Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Movies - Bullets Through The Barrier - 1978


What made The Movies special is their lack of speciality. They could go anywhere and talk to anyone. If they arrived at the BBC, they would talk the doorman's language, then the receptionist's, then the studio manager's, and then the Chief Executive's. They had the manner of every class of human being stored in some internal database. But for themselves, they were - in the words of one of their songs - 'No Class'. I followed them down a BBC hallway, and heard their accents, even their personalities, change according to whom they met on the way. This was not the behaviour of human beings, but of the mirror-men of Planet Tharg.
As for politics, their rejection of barriers, of class, and of gentlemen's clubs (viz 'Big Boys Band') might have endeared them to the far-Left, but it didn't, because the far-Left believed then that anyone in the Music Business must be deeply fascist. And the far-Right didn't like them because they rejected barriers, class, and gentlemen's clubs. And everyone in the middle was quite happy with Punk (whose words they couldn't hear) or Not Punk (whose words were blissfully untroubling). No wonder The Movies never made a bean!
But they had a devoted following, dotted across the globe. Dundee was a hotspot. And Bath, well I think that was the only time I came across an audience weirder than the band. Even in New York. And you know you've got somewhere when the audience mouths the words back at you. That's frightening. You really don't want to get it wrong when there's hundreds of people lurching in front mouthing words in time: if you get it wrong, they'll lose sync and start crashing about.
Thanks tyronetieclip!!

The Movies - Bullets Through The Barrier - 1978/rs

5 comments:

Suzy Andrews said...

Always wanted to check this one out,I remember seeing the sleeve in record bargain bins in Nottingham and never got round to buying,thanx,Mikeyten

Anonymous said...

India (1980) was an instant hit with me. I was bummed to hear that no music of theirs is planned to be re-released but ecstatic to find all their albums available at:
http://www.themovies.org.uk/backstage/disc.htm

Klas said...

I have tried to download the songs from that website, but it doesn't work out for me. Anyone who can guess what I'm doing wrong?

Hebridean Monty said...

Bloody hell!I've just remembered I've got 'Bullets...' on milky/translucent vinyl and a white label of 'India'...haven't played them for years...did somebody once say they were a British Steely Dan?...maybe I made that up...anyway,they certainly didn't follow the trendy trends of the time...my foggy memory has them bracketed with Sniff & The Tears...need to go back and re-check this stuff...

Anonymous said...

Hi
You need Apple Quicktime Pro to download the songs from teh Movies site. Best £20 I ever spent - as you say, you just can't find the albums as mp3's anywhere else. Superb, superb band - like the blogs says, impossible to pigeonhole and I still play Double A, Bullets and India all the time - still sounds fresh to me!

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