 96m
u.s.
release: April 7, 1982
video
availability: VHS (out
of print)
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I loved every second of Urgh!
A Music War, even when I was baffled. Perhaps especially
when I was baffled. How else does one respond to such only-in-the-early-'80s
acts as Invisible Sex, who appear onstage in makeshift hazmat
suits, or the late Klaus Nomi in his futuro-bizarro getup
and his soaring falsetto, or the Surf Punks with their punk-nerd outfits
and the simulated sex in an onstage beach shack? Dear God, what
a strange and wondrous time for alternative music. This was an
era in which the Go-Gos could be sandwiched between the
hardcore punk acts Athletico Spizz 80 and Dead Kennedys and somehow not seem out
of place. (Belinda Carlisle, in the Urgh! footage, may
be bouncy and happy, but she's got the prerequisite short punk
'do.)
Urgh! was filmed in 1980 at a variety of locations
(New York, London, France, Los Angeles) as a somewhat scattershot
attempt to capture some of the emerging New Wave and punk acts
of the day. It can be seen today as an accidental Woodstock,
as musically important in its way as Michael Wadleigh's Oscar-winning
documentary was. It catches, for instance, one of XTC's last live performances (a ripsnorting
"Respectable Street," easily one of the film's highlights)
before Andy Partridge got stage fright and announced that XTC
would no longer do concerts. At the end, when the Police do "Roxanne" (a
great performance -- man, they kicked ass in concert back
in the day) and then "So Lonely," they invite various
groups we've seen in the movie: UB40, Skafish, the ivory-tickling Jools Holland, and others; it's a semi-historic
jam.
When the camera moves in on
one hot babe or another in the crowd (which is somewhat often),
you can tell that at the time the camera crew was just filming
whatever caught their eye (and pants), but seen today it's a
cultural document: It's fun to see how young women were dressing
to go see X or Pere Ubu. From this movie, you might
also conclude that the Lollapalooza generation didn't invent
pogo-ing, moshing, and stage-diving; you see it all here (most
amusingly, I thought, during sets by the Go-Gos and Oingo Boingo). Urgh! also captures
a deadpan-antagonistic time in rock. Many of the punk and New
Wave acts here don't seem to give a fuck whether you like them
or not, yet they come to play and they play hard. When Lux Interior
of the Cramps sticks his mike in his mouth
and staggers around grunting as it hangs out, it's a primal moment
to rival Pete Townshend's guitar-smashing; it comes from the
same basic impulse, anyway.
You notice, too, the high level
of joy in these performances. Many of the arrogant young
(mostly) men onstage may have been in it to entertain themselves,
but they keep things moving. The gyrations here couldn't be further
from the frozen-faced growling of today's "alternative"
rock. Dead Kennedys' frontman Jello Biafra, spitting out
"Bleed for Me," exhorts the crowd to enjoy the freedom
to hear punk rock -- while it lasts (the punk rock and
the freedom). Biafra has a corrosive staccato gaiety that matches Johnny
Rotten at his most splenetic. (He also has a finely honed sense
of political outrage: "Bleed for Me," which begins
with a description of government torture, goes on to rant, "In
the name of world peace/In the name of world profits/America
pumps up our secret police/America wants fuel/To get it, it needs
puppets/So what's ten million dead?/If it's keeping out the Russians!")
Kenneth Spiers, lead shouter of
Athletico Spizz 80 (doing their novelty hit "Where's Captain
Kirk?"), jumps around spraying the audience, fellow band
members, and himself with silly string, then tosses the empty
can. Jim Skafish bends himself into art-rock pretzels during
"Sign of the Cross," a nerd's idea of punk (a lot
of the music here is a nerd's idea of punk, including Devo,
represented here with the relentless "Uncontrollable Urge").
Steel Pulse illustrate their song "Ku
Klux Klan" with a (black) band member capering onstage in
a KKK outfit. Howard Devoto of Magazine -- the former Buzzcocks member
who bears an uncanny resemblance to Chuck & Buck's
Mike White -- strolls around the stage as if waiting for a bus,
a sly parody of punk flailing that has its own quiet punk wit.
In comparison with the carefree showmanship seen in Urgh!,
many of today's acts seem stoic, almost monastic, and far more
self-involved and nihilistic than the most insular New Wave warbler.
Half of these groups didn't
seem to go anywhere after 1981, but it's a treat to go back in
time and catch the ones that did make it. Two elder statesmen
of film-soundtrack composition, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo and
Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo, come off here like the sweaty madmen
they were back then. Joan Jett (doing an electrifying "Bad
Reputation") looks appealingly almost-chubby, before the
label presumably told her to slim down for MTV; the same is true
of Belinda Carlisle. Exene Cervenka nonchalantly commands the
stage on X's "Beyond and Back," as does Gary Numan
(tooling around in a little car) on "Down in the Park."
The one-hit wonders and no-hit wonders are equally alluring.
I was charmed by Toyah
Willcox's jubilant, oh-shit-I'm-supposed-to-be-cool,
but-I'm-happy hopping about. It's a shame the exuberant
Chelsea weren't better known. Wall of Voodoo, whose lead singer Stan
Ridgway resembles a crank-addled Griffin Dunne, pumps up the
defiant "Back in Flesh" (no, not "Mexican Radio"
-- that would be too obvious). The movie is heavily male, but
the female singers -- Willcox, Carlisle, Jett -- distinguish
themselves by their clarity. Joan Jett screams as fiercely as
anyone, but you can understand everything she's saying,
whereas many of the male singers rant unintelligibly (which can
be its own kind of hostile fuck-you lyricism). The viewer/listener
comes away thinking that Jett and the other women -- remember,
this was 1980 and 1981, long before Courtney and Alanis -- have
fought too hard to be on that stage to waste the opportunity
to be heard; the men, accustomed to being heard, let their
words clatter and fall every which way.
Jonathan Demme is thanked in
the credits, and much of Urgh! shares the concert-film
aesthetic he pioneered in Stop
Making Sense and continued in Storefront
Hitchcock. Director Derek Burbidge, who made rock videos
back then (including "Cars" for Gary Numan and pretty
much all the Police's early MTV highlights), is into simplicity,
not flash (a useful approach when catching thirty-odd bands on
the fly in three different countries). The bands are given space
to work up their own rhythm -- the editing doesn't do it for
them. Burbidge is as fond of the mammoth close-up as Sergio Leone
ever was, and half of "Roxanne" seems to explore Sting's
nostrils from previously unseen angles. Performers like Lux Interior
and Jello Biafra seem to be dripping sweat right onto you. The
effect is to take you into the front row. Urgh! doesn't
(and can't possibly) have the cohesive brilliance or musical
momentum of Stop Making Sense -- the styles are simply
too varied, throwing you from catatonic New Wave to thrashing
punk in an eyeblink. Still, as a record of a moment and a sound,
it ranks up there with the best you've seen and heard.
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