When the credits have rolled and all's left onscreen is a message about piracy causes bird-flu, what will most likely hover closest to the corner of the brain related to the remembering of things past, is that those performances were fucking incredible.
For this reason alone Screaming Masterpiece would be essential. It's not as comprehensive as a fella might maybe have liked, and is probably best viewed as an introduction to Icelandic Popular Music, rather than as an All You Need To Know type deal, but it does have a staggering performance of All Is Full Of Love, and it does at least name-check the various elements and influences helped create this most astounding of near-Bohemian musical communities, a community thriving on little else but its own sense of adventure and suspicion of convention.
Line it up for a marathon night's viewing alongside Jason Kulbel and Rob Walters' Saddle Creek documentary, James Szalapski's Heartworn Highways and the first couple instalments of Penelope Spheeris' Decline Of Western Civilisation series. That right there is the basis for a truly brain-frying eve of musical wonder, community values, terrifying hair and shockingly underrated genius.
Thanks, folks.
Article comments
1 - Jon Sobel
Cool, I am going to look out for this DVD that you so righteously describe. Also this might be the most awesome review of yours that my eye-holes have yet beheld. All of the legendary Duker stylations plus extreme focus.
2 - Duke De Mondo
jon, i thank you no end, and my god, just last night i was lamenting to my ladyfriend, beautiful ms gillian, that i had just submitted a review to blogcritics that may be the most nonsensical, ill-considered, pointless mess i've ever scribbled, and that i may well have some apologising to do to all concerned once the folks who sent the material get to reading it. i don't say that for to have all "oh, not at all, it rocks" etc but for to illustrate the relief i felt there now; "extreme focus"!
i really am very very suprised at that, and pleased, also. maybe i couldn't make sense of it when reading it back because i've got the flu...
either way, thank you very much, and yes, keep an eye out for the flick, it's well worth a gander, is my opinion on the matter.
3 - Duke De Mondo
jon, i just left a lengthy comment thanking you for the "extreme focus" remark, owing to how i was shittin it that this made no sense. sadly, the comment was lost to the ones and the zeroes for some reason. but thank you, was all i said really, and also, yes, keep an eye out for the flick. some astounding stuff in there.
4 - Duke De Mondo
jon, i tried a few times to say thank you, and my comments keep dissapearing, so third time lucky, thank you very much, particulary for the "extreme focus" remark, since i was wailin to my ladyfriend just last night that this was nonsense that lacked anythin approachin focus. so nice to know it made sense to you. maybe it's cause i'm used to havin NO focus, so havin some seems weird to read back. i dunno. anyhow, thank you!
5 - Aaron Fleming
Superb Duke, as always, focused AND poetic!
6 - gillian
great review, and you were stewin a bit over this. there was no need to worry; another excellent article :) xo