Here's a feast of new Dennis Hopper Chopper videos, which I made in conjunction with the launch of his new album 'Be Ready'.
First up we've got the video for the single 'All Could Come True', which we filmed in Almeria, Spain:
Next, here are two short 'making of the video' videos:
And finally, some awesome performance footage of Dennis Hopper Choppers playing as a 7-piece band, with guest vocalist the magnificent Nadine Shah. The song is 'My Destiny' from 'Be Ready':
18 July 2011
The Wrong Rock Show, broadcasting on Bush Radio 89.5FM in Cape Town, South Africa, featured music from One Man in the Band artists. The playlist includes The Two Tears – I'm So Outta It, I Can't Get Into It, Dennis Hopper Choppers – Razor Gang, Honkeyfinger – Burning Skull Blues and Thomas Truax – Escape from New York. Listen to the Mixcloud podcast of the show here.
26 January 2011
Dennis Hopper Choppers has been in the recording studio with producer Ben Hillier, working on his new album 'Be Ready'. Here's a Youtube link for some footage I shot behind the scenes.
26 January 2011
Over in Philadelphia, James Carlson has been writing a great series of articles about one-man bands. Read his interview with Honkeyfingerhere, and click through on the links at the bottom to read the other articles in the series.
14 July 2009
I'm busy making the DVD extras for the release of One Man in the Band. It's been a while since the footage in the film was shot, and it's great to catch up with everybody again. Everyone seems to have something new to say, so we're trying to film new material for the extras. The DVD is running late already, but it will be worth it, I promise! Currently, we have subtitled versions of the film in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian... does anyone want to offer to translate it into any other language?
19 June 2009
The Guardian newspaper (UK) runs a story by Kirsty Allison on the inexorable rise of the one-man band as the wider music industry falls apart in disarray. Dennis Hopper Choppers, Honkeyfinger and Thomas Truax are all discussed and One Man in the Band is namechecked. Read the article online here.
13 June 2009
The Unspoken Heroines of One Man in the Band
They don't even get namechecked in the end credits, but these two cats have leading roles in One Man in the Band.
Top left we see Ernie, the music critic and thief of fairycakes who lived with Man From Uranus. Alas, now she is RIP, having passed her last miaow of judgement on MFU's bowel-loosening organ riffs. Towards the end of her life she was profoundly deaf, but like Beethoven, this did not hinder her ability to know when it was time to get out of the chair and escape the racket from that bloody theremin.
Bottom left we see Nancy, the charming and rather possessive little madam who lives with Honkeyfinger. Every now and then she goes for a sly nap in his kick drum, only to get a terrifying awakening when music practice starts. Since the film was finished, she has been joined by a companion, Lee, and now they have to compete for Honkeyfinger's attentions when cocktail hour chimes.
Many thanks to Philippe Delvosalle of La Mediathèque in Brussels, who pulled these frame grabs and blogged charmingly about the film here and here.
8 June 2009
I'm just back from the Bremen One-Man Band Festival, held in a fantastic venue called Spedition, a railway shed in the heart of Bremen, Germany. This is an amazing festival, now in its second year, which brings together one-man bands from across the world and puts them on in front of an incredulous crowd. This year there were too many fine moments to mention from bands such as Becky Lee and Drunkfoot, The Big Sound of Country Music, Rocco Recycle, The One Man Destruction Band and Spookyman. There was even time to squeeze in a quick screening of One Man in the Band. There is something rather wonderful about one-man bands getting together with no escape in old railway sheds in Germany... everyone is there on their own and large amounts of craziness are the inevitable result. Well done to Dad Horse and the rest of the BOMB crew for a memorable event.
30 April 2009
Photos from the Play-Doc International Film Festival A selection of black-and-white 35mm and colour digital pictures taken in Tui, Spain. March 2009. Featuring Duracell, Honkeyfinger, Thomas Truax and The Two Tears.
30 April 2009
Why dogs howl at the moon... Thomas Truax playing live after the screening of One Man in the Band at the Leeds Film Festival, 5 November 2008. Behind him is Mother Superior, a souped-up version of his other drum machine, Sister Spinster.
1 April 2009
Play-Doc International Film Festival Here are some glimpses from the fabulous Play-Doc Festival in Tui, Spain. The streets of this beautiful medieval town were awash with one-man bands on the night of Friday 20 March as Honkeyfinger, Thomas Truax, The Two Tears and Duracell took to the stage at the Sala Metropol, following a screening of One Man in the Band in the cinema. This was a truly unique event. Because I have lived with the film for so long, with its editing and promotion, I forget that most of the musicians in the film haven't met each other. It felt weird and amazing to have so many of them alive in a room at the same time. Because their styles of music are so different, usually no sane promoter would put them on the same music bill. Step forward Ángel Sánchez and Sara García Villanueva, the visionary organisers of Play-Doc. This was an amazing concert... maybe, on paper, it shouldn't have worked; but, in reality, it was brilliant.
1 March 2009
Memorable moments at film festivals part 5
The Cinesubsonica festival, in Montpellier, France, combined crazy, stylish music films and hard-rocking music performances. Among the many highlights, Man From Uranus played alongside a film about sixties garage rockers The Monks. Honkeyfinger played a set of screaming psychedelic blues skronk immediately after the screening of One Man in the Band. Here are pictures and a video clip of Honkeyfinger at Le Mojomatic.
25 February 2009
We're very excited about a special event at the Play-Doc International Film Festival Tui, Galicia, Spain. On Friday 20 March, the film is being screened at 20h30 followed at 0h30 by a concert organised in one-man-band heaven: Duracell, Honkeyfinger, Thomas Truax and The Two Tears all playing live.
It's the first time Duracell has played at a screening of the film. Now all the musicians in the film have played live at film events. This quadruple bill is the biggest line-up yet. Many thanks to the folk at Play-Doc for pulling it together.
If you've got any sense, you'll make your way to beautiful Tui for the festival. It's easily accessible from Porto and Vigo airports and there's lots of great documentary films screening there.
17 January 2009
Memorable moments at film festivals part 4 The London Short Film Festival at the Roxy hosted a special feature screening of One Man in the Band, followed by a unique double bill of live music featuring the theremin acrobatics of Ninki V and the twisted blues stomp of Dennis Hopper Choppers.
January 2009
Electric Sheep Magazine previews the London Short Film Festival and the special feature presentation of One Man in the Band (or download PDF, 104kb, here).
Here is Man From Uranus doing the soundcheck for his post-film show at the Junction, Cambridge, part of the Cambridge Film Festival. Since I first filmed him, some of his old analogue instruments have blown their final fuse and been replaced by sinister electronic bricks. Somehow he set off the fire alarms during this performance.
These fluffy curry potatoes are apparently essential post-gig fare in Cambridge. That fact must have seemed very important at the time I took this photograph.
September 2008
Martin Simmonds interviewed me and wrote this article about One Man in the Band for the BBC's website (or download PDF, 180kb, here).
15 September 2008
Memorable moments at film festivals part 2
The Two Tears, aka Kerry, performing at the Milano Film Festival in the run-up to the screening of One Man in the Band. She arrived from Paris minutes before going on stage and played her set coasting on adrenaline.
The film was screened outdoors in a park in Milan later that evening using a wireless headphone system. Here is Kerry (centre) waiting for the screening to start.
And this is what the outdoor projection looked like. I think this the scene in the film in which Ninki V demonstrates her theremin technique. This photo proves that the park was spinning by that point, it wasn't just my head spinning after too many film festival drinks.
The Jecheon International Music and Film Festival in Korea was a succession of strange and wonderful moments. I didn't remember to take any photographs at the screening of One Man in the Band, but the film seemed especially popular with the elderly ladies in the audience. The post-screening Q+A mostly consisted of personal questions about my love life, a novel way in which to analyse the film.
The cinema in Jecheon where One Man in the Band was screened.
This made perfect sense in context.
Nothing to do with film festivals... but a street in Seoul filled with shops selling prosthetic limbs. Useful for one-man bands, if they'd like to play a few extra instruments at once.
Here are some links to Dutch-language responses to One Man in the Band after its screening at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam: IDFA Film Festival Daily.
Dutch one-man band Dead Elvis and His One-Man Grave casts an eye over the film.
30 November 2007
This is an action photograph of the director Q+A after one of the first screenings of One Man in the Band, at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. If I remember correctly, I'm the pixie on the left. It was a big cinema, big screen, and the projectionist kindly cranked the volume up to maximum. The film was third in a triple bill alongside Grant Gee's Joy Division and Julien Temple's Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. A lot of the audience stayed and partied to the end, breaking into spontaneous applause after some of the music scenes. Photo by The Two Tears, who hid on the back row of the cinema...
Why dogs howl at the moon... Thomas Truax playing live after the screening of One Man in the Band at the Leeds Film Festival, 5 November 2008. Behind him is Mother Superior, a souped-up version of his other drum machine, Sister Spinster.
