The prospect of a Frank Zappa episode of Pop Screen is likely to get you either cheering or groaning, which is of course why we’re doing it. This week, confirmed Zappa obsessive Aidan Fatkin joins regular host and Zappa dunce Graham to talk him through the jazz-rock-classical-comedy titan’s career – […]
Archaeon
The Smiths & England is Mine – Pop Screen 19
Today we know Morrissey as a character on The Simpsons, but are you aware he also taught Villanelle how to do local government admin? This is just one of the revelations in Mark Gill’s 2017 film England is Mine, a film about Morrissey’s early life starring Jack Lowden as the […]
Adam Ant & Jubilee: Pop Screen Episode 18
It’s the film that’s so punk, it annoyed even the punks – Derek Jarman’s Jubilee, with its motley cast including Toyah Wilcox, Rocky Horror legend Richard O’Brien, a pre-fame Adam Ant and at least one former tightrope walker, is our subject of discussion this week. Join We Are Cult’s Mark […]
Rhianna & Battleship: Pop Screen 17
It would be fair to say that Battleship, Peter Berg’s $250 million dollar Hasbro adaptation, does not arrive with the greatest of advance press. And yet, on this week’s Pop Screen, our hosts are still astonished at how much goes wrong. Join Graham and Andrew (from Behold! podcast) as we anatomise […]
Phantom of the Paradise – Pop Screen Episode 16
Brian De Palma is not a name commonly associated with campy rock-opera frivolity, but his 1974 film Phantom of the Paradise is closer to Rocky Horror territory than you’d expect from the Carrie auteur. A gonzo melange of Gaston le Roux, the Faust myth and the 1970s music scene before […]
Get On Up – Pop Screen Episode 15
Before we find out if Chadwick Boseman is going to win a posthumous Oscar for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, let’s take a look back at Get On Up, his previous brush with the Academy’s sweet tooth for musical biopics. Widely predicted to be a frontrunner in the 2015 Oscar race, […]
Quadrophenia – Pop Screen Episode 14
Pop Screen roars back, like an army of mods on scooters, with Quadrophenia. One of the definitive British cult movies, a peerless translation of an ambitious concept album and a loving tribute to a scene that, in its era, was so dangerous that the term “moral panic” was coined to […]
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping Pop Screen Podcast 13
What better time for a mockumentary than April Fools Day? The history of music industry mockery is long and storied, but Graham, Sarah and Mark went for a recent example – Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, a note-perfect spoof of the early 2010s style of pop-promo documentary. A flop on […]
It Couldn’t Happen Here (Pet Shop Boys) – Pop Screen Episode 12
Pop Screen continues its dive into the strangest products of the 1980s trend towards long-form music videos with a lost gem of British pop-surrealism – Jack Bond’s It Couldn’t Happen Here, starring the Pet Shop Boys. Arguably the first stumble in the relentless upwards trajectory PSB were enjoying, it’s been […]
Billie Eilish – The World’s a Little Blurry (Pop Screen 11)
We have taken out our Invisalign, and this is the podcast: Mick Snowden of Behold! rejoins Pop Screen to review Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry. It’s basically a piece of embedded journalism from the household of a very 21st-century pop star, from the day she first uploaded ‘Ocean […]