Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

And so I found myself on my way to The Electric Cinema Birmingham to see & hear the honourable Steven Severin of the Contingent Bromley. He was due to give a LIVE performance of his new soundtrack composed for the Jean Cocteau film "The Blood of the Poet". Entitled "Cold Spring" this film soundtrack malarkey is what Mr Serverin seems to be up to nowadays; well it beats going to Blackpool Rebellion every year after year and pretending Punks Not Dead. Anyway before we talk about "Cold Spring" let's get the TIME LINE straight.

First off neither Mr Severin or I were alive when Cocteau made this silent film back in 1930 (in fact Cocteau and I was only coexisted for three months of 1963). Steven Severin hasn't notably played with the Cure's Robert Smith since leaving the Banshees (as it says on the EC bumf above) - that was "The GLOVE" which was back in '83. The last time I saw Mr Severin live "in Birmingham" was at the ODEON with the Banshees (obviously) back in on the "Hyæna" tour in '84. And the last time I saw Jean Cocteau "in Birmingham" was about the same time at The Triangle Cinema. Twenty years later it was Siouxsie Sioux in Banshee mode for the last time LIVE infamously without Steve Severin in London at the RFH. I did get to see Mr Cocteau in 2004 though…………….. but I'll get to that later

The Electric Cinema (according to itself) is the oldest working cinema in the UK. Sounds wonderful don't it! Unfortunately I don't remember the Electric Cinema as the oldest working cinema in the UK I remember it, as it was in the eighties, as a PORNO CINEMA. Not through personal experience obviously (clear throat) but that's what it was. While the ELECTRIC was enjoying its PORNO phase I spent most of my time across the city at THE TRIANGLE CIMEMA in ASTON. Unfortunately during the mid nineties the evil doers; who are again in control of this country of ours again, decided to convert the TRIANGLE CINEMA into a piece of grass behind the SACK OF POTATOES pub. A reformed Electric Cinema opened up around this time and as the TRIANGLE CINEMA died the ELECTRIC became the only art house Cinema in the centre of Brum.

Things have changed cinema wise over the last 25 years, back in the eighties you put on a film and people who loved the art form came and watched. Nowadays (in the EPOCH of the IDIOT) you need comfy sofas, and chocolate cake, and cups of milk, and copious amounts of alcohol to lure the disinterested into the cinema, because apparently watching a ground breaking film is not quite enough of a draw today.

Back in the halcyon alcohol drenched days of the mid eighties this wasn't the case. then there were a unique bunch of characters (WHO LOVED SIMPLY WATCHING FILMS) that inhabited both the tricolour flying GOSTA GREEN PUB and the nearby TRIANGLE CINEMA. You see back then there was a place to drink and a place to watch films - radical! One battered old bloke who was omnipresent in those times I dubbed THE WATCHER. He'd always sit on the front row of the tiny TRIANGLE cinema and he'd always there before anyone else arrived - sitting on the red velour fabric of seat number 6. He'd always be decked out in the same thread bare camel Crombie overcoat whether it was hot high summer or bleedin' brass monkeys; but being omnipresent in a cinema wasn't why I knew him as the WATCHER.

Just before the lights would dim he'd take a metal comb from his inside pocket and rake it through his greased black and grey streaked hair. Then he'd replace the aluminium implement and draw out a small fragment of broken mirrored glass. It was about the size of a fifty pence piece coin. He'd hold it up, gripping it firmly with his orange and black gnarled finger nails. He wouldn't be looking at his recently combed receding hair line or his own sallow flesh defying gravity hanging in flaps from his insufficient bone structure. No. He would use the glinting piece of mirror, moving it slowly from left to the right, to spy on the poor souls in the rows behind him. He would carefully and deliberately find and fix upon every reflected face in turn. Why he did this I've no idea. Perhaps he was counting the house attendance; perhaps he collected faces; and by committing each face to memory somehow captured part of their souls. Either way he was The Watcher, he was the bloke you learnt never to sit behind, especially if the film was Un Chien Andalou. He's probably in the cold unforgiving GROUND now, in the dark once more, with a catalogue of faces for entertainment.

Meanwhile back at the ELECTRIC CINEMA I was waiting for Mr Severin amid the click of tea spoons and cake forks. Drinks were kicked over and the middle class middle brow dicks chattered on and on inanely in the ridiculously over gentrified picture house. Luckily there was a Goth contingent, a Banshee contingent and a film buff contingent present; thankfully in enough numbers to prevent me from indiscriminately taking up the gun against the dicks.

Finally the lights were dimmed and a black clad figure made its way through the auditorium and onto the front of house stage. Seated at a small table, hunched over and lit by the light of a MAC laptop, the white haired Mr Severin took a sip of water, his intense black eyes darted between the small screen before him and the large screen above. The "Cold Spring" soundtrack was queued in and Cocteau's "The Blood of the Poet" began.

And when the lights came up again what had I learnt? Well, Cocteau's imagery is still as strong as ever and Steven Severin's new soundtrack was a perfectly worked ambient revision. But then Banshees were always strong on imagery and Severin's lyrics invariably had a filmic quality; take MELT! for example from "A Kiss in the Dreamhouse"

You are the melting men
You are the situation
There is no time to breathe
And yet one single breath
Leads to an insatiable desire
Of suicide...in sex

Handcuffed (in lace and blood and sperm)
Swimming in poison
Gasping in the fragrance
Sweat carves a screenplay
of discipline...and devotion

Very "In the Realm of Senses".

In this time of regroupings and revisitations and reunions have we really seen the end of Siouxsie & the Banshees; will they be lured out for another final hurrah? - Personally I hope so, even though it seems unlikely. Perhaps they'll get the itch for one more one more; perhaps this time it will be without Budgie, who knows? Perhaps the end was really the END in '97 or in 2004.

Oh yes I nearly forgot, back in 2004 where did I see Jean Cocteau? Well every time I go to London I go to Notre Dame. Oh you thought Notre Dame was in Paris, well you're wrong. This is THE CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME DE FRANCE and it's in Leicester Place, off Leicester Square, in China Town, London. Inside the church are some exquisite murals by Cocteau completed three years before his death in 1960. When he had finished his task Jean Cocteau was sad to leave, he said: "I am sorry to go it's as if the wall of the chapel has drawn me into another world…" "I shall never forget the wide open heart of Notre Dame de France, and the place you allowed me within it."

Irrespective of what religion you are (if any) THE CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME DE FRANCE is a perfect place to escape from the clamour of BABYLON and were you will find the man and artist Jean Cocteau.

PS: Of course Bill Nelson went completely Cocteau mad by setting up Cocteau Records in the early eighties; see Cocteau release No.1 COQ1 above - Do You Dream In Colour? And then there was the Cocteau Twins but....ok I can see you're nodding off so.........................................FIN